Ask a Published Author: "How do I make myself write?"

Susan Dennard  is a writer turned marine biologist turned writer again.  Something Strange and Deadly  is the first in a Gothic trilogy, and the sequel,  A Darkness Strange and Lovely ,  has just released. She shares with her heroine Eleanor a healthy appetite for baked goods.

How do you make yourself write when you really don’t want to? I have this problem a lot and am struggling to get myself to type. Please help! — Anonymous

This is something I encounter pretty frequently in my own work (loads of people do; you’re totally not alone on this), and what I’ve found is that what’s keeping me from writing can boil down to two things: 

More often than not, I’m just being lazy. It’s true! A lot of the time, the thing keeping me (and most people) from writing is actually me. It takes a huge amount of self-control to sit at a computer for hours on end and type, and I’ll admit that there are times where my self-control fails and I go play Assassin’s Creed instead.

Still, if I’m finding that I don’t want to write, I make myself go BICHOK anyway. I put my Butt-In-Chair, Hands-On-Keyboard. Oftentimes, this will get the words flowing, and before I know it, I’ve written the chapter that needed writing.

If, however, I find I’m still having a hard time writing or I find that I hate everything I write, the answer could be that…

There’s a problem with what I’m writing. It could be a problem with what I’ve planned, a problem with the world I’ve built, a problem with a scene I just wrote, but basically something isn’t right—and that something is what holds me me back from writing.

So whenever this happens, I sit down with my headphones and my epic music, and I think really hard about what would make me want to write.

Have you ever heard the phrases “cookie scene” or “candy bar scene”? They refer to those special scenes that really excite you to write the book—the parts of the story you just can’t wait to reach.

But here’s the thing: Every scene should be a cookie scene. Plain and simple. You need to make every scene include something that excites you because if you’re not having fun, your reader won’t either.

Now, for me, this will sometimes mean letting go of everything I’d planned or built in the world—or maybe an entire draft I’ve already written and rewritten (this has happened; multiple times with multiple projects). I can’t make the story what I want it to be or dig out the yummy chocolate chips if I’m not willing to let go of what I’ve already done. And I never view that as work wasted. At least I learned what wasn’t going to work. Every new word made me a stronger writer at the end of the day.

Sometimes, though, it’s a simpler solution that will get me excited to write again. Sometimes it just means skipping a scene I’d planned and moving straight to the good stuff. Other times, it’s as easy as changing a scene’s setting or adding a favorite character into a scene to give it some deliciousness. 

Heck, I’m actually doing this right now—I’m stuck in the brainstorming phase. I have pages of notes with ideas and yet none of them are really resonating with me. There are no chips (yet) that inspire me to write a full story. But I’m not worrying about it. I know that with the right idea (and the right epic music), I’ll find a story that wants to be told eventually. It might take days, it might take weeks. I just have to be patient and keep on thinking.

:) Good luck!