In the course of my writing life, people have asked me over and
over about motivation. “How do I get motivated?” or “Can you motivate
me?” Few things strike as much fear into my heart. It’s not that I don’t
have any concern for people. I genuinely want to nurture other
writers. But I hate “motivating” people.
Does this make me a horrible person?
When someone asks me how to “get” motivated, I immediately pull
back. To me, this sounds like an invitation to play a guessing game with
their psychology, to start pulling wires in their heads until I make them do
the thing they want to do. This takes an unimaginable amount of energy
and patience on my part. Some days I just don’t have it.
When I hear this from a growing writer, I worry about two
things. First, I don’t want to give the appearance of hoarding the
Special Magical Mystical Writing Knowledge That I Surely Possess ™.
Second, I don’t want to give the appearance I don’t care about other
writers. But at the end of the day, I believe in tough love. To
write, you have to write. It’s as simple and impossible as that.
The necessity of pulling back
When you overwater a plant, it becomes wilted and soft.
The stem grows mold and the plant can die if the gardener doesn’t hold back a
little. Sometimes I think one has to hold back to the sake of the
writer. I don’t want them to wilt. I want to see people confident
and self-actualized just as much as I want to preserve my own energies.
So how do I help people get off their metaphorical
couches? How do I help them to overcome their training that “writing is
impossible” and you have to “write it right the first time”?
RX for writing motivation
Motivation is not something you can find, and it is certainly
not something someone gives you. There is no magic button or pill.
Motivation is a series of choices we must all make. As writers, we are
not automatically afforded the respect and dignity given to more popular
professions. We must nurture ourselves, empower ourselves, and claim our
own work as work. We must learn to motivate ourselves.
Give yourself the gift of the draft
Produce. Produce. Produce. You are not a
writer until you are writing. There is no pizzazz in this, there is no
glamour. You are translating thought and impression into the code of
language, and making that code understandable to others. This is work.
This is labor. Own it.
When you actually work on something , you become intimately
familiar with the process. You learn the needs of the format or genre
you’re working with, and you learn your own habits and foibles. The
experience of working draft by draft is more valuable than a hundred writing
books. There is no substitute for drafting.
You can’t spit out the Mona Lisa
Distance yourself emotionally from your draft and learn to
edit. Your first draft will always be flawed. Your second, third,
and even fourth will have issues. Sometimes projects have fatal flaws,
and sometimes they need heavy-duty restructuring. This is not an
indictment on your as a writer.
You are under no obligation to write a perfect poem, essay, or
paper the first time. Waiting until you deem something “perfect” to move
on is going to prevent you from writing anything. Excellence is a good
goal, but perfectionism is a very bad habit.
Identify your High Order Concerns
Take this session by session, and have definable goals for each
one. In tutoring, we have to prioritize on the fly, and we usually only
have 30 minutes with a student. A successful tutoring session
triages a paper: both individuals ascertain what the biggest flaw in the work
is and address that first. If there’s time left in the session, they work
on small fry. This empowers the student to work on their own errors, not just
accept criticism, however well deserved – it puts them in the drivers’ seat.
Do the same for yourself. What do you want to accomplish
this afternoon? Today? This week? Limit these goals
severely. If you can’t place it in the top three slots of your to-do
list, it’s not a High Order Concern. Not every part of the writing
process is priority one at every single step. Pull back, consider, identify,
and act.
Parting Thoughts
There will be days, even weeks, where you can’t get “anything
done”. That is ok. You are allowed to have a life outside of
writing. But you must develop the reflex to return over and over to your
worktable. Over time, the choices you make become habit.
If you choose to put off a project until you find the perfect
word, detail, mood, whatever – you are ultimately choosing to not bring this
project to completion. You will develop and reinforce fear, anxiety, and
perfectionism. You have developed the habit of de-motivating
yourself. Can you live with the outcome of these choices?
However, if you develop the habits of production, editing, and
prioritizing – you have chosen to motivate yourself. On a day to day
basis, you will have your hands dirty with the work of writing. You may
feel temporary disappointments and setbacks, but overall you will remain
motivated to continue.
***
Liz Reilly is a tutor and adjunct at Passaic County Community College. She has over 5 years’ experience in blogging, writing, teaching, and tutoring a wide variety of people.
