How Toxic Productivity Destroys Your Creative Drive
It was 8 p.m. Friday night, and I had just gotten home from an exhausting day of work.
After throwing my bags onto the ground and collapsing onto the couch, I only thought of one thing.
I need to do more.
The Secret to a Consistent Daily Writing Practice
If there’s one thing that’s always mentioned when it comes to writing, it’s how important it is to have a daily writing practice.
I remember seeing articles and blog posts about popular writer’s routines and how many of them had a target word count they’d hit every day.
Stephen King’s was 2,000 words. Earnest Hemingway was 500. Margaret Atwood’s was between 1,000 to 2,000. And the list goes on.
The concept of having a daily writing practice always made sense to me, but I struggled to make it happen for myself.
Why? Because I was obsessing over the content of what I would write each day.
The Devastating Problem with Too Many Mentors
When I first started writing, I was obsessed with reading craft books.
Save the Cat by Blake Snyder? Read it.
Story by Robert McKee? Already Finished.
Plot and Structure by James Scott Bell? Do you even need to ask? Read it within a week.
These, plus dozens of others, sit on my bookshelf with annotations, page marks, and notes scribbled in the margins.
In my head, the more I read about writing, the better my stories would be. But do you want to know what happened?
I was too paralyzed to write a word.
The Best Source of Inspiration for your Writing
Lately, I’ve found myself in the rabbit hole of Lisa Cron’s teachings on story. I’m rereading her book “Story Genius,” and she is a master of the ins and outs of storywriting. Her perspective is one I could listen to all day.
But what I like most about her teachings is her emphasis on backstory. She points out that you can’t write a strong story about a protagonist when you know nothing about them or how they came to be that way.
Personally, I feel the same applies to us as writers.
How to Defeat Perfectionism in Your Creative Writing
We’ve all been there before. You have this grand idea about this amazing story you want to write about, but no matter how you put it on the page, it doesn’t work.
The characters aren’t interesting enough. The dialogue is too flat. And the plot? Don’t get me started.
Nothing about what you’ve written matches the vision inside your head.
So, what do you do? You scrap it.
Why? Because it’s not good enough, and neither are you.
The struggle of perfectionism is one all creatives face. We’re unable to move forward in our work and reach the success we want to achieve because we can’t get over the fact that our work isn’t perfect.
Why You’re Struggling with Your Writing and How to Overcome it like a Pro
There’s no greater pleasure than sitting at the computer and having your story flow out of your fingers with ease.
But if we’re being honest, that’s often the exception, not the rule.
Most days, we’re doing our best to get by and overcome the latest struggle in our way.
Facing obstacles is part of the process of being a creative. It’s what we signed up for when we said, “Yes, I want to do this.”
But now that we’ve signed up for this deal, how do we overcome the challenges that often hold us back?
Below, I’ve listed ten reasons why you’re struggling with your writing and tips to face them like a pro.