If You Fall off the Writing Wagon...

Just get back on. And I mean, truly just get back on. No need for fanfare. No need for all the beating one's self up. Or analyzing why you fell off. Or explaining to your coach (if you have one). Life happened. Moods occurred. You stopped writing. And now you'll start writing again. Because you choose to. It's that simple.

One of the ways we creatives set ourselves up for failure, is by making such a big hairy deal out of everything. The expectations we put on ourselves require that we be Hemingway every time we sit down to write. Or that we have wide open batches of time, with no one around, and maybe a beach/mountain house in order to write. Or that we're feeling particularly inspired or "in the mood" in order to write. But that's just not realistic. How many writers actually have that life?

If we wait for the perfect moment, the perfect mood, or the perfect inspiration, we may be waiting forever, and that would be a tragedy because, in my opinion, if you're a writer you need to write. Literally.

It's like the Joan Didion quote "I don't know what I think until I write it down". I have found that those that have the tendency to lean towards writing as their chosen form of expression, do so for a reason. It's because it's their best means of processing this crazy world. So the last thing you should do, when you've fallen off your axis, is to take away the thing that helps you process, right when you need it the most. Just get back to it.

It doesn't matter if you're feeling creative right now. Or if you're feeling stuck with the story you're telling. Or if you're wanting to avoid it all. That's just a sign it's time to switch over to journaling for awhile and write about that. Steal 15 minutes out of your day and just rant if you need to. Do a brain dump on the page on all the things that are clogging the system. Clear out the coffers. Flush the engine. Or have a written dialogue with the characters in your story. Allow yourself the gift of written exploration that has no aim other than clarity. And once you've written your way back to that clarity and/or a happy place, you'll find inspiration comes rushing back in. And you'll know just what to do with it, because you kept your writing muscles warm. :)

***Holly Payberg-Torroija is a writer/writing coach and founder of Loving The Process, a coaching program designed to support writers in getting out of their own way, so they can write the stories they were born to write. If you know it's time to finally write that book or script, and are ready to transform your life in order to make that possible, hop on a call with Holly to chat about it. You can book your free consult by clicking here Her next year long program starts up in September. Will you be in it?