Read Something (part 2)

Hey guys! Thanks for checking back in. :)

This month, as you may know, we’re talking about what to do if you’re not feeling it. What to do when you want to write, but you just don’t like anything that you’re writing and you feel like you’re in a rut about every single bit of it.

I’ve been there. In fact, I’m still a little bit there now. I just started working on a new novel, unlike anything I’ve worked on before, but it took a long time for me to so much as find that idea, never mind the time it took to convince myself that I did, in fact, still have ideas.

Like I said the other day, I’m basically making the exact same point today that I made on Tuesday, but there’s one distinct difference. Tuesday, I recommended that you go read something. Get outside your own head, look at some ideas that didn’t come out of your head. Well, now, I want you to do the opposite.

Read Something

But don’t read anything by anyone else. Read something of yours, something you love, something reviewers love, something that highlights how creative you truly are.

For me, that meant reading my favorite scenes from the Druid Novels, and going over some of my favorite moments in the Earth-Space Saga (coming soon, I promise!). It meant looking through some sections that my beta readers constantly reminded me how much they loved, and forcing my brain to remember that I can, in fact, do this.

You can, too.

Even if you haven’t written and published very much, you have a favorite thing that you’ve written. So go back and read it. If it’s short, maybe read it a few times. There’s nothing wrong with that. Read it, and bask in the glow of how much you love it. There’s nothing wrong with that, either.

See, as writers, we see story everywhere. We live in a world of story. We see many facets of life as facets of story. But sometimes, especially times when we feel like we’re in a rut, we forget that this is how we already see the world. In reading something that you love, something that you wrote in a time when writing was the best thing ever, you’ll remember what it’s like. You’ll remember how to write like that, how to allow your creative brain to take over and get you out of the rut of logic.

After all, logic is great in editing, but in writing it can be a real dud.

So, go read something. Something you wrote. Something you love.

And remember how great you are at the thing you love to do.

[love]

{Rani D.}