Revamp

What’s a writer to do, when you’re just not feeling it? When it feels like you have no ideas anymore, like nothing you’re working on is worth working on? Well, that’s what we’re talking about, all month long. Ways to get your mojo back, to get yourself writing again, and to get back to where you believe in what you’re working on.

Great topic, isn’t it?

I know many writers who have this problem, who struggle to keep going (especially after hitting the ten-books-written point), and honestly, I’ve been in the same boat a few times. But there are several ways to get yourself out of this rut.

Today, let’s talk about the one I ended up doing this time, to get me back into the writing game.

Revamp Something

Something of yours, of course. Preferably something you never published, or, even better, something you never finished. Pick it back up again. Rework it, rewrite it, get it to where it actually shines this time. After all, you wouldn’t have given up on it without good reason, would you? Well, now you’re older and wiser, and I think you’re more than ready to get this thing to where it needs to be.

Like I said, this is actually what I’m doing right now. I’m still in the beginning stages of this new story, but what I ended up doing was reading through the five chapters I’d written in a novel I loved (at the time) and never finished (in favor of the Druid Novels). And guess what? I still love the story, but I knew from the get-go it wasn’t good enough to actually keep any of what I’d written prior.

So I started over. In fact, I kept only the barest bones of the story, and am completely rewriting it from there. And you know what? I think this is one of the funnest projects I’ve worked on in a really long time.

That’s the brilliant part of revamping something. This is a story you’ve already loved before. Your brain already knows how to fall in love with this story. But now you’re better at your craft, better in many ways, and you can do the story justice. You’re doing it for the writer who started the story, knowing very well how much that young writer loved this story, when they first started writing it. Because that writer is you.

I honestly found that it was the best way to get myself out of the current rut, and I really can’t wait to see where the story is going to go from here. Even one chapter in, I can tell this is going to be one of my favorites that I’ve ever written.

And that, my friends, is why you should never delete anything you ever write, even if you, in this moment, think it’s pure crap.

Future you might need that pure crap, to make something happen.

Believe me.

[love]

{Rani Divine}