How to Get to Your Desk and Stay There
We’ve compiled advice from authors on keeping your butt in your seat, and pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard, as it may be). Sometimes the final draft feels really far away (especially if you’re writing a novel), and that makes keeping motivated hard. When you find yourself feeling the urge to escape the desk…
1. Allow yourself to write without worrying about quality. Worry about quality when you get to editing. But for drafting, just get words on paper.
“It’s perfectly okay to write garbage — as long as you edit brilliantly.” — C. J. Cherryh
2. Don’t disappear. It can be easy to become immersed in work when you’re trying to achieve a difficult thing. Sometimes that’s good, but it can also work against you. Take a break or allow yourself play time. When you allow for growth and time in other important things, it will only better your writing.
“If you have other things in your life — family, friends, good productive day work — these can interact with your writing and the sum will be all the richer.” — David Brin
“Keep human! See people, go places, drink if you feel like it.” — Henry Miller
3. Switch it up. Habits cut both ways: they can help us be more consistent, but they can also get us into ruts. If you find yourself feeling uninspired, try writing something that isn’t your current work in progress. Creativity thrives from cross pollination.
“Exercise the writing muscle every day, even if it is only a letter, notes, a title list, a character sketch, a journal entry. Writers are like dancers, like athletes. Without that exercise, the muscles seize up.” — Jane Yolen
4. Walk away. Somewhat related to #2 — when you find yourself stuck, sometimes the best answer is to disengage. Allowing yourself a quick breather helps. Besides, you never know where you’ll find inspiration:
“The best time for planning a book is while you’re doing the dishes.” — Agatha Christie
5. Stop worrying about outside readers. Focus on your passions, instead.
You will never truly be able to know what other people want to read. You aren’t a mind reader. So instead, figure out what you want to say. Having a sincere interest and passion for what you’re writing about is what will get you through the hard times.
“Don’t try to figure out what other people want to hear from you; figure out what you have to say. It’s the one and only thing you have to offer.” — Barbara Kingsolver
“If there’s a book that you want to read, but it hasn’t been written yet, then you must write it.” — Toni Morrison
6. (If all else fails…) READ. RE-READ.
Revisit the books and poems and stories you find most inspiring. Read slowly, and take careful notice of what you like best about them. Reading is a form of study. It will help you learn craft and discover what works and doesn’t work for you. But beyond that, it’s a way of reminding yourself why you got into writing in the first place and what exactly you love about it. Being reminded of your love for the craft is one of the most powerful forms of inspiration:
“A good book is an education of the heart. It enlarges your sense of human possibility what human nature is of what happens in the world. It’s a creator of inwardness.” — Susan Sontag
7. Last, remember this:
“People on the outside think there’s something magical about writing, that you go up in the attic at midnight and cast the bones and come down in the morning with a story, but it isn’t like that. You sit in back of the typewriter and you work, and that’s all there is to it.” — Harlan Ellison
For more writing tips, resources, and inspiration you can subscribe to OneRoom’s daily writing newsletter.
Kayla Quock graduated from UC Berkeley with a B.A. in English Lit. and a minor in Education. She worked for the UCB Vice Chancellor for Equity & Inclusion before coming to work at OneRoom.
