Should You Force Yourself to Write?

If I'm perfectly honest, even though I love to write, I often just don't feel like doing it. I love creating worlds and characters and storylines, but the actual writing is hard work and I don't like writing when I'm not in the mood. Because, after all, you need to wait for inspiration, right? If you write when you don't want to, it's going to suck, correct?

Well, maybe. But maybe not. The answer to this question depends on how serious you are about your writing.

And I am writing this to myself as much as anyone else because I am such a hypocrite in this area. I know for a fact that if I only wrote at the times when I was actually feeling inspired to write, I would never finish what I was working on.

So, short answer, yes. You should force yourself to write.

But there's more to it than that. If you have a project that you're working on and seriously want to finish, there are times you just have to force yourself to write. Sometimes you have to put your nose to the grindstone. You don't have to wait for inspiration. You're still capable of writing great stuff, even with no inspiration, even when you don't feel like it. It just takes more effort. You may have to make extra notes. You may have to try things a few different ways, but it can be done.

If you want to sit around and wait to be inspired, that's your call, but, in the words of Jack London, "You can't wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club." Sometimes inspiration comes to you when you're not expecting it, but if you consider yourself a writer and are looking to improve your skills, if you only write when you have inspiration, then you're not going to be writing as much as you should. Writing isn't easy and it's not supposed to be, so only writing when you're in the mood isn't how it's supposed to work.

Make a schedule for writing and stick to it. It can be as simple as 100 words a day. At least you're writing. That's what's important. If you really, really, really, can't get in the mood, just make yourself write 100 words and then you're done for the day.

Always have a daily goal. It really does help when you know what you're aiming for. When there's a starting point and a finishing point. And, honestly, one of the reasons writers make plans like that is because we know we aren't always going to feel like writing, so we know we have to force it out of us sometimes. That's why, when you make a schedule, you know ahead of time what to do when you don't feel like writing but know that you should. This way, you will write the same amount every day whether you feel like it or not. If you are in the mood, you may write more than the required amount and that's awesome, but you will reach the goal every day.

No one feels like writing all the time so if you're not too serious about writing, you don't have a project in the works, perhaps you don't need to force yourself to write. But if you're trying to finish something, you need to plan to not feel like writing some days but writing anyway.

You have to know when enough is enough, though. Don't push yourself to the point of exhaustion. If you need a break, or you need to stop, stop. If you are trying, it counts. Don't hurt yourself. But don't procrastinate, either.

So, hopefully, having finally written this down will have motivated me enough to quit procrastinating on my writing and to stop waiting until I'm in the mood or have new ideas. Because sometimes, you can't for ideas, sometimes you have to seek them out.