Stop Making Excuses and Start Writing!

Why making excuses why you shouldn’t write is a bad idea. Photo credit: vignette3.wikia.nocookie.net

Time for some blunt honesty, people. I’ve been on hiatus for months. Not just on here, but with my writing too. In fact, my writing had been in this state of suffering and neglect since before I started The Cozy Quill.

I could say that life got in the way. That I was busy. That I didn’t have time. There are so many ways to say that same excuse. But, newsflash, it’s a trap!

I thought all the excuses I was giving myself were legitimate. I was in the middle of a hectic semester at school. I really thought I didn’t have time. But, I knew deep down that this was a lie. Even 10 minutes is enough downtime to write. I had that, and I knew I did. Yet, I continued making excuses that did nothing except make me feel miserable and guilty that I wasn’t writing. I did nothing about it. The excuses kept coming. Until now.

As some of my less enthusiastic writer friends have told me before, I needed to get serious about writing if I was passionate about writing. This seems like common sense. But why weren’t they doing it? I kept putting off ‘getting serious’. Why? I’m not sure. Maybe I didn’t want more to-do’s on my plate. This sounds legitimate, but also a lot like another excuse. I realized that if I kept putting off writing, that soon it would be another year gone that I hadn’t worked on my WIP. That’s right, I hadn’t worked on my current project seriously for over a whole year! Sure, there were maybe one or two days every month or so that I worked on it, but even that was rare. That was unacceptable!

What ended up really changing my perspective on my writing and the fact that there’s no time like the present to get serious was joining a writing community. I had followed a blog, called She’s Novel, for a while. However, when updates or newsletters landed in my inbox, I usually just deleted them. I didn’t have time to write, let alone read a blog about writing! But, randomly, one day earlier this summer, I opened one of the newsletters. In it, it advertised a writing community that had been set up on Facebook just for followers of the blog. I had always wanted to find a stable writing community that was actually frequented outside of November (the NaNoWriMo forums are basically dead 11 months out of the year, sadly). This seemed like the perfect opportunity to connect with other writers.

The only thing standing in your way of writing is you. Photo credit: lanakrumwiede.com

This has been one of the best decisions I have made about writing. Although I haven’t participated in the group a lot so far, I love getting updates and reading other people’s posts. And this is what started to get me out of my writing slump of excuse after excuse. It didn’t get me back to writing entirely at first, but it was definitely the thing that made me realize it was time to get serious. People from all walks of life post in the group, and they all make time to write. A lot of them have demanding jobs or kids or both. Having neither myself, I realized ‘wow, if they make the time to write, why don’t I?”

Exactly.

Finding a writing community is obviously not what kicks everyone into gear. It took several other things to get me writing again, including accountability buddies, a writing routine, and a writing ritual. I’m slowly getting myself back into the habit of writing, if I ever even had such a habit.

But it is possible to get back in the writing game. Find what pushes you to get serious about writing. It may seem like you’re climbing Everest, especially the first few days. Those writing muscles are out of practice. They just need a little warm up.

So, what works for you? What gets you writing, or, if you already regularly write, what keeps you writing? Let me know in the comments below. 🙂