Did You Break Your New Year’s Resolutions?

Getting Inspired Again

by Deborah Owen

How to Get your Motivation Back

Have you already broken your New Year’s Resolution to write more? Did you want to take a writing class this year? Write more often? Finish that story? Try poetry? Breaking resolutions is only natural, but you mustn’t allow this to leave you feeling discouraged, demoralized and demotivated.

Life is busy, and it waits for no one. Don’t be cross with yourself for “failing”. No one really fails. They are just procrastinating; always thinking tomorrow will be different. It happens with diets. It happens with smoking. It happens with writing too. The main thing is to pick yourself up now and start over again. And should you fail in this effort as well, begin again another day. As long as you have new days, you have the opportunity to succeed.

Refocusing on your Writing

Daily resolutions are the only kind of resolutions that really accomplish anything, so now is the time to make your daily resolve. Here are a few ideas to help you refocus:

• Break your writing time into small chunks that you can work into every day. Fifteen minutes is a good start. That gives you five minutes to clear your mind and ten minutes to get into the groove. You’d be surprised what you can write in fifteen minutes. True story: An unpublished woman wrote and finished a book by writing fifteen minutes a day on her lunch hour. She sent it to an editor. He bought it, and she got it published. Writers, you make your own limitations, and you make your own chances in life. Get going!

Did you break your New Year’s resolutions?

• If you don’t find inspiration when you sit down to write, don’t worry! You can write about your work, your boss, a rude clerk in the store, a nice person you met, your mate, how you want to remodel the house, or about your dreams. What matters is that you string your words together in proper English, demonstrating proper punctuation, and good thought patterns. Remember: everything you write has meaning. It shows your attitude, your interest, your opinion, your intentions, your psychological status, and it develops your writing talents.
• Write at the same time every day, if at all possible. That is the key to wanting to write. If you write at the same time every day for a week, you’ll begin to feel the “muse” – the urge to write. When you resist that urge because you choose to do something else, the muse will be diminished the next day. Put writing at the top of your priorities.

If you haven’t met the muse, you’ll know it when it hits you. It will be hard to type as fast as your mind can deliver the content. You won’t want to stop. You won’t want to be disturbed. You won’t want to do anything but write… that is the muse. Cherish it. Love it. Obey it when it calls. The muse is to a writer what a car is to a driver. It’s your vehicle to transport you from this world into the one you create.

So, what were your writing-related New Years resolutions? Share them with us in the comments below! And after that, be sure to check out www.CreativeWritingInstitute.com and sign up for an affordable 8-week writing course!