Staying Motivated

Combining full time work with writing is a tough job. After a long day at work, you have 4 – 5 hours tops before you need to get to bed. Within those hours, you have stuff like getting dinner ready, preparing for the next day at work, etc to get out of the way before you can finally get down to writing. It’s pretty hard to stay motivated in the midst of all that and the natural instinct is to give up. When I come close to that, here are a few things I do to get me back on track: -

1. I’m a big advocate of turning off your idiot box. If you tally the number of hours you watch it in a day x 365 days a year, that’s a lot of your life spent in front of a box that adds no value to you as a person. 
2. Listen for your muse. Every writer has one. I have the crazy lady in the blue tunic. When he/she comes, stop whatever you’re doing and go with the flow.
3. If you can’t hear your muse, that’s ok. It doesn’t give you a pass to turn to the TV or Internet. Pick up a book and start reading instead. It will eventually get you going again.
4. Make a timetable and determine to stick to it. I try to do at least an hour of writing on workdays and 4 – 5 hours on weekends. Initially, it can be a struggle but once you get into the routine, it works out quite well.
5. Get off the Internet. I’m guilty of this. Under the guise of searching for some information you need for your book, you end up wasting valuable hours on the WWW. Limit your research to only 1 or 2 days a week, if that. If you’re a slave to the Internet, you can unplug it before you start writing.
6. Get officious with the writing. Have an area for it with a desk, printer and other necessary paraphernalia. Let the area serve as a writing office only.
7. Put all new age devices on silent mode i.e. blackberry, iphone, ipad, iwhatever, and focus only on the screen in front of you. No distractions. 

If you have any tips for staying motivated, please share them in the comment box. Happy reading & writing. :)