Motivation To Write – WNP 093

This is The Write Now Podcast with Sarah Werner, Episode 93: Motivation To Write

Welcome to Write Now, the podcast that helps all writers, aspiring, professional, and otherwise, to find the time, energy, and courage, you need to pursue your passion and write. I’m your host, Sarah Werner, and today we’re going to be talking about motivation. 

I feel like a lot of the time, motivation is very easy come, easy go. We’re working on something, we lose our motivation. We go on to Pinterest, we see a picture that says, “You can do it! You can do hard things!” We get our motivation back. We plunge back into our project, we lose our motivation again, and the cycle continues. Maybe you’ve experienced this. Maybe you haven’t, but I’m guessing that if you’re a creator, you’ve faced down a lack of motivation at one point or another in your work.

The reason I decided to talk about motivation this week is that I’ve been doing write-alongs on Wednesday and Friday evenings. If you want to join us, I would love to have you there. It is Wednesday and Friday evenings at 7:00 PM Central, so that’s 8:00 PM Eastern, 5:00 PM Pacific. I don’t know what that is for those of you internationally, but I’ve been doing them in my I Am a Writer, and my Seriously Successful Podcasters Facebook groups. If you’re not a member of those, come join us, do some write-alongs with us. We talk about what we’re struggling with, we do some writing together, we come back and we talk about how we felt doing the writing, all of that good stuff.

But in one of our recent write-along sessions, podcast listener, Mike, who is currently working on a novel, mentioned that he was joining us for the write-along, but he didn’t really have high hopes for it because he hadn’t written in a long time, because he had lost his motivation. He was in this big, soggy, middle of his novel and just couldn’t move forward. I highlighted this during the livestream and said, “Yes, this is definitely something that I have experienced before, and I would love to talk about it.” And it was interesting because at the end of our session, he said, “Oh, wow. I just wrote a couple hundred words. Somehow being in this group motivated me.” And so, I wanted to talk about motivation this week, because it is so broadly talked about, but it’s also so elusive and so fickle, and whether we have it or whether we don’t, can depend on a whole bunch of external and internal factors.

As human beings, which I am assuming that you are because you’re listening to a podcast, but maybe you are something else entirely, in which case, welcome, and I’m glad you’re here, but as humans, we are biologically wired to seek meaning. Chemically, when we find meaning, or when we live into meaning, our brains receive a jolt of dopamine, which is a chemical that makes us feel happy and good. This dopamine hit, this good feeling, has a lot to do with our motivation.

And I know, I don’t like to think of my motivation as just little chemical dumps in my brain. That takes out a lot of the romanticism about creating and about achieving things. I want to think that I’m living my life for more than just dopamine hits. But that aside, the point here is that we are wired to seek meaning in our lives, and motivation is what drives you to seek that meaning. And yes, maybe it all comes down to a jolt of dopamine, but what gives you that jolt of dopamine? What is meaningful for you? What gets you excited? What drives you? What is the reason behind why you do what you do?

It was really interesting, I Googled “What motivates you?” because I was curious, and I wanted to get some examples for this podcast, and what I ended up getting were a bunch of Google results that all had to do with job interviews. It turns out the question, “What motivates you?” is a very common open-ended interview question. So this got me really, really curious, and I kind of went down this rabbit hole for a while, because all of the answers were geared toward quote, “Leaving a positive impression,” and I got that from an article on indeed.com, which I will link to in the show notes for today’s episode. This article suggested that you reflect on what you love or find fulfilling about your role and field, and what in the job description you’re looking forward to, in order to answer this question in a way that will indeed, leave a positive impression and impress the people with whom you are interviewing.

This is just such an interesting way and an interesting impetus to think about what motivates you, because you’re doing it to look good. And speaking of which, they do note very delicately, that quote, “Compensation may be a strong motivator for you, but it may not always be a motivator you want to share in an interview.” Which is really funny because honestly, they’re encouraging you to lie. Would I be applying for this data entry position if it weren’t going to pay me money? My motivation is not because I love doing data entry. That really, really bothers me that in job interviews, you essentially have to be dishonest about your motivation for seeking a paid position. Like, why do I want to work this night shift at 7-Eleven? Oh, it’s just because I love being at 7-Eleven at midnight, when I’m tired and I could be sleeping. No, it’s because I need money to buy food and pay rent.

Anyway, sorry. That’s totally beside the point. The point is that we are going to be honest with ourselves about what motivates us to create, what motivates us to write, what gets us excited actually and truly, what drives us, and why we choose to spend our time doing this. In her book, The Four Tendencies, author Gretchen Rubin talks about this mix and match of internal and external motivation, and in this case, it’s all expectation-based, and she’s come up with four different personality types, depending on how you react to internal and external expectations that you set for yourself or that other people set for you. There is the upholder, who meets outer and inner expectations. There is the obliger, who meets outer expectations while resisting inner expectations. There is the questioner, who resists outer expectations and meets inner expectations, and then the rebel, who resists both outer and inner expectations.

Now, today’s episode of Write Now is not a book report on The Four Tendencies, nor is it an encouragement to discover which of these four tendencies you lean toward, although you are perfectly welcome to do so if you want. You can Google Four Tendencies and take the quiz for free. But the reason I want to talk about this today, is because of the connection between motivation and expectation. Oh, and I’m an obliger, by the way. I meet external expectations, while rebelling against internal expectations. And I think the question that we need to ask here is not necessarily what motivates you, but what do you expect from your experience with creating?

Motivation is an act of looking forward. So when I get out of bed in the morning and I feel motivated to write, I’m looking forward to something, I’m looking forward to a scene between two characters that I’m really excited about writing. Or I get out of bed in the morning, and I expect to feel depressed and bored by what I’m working on, and thus, unmotivated. So what kind of expectations are you setting for yourself, and what happens when we lose sight of those expectations, when we stop meeting them, when we lose our motivation? Because as I said in the very beginning of this episode, motivation can be very fleeting. It’s easy come, easy go, and that’s because our expectations change as our experiences change.

So have you ever lost your motivation for a project that you used to feel really excited about? For me, the answer is very clearly, yes. I’ve had this most clearly happen in a job that I was excited to start. You read the job description, you’re like, “Oh my gosh, that’s my dream.” You get hired, you wait for your first day, you show up the first day and you’re like, “Yes, this is the first day in the beginning of my new life, and I can’t imagine ever being unhappy in this new job position. I get to do what I love and I get paid to do it,” which I did not bring up during my job interview, because to do so would be indelicate.

But there’s a little bit of a honeymoon phase at the beginning of a new job, a period of extreme motivation and bliss, when your expectations haven’t quite settled out yet, and when your experiences haven’t yet added up into one big culmination, of fulfillment or letdown. Have you been there with a job? After three, six, maybe nine months, the shininess fades, maybe the customers are rude, maybe your manager doesn’t let you experiment with the freedom that you had first been promised. Maybe one by one, your ideas have been shot down. Maybe your coworker clips their fingernails at their desk. Whatever it is that causes it, you are no longer on fire for your job. You are no longer motivated and driven within this job.

And maybe the same thing has happened to you with a creative project. You started off excited for a new project, full of the possibility of a clean slate, refreshed and rejuvenated by the possibility of new characters, their interactions, or maybe simply the chance to tell your story, which sounds so liberating and so freeing, but then something happens. There’s always a reason that we lose our motivation. There’s always a reason that we lose our drive or our excitement about something, and that is when our expectations are not met.

So we talked about the new job not being exactly what it was billed to be, an annoying boss or a co-worker who doesn’t quite let you have the freedom or the experimentation that you were looking forward to in this position. Maybe with your creative project, it’s the realization that you didn’t quite know how hard it was going to be. You had the expectation that it was going to be fun all the time, and when in reality, writing can be extremely tedious. Maybe you’ve met with some resistance, and you’re not quite sure how to get past it. Maybe there’s something stopping you or blocking you, and you don’t know how to restart your engine.

Maybe you’ve turned writing or creativity into a series of rules that are so rigid, you are no longer interested in following them. Maybe you’re feeling a sense of disconnect with your project, because it’s simply not turning out the way you had dreamed it would. Maybe it’s adding an element of stress to your life that you’d just really rather do without. Maybe it’s not fun anymore. Maybe it’s boring. Maybe you’re dissatisfied because you’ve been comparing your work to someone else’s. Maybe it’s taken longer than you originally planned. And maybe you’re feeling discouraged, like you can’t actually make a difference, that that thing that motivated you to begin with is unattainable.

These all sound awful, but they are all things that we face as creators all the time. These things that cause us to lose our motivation or to lose sight of what originally was driving us, or to give up hope that the meaning we originally sought is not there for us, it’s not waiting for us at the end, or maybe the finish line is simply too far away. There are a million ways that we can lose our motivation, and that can seem so disheartening, and even more disheartening it seems to be inevitable because when we initially set our expectations, we often don’t know how to gauge them, how to set them realistically and appropriately. We jump into new projects with unprepared excitement, with blissful ignorance, and it feels good, I love starting new projects, but it’s hard to stay the course to keep going and to finish them when along the way, our expectations aren’t met in the way that we hoped and dreamed they would be.

So before this becomes too much of a downer episode, let’s talk about ways that we can reclaim our motivation. At the very top of the list is, remembering why you’re doing this in the first place. Remembering, “Why did I start this? What did I hope to accomplish? What was driving me? What got me excited about this in the first place?” This is one of the reasons I encourage every writer to write a mission or a vision statement. I know I’ve been referencing this episode a lot lately, but I do have a Write Now podcast episode, episode number 46, it’s called Crafting Your Mission Statement, and it’s just a really good idea to do that, and to be honest when you’re doing it, and to have that mission statement written down for days when you need to remember why this is worth it.

I had to do this recently myself. I’ve been writing season two of Girl in Space, and it’s been a struggle, and it becomes even worse when I realize what a first world problem this is, when I realize how privileged I am and how whiny I’m being. And I had to dig through all of the garbage and re-examine the reason that I started this project in the first place, because a lot of stuff gets in the way during the process, a lot of that garbage builds up and gets in the way of the reason we’re doing this. And I had to remind myself, that “Oh, here’s the reason.” This is going back to my mission and vision statement. “This is the reason I started doing this. Okay. I can still do this, for this reason. I just have to let go of all the clutter that’s arisen in the meantime. The fans, the reviews, the adaptations. I need to go back to why I started doing this in the first place.” So that was something that was helpful for me.

Another thing you can do is focus on the habit and the discipline of creative work. This is the infamous butt in seat strategy that I see a lot of long-haul writers using. The idea here is that no matter how you’re feeling, no matter how motivated or unmotivated you might be, you discipline yourself, you create a habit to sit down every day at a certain time and write. For some people, this is very helpful. For other people, it sounds like their worst nightmare or torture, but it is a way to keep going and to rediscover your motivation, through the act of creating itself.

Another method is reexamining the process, the rules, the structure that you’ve built up around your creative activities. Have you purposefully or not purposefully, turned the act of creation into a chore? Have you turned it into something that is, for whatever reason, no longer enjoyable? Have you sucked all of the joy out of writing again, accidentally, or on purpose? Maybe what you need, and again, this all comes back to your expectations. Maybe what you need to motivate you is to allow yourself to experiment a little bit more, to allow yourself more freedom, and to get rid of some of those rules. Maybe you’re feeling disconnected from your work, maybe a theme or an element that you’re uncomfortable with has crept into your writing. Maybe you realize that, “Wow, this novel is not saying what I wanted it to say,” or “Wow, my podcast has really gone off the rails, and I’ve gone from encouraging people to adopt puppies, to railing against the injustice of insert whatever here.” How can you examine your expectations? How can you examine your purpose and your mission, and how can you recalibrate to move forward?

Here’s a common one. Maybe you’ve experienced a setback or a difficulty. Maybe you’ve sent your work off to an agent or a publisher. Maybe you’ve submitted your work to a contest, and maybe been rejected or heard nothing back but crickets. Maybe your expectations have been reset. Maybe now when you create, your expectation is rejection, your expectation is emptiness, your expectation is disappointment, your expectation is loss. This especially, especially is when you must ask yourself, “Why am I doing this? Do I really want to continue doing this? Do I need to re-examine my mission statement? Do I need to really take a hard look at what it means to experience joy in my work, or do I need to focus on experiencing joy in my work in the first place?”

If what was motivating you in the first place was the prospect of winning an award, and you will not be satisfied if you do not win an award, then maybe writing is not the creative activity for you, or maybe you need to readjust your expectations about what you want out of this experience and what you can get out of this experience. It all comes back to being honest with yourself about why you’re doing this and what you expect out of the experience. If you are stuck in the middle of a novel that you were writing for fun, how can you make it fun again? If you’re doing it for fun, how do you put fun back into it? If you were doing it to tell your story, how can you make telling your story more meaningful? How can you rediscover that again?

We are not guaranteed anything in this life. Well, unless you’re being cynical and you say like, “Oh, death and taxes,” but writing a good story does not guarantee an award, it does not guarantee a TV deal. Those things are great if they happen, but why are you doing this? What is your actual reason for writing? I’m not saying any of this to discourage you from becoming a writer if your motives aren’t “pure enough”. That is absolutely not what I want to accomplish here today. If you are writing to win an award, then by all means, write your hardest, and do your best to win that award. I just don’t want you to be disheartened, and to stop and to give up on creativity, if you don’t win.

Finally, I’ve spent a lot of time talking about internal motivation, and I would like to speak briefly about external motivation, because this is often how I am motivated. If you’ve tried all of the above and they are just not working, and you stop caring and you’re like, “I hate this thing that I’m working on, and I’m just so unmotivated to work on it or finish it,” turn to another writer. Turn to a community, turn to a friend or a mentor and say, “Hey, I’m feeling really unmotivated. Can you remind me that I’m a good person? Can you remind me why I’m doing this? Can you encourage me please? Can you set a deadline for me to have this finished by?” Some of us get by with a little help from our friends, and there is nothing wrong with that.

One of the most motivating experiences I’ve had is being in conversation with other writers who are excited about their work, and I find that their motivation, their excitement rubs off on me, and then I become motivated to seek out new experimentation in my work, to try something a different way, to reinvigorate my story. I appreciated reading The Four Tendencies by Gretchen Rubin, because it showed me that as an obliger, internal motivation can be difficult for me, but external motivation, knowing that I might let other people down if I do not complete my work, whew, that gets me going. That helps me move forward. I am such a people pleaser, that I cannot stand the idea of letting anyone else down, and I know that about myself, and I can use it in a way that motivates me. I can use it in a way that pushes me forward with my projects, and does not let me get tangled up in my own garbage, which brings us back to Wednesday night.

I’ve found that when I do these, create-alongs, when I commit to showing up at 7:00 PM Central on Wednesdays and Fridays in my Facebook group, I Am a Writer, I show up because I know people are counting on me. I get to work, and everyone around me gets to work. It’s a measure of accountability. Knowing that I cannot stand to let other people down, I can use that against myself and I can use it to get my work done, and I can use it to keep moving forward until the gears catch and I remember, “Oh yeah, this is fun. I like doing this,” until I realize I’ve created too many rules for myself, and that I can break those rules, and have fun and experiment with my creative work again when I realize that my work is a vehicle for self-expression, for experimentation, and to express my purpose.

I hope that today’s talk about motivation has been helpful for you. It was actually helpful for me to take a step back and really explore what drives us? Why do we do what we do? What gets us excited? What motivates us? And I think it comes down to being honest with yourself. You’re not in a job interview, you don’t need to look good. You don’t need to leave that positive impression on anyone. When it’s just you, what’s going to keep you going and what can help you along the way?

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And with that, this has been episode 93 of the Write Now podcast, the podcast that helps all writers, aspiring, professional, and otherwise to find the time, energy, and courage, you need to pursue your passion and write. I’m Sarah Werner, and let’s get ready to work.