Let’s be real—some days, writing seems impossible. You sit there staring at your laptop, and suddenly, reorganizing your closet feels so urgent, you just have to get up and do it. Sound familiar? Trust me, dear happy writer, we’ve all had those days. But guess what? You don’t have to be at the mercy of “not feeling like it.” In this post, I’m sharing with you five motivational tips on how to write when you don’t feel like writing.
To write when you don’t feel like writing, it’s important to recognize that writing isn’t just about talent and inspiration. What’s even more important is showing up and doing the work. Yes, even when you don’t feel like it! You can use the following motivational tips to reignite your creative spark and rekindle with your love of writing. So, if you’re ready to stop waiting for inspiration and take charge of your creativity, let’s dive in!
If you prefer the video version, check out the YouTube video below for tips on how to write when you don’t feel like writing.
Reconnect with your writing purpose
Sometimes we get so wrapped up in the hustle and grind that we forget why we do that work. Do you remember what motivated you to start that project? In those moments when you sit in front of the computer and you don’t feel like writing, it’s a good time to reconnect with your writing purpose.
I’m a huge fan of Simon Sinek and his book Start with WHY. I highly, HIGHLY recommend reading this book, or at least watching Simon Sinek’s TED talk on How great leaders inspire action.
Your writing purpose comes first. It’s the biggest force that pulls you towards achieving your goal. When you’re connected to your writing purpose, it becomes easier to see how to move forward and which small, meaningful steps will help you turn your dream into reality.
Find your writing purpose
As a writer, you first need to ask yourself why you started writing in the first place. Why do you want to write and publish that book? Why is this book important to you? If you’re writing it and putting so many hours and so much effort into it, then it must be important. You just have to remind yourself why.
Is there a certain life lesson you learned and feel it’s important to share through your story? Do you want to inspire or caution others through your shared life lessons? Or do you do it for the excitement of creating new worlds and joining your characters on thrilling adventures?
Maybe you do it because you really want to see your book on a bookshelf in a bookstore. Did you start writing because want to get some additional income, or in the hopes of one day quitting your job and earning a full income from your writing?
There isn’t a right or wrong answer to this question. It’s all about what’s important to you. Your motivation for writing may not be the same as mine or the other authors you know, and that’s okay.
What matters is that your writing purpose is powerful enough to keep you going, even on the toughest writing days. As long as it fuels your passion and keeps you moving forward, it’s the perfect motivation for you.
Inspired by Simon Sinek’s work on finding your why, I took the time to reflect on what truly motivates me—and here is my why for Happy Writer Hub.
My Happy Writer Hub WHY
My personal why for this Happy Writer Hub blog and YouTube channel is very simple and rooted in my belief that doing work you love can bring joy—not just to your life, but to the world around you. My why is to inspire writers to follow their dreams, do what they love, have fun along the way, and stay true to their passion even during the toughest times. By inspiring them to embrace playfulness and joy at every stage, I aim to support writers in achieving their dreams and never giving up on their passion.
Bring your purpose to life: Keep a sticky note with your writing purpose next to your computer so you always feel inspired, focused, and excited to show up and write.
If you need help in getting clear on your writing motivation, I created a free one-page downloadable file to help you find your writing motivation to inspire you to write when you don’t feel like writing. I hope this provides some extra motivation during those challenging writing days.
And if you’d like to explore purpose on a deeper, life-wide level—not just for writing—I highly recommend Simon Sinek’s work, including his Start with WHY and Find Your WHY book and his Find Your WHY course.1
Lower the stakes and start small
Sometimes, even sitting down to write seems like a daunting task. Why? Because you’re thinking that you have to sit down and write a novel, or an entire chapter. Either way, it’s a lot of words and overwhelm takes over, slowly killing your motivation even before you start the writing session.
When you’re feeling overwhelmed by how far you still need to go to finish the book, remember this: Rome wasn’t built in a day. Every masterpiece takes time. You don’t have to write it all in one session. (Though if you do, please let the rest of us know how you do it!). You don’t even have to write a whole chapter.
Aim for 100 words. Start with one sentence, and then the next and then the next. Take it one word at a time, and soon enough, you’ll see just how far you’ve come. As you start writing, it often happens that you write a lot more than 100 words. Starting is the hardest part, but once you get rolling, the process gets easier and the words flow like magic.
Make it happen: Sit down and write for five minutes, knowing that writing even one sentence will bring you closer to finishing the novel.
Set the stage for inspiration
Have you ever sat down to write, only to find yourself distracted by all the clutter on your desk? The problem is not that you lack the motivation to write. It’s that there’s just too much visual clutter for you to focus.
Your writing environment can either fuel or drain your motivation. Optimizing your workspace will help you get into a writing mindset faster, boosting your productivity levels throughout your writing session.
How to optimize your writing space
Here are a few things you can do to optimize your writing space:
- A good place to start is by cleaning your desk. Remove all the clutter and keep only the essentials. Your brain will thank you for it. Clear desk, clear mind. And a clear mind leads to increased focus and boosted creativity.
- Create the perfect ambiance to elevate your creativity. Do you write better under bright lights, or do you find that the words flow more smoothly under the warm glow of candlelight? I prefer using fairy lights for my writing sessions—I feel like my ideas flow better under their magical glow.
- Sound or no sound? Some writers thrive in total silence. In this case, noise-canceling headphones are your best friends. Do you write better with music? Then, I recommend creating a playlist with the music you find most inspiring for your writing. I tried both, and I found that the perfect boost for my creativity comes from an ambient sound that I play from ambient-mixer.com.
What are your preferred writing conditions? Have you ever tried ambient-mixer.com? If so, which is your favorite audio atmosphere? My go-to track for writing my novels is the Ravenclaw Common Room. But they offer thousands of ambient sounds you can explore to help boost your writing productivity. And it’s all free!
Action tip: Clean your desk and create an inspiring playlist to make your writing sessions more enjoyable.
A rewards game to write when you don’t feel like writing
Ideally, you should have intrinsic rewards for your work. Rejoicing in the fact that you’re working on your passion project, you’re improving your writing, and crafting stories that will touch the hearts of your readers—these are all examples of meaningful intrinsic rewards.
Sometimes on tough days, intrinsic rewards are not enough, and we need a little extra push. That’s when extrinsic rewards could do the trick.
Is there a trip you would love to take? A place you’ve been dreaming of visiting? That would be an awesome extrinsic reward to celebrate publishing the novel you’re putting so much effort into writing right now. I have a pretty exciting trip planned for when I publish my debut novel. I’m so looking forward to my trip to Squamish and having lunch at Jack’s bar (Virgin River fans, you know what I’m talking about).
You don’t have to celebrate only the big milestones. You can reward yourself with smaller rewards for completing smaller tasks. A small reward for completing a writing session, advancing your novel by 1000 words, or editing a full chapter can be the perfect motivation.
Is there a new TV show you want to watch? Dying to see what happens in the next episode of your favorite series? Don’t watch it! Use it as a reward instead. Decide to only watch a new episode when you’ve achieved the word count for the day. The desire to see what happens next to your favorite characters can be an excellent motivation to do the hard work. If there were a new season of The 100, I guarantee I would get my word count for the day just to make sure I get to see a new episode of my favorite series ever.
I know many writers love stationery, dream of stationery, and… have no more space for stationery. And yet, there’s that beautiful set of floral washi tapes or Happy Planner stickers you’ve been eyeing and stopping yourself from adding to cart every time you visit the Amazon page. You can never have too many stickers or washi tape, right? But apply this tip with caution. If you buy new stationery every time you hit 1000 words, you might have to move to a bigger house just to fit it all in.
Go for it: Set up a reward system for different milestones to turn writing into play and keep your fingers on the keyboard.
Visualize the finish line
Sometimes, when you see how many words you still have left to complete your manuscript, it can be discouraging. You have the feeling that it will never happen, that your goal is just too far. But it’s not! It’s closer than you think. You just have to push through the obstacles, one word at a time, and you’ll be at the finish line before you know it.
Remember how you saw yourself holding your published book in your hands when you first thought of writing a book? Motivation increases when you can visualize the outcome of your hard work.
Visualize that outcome again: see yourself holding the book in your hands. Imagine the beautiful cover, the feel of the pages, the smell of that freshly printed book. Don’t you feel excited just thinking about it? If just visualizing that moment feels exciting, imagine how incredible it will be when it actually happens.
You want that vision to become a reality, don’t you? With that image fresh in your mind, get back to the keyboard and start typing. Let your vision pull you toward your goal and turn your dream into reality.
Practical tip: Create a vision board focused on everything you want to see happen for your book and use it to focus on your future success.
Use these tips to help give you a boost on those tough writing days and to keep yourself motivated to write when you don’t feel like writing.
This post was all about how to write when you don’t feel like writing. If you enjoyed it, you might also enjoy this post:
How to Get Book Ideas—Where Do Authors Get Their Creative Inspiration?
Now it’s your turn. Let me know in the comments what are your best tips for writing when you don’t feel like writing. And if you’re willing to share your writing WHY, I would love to read about it and learn what motivates you to write.
- ‘Start with Why’ is a registered trademark of Simon Sinek/The Optimism Company. All references to it and Simon Sinek’s work are intended as fair use, for informational purposes only. This content is not sponsored or endorsed by them. I’m simply a huge fan of Simon Sinek and his work. ↩︎
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