Continue Your Journey

Tips for Staying Motivated

• So, when will I get published?
• How can I reinforce my writing routine?
• What if I keep failing?

Develop Your Writing Practice

You began these lessons by looking inward, writing a letter to yourself. You then described your “I” in different ways, captured moments with vivid details, and built a story around a personal turning point. In the last lesson, “Dear World,” you wrote a public letter about a topic that matters to you.

Congratulations! Keep going.

Congratulations! How far you’ve traveled – and how much more there is to discover. What’s next?

In most writing courses, the focus shifts at the end to advice for getting published. It’s a worthy goal, although publishing tips fall outside the scope of this course. Instead, Finding Your First-Person Voice offers something else: the mental tools and mindset for persevering. That’s why it’s also titled “Lessons for Life.”

Don’t assume you’re on the wrong path just because you haven’t published yet or editors and agents don’t like your current project. Don’t push to be better, stronger, smarter, or whatever form of self-criticism you fall into. There are no guarantees of publishing success, even for professional writers.

But keep going, please.

I and many other teachers call this writing for life. Six tips for staying motivated follow, and in the box below, I list three “life goals” for writers. Think of them as legs of a sturdy stool that will hold you for a lifetime of writing: inspiring yourself, establishing a routine, and finding a supportive community.

Tip 1: Continue your Process Notebook.

The notebook habit is a great strategy for reinforcing the writing habit. Taking notes keeps you writing. A notebook also provides necessary private space to experiment and make mistakes. It helps develop self-compassion, a skill that serves you beyond getting published.

Keep adding to your current Process Notebook or start a new one. You don’t have to use the same notebook to journey onward. A few possible “itineraries”:

1. Continue with the same Process Notebook, adding pages as you go.
2. Start a new Process Notebook, copying the template provided.
3. Start a new paper notebook, continuing to take notes by hand.
4. Take notes with the online app of your choice.

If you like responding to prompts as a way to support your notebook practice, return to the many suggested prompts in these lessons.

Tip 2: Write about what you love.

In his classic nonfiction guide, On Writing Well, William Zinsser had much to say about the “tyranny of the final product” and how the threat of failure can undermine writers. Rather than trying to write what you think others want, he emphasized writing personally about things that spark you:

“How can you fight off all those fears of disapproval and failure? One way to generate confidence is to write about subjects that interest you and that you care about.” ^[1]

Don’t bore yourself.

“Living is the trick,” Zinsser added. Your own experiences provide a rich storehouse for stories. Don’t bore yourself: write about what you love, what you’re passionately curious about.

Tip 3: Set realistic goals.

In the next chapter, I ask you to come up with three new writing goals. As with your original goals, I encourage you to be specific and to set goals that resonate with you emotionally as well as challenge you. Then there’s reality.

For example: I will write in my notebook for five minutes every morning.

A laudable goal, but is it possible? Aspirational goals are fine, but they shouldn’t deny reality. They need to match your work style and schedule. While it’s good to commit to your writing goals, you also need small wins along the way.

Aspirational goals are fine, but…In my own case, I rebel against making notebook entries on a schedule. So, my goal is to write in a “reading journal” every time I finish a book. The timing varies, but I love books, which inspires me to stick with it. More important, this private notebook allows me to get down immediate impressions. I always end up writing more than I expect – a win.

Tip 4: Be kind to yourself.

The process perspective I advocate in Finding Your First-Person Voice is not a one-off for a few lessons. It’s a lifelong approach that encourages mistakes, fiddling around, raw feelings, and all the stuff most writers need to get down before they craft a piece for public consumption. Without self-compassion for the mess within, you won’t feel safe enough to allow your stories to grow.

If you aren’t kind to yourself, in other words, you’ll get stuck as a writer.

If you aren’t kind to yourself, you’ll get stuck as a writer.

Here, I’m drawing on meditation practice. Like meditation, the writing process can bring self-awareness coupled with suffering or a sense of failure. The analogy between meditation and writing is not exact, but they both rely on the courage to sit with negative thoughts and emotions. Which leads to…

Tip 5: Write about your regrets.

Cultivate self-compassion.

If you’ve made mistakes in life – and who hasn’t? – getting enough distance on your feelings to write about them helps cultivate self-compassion. Daniel Pink underscores this point in The Power of Regret, noting that storytelling is one of the most effective strategies for achieving the right balance between vulnerability and self-distance.

Try taking his World Regret Survey, recounting something you regret.^[2]

Tip 6: Make peace with failure.

“I always consider the entire process about failure,” Ta-Nehisi Coates says, “and I think that’s the reason more people don’t write.” Coates discusses the inevitable failures writers experience in his 2013 “Creative Breakthroughs” video from the Atlantic. I recommend watching this short, personal video at least once, particularly if you feel your motivation faltering.^[3]

Failure is an integral part of the creative process.

When you stumble, don’t be discouraged from trying again. Note that I wrote when you stumble, not if. Instead of blaming yourself for falling short, acknowledge failure for what it is: an integral part of the creative process.

Then take notes and travel on to your next project.