Make Writing Fun Again
"How can I get my joy back doing this thing that I know I love?"
Hi, I’m Kate. Ask an Author is a reader-supported newsletter providing advice and support for authors at all stages of writing, publishing, and hand-wringing. If you know someone this applies to, you can forward them this email and encourage them to sign up. Have a question? Fill out this form and I’ll answer it in a future response.
News!
My debut novel Greenwich will be out July 22!
Adrienne Brodeur, bestselling author of Little Monsters, calls it “A stunning debut…Fast-paced, beautifully written, vividly peopled… impossible to put down.”
Publisher’s Weekly says it’s “[An] insightful debut…Fans of Celeste Ng’s Little Fires Everywhere ought to take note” and included it as one of their “buzz books” for summer 2025.
Pre-ordering early is the best way to support a novel and help get Greenwich into stores and in front of other readers! Order now and it will ship to you on release day.
“Care and Feeding” is out in The Rumpus
“Good Dead Girls” is out in No Tokens
More work is forthcoming in Bellevue Literary Review, The Brooklyn Review, and Fourteen Hills.
Dear Kate,
I’ve always wanted to be a writer. But now I’m writing a long project and it’s not fun anymore. I know every job/career isn’t fun all the time; there’s always blood, sweat, and tears. But writing used to be fun, just like I feel about my day job where the best moments don’t even feel like a job. And now it’s just … not like that anymore. How can I get my joy back doing this thing that I know I love?
- Sad Writing Panda
Dear Sad Writing Panda,
Oh, Sad Panda! First: this is so, so normal. You aren’t doing anything wrong or on the wrong path or “not a writer” or failing in any way because you’re finding out that a long project turns out to be a major grind. Even a short project hits a point that’s not fun, when you’re on your 65th round of revisions agonizing over the placement of the word “the” and wondering, does this matter??? Why am I doing this to myself???
But there’s something uniquely difficult about a long project, especially if this is maybe your first truly long, involved, solo, multi-year (I assume) project that’s on a completely different size and scale from anything you’ve tackled before. Writing requires stamina, and developing the muscles that allow you to keep going. The good news is that you build this muscle by … doing the thing. The more you write, the more you will be able to write. The more you focus on this project, the more you will be able to complete long projects without losing your mind. Just by working on this project now, you’re giving yourself the tools that are essential to finding your way back to the joy you get from writing, and the joy you’ll get from finishing this book. Not working on this project is not going to give you that joy back.
As you say — nothing is fun all the time. I think it’s worth taking a moment to really sit with that and internalize it and see if you can be okay with the fact that it doesn’t feel fun right now. If there’s still some part of you that’s expecting it to be fun, that can contribute to the feeling of resistance and the “But I don’t wanna!!!” that’s making it hard to sit down and finish this thing in the first place.
How do you get through the parts of your day job that aren’t fun? How do you reclaim the fun times, so you still feel good about it (because it sounds like you genuinely like your job!) even if you hit a rough patch or have to deal with some part that’s inevitably shitty? If, for example, you set a deadline to deal with some part of your job that you don’t like, can you do the same for your manuscript? If you work with a friend when you have to knock out stuff you don’t like at work, can you do the same when you’re writing? If you reward yourself with a favorite treat, or a TV show, or something that gives you a little dopamine buzz when you get through stuff at work, can you do the same here? I’m sure you have your own tricks and techniques to get you through the other parts of life and work that are sucky. You can definitely apply them to writing, too.
Some ways to get your mojo back:
Dabble with some morning pages or journaling, to stretch your writing muscles in a low-stakes, stress free way.
Start scribbling something new on the side — not so that it takes over what you need to finish, but so you can, again, flex your creative muscles and remind yourself that you do, in fact, enjoy this. (Make sure you don’t abandon the current project while you’re doing this, though!!)
Dream about a new project, even without writing anything down. Planning ahead can give you something to look forward to, and an incentive to finish this current project so you can move on to the new one.
Write by hand if the computer feels stressful.
Open up a blank document so you aren’t staring at the same doc you’ve been wrestling with for ages and work on your project from there.
Set a timer. Can you work for 20 minutes, then give yourself a 5 minute break? Not every day has to be the world’s most productive session, especially if long hours are contributing to your burnout.
Read something you love, to remind yourself what you love about words.
Read something you wrote in the past, to remind yourself of the things you know you can do, because you’ve already done them.
Treat yourself to a favorite tea, or a cafe if you like getting out of the house, or a playlist if you write to music, or anything that makes you feel comfortable and focused and can signal to your brain and your body that now it’s writing time.
Get realistic about what you actually have left to finish. Sometimes it can feel so overwhelming. Make a list of concrete tasks, broken down into doable sizes. This will let you focus on what you actually have to do, instead of that demoralizing “All the things!!!!” that can feel insurmountable.
And then check off the tasks as you complete them!!!! I know list-making itself isn’t necessarily fun on its own, but tell me it doesn’t feel amazing to cross something off a list!!!!!
End each writing session on a high note. You don’t have to work yourself into the ground to be able to call yourself productive. I always try to finish a writing session before I’m exhausted, because the tiredness makes me think I hate writing when I know that I don’t—I’m just cranky from working too much.
DRINK WATER.
If things like alcohol, caffeine, or other substances affect your sleep and/or make you anxious or crabby in any way, limit them or cut them out. I’m so protective of my writing time, which means what I’m really protective of is my SLEEP. Everything sucks if I’m tired or hungry. I can’t write if I’m not taking care of myself.
I know this sounds hokey, but honestly: tell yourself that you can do this. The way we speak to ourselves makes a difference. If you’re constantly telling yourself “I hate this,” every step is going to be a lot harder than if you say, “I know I can get this done.” Being mean to yourself isn’t going to make writing fun, no matter where in a project you are.
If you are avoiding your work in a way that crosses into self-sabotaging or self-abandoning, these are things worth discussing with a trained therapist who can help.
Rebecca Makkai has written an incredibly helpful series of posts about writing with ADHD, and whether or not you have ADHD, this list of tricks she uses to get things done has a bunch of good ideas that might resonate. The most important thing is finding out what works for YOU. This requires some trial and error. It also requires being honest with yourself about what’s really holding you back, and not letting yourself get away with choices that aren’t actually serving you.
If you’re experiencing emotional dysregulation that’s affecting your writing —especially if, in this scenario, you recognize yourself as freezing on or fleeing from the page — Anna Sproul-Latimer has insights into how to name and shift these ingrained frameworks:
The pressure of finishing a large project can be a lot. How much pressure are you putting on yourself, not just to finish the project but as you’re imagining what life will be like after you’re done? Remember that no one is expecting perfection of you. NO ONE. Not your agent (if you have one). Not your editor (if you have one). Not your readers, when they come. That’s just … not what writing is about. What if you gave yourself permission to be imperfect, and to write something that’s the best you can make it — but isn’t perfect, either? Every book is a bit of a failure. That’s just how it goes. Not because it sucks, but because as writers we’re always working on our writing, and trying to make it better, and seeing all the places we can still improve. Sometimes the most liberating thing is to recognize those limitations, and decide they’re part of the process and a sign that you’re Doing The Thing, rather than a weakness that you have to overcome. Finishing something is hard, because everything has to work — you can’t keep saying “I’ll solve that problem later!” But finishing something is also satisfying in a way that a bunch of unfinished pieces will never be. And part of finishing a project means letting it go — allowing it to be whatever it is, with all its successes and its limitations — and letting yourself grow into the next project, too.
And honestly? Sometimes you just have to make yourself do hard things. This is a tough love moment, but here it is: I think you ultimately have to want the thing more than you want your life without the thing. You have to want to finish a book more than you want life without a finished book. Not writing is worse to me than any day of writing will ever be. I know we can’t just will ourselves into a different head space. And there are always going to be bad days. But when things get hard, I try to remind myself that I don’t HAVE to do this. No one is making me be a writer. And sometimes, the reminder that I choose to do this is enough to get me back.
There are fun things about being close to the finish line. Even if you’re sick of the project and hate every word you’ve written. Look at how much you’ve already written, and how far you’ve come. It’s going to feel so good to get this done. You won’t remember how un-fun this current moment feels — you’ll remember how good it felt to write a book. And then you’ll want to do it all over again.
Hang in there!
No matter what, keep writing.
Kate