Writing When You Don't Want To

Tips on Getting Started

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I've made an effort over the years to eliminate romance from my writing routine. I used to believe that in order to put words on the page, I needed to feel like writing. As a pre-requisite to starting, I looked for inspiration and motivation. In Bursting the “Writing Should Be Inspired” Balloon, I note that writers often

believe that all writing should be inspired, that it has some ideal conditions that must be met for it to happen, and that if we don’t feel like writing, then it will be impossible.

I advocate for a different mindset around writing in order to make it more routined, regular, and to put less pressure on what writing should look like. Instead,

Writing is more often uninspired, it rarely takes place in romanticized conditions, and to do it a lot requires the habituation of brushing your teeth. When you sit down to write as a habit, your feelings about it are often neutral and only fueled by the inertia of doing it regularly. The most prolific writers…don’t wait till that writing retreat in some exotic location or communion with the right group of scholars to write, because those spaces are elusive and few and far between. Most productive writers stop seeking their Hogwarts library and settle into writing in that cluttered corner of their apartment.

Letting go of the idea that all writing should be inspired and has an ideal set of conditions that must be met allows writers to develop more routined writing that doesn’t have to have positive feelings or bright ideas associated with it as a prerequisite to begin. Inspiration arises in the act of writing rather than being a preexisting condition that a writer must meet in order to begin.

Making writing a habit makes it much easier to get started on a regular basis, but that doesn’t mean that resistance is eradicated forevermore. There are days when I simply don't feel like writing for a variety of reasons, but I've developed some techniques to help me get past some of this resistance to starting.

This post offers some mindsets and techniques for writing even when you just don't feel like it.

Getting Started Techniques

After letting go of any preconceived notions of an ideal feeling you need to begin writing, there’s a few techniques you can use to get started.

Reflect on Why

There are a zillion and one reasons why we might avoid writing. Perhaps we fear criticism and that fear deters our ability to put words to the paper. Perhaps we find writing difficult and instead look for relief from difficult things. After all, this profession already has enough challenges! Or perhaps we are stuck and unsure of how to proceed because we haven't decided where we want to go with a particular piece of writing.

I advocate for using reflective practice techniques like flow writing or discussing road blocks with a family member, close friend, or colleague to consider the reasons why you might be stuck or avoiding writing. Exploring intellectual or emotional barriers to writing can help light a path for how to overcome those particular challenges.

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Reminding yourself of why this project is important to you and how finishing it might help you achieve your goals is another helpful tactic when you're trying to get started. Sometimes we lose ourselves in the daily grind of our work and forget our why. To reduce inhibitions, make a few notes to yourself that will serve as a reminder of your reasons for writing in the first place. You can even write down those reasons and stick them on your wall or your computer so you can remember them whenever you feel resistance cropping up.

Warm-Up Writing 

Warm-up writing is a simple strategy to engage your brain with your keyboard or notepad and remind yourself what the flow of writing feels like. If you are about to do a strenuous workout, your personal trainer will encourage you to warm-up your body so it’s ready to do whatever physical task you ask of it. The same concept can be true for writing. You need to warm-up your brain and get it ready to write again. Simply set a timer for 5 minutes and just write about anything that comes to mind. It doesn’t have to relate to your research in any way because the goal is simply to help your brain remember what writing feels like without being too strenuous too quickly.

Writing scholar Robert Boice recommends a 5-minute warm-up every writing session. He says,

writing often proceeds most smoothly and fluently when writers work without conscious reflection of what they’re writing. When they do so, writers master a most important skill. They learn to write without feeling “ready,” without filling fully in control, and without awaiting inspiration (p.41).

Writing Chunks

Sometimes you open your dissertation or book file and feel overwhelmed by the daunting final task in front of you. Facing a whole project at once is intimidating and can surface debilitating forms of perfectionism and/or procrastination.

Instead of trying to tackle a whole dissertation, book, or article, try breaking writing down into small digestible chunks. If you don’t feel like writing for whatever reason, tell yourself you will just write one paragraph and see how it goes. Perhaps you’ll just set a timer for 10 minutes or maybe you’ll write 150 words. If the thought of spending an hour or a day at writing breeds a lot of resistance, then just do these small chunks instead. Mentally it is difficult to wrap one’s mind around a whole amorphous project at once whereas one paragraph or 150 words is much more achievable and adds up over time.

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When I feel resistance, I usually set the timer for 15 minutes and tell myself if my resistance is still as strong 15 minutes later, then I will do something else. Nine times out of 10, that 15 minutes is all I need to get the inertia moving and I write longer than 15 minutes. The mental levity that accompanies small chunks of writing is so much easier to manage than the daunting task of writing a large project.

Record Yourself Speaking Out Loud

Another way to jump start writing when you don’t feel like it is to record yourself speaking about your research instead of writing it down. Sometimes articulating yourself in a different mode of communication can open up your project in a new way and sometimes it can help push past intellectual pain points.

It can be helpful to record yourself in a platform that will transcribe your words for you. If you open a meeting in Zoom and record it, you will have access to the transcript afterwords, for example. The transcript will act as notes that can be transferred into the document you’re writing in.

Change Your Environment

I’ve talked about how it is unpractical the seek the perfect time or location as a prerequisite for writing. Having said that, I believe that occasionally it can be beneficial to pick up your laptop and find a new place to write from in order to break up the routine. New sights and sounds awaken the brain in new ways. What was feeling like a slog in the same ole space is reinvented in a new environment. Simply get up and move to another location outside your normal writing routine and see what opens up for you.

What Are Your Strategies?

Now we’d love to hear from you!

When I started Publish Not Perish, I hoped that readers would see my posts as invitations to share their own approaches to writing, as well as their successes and setbacks. My motivation is partially self-serving because I'm a lifelong learner and I want to discover new techniques that are effective. My other goal is to increase the variety of viewpoints shared here because what works for me, doesn’t work for everyone who reads this newsletter. However, I do think that the more people who share, the more opportunities we have to collectively find solutions that work for a wider range of people. Someone in the Publish Not Perish community might just have the method that works for you!

So, what strategies do you use when you just don’t feel like writing? Consider adding a comment below. It might be exactly what someone else needs to hear right now!