Remove Your Options

A fellow writer asks: "How do I get motivation to keep writing something that I know is crap?"

My answer: Remove your options.

The reason you are plagued is that you believe that you can stop writing. And, quite simply, you usually can. It is remarkably easy to put down the pen, close your word processor, and move on to some other thing. It could be another project or it could be another activity (like learning sweet magic tricks).

But the other reason you are plagued is that some part of you has a tenacious grasp on this project and refuses to let the rest of you put it down.

This puts you in a deadlocked position. As you said, you lack the motivation to continue. If you remove the ability to drop your project, you will be filled with a great motivation to complete it just to be done with it.

Being a fellow writer, I am sure you are well aware that nothing puts a fire under your ass like a deadline. So give yourself one. And give yourself a real deadline, something you will be held accountable to by other people. Make it a deadline you can't push back. And if you need to pull an all-nighter to complete it, so be it.

You may need to tell yourself that you will submit it to a publication. If you have an editor or agent, then promise you will get a draft in by a certain date. Make it a reasonable one, so you don't expect to fail, but that you cannot screw around. If it is just you, then promise a friend or colleague to show your project by a certain date. You ought to have enough pride and self-worth to not be embarrassed by showing up with nothing.

When we went to school, we had to write a lot of projects. We all thought that most of our writing was crap, but we had to grin and bear it; we had to finish our works and make them be the best they could (really had to shine those turds). This doesn't stop being true post-graduation.


I will admit that I am making some assumptions here. I assume this is a personal project that you are losing motivation with (and saying that you know it's crap comes from your lack of inspiration). If this is for work, then you already have a deadline and there is nothing you can do but grin and bear it.

If the problem really is that you hate the particular project you're on, but you don't want to stop writing, then drop the project and start a new one.

If the problem is that you hate the current form of your project, but you don't want to give up on the concept, then you'll have to wait for tomorrow's post.