Staying Motivated When Your Writing Feels Difficult

By Understanding Royalties and Rights for Authors
Comments 35
7 Aug 2026

Staying Motivated When Your Writing Feels Difficult

When Difficulty Isn't a Warning Sign

There is a particular kind of silence that settles over a writing desk when the work stops cooperating. The sentence you were pleased with yesterday now looks thin. The plot has stalled. Every word you type seems to arrive wearing the wrong coat. It is tempting to read this as evidence that you are not really a writer, or that this particular project was a mistake.

It is almost never either of those things. Difficulty is the normal texture of making something long and complicated. What matters is not whether you feel motivated, but whether you have a practical system for sitting down anyway. Motivation is a mood; routine is a structure. The three tools below — gentle accountability, small rewards, and genuinely restorative breaks — are the ones that keep most working writers moving through the flat, doubtful middle of a project.

Gentle Accountability Beats Willpower

Willpower is a poor scaffolding. It collapses quietly on the days you need it most. Accountability works far better, provided it is gentle rather than punishing. The goal is not to feel watched, but to feel expected.

Try one of these, and keep it deliberately small:

A weekly check-in with one other writer. Not a critique group — just a fifteen-minute call or message where you each say what you intend to draft this week and what happened last week. Knowing someone will ask is remarkably effective.
A local writing group at your library or community centre. Many run quiet, drop-in sessions where people simply write side by side. The presence of others doing the same difficult thing is a reliable tonic.
A shared deadline that isn't a competition. Two or three writers agreeing to swap a chapter on a set date creates momentum without league tables.
A visible record of sessions. A wall calendar with a single cross for each day you wrote, even for twenty minutes, quietly reframes you as someone who turns up.

The key is that the commitment should be to time spent, not word count. "I will write for forty minutes on Tuesday and Thursday" is a promise you can keep. "I will write 2,000 words" is a gamble on how the day goes.

Rewards That Actually Reward

Writers often reserve rewards for finishing a draft, which can be months away and therefore useless as fuel. Move the rewards closer. Small, immediate, and slightly indulgent works best.

Pair writing with a pleasure. A proper coffee from the good café, a particular album, an hour in a favourite chair. Reserve these for writing sessions so they stay associated with the work.
Reward the hard thing, not the easy thing. If you dread a scene, promise yourself something pleasant the moment you finish it — before you tidy up or check email.
Use a "done for today" marker. Deciding consciously that today's session is complete prevents the endless, demoralising drift of half-working all evening.

Be honest about what genuinely restores you. A reward that leaves you more tired, or that swallows two hours you needed for sleep, is not a reward. It is a second job.

Breaks, Not Avoidance

There is a difference between a break and a disappearance. A break has an end time and a purpose; avoidance has neither. When you notice yourself refreshing the same page for the fourth time, you have probably slipped from the first into the second.

Good breaks share three features. They involve movement, because sitting still keeps the mind circling. They involve a change of sensory input — going outside, listening to something, handling an object rather than a screen. And they have a defined length. Ten minutes walking around the block, with no phone, will do more for a stuck paragraph than an hour of scrolling.

For longer slumps, plan a proper day away from the project. Do something absorbing and unrelated: cook something fiddly, visit an exhibition, walk somewhere unfamiliar. The mind solves writing problems in the background, but only if you give it something other than the problem to chew on.

Returning With Fresh Energy

The hardest moment is not the middle of a difficult session. It is the first five minutes of the next one. Lower that barrier deliberately.

End each session mid-sentence. Stop while you still know what comes next, so tomorrow begins with an easy win.
Leave yourself a note. One line — "Maya confronts the landlord here" — is enough to restart without rereading the whole chapter.
Read the last paragraph aloud before continuing. It recovers the voice of the piece far faster than reading silently.
Start with the easiest task. If drafting feels impossible, do something adjacent: sketch a scene, fix a timeline, write a paragraph of dialogue you'll probably cut.

Doubting the Work Is Part of the Work

Doubt does not vanish on publication, and it certainly does not vanish on a good writing day. The useful shift is to stop treating it as a verdict and start treating it as weather. You cannot argue yourself out of it, but you can keep working through it.

Keep a short list of the passages you are proud of, and read it when the project feels worthless. Tell your accountability partner the truth about a bad week, rather than quietly dropping out. And remember that a first draft is allowed to be rough — roughness is what revision is for, and revision is where most books are actually made.

If the difficulty lasts weeks rather than days, and writing has stopped bringing you anything but dread, then rest properly rather than pushing harder. The project will still be there. So will you, with a little patience and a good night's sleep.

Creative Life

A Practical Guide to Proofreading Your Own Writing

Map your plot across beginning, middle, and end using turning points that raise stakes and keep readers turning pages.

Previous Post At vero eos et accusamus et iusto odio dignissimos ducimus qui blanditiis praesentium.

Next Post Dignissimos ducimus qui blanditiis praesentiu deleniti atque corrupti quos dolores

5 Comments

Robert Sonny says Jul 21, 2024 at 10:00am

I must explain to you how all this mistaken idea of denouncing pleasure and praising pain was born and I will give you a complete account of the system
Reply
- John Abraham says Jul 21, 2024 at 10:00am
  
  I must explain to you how all this mistaken idea of denouncing pleasure and praising pain was born and I will give you a complete account of the system
  Reply
  - Robert Sonnysays Jul 21, 2024 at 10:00am
    
    I must explain to you how all this mistaken idea of denouncing pleasure and praising pain was born and I will give you a complete account of the system
    Reply
Robert Sonny says Jul 21, 2024 at 10:00am

I must explain to you how all this mistaken idea of denouncing pleasure and praising pain was born and I will give you a complete account of the system
Reply

Jenny Watson

Hi! beautiful people. I`m an authtor of this blog. Read our post - stay with us

Instagram

How We Can
Help You!

Trim small talk, reveal character through subtext, and read conversations aloud to ensure each line moves the story forward.

section heading hidden

Our Latest News

How to Structure a Novel with Three Acts

Writing Dialogue That Sounds Natural and Purposeful

Finding Ideas for Poems in Everyday Life

Contact Us

Article