I Love Writing

Djuna Shellam The Write OWL Video Series—Episode 10

It almost seems redundant to write a blog and make a video about how much I love writing, doesn’t it? I mean, in order to write and finish writing a project like a novel, you have to love it. It’s not easy to do, and take a lot of love and patience to bring a project to fruition.

But the point of all this was to talk about what was the ultimate motivator that pushed me to finish writing projects. It’s so very easy, despite how much you or I love writing, to procrastinate, or to jump from unfinished project to unfinished project; or to be afraid of actually finishing something because it might be proof that we are not very good writers.

It’s difficult to maintain motivation when you have the little voice in your head telling you, “You might not be very good… you’re just a dreamer, stop kidding yourself… everybody thinks they’re a writer, what makes you so special?… LOSER!” and so on. Add to all that depressing mental loop not knowing how to move forward or reach your goal of finishing something, and your love of writing can quickly morph into loathing.

Personally, I’ve found that trying to seek motivation from other people’s successes or achievements is counter-productive and often promotes feelings of envy, which is not a productive state of mind for me.

So what motivates me to write? Well, prior to finishing my first novel, it was that goal, to finish it, but more than that, in Episode 10, “I Love Writing,” I discuss one of the primary, initial, motivators that got me to that first, giant, goal. Since finishing my first novel, the prime motivator for me now is the high I get from continuing my series, The Em Suite, and seeing where my characters have been or are going.