Writing a book is a long-term project with lots of ups and downs along the way.
While almost every writer begins work on their book brimming with enthusiasm for the project, the initial excitement inevitably fades over time.
In episode 157 of The Writing Coach podcast, I explore what to do at that critical moment in the creative process when your initial enthusiasm for a project begins to fade.
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The Writing Coach Episode #157 Show Notes
Get Kevin’s FREE book: NOVEL ADVICE: MOTIVATION, INSPIRATION, AND CREATIVE WRITING TIPS FOR ASPIRING AUTHORS.
The Writing Coach Episode #157 Transcript
Hello, beloved listeners and welcome back to The Writing Coach podcast. It is your host, as always, writing coach Kevin T. Johns here.
I’d love to give you a free copy of my book, Novel Advice: Motivation, Inspiration, and Creative Writing Tips for Aspiring Authors. To get your copy of that book, head on over to www.kevintjohns.com/novel-advice, and there’ll be a popup, or you can click the tab at the top that says, free book,
In this episode, I’d like to talk about something that recently came up on a coaching call. A client asked, what do you do when your enthusiasm runs out for a project? And there’s still a long way to go, and I think this is a wonderful question because it’s something every book writer faces, and it’s not something artists face quite as much in other fields.
I always think of the example being a punk rocker. Growing up, I would write a song on Wednesday, bring it to my band on Friday, we’d practice it, rehearse it, and Saturday night we might be putting it into the set and playing that show at a club and have people cheering. That timeline from creation to getting positive feedback can be so quick with something like music.
It’s similar to, say, painting. You know, you can start a painting in the morning, finish it in the evening, show it to someone, and get that positive feedback again. Unfortunately, with something like writing a book, it’s a much more long-term project. And yeah, you can jam a book out really quickly, NaNoWriMo style, do it in a month or two, and whatnot. But most people that I know, or that I’m working with have jobs, have families. And so they’re working their novel writing or their book writing around a ton of other things, which means it just inevitably takes longer than if you were dedicating eight hours a day to writing a book, which very few people do.
And so when you are working on a long-term project, at some point, you’re inevitably going to run out of energy, out of inspiration, out of enthusiasm. At some point, it’s going to start feeling like a slog. In fact, this might happen in several cycles over the course of a project. You might lose that enthusiasm during the drafting and then regain it and lose it again at some point during revisions and then regain it and then lose it again at some point during the marketing process.
In fact, something called the “transition curve” or the “S curve” has been created to describe the emotional experience of learning a new skill or working on a long-term project. And how the transition curve goes is you start a project with uninformed optimism here going in, you don’t know what you don’t know, and you’re running on pure energy, on pure enthusiasm and pure inspiration.
But especially with a book, especially with a first book, maybe you get 20,000 words in maybe get halfway through the first draft. What inevitably happens is you reach a point of informed pessimism, and this means you are looking at the project and you’re going, wow, this is a lot harder than I thought it was going to be. And all that excitement I had at the beginning isn’t here any longer. And this is when you can really bottom out in the S curve. So if you think of this as a bit of a peak, the peak is headed toward our uninformed optimism, and then we start curving downwards with informed pessimism. At the bottom of that transition curve is the most important point. And that’s what we’re going talk about in today’s episode because it’s at that moment that you either give up, which is what most people do.
This is why most people never finish and publish their books because when they reach the bottom of the transition curve, when it’s no longer fun, when they’re no longer feeling energized about the project they give up. But if you use some of the techniques that we’re going talk about on today’s episode to push through that wall, push through that transition curve at the bottom at the dip, you actually start trending upwards again. And this enters a time in the project of informed optimism, very different from the uninformed optimism that you started with. You now know that this is a difficult project, but you also know that you’re going complete it and that you have the ability to do so.
Now, I think what a lot of people might assume I’m going to say when they say, when I’m asked the question, what do you do when you’ve run out of enthusiasm I’m going to say accountability, I’m going to say community, I’m going to say, you know, join a group coaching program, all those things . . . And all those things can help. But in reality, for someone like myself, I’m probably not going to join a group coaching program because I’m leading them, but I’m still going to experience moments in a project where I run out of enthusiasm, enthusiasm and need to keep working on it. And what I rely on at that moment when I hit the bottom of the transition curve is actually not cheerleading and coaching. What I rely on is craft writers craft the skills, the templates, the tools, the knowledge that I’ve attained over my writing career. I rely on that to get in there and get the work done that I need to get done, regardless of whether I’m feeling excited about it or not. The reality is, not every writing session is going to be utterly incredible.
You’re not going to go in it just utterly excited or utterly inspired to write every single scene in your book. So if you are writing, if you’re relying on pure enthusiasm, you are going to run out. But when you run out, fall back on craft. I know that if my scene has good scene structure, it’s going to be good. I know if there’s a clean, clear scene goal, if my character is agency driven, if they’re encountering progressive complications, if there’s a decision point, if there’s a nice hooky opening and a great cliffhanger ending, if my character geography is clear, if the environment is intriguing, if the characters have depth and if the reader feels empathy towards them, all of those things don’t require inspiration. They just require the mechanics of solid writer’s craft. And so if you educate yourself on your art form and if you practice it, and if you write several books, you’re going to be able to fall back on that knowledge with the confidence that even if I’m not feeling inspired, I can still write a great scene.
And this is what Stephen Pressfield talks about in several of his books, in his books Turn Pro, The War of Art, and Do the Work. I mean, that’s a great little motivational trilogy of books for writers and artists in general. But what Stephen Pressfield calls this is “going pro.” You know, not being a hobbyist, not being an amateur, being a pro writer. And that means going to work and putting words on the page whether you feel particularly inspired that day or not.
And think of athletes, especially athletes in a sport like, say, baseball or hockey where you have 80 or 120 games a season. Do you think Wayne Gretzky felt utterly energized, inspired, enthused to play every single game of hockey in every single 80, you know, eight every single 80 games in every season? No, athletes, like the rest of us, have good days andc bad days. They have times when life is trouble. Maybe their kids are getting in trouble at school, and their minds are elsewhere. So what do great athletes do when they’re not feeling inspired? Well, they get on the ice, they go pro, and they rely on the skills that they’ve developed to get in there and still put in a great game. And yeah, maybe not every game they’re going to score a hat trick, but they’re still going to get in there and do their job.
You don’t have to be a professional athlete to get into this mindset. Most people listening to this podcast, probably have a job of some kind. And do you only go to your job when you’re feeling inspired? When you’re feeling energetic? <Laugh> No, because you would get fired. Or if you’re running your own business, your business will go under. Having a job is about getting up and going to work every day or whatever your schedule is for work, whether you want to do it or not.
I once ghost-wrote a book where the author was telling me this really great example of this. He was talking about his father being a dairy farmer, and he was saying that if his father didn’t get up and milk the cows in the morning, the cows would be in pain. They actually need the milk expressed or they can get sick, and they can be in a lot of pain. And so as a dairy farmer, it didn’t matter whether it was a nice day out or a horrible day out, it didn’t matter if there was a storm or sunshine. It didn’t matter if he was feeling sick or feeling really great either way, no matter what, his dad got up and milked those cows every morning because he had to, because it was his job and the health of his cows depended on it. And the health of your book depends on it. In the same way, if your book is going to get done, you have got to get in there and milk it every day, whether you’re feeling excited about it or not.
Now, another way to approach this is to get into this goal and milestone-focused mindset. Rather than saying, “I’m going to wait until this book is published and everyone is celebrating it, and I’m selling a million copies to get my satisfaction.” You can create smaller chunks of activity that give you a reason to celebrate. And this is why I often recommend my clients to break their story up into acts, not just because we need those turning points in our story to signify changes in the narrative structurally, but also because when you finish writing an act, it’s time to celebrate. You know, yeah, the book’s not done, but you’ve got a big chunk of story done. And that’s something worth celebrating. That’s a goal that feels much more attainable than just writing an entire book. And it gives you a reason to celebrate and recharge, right? Maybe if you did run out of energy writing act one, well, maybe turning, crossing that threshold, going into the extraordinary world, starting to write Act Two is something that can re-energize you and you can say, “Hey, okay, I did get that first act done. Now maybe I can write the second one.” Now, of course, milestones and timelines and deadlines, give yourself an excuse to celebrate, but also to show up and do the work every day. But of course, self-imposed deadlines can be challenging. Even if you have a regular writing routine, even if you have certain days or times that you are committed to writing every week, you can still fall behind in projects.
And so this is where I bring the accountability aspect into it. This is where having a writing buddy, having a writing group, working with a writing coach, this is where the account accountability does come in. It’s not so much about getting you jazzed up and excited to write. It’s about you holding yourself accountable to the timelines, milestones, deadlines that you’ve created for yourself. And so, yeah, community coaching, these things do come into it, but I really think craft is where it all starts. If you know what you’re doing, you can sit down and write with the confidence of a professional.
The final thing, perhaps I want to say here is that so many amateurs and beginner writers, and even some more advanced artists, their process is to sit around and wait for inspiration to strike. And then when it does, they sit down and write. I think this is a very dangerous way to go about creating your art. As I said, it’s like having a job and only showing up when you feel like it. Whereas what I find is way more productive. A way to go about your writing is sit down and just start writing. Do the work, turn pro, and then guess what happens? The inspiration of rises in the writing. It’s when you’re sitting there putting words on the page, doing the hard work of executing on your writer’s craft that inspiration strikes, and then you can embrace that, and then you can pursue that, and then you can turn that into a creative fuel to keep you going. But so many people do the opposite. They don’t start writing and allow the inspiration to arrive through the process. Instead, they sit around waiting for inspiration in order to start writing, and then they’re surprised why their story moves so slowly in the creative process or why they never get anything done.
So sit down, do the work, learn your craft, and then execute on it. And you won’t have to worry so much about enthusiasm, about creative energy, about inspiration.
All right, my friends, that is it for this episode. To grab a free copy of my book, Novel Advice: Motivation, Inspiration, and Creative Writing Tips for Aspiring Authors, head on over to www.kevintjohns.com and click that button or tab at the top that says, free book.
Thank you so much for tuning in. It has been a great discussion about hard work, and where hard work needs creativity. It’s fun stuff. If you want hear more like this, make sure you hit that subscribe button, and I will see you on the next episode of The Writing Coach.
