iβve been seeing a lot of people recently complaining about losing motivation to role play / feeling super ooc / or losing the will to write. canon muses or ocβs alike, people have been down in some creative dump everywhere. and i feel like that itβs time that i said something. iβve given advice to some of the people iβve seen but the number keeps growing so i figure iβd make a post about this:
i have been rping for 12+ years now. when i started i didnβt have a care in the world. i was doing what i wanted to do. but then i did start caring about my portrayal and what i was doing. i wanted to do the best i could and shovel out as much as i can. i wanted to try and give my fans what they wanted to see.
this is a huge mistake. and i didnβt really learn it until just a few months ago.
iβve noticed that i tend to feel ooc the most when iβm pushing too hard. when iβve been going for too long or when i force myself to do more than i can. i used to try and reply to things daily. i used to cry a lot because i would get so stressed about being accurate. which admittedly, is both good and bad. it shows that you care about what youβre doing and thatβs good, but at the same time a hobby shouldnβt force you to be down in such a drastic low.
if you start to feel that you canβt write as well, stop. if you start to feel ooc, stop. if you start to feel like youβre doing too much, stop. it doesnβt mean that you have to stop completely by any means! but just donβt do anything. your brain is done. you donβt want to write anymore. you donβt want to role play. your body, your mind, even if itβs subconscious, wants to do something else.
does that mean youβre done forever? no. does that mean youβre actually ooc? absolutely not. it just means that you have lost the luster for that specific day. you can always come back later when you want to role play. when you want to write. i donβt mean take a break. because i know that doesnβt help everyone and it often leads to people never coming back. but, when you feel that you canβt do anything else but write / role play / die without getting a headcanon down on a post, thatβs when you need to come back. when that urge or that desire or that muse hits you.
tl ; dr βΒ Β if youβre feeling unmotivated for whatever reason, donβt force yourself to keep going. that will make you want to rp less. do it when your mind and body wants you to, and youβll find yourself twice as motivated as you were before. even if that means not being online for two weeks.
