I Put My Good News On

There are going to be days (or weeks, or months) where you sit down to write and feel... disconnected. From your voice, from your characters, from your ideas. Like the person who used to write your stories just packed up and left.

They didn't. They're just tired. Here's how to keep writing anyway:

Lower the bar (Until it's on the floor) You are not here to write something brilliant. You are here to write something. A paragraph. A sentence. A single line of dialogue. Movement matters way more than quality.

Write around the story Don't force it. If you can't write the scene, try: ⋆ A character ramble / journal entry ⋆ A conversation that won't be included in the final draft ⋆ A list of things the character would never admit out loud ⋆ A messy summary of what should happen Engage with the story from a different angle.

Borrow a voice until yours comes back No, not with AI. Read something that feels close to what you want to write, or watch a scene that captures the tone, then write immediately after. Not to copy, to reignite your instincts.

Write the emotion, not the plot. What is your character feeling in this moment? What are they afraid of? What do they want but won't say? What's being kept from them? The emotion leads, the plot catches up later.

Stop trying to "feel like a writer" first. You don't write when you feel like a writer. You feel like a writer because you write.

For me, opening a new doc and placing it side-by-side against what I've written, and then transcribing what's already been done (and editing in the process) helps ground me in the scene/chapter/voice/characters and helps me discover ways to get unstuck (maybe I didn't explore an emotion earlier that needed to be dug into. Maybe they should not have left that room when they did and lingered longer. Maybe the conversation needed to get cut off before the character made the statement that derails everything). Starting from the beginning is like re-tracing your steps and editing at the same time, and most times it really helps get the brain closer to where it needs to be.

^“At the bottom of the image is the segment of the flag cut for the St. Patrick’s Cathedral protest. Photograph by Mick Hicks”