Move On

Can't Get Inspired No Matter How Hard You Try? Just Move On To Something Else!

A writer must learn and develop a healthy balance between discipline and inspiration. Being an artist, writer, or otherwise creative person is like doing magic. Imagine you're in the midst of a scene from a Harry Potter movie. The young wizards are in their potions class, stirring up some powerful magic potion. Envision all the details that you possibly can: you can see the room full of the young students in their long black robes, wands in their hands, stirring the potion as it steams and boils.

What are they going to do with that potion?

The potion is like the creative magic within you. You are a caldron of steaming, boiling magic potion. Your wand is your pen. Pull out your pen and get ready to do some amazing magic spells. Dip the pen ever so slightly into that caldron and see what happens. You have to know how to work with it just right. If you dip the pen into the caldron at the wrong place or at the wrong depth, at the wrong time of day, wrong setting, wrong season, or say the wrong incantation, you won't get the magic you're hoping to create.

Who knows what you'll get? Maybe something good will come from it anyway. Or maybe nothing.

Whatever you're doing, if you can't make the magic happen, then try something different. You're a writing wizard. Do what any good wizard would do. Call on your magical resources and cook up something new and different.

Know when you're stuck. Know when what you're doing isn't going to work and move onto something new and mysterious, something that gets your juices flowing again.

Just remember though, this isn't an excuse for lack of discipline or laziness. Instead, looking in a new direction is just one of the wizard's magic tricks.

(As an example, I'm currently finishing up a novel and I'm stuck on chapter 33. But nothing is coming to mind right now, so rather than doing nothing, I'm simply going to move onto chapter 34 and come back to chapter 33 later, when the moon is full, the dew is glistening on the black widow's web, and the wolves are howling....)