Finding Motivation to Write in a Stressful Time

Published April 17, 2020

Covid-19 has everyone staying at home and most writers I know are in introvert heaven. Stay home? Sure thing! Most of us do that anyway. But even though the stay at home order doesn’t affect us the same way as others, it does affect us.

We feel the stress of others. Having this pandemic and having stores, restaurants, and schools closed makes many of us think about the economy. How will these businesses survive? I work at a movie theater for my day job and there are news articles saying that my particular company may not survive this shutdown.  How will restaurants survive? The small businesses survive?

We have our own stressors, too. Everyone panic-bought toilet paper and canned foods. Where are we going to find these items for our own family? How do we keep ourselves safe?

With all this going on I know of many writers who just had no motivation to write. Too busy worrying about everything else to even think of writing. So how do you get that motivation back to write again?

Have A Purpose

When the governor first declared the stay at home order, I thought Cool, I can get a lot of writing done now that I don’t have to go in to work. But, as the reality started to sink in, I had no motivation to do anything creative. I couldn’t edit, I couldn’t write. I thought about my job, now closed, and the economy. How are these places going to survive?  How are we going to survive?

Luckily, April is Camp NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month). I had been planning out what I was going to write (funnily enough, about the pandemic) and had my outline written. I was excited to start writing it, and in fact, wanted to start before April 1^st. But I followed the rules and started on the first day of Camp NaNo and wrote 1,347 words that first day!

Writing As Therapy

It was actually therapeutic for me, in more than one way, to write out what was going on. It helped to write out my feelings about not being able to find toilet paper (since I didn’t get the memo to buy a ton of it), and also helped me to focus on something other than this pandemic. I was able to think as a writer as I wrote, kind of detaching myself from the issue, but in a way also think as a person, and trying to make sense out of it all.

Take Your Time

Let yourself feel what is going on around you. Don’t try to ignore it, or it will creep up on you and mess with your head. Once you work through what you’re feeling, even just by writing it all down in a journal, you can finally start working on your stories again.

Give yourself time to work through all that is going on around you, be it this pandemic, or any stressor that comes around. It is a stressful time, and if you can keep one aspect of normality in your life, you will be able to keep your sanity and have something to show for it later.

Here are some other inspirational posts to keep you writing:

• Longevity by, F.P Dorchek
• Finding Your Motivation and Muse by, Sam Crane
• What to Write When You Don’t Know What to Write About by, Deb Buckingham
• Benefits of a Crash and Burn by, Catherine Dilts

Margena Adams Holmes was born in Bellflower, CA sometime in the 1960s. She has always had a love for both reading and writing, writing her first song/poem in 1st grade. Margena is a big supporter of indie authors and will read anything that draws her into the story. She is an observer of life, and many everyday things could (and do!) end up in her writings. Her publications are available through her author page. Contact Margena via email: jedi_anegram@hotmail.com.