I'm having a problem getting back into the groove of regular writing. This is a bad thing for someone who is supposed to be a professional technical writer! If you are game, what I would like to do here is lay out the history of the problem and my current situation, then hear from you how you get yourself to crank out those words.
As I said above, I consider myself to be a professional technical writer. I've published quite a few actual printed books (mostly on computer-related topics). I've sold technical articles to various magazines, written product reviews, manuals, and other documents for various clients, as well as online courses on Microsoft Outlook. I've been in this game a long time (my first books came out in the early 1990's).
One of my first published books.
To get that stuff done, I needed to sit my butt down in my chair and write. It wasn't that hard to get myself to do it. All the projects I mentioned above had deadlines to meet, with money on the line. I also desperately wanted to be my own boss instead of someone's employee.
I planned to move to South America and live off my writing skills, which entails actually writing stuff from time to time. So there was motivation aplenty.
But even then, I often had trouble starting each new project. Writing technical stuff is hard. Not hard in the creative ways that writing a novel is hard, but very detailed and painstaking.
And because technologies change so fast, the deadlines for most of this stuff can be ridiculously short. Also, during most of this time I was working a full time job, so all the writing had to happen on nights and weekends.
As a result, a part of me always resisted starting to write. That part of me seems to be the creative part too:
- Hmm, I need to come up with a good outline for this piece, then I need to sleep on it for a couple of days so I can see it with fresh eyes before I start writing.
- Things at the office are so intense right now I had better wait until next week to start writing. I'll be able to concentrate better then.
- There was a period where, while I was working on the current book, I would find and buy classic, usually out of print, books on writing. Then I "had to" read one of those books before I could start on my own next project. Gotta keep improving, you know.
There was always a good excuse to put off starting the next project for just a little while longer.
But then there was that nice contract with all that money that I wouldn't get if I didn't start writing soon. And getting this piece written would take me one step closer to being my own boss. The result was a constant tug of war inside my own head.
Of course, eventually I would start the project. And once I did, I could get into a groove and write long and hard until the project was done.
The Problem Now
That was then. Now I am wrestling with the problem again. But this time, my life is very different. I am very happy with my situation. I am self-employed and primarily living off the royalties generated by courses I created years ago.
I am newly married and living as a permanent resident in Ecuador. I have some money in the bank and could get by doing no work at all for a few years. And I am no longer working on contracts with deadlines and defined payouts.
In other words, the old motivators that forced me to sit my butt down and write are all gone now.
I had gotten back in the groove for a while, launching the FreerTomorrow blog and putting out one or two meaty posts per week. But then life intervened. In the last two months I moved to a new place, got married, spent a week in the USA dealing with my Mom's estate, visited my daughter, and was without Internet access at home for 6 weeks.
I was able to get some work done during this time, but it was mostly reposting of existing content to STEEMIT. All that work is done now and I need to start cranking out new stuff.
I know I need to start writing new blog posts. I know I need to work on the video-based courses that I bought my fancy mic and webcam for. But getting started is even harder now with all my old motivators missing.
My wife and I have some plans for our future that will require significantly more money than I have on hand. That helps. Even so, I could definitely be more motivated.
As a writer (or anyone else who creates stuff on your own), how do you get yourself motivated to create? Do you have any secrets to share to help me and our fellow STEEMians get to work?
Thanks,
--Bill