Writing when you REALLY don't want to.

The last few months have been crazy for me. As a mom of a toddler, I have a newfound loathing of winter. Pre-baby, I NEVER used to get sick. Now that I have a live-in, three-foot tall petri dish, winter has ceased to be a magical, snowy wonderland and is now synonymous with stomach flu and a constant runny nose.

In short, it's the worst.

After being sick for months, I realized I'd needed to change up my game plan for working on my books. When I feel terrible, I just cannot write. I can't seem to get in to my character's head space. My creative juices go in to lock-down until I feel better. Obviously, not super ideal when you are trying to finish three separate novels.

I tried out a few different methods to get work done. I found one that seemed to work the best for me. After many failed attempts to make progress on one of my books, I stopped worrying about trying to work on a specific project. Instead, I wrote about how I was feeling. Let me tell you, some of the entries are not pretty. Lot's of ugly crying.... Honestly, I was initially embarrassed to let anyone read them. Or even admit that's what I'd been writing about.

But then I had one of those "ah-ha" moments.

You see, usually when I'm writing, I'm really happy. And when I'm really happy, it can be difficult to write about upsetting things from my character's perspective. Now, though, I have pages and pages of entries focusing on the low moments of the human plight-sickness, loneliness, hopelessness, sadness, anxiety. Everyone hates feeling that way, and yet we all know we WILL feel that way sooner or later.

I maybe didn't make progress this winter in the traditional sense, but I encapsulated some intensely deep and emotional feelings in my impromptu journal. Some of my entries fit perfectly with scenes I was previously struggling to write because of the heavy nature of what my character was going through. Those entries have brought a new depth of feeling to my characters in a way I couldn't previously manage.

So, when writing is the last thing you feel like doing, write about how much you DON'T want to write. Write about why you feel the way that you do. Write about all of those deeply personal, slightly embarrassing feelings you would never admit to anyone aloud. Save it, stick it in a file, and keep it in your back pocket for the next time you have to write about one of your characters having a total breakdown.

Seriously, it worked like a charm.