3 Books to Help You Stay Consistent, Motivated, and Inspired to Write
3 Books to Give Your Plight a Lift
Writing struggles are normal. Even now with today’s tools, you’re not going to avoid obstacles, most of which are mental.
And though you didn’t commit to writing because you thought it would be easy all the time, it will be difficult at times to remember how normal those struggles are. Especially when you get knocked off your square for a few days or even weeks, or if you’re not writing with the authority or control that you’d like.
So here some insights from 3 books that can help you find your writing flow again.
#1 The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks and Win Your Inner Creative Battles by Steven Pressfield
The title is a rewording of the classic book on military strategy, Art of War by Sun Tzu. Pressfield names resistance as the enemy that we war against on the creative journey, lays out forms it takes to prevent us from doing our best writing, and offers perspectives for how we can break through it.
In part one, “Defining the Enemy”, many of the essays are simply titled “Resistance is…” followed by a word for the form it takes or a trait it expresses. Like Resistance is Invisible, Resistance is Internal. Insidious.
A common form of resistance is procrastination, about which he says we don’t tell ourselves, “I’m never going to write my symphony.”
We say, “I’m going to write my symphony; I’m just going to start tomorrow.”
Procrastination can quickly become a habit. It’s a form of resistance to be on the lookout for, because you might end up calling yourself a procrastinator, attaching yourself to an identity that’s harmful to your writing self (and to yourself, generally).
Having a routine or schedule for your writing can help a lot to dissolve many bad writing habits.
In Pressfield’s first essay in the book is titled “What I Do”, he shares his daily routine in detail: showering, breakfast, coffee, he has a “lucky” sweatshirt he wears, he says a prayer which is a passage from Homer’s Odyssey, makes a few necessary calls and more; a comprehensive list of things he does before dropping in to write for at least four hours. He says he doesn’t care about the number of pages he’s written or even if it’s any good. When the time block is done, it’s done. But at least you’ve overcome resistance for the day.
Another observation about resistance he mentions is that Resistance is universal. Of the many possible things unique to you, overcoming resistance isn’t one of them. You’re not the first or the last with writing struggles, and that can put your mind at ease a little. Knowing we’re not alone in our predicament often helps us work through tough problems.
In the latter part of the book, he mentions serendipity as a reinforcement of our purpose, but that you have to make yourself available for it through regular work.
Serendipity might come in the form of a surge of creative energy or inspiration, making your writing session seamless and more enjoyable than usual.
But your effort is the currency to purchase the ticket for a chance at the prize of serendipity. Gotta play (with discipline) to win.
We’re not non-participating bystanders to this process, awaiting some miraculous grace to be bestowed on us. We have to play our part; work diligently and keep your eyes and ears open.
In an essay titled “Experiencing the Self”, he explains that he believes our ego and Self are naturally at odds when writing. He details how to distinguish between the self and the ego, and why they’re at odds.
In comparing them, he says, “The Self is ever-growing and ever evolving, and it speaks for the future.” The ego, he says, “doesn’t want us to evolve, likes things how they are.”
He continues to explain that the self has an instinct to draw us toward elevation of our consciousness and continued learning, and the ego finds comfort in fear and seeks predictability, even despite evidence of the need for change.
Seeking certainty, efficiency and productivity are very normal. And when it comes to your writing habit, efficiency & ease are only earned through practice. But better is born out of a willingness to take risks in your writing, not knowing how it’ll go from day to day, a desire to open the way for readers to ride the risks with you and be rewarded when you deliver by the end of your story.
Whether you believe you can elevate your consciousness for better writing, or that sometimes you simply gain greater command, they only become available if you’re consistently working.
#2 Still Writing: The Perils and Pleasures of a Creative Life by Dani Shapiro
Dani Shapiro’s Still Writing is another useful, charming find for writers seeking to get out of their own head about writing.
She uses her personal stories from childhood to adulthood to highlight and illustrate her advice. It’s broken up in three sections, like Pressfield’s. Hers are titled, “Beginnings”, “Middles”, and “Endings”, keeping things all the way simple.
Each section starts with a motivational quote. One she borrows from Annie Dillard compares writing a book to climbing a ladder, she says “You watch your feet step on each round rung, one at a time; you do not hurry and do not rest.”
It’s another call for consistency, to train for endurance. You don’t have to deny feeling fatigued but stay committed to keep pushing forward every day. It won’t be easy to sit to write every day, but this is where stepping on the next rung and climbing comes in.
Today’s best is always enough; remember that. Your steps don’t have to be perfect. Just write. You can fix and arrange it later. I’ll edit as I write at times. It only works out for me every now and then. Most times, it disjoints my rhythm, so I haven’t figured out exactly why I keep trying it. But I’ve never been disappointed when I’ve waited to edit until the end of drafting. The fight is the waiting.
In one essay, she shares a look into her upbringing as an only child of older parents, and their unintended contributions to her becoming a writer. A lot of alone time and her parents’ discouragement of her listening to grown peoples’ business afforded her time to experiment with stories. To replace their omission with her imagination.
There are often rich origin stories behind how we come to prioritize writing. I’m sure if you think of your own history with writing, there are stories that affirmed your belief that writing was something you should continue to do, but that you should also make it an area of focus in your life. Writing those stories is a great exercise for reminding you of your why when you need it.
Another essay entitled “Distance” is useful to return to often. She tells a story of being in a guided meditation class and was instructed to visualize a lit match burning bright, going out, and eventually turning to ash. She compared this to the process of getting inspired by an idea and the sudden urgency felt to write it all at once. She says “we don’t write out of the incoherent flame. Nor do we write out of the smoke. We wait until the ash is cool. Now we can touch it. Mold it at will. Observe it.”
The case she makes is that “Strike while the iron’s hot” has its uses. But here, Shapiro says just hold up a minute. Pull back and see the idea from a broader lens before beginning; gain some distance, to use her term. If you often follow the creative urge without question, that pause is useful and necessary at times. To bring the Annie Dillard quote back, she didn’t say you bound up the ladder, skip rungs with explosive jumps.
“…one rung at a time”, she said.
#3 remembered rapture: the writer at work by bell hooks
bell hooks wrote over 40 books, and she’s known mostly for her titles that feature her critical cultural analysis and critique: her engagement with societal topics like the deconstruction of racism, classism, sexism, patriarchy, capitalism, colonialism. Nothing about the writer’s life specifically.
In the preface to remembered rapture, she confesses the primary reason for writing the book is feedback she received in her other work. Readers had high interest in her relationship to writing, her passion for it, her life as a writer. Not just the topics that she writes about.
In it, she includes a collection of personal essays ranging from the benefits confessional writing can have on your mental health and emotional healing and expresses gratitude for the impressions left on her writing life by Emily Dickinson, Lorraine Hansberry, and Zora Neale Hurston in essays dedicated to each of them. She also shares how others writer’s continued to influence her.
She candidly cites that larger publishing houses created and environment of competition among Black women writers, which is why she and many other writers like her often choose to work with smaller publishers. There’s a close look at the blessings and inconveniences of touring and promotion demands; activities kept her from doing more writing. She considers to be sacred ground; however, she quickly came to treasure the in-person connections made with readers through those touring opportunities. Today, while social media may be a task many writers don’t enjoy engaging, the connections made to readers and other writers can’t be denied, offering a similar blessing within the inconvenience of being pulled away from the writing.
In her essay entitled “writing and spirituality” she reveals the sense of fulfillment she feels from fully surrendering to her writing self. She writes,
“I’m given the grace to work with words in a spirit of right livelihood that calls me to peace, reflection, and connectedness with communities of readers whom I may never know or see.”
It may land idealistic, but it’s comforting to hear if you’re a beginning writer with a similar idealistic, grateful streak.
In the same essay she comments that men don’t often publish work about how their writing life is impacted by their emotional and spiritual lives. The book was published in 1999, so we’ll have to follow up on if that’s still true today.
But the comment alone can lead us to other questions, like:
- What could you write about that you actively avoid?
- What parts of yourself remain inaccessible in your writing?
- What are you not writing that could be of service to others?
- What has kept you from writing and publishing these things?
We all have more valuable, unique experiences than we think. Remain curious about yourself and take inventory before you take yourself for granted.
At the tail end of the book, she shares a story of a student coming to her for professional advice. The student was hoping to overcome professional isolation, which bell mentions is a common experience faced by many Black women writers in academic and activist spaces.
She told the student to visit Hansberry’s essays on the topic and confessed that Hansberry is one of the voices she looks to when she feels she has a lack of radical thinking comrades to relate to.
In Hansberry’s 1959 essay “The Negro Writer and His Roots: Towards a New Romanticism” she speaks on the social nature of writing and art, urging writers to engage even further with the world around them:
“The foremost enemy of the Negro intelligentsia of the past has been and in a large sense remains—isolation. No more than can the Negro people afford to imagine themselves removed from the most pressing world issues of our time than can I believe that the Negro writer imagines that he will be exempt from artistic examination of questions which plague the intellect and spirit of man.”
In hooks’ choosing to point the way rather than simply hand the student an answer, she reminds us that those we learn from are also continually learning from others. To say to others “yeah I have that problem too sometimes”, can prevent bigger problems from occurring, like isolation, burnout or quitting altogether.
She advises studying broadly, beyond the scope of the familiar too, in essays like writing without labels, where she points out the benefit of adopting the identity of a writer. By doing so, we chance opening ourselves to learn from all writers, regardless of what other identities they may have attached to. She testifies that this kept her mind and heart open to being influenced early in her writing by Emily Dickinson, William Wordsworth and Gerard Manley Hopkins. She suggests that we shouldn’t risk restricting ourselves to learn solely from those who we share the most in common with. In fact, ask yourself, “can you learn from someone you disagree with?”
We can always delve deeper into what we already know well or are interested in. But we can also learn across from and adjacent to ourselves, adding new dimensions for us to share with lovers of books who await our reach.
Thanks for reading.
What’s your favorite book about the art, craft, or practice of writing?
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