What happens when you lose inspiration?

Hi!

I do a few things. There's usually something about a story that you fell in love with at the beginning. It seems like everyone wants to write a book, and while it's true that very few people actually finish them, there's also a TON of people who never start their books. Just taking the first step, writing that first sentence, means that there was something in your idea that motivated you. I don't know what that is for you. For me, it's usually characters. I tend to fall head over heels in love with my characters, and so it's never an issue to write. I love them too much to worry about making mistakes. Sitting down and interacting with them every single day is motivation to keep writing, and it's also the motivation that allows me to send out queries (even when it's scary) and lets me pick myself up if I get rejections.

But it doesn't have to be characters. For my last book, I was absolutely intrigued by the concept. It took me about two weeks to even THINK about characters, but once I "found" them in the narrative, I fell in love with them, too. To me, falling in love with your characters is the easiest thing to do. If you haven't, spend more time with them (whether it's fleshing them out, doing character exercises, or simply thinking about them).

If I'm simply creatively drained, I like to experience other creative pursuits that are different from writing. When I'm in the heat of a novel, I RARELY read. First drafts are supposed to be bad - give yourself permission to be bad - but if I'm constantly presented with final, published works from GREAT authors, I get discouraged. So I draw creativity from music and movies. You'd be surprised how easy it is to connect almost every song or movie to your story. It can be something as uncanny as a similar plot, setting, or time period, or it could be somewhat similar characters. Sometimes, I have songs on my playlists that have NOTHING to do with my stories, but the songs simply match the tone of my novel! Whatever works for you.

I know this has been long, but I hope it helped. Let me know if there's anything else you need help with.

Yeah, I get down in the dumps with my stories and mss. I just start something new and hope I'll come back with the zest I started with. I currently feel this way about my ms I started querying last year. It's trunked now. I try not to think about errors and making writerly mistakes while I'm crafting my story, because that can mess with your head. And it did affect my flow in writing.

Side note: I frikin' loved Phoebe and Cole's relationship. I do miss that show!

I might be in editing mode from being on SYW boards - but the aside about Twilight/Charmed/Clark Kent doesn't seem to be necessary. I didn't infer anything from your title.

My Question is, now I feel like a failure, I haven't written in such a long time because everytime I see it, I'm thinking, 'oh not that again' because I'm worried I'm making the same errors and also, my writing does not seem to flow as it used to because I am too worried about making mistakes....

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Whoa, I got lost. Maybe you're a little too worked up?
1. You're not a failure. You're writing stuff. Go you!
2. It sounds like looking at your own writing makes you cringe - that's how I tend to feel, anyway, so if that's the case, I can relate.
3. Eventually you have to beat it into your head that errors are okay in the first draft, and unavoidable. You need to allow yourself to make the first draft a little sloppy. You can get a beta reader to help edit the story later.

So what do you do when you're down in the dumps because you've lost the inspiration?

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Listen to music, watch TV, play online games all day long, or crit other people's work in SYW.

Any one feel the same and what do you do from here?

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I've felt the same. I'm currently 36 pages in - I'll get about one day of writing, and then spend a week cringing over it. Things don't go as planned. I have to go and prune the story every now and then to make sure it continues on the right path.

I think right now you need to find the inspiration again. On these forums, seeing people with book covers and publishing deals really inspires me, makes me excited. I want to have a book cover of my own, and feel the joy of getting an agent and a publishing deal.

You can also try listening to music, watching movies, or reading books that are related to what you're writing about.

Re-read what you've written, and falling in love with the story again.

Or, you can plot out your story more - if it's not interesting, what changes or additions can you make to keep things exciting?

Hope that helps.

You need to take a look at your story and see what it is that's holding you back. (If it actually has to do with your story.)

-- Can you see "the end"? If not, you might be afraid you've trapped yourself. Jotting down any scenes that you "can" see but have not yet written might help.

-- A good quality character building exercise -- something richer and deeper then the basic "Eyes / hair / height" etc. might help you breathe in some new life. I have a 96 question one that I do before I start a new story. PM me and I'll send it to you if you want.

-- Going onto a site like Google Images or DeviantArt and looking for visual representations of the people and places in your story can help bring it more to life in your mind. You might also try hunting for the important items your characters have. I searched images of cars, clothing, purses, town houses, hotels and the interior of dance clubs, among other things, when I was preparing to write Moon Dance.

-- I like using The Sims 3 or The Sims Medieval to see how my characters might interact with each other. It also lets me fool around with hair, clothing, etc. to get some images of them if DeviantArt or Google Images fail me.

-- Music can be a very helpful thing. (If you like music, anyway... This might not work for everybody.) I try to find a "theme song" for each of my characters. I also pay attention to how certain pieces of music make me feel -- "This song perks me up!", "This song pisses me off!", "This song makes me want to cry" etc. and keep a list of them for when I go to work on certain scenes or situations.

If the problem is that you're really scared you're going to mess up, the only advice I can give you is: Just do it.

My characters threw new curve balls at me all through my rough draft. One ended up deciding she was in love with a character I'd intended for someone else 3 / 4 through, one decided she had powers about 1 / 3 through, one decided to tell me at the end of the book that he loved my FMC like she was his sister and that's why he protected her. You get the idea.

This is all being fixed as I work on revision. It's so much easier to put all the pieces together once you have the pieces. It's 100% okay for your first draft to suck.

Anyway, I hope that this helps. Good luck! BTW, I think the concept of a witch and a demon could be very interesting. Just remember ... Only you can give us your version of a witch and a demon. If it's still in you to do it, then don't hold back. Someone, somewhere is waiting for that story.

My theory is: inspiration never runs out - your subconscious is merely telling you something is wrong.

Let me tell you about my story, Noxbringer - I made it 90% of the way through my first draft and I stopped writing new stuff for 2 weeks. Why? Something was missing. I furiously tried to figure it out. Changed things, cut things. In the end, I made the hardest choice I ever did: The thing is just fundamentally flawed at its core. That didnt' change the fact I was in your shoes. I WANTED TO WRITE THIS STORY TO DEATH!

I did my first ever complete rewrite. I had originally had 3 main characters. I focused it down to 1 - the one I liked the best - and downgraded the other 2 to support and rewrote them to fit the MC's story better. I cut everything that went nowhere, and just focused on her. I changed PoV from 3rd to 1st... and, 2 months later, I finished Noxbringer. It's the best thing I've ever written. What that means, I don't know, but I'm eager to have this thing polished, with a super query letter and synopsis, and find out.

It happens.

My "inspiration" for my current YA dystopia ran out sometime after the second draft of a synopsis. I have the book written, yes, but after getting some feedback had to look at it again and say, "No, they're right, this doesn't make sense, I need to rewrite it." After getting to the query process, if I realize I need to rewrite, it pretty much lands me at a full stop. I don't want to go back to revisions--I want to go forward.

It's depressing and frustrating.

Here's how I'm dealing with it:

Put the YA dystopia AWAY and not look at it for a while. Work on my other projects in the meantime. (I have many.) Then, after I'm not cringing at the thought of looking at my manuscript again, go back and revise. And then find a fresh beta reader or two to look it over as well.

If you're still in the writing process, however, the best thing is to just step away from it for a bit. When you come back, you can try to look at it objectively and either work with what you have to make it better, or accept that it's not worth salvaging and trunk it. It is okay to trunk novels. It took me a while to figure that out, but it's okay to give up on a particular story if it's not working. It doesn't mean you're a terrible writer--it just means that story is not working.

But believe me, I understand wanting to write the thing "to death". I struggle with reminding myself that there's no race--I can take as much time as I need to get a given story written. In fact I think one of the reasons I juggle multiple projects is because I always have another one to fall back on if one starts to flag.

Okay, I don't know if any of that made a lick of sense--I'm more rambly than usual this morning. Bottom line: The inspiration will come back. Don't let it get you down.

There are plenty of writers who write some of a book then come back to it. Just do that.

I've had lots of motivation problems, along with tons of "I suck why am I doing this" moments. It happens to everyone, I think.

The main thing that has helped me was finding a really awesome crit partner. We swap chapters back and forth all the time and if I'm lagging she'll get me back on my toes. We communicate on twitter and have word count wars, where we'll write for an hour then check in to see how the other did. It's so helpful to have someone who knows my ms almost as well as I do, who can point something out and say "this needs fixing" or "that part doesn't flow as well" but who will also say "that is AMAZING" or "ooh, I love that line!" We've actually become very good friends outside of writing, and I don't know what I would do without her now. She keeps me sane!

Just my little piece of advice--find a great crit partner and it will help so, so much.

That is so encouraging, Aubie! I'm on that path as well.