2023 New Year's Resolution for Writers: Motivation

Greta Stern

Every new year I make a writing resolution. In past years, I have resolved to begin projects and to finish them. I've resolved to observe the ordinary, and to read. I've resolved to write what I most feared and to get more rejections than C. S. Lewis. (He got 800 before he was published.) To my credit, I have managed to fulfill all my resolutions - even C. S. Lewis' stunning number of rejections. (I've gotten well over a thousand, but that's counting rejections for everything I've written.) (Yeah, so I cheated... so sue me.)

All of these were great resolutions, and I have done my best to follow them. After all, a promise is a promise. But where to now? I have read; I have written, I have been rejected (yet even other more additional times). I have begun projects and finished them. I have faced fear in a mirror. What's left?

For writers, what's left is discipline. Having been trained in classical music, and undergone the bootcamp known as "conservatory of music," I don't lack self-discipline. But what I do lack is motivation. Sitting down to write takes discipline. But it also takes motivation. We have to want to sit in front of a blank screen (or a blank piece of paper if you are old-fashioned) and we have to want to do it whether we receive accolades (although those help), or prizes (those really help), or publication (man, does that help!). We have to do it during the soul-sapping mental paralysis of the continuing covid pandemic and the loss of a reality we thought was eternal. (It never is.)

The reason we have to want to face that fearsome blankness is that we are writers because we have something to say. The moment we forget that, and begin to focus on the anticipated, much-hoped-for (and largely imaginary) social and financial rewards of writing, we lose the reason for writing. If we have nothing to say, then there really is no point in putting pen to paper.

So, dear writers, what do you have to say? Do you have thoughts about life, human nature, the state of the world? Do you fear for humanity's survival, take joy in random acts of kindness, blush (or retreat) when someone says "I love you"? 

Take some time out to focus. Then sit your butt down and write. It's important.