If you’re wondering how to stay motivated when writing your first book, you are by no means alone. Learning how to write can feel daunting…but when it comes to something as simple as how to stay motivated?
This is an entirely other animal. Writing my first book was an exercise in mental toughness. This journey lasted eleven months. It can be hard to know how to start and finish, but perhaps the most difficult part is discovering the motivation to carry through the middle to the end.
My writing mentor refers to the hardest part of writing as the marathon of the middle. This is where learning how to stay motivated really matters.
I’m here to teach you how to stay motivated when writing your first book, second book, for seventeenth book, as well as the secret that helped me write five books myself.
Add to this the fact that we’ve taught over 8,000 authors how to write, publish, and market their books over the last 10 years. A large contributing factor to our students’ success is staying motivated.
Are you ready to learn the keys to follow-through? Let’s get into it.
How to stay motivated when writing your first book:
How to keep motivated when writing a book?
One of the best ways to learn how to stay motivated when writing your first book is to create systems that do the work for you.
James Clear has gone to great lengths compiling research on how to motivate yourself to do what you want to do, what works, what doesn’t, and how to set yourself up for winning. Simon Sinek is known for his work on the power of finding your purpose, or as he calls it, “your why.”
When we pair the work of Sinek and Clear, we have the building blocks for success. Let’s take a look at the power of systems and purpose, specifically as they pertain to writing.
Define your purpose
Writers often refer to their books as their passion project or their baby. I imagine few writers sit down to author a book they do not feel some level of passion over. If you want to stay motivated throughout the entirety of your book-writing process, it’s crucial to know why you want to write.
Consider the following questions:
- Do I want to showcase a particular literary conflict?
- Do I feel compelled to share my story via memoir?
- Is there a specific character journey I feel drawn to?
When you know why you want to do something, you are much more likely to follow through with it.
Recently, a friend called me to share that he’d been pursuing a healthier lifestyle and lost some weight that was holding him back from that lifestyle.
In the health and fitness world, whether losing weight or gaining muscle mass, very rarely do people who stick with it do so without a purpose in mind:
- “I want to be healthy for my kids.”
- “I want to be a fit grandmother for my grandkids.”
- “I want to be physically strong to help those around me.”
These are various purposes behind health journeys. My friend stuck with his health journey because he had a purpose in mind. What is your purpose for writing?
Articulate it for yourself so you can learn how to stay motivated from first page to last.
Create a specific routine
When my friend called me to say he was well on his way to his dream weight goal, I asked him what his routine looked like. What was working for him?
He named several specific actions he was engaging in on a regular basis. He had a routine. As a result, he was achieving his goal.
Writers need a routine as well. Rome wasn’t built in a day, but brick by brick. Books are built word by word.
I find it helpful to follow this routine, one my writing mentor taught me:
- Create a self-imposed deadline
- Research how many words should be in the genre you write
- Determine how many words or pages you need to write per day to meet your deadline
- Commit to writing at a specific time
- Edit yesterday’s work to springboard you into writing today’s work
Of course, the real work is in sticking with the routine day in and day out, which leads us to our next step.
Refill your creative tank
Going to the movies may feel like a night of entertainment, and for many it is, but sometimes, I know it’s the best choice for my creative endeavors.
When we ingest too much information, we lose our aptitude for creativity, but when we write and write without ingesting any inspiration, our creative tanks run dry.
The key is learning how to balance this dichotomy: Know when you are ingesting too much, to the point where it’s turning off your creative capacities, but also know when your output is maxing out your input.
In other words, know when to refill your tank in order to stay motivated. There are many ways to do this, and different activities work for different people.
Here are a few ideas to get you started:
- Go on a walk in a place your character might walk (big city, quiet park, etc.)
- See a movie in the genre of your current work-in-progress
- Read an upmarket fiction novel to help you envision how you might reach a large audience
- Do something you’ve never done (ex: kickboxing, rock climbing, cooking a new cuisine, going to a show for a band you don’t typically listen to)
Engage a support system
Just as people are village made, books rarely happen in vacuums. For one, writers draw inspiration from the world around them. But for two, it can be hard to know how to stay motivated when writing your first book if there’s no one to encourage you along the way.
I’ve been in various writing groups over the years, worked with different writing coaches and book coaches, and greatly benefited from this support. Wondering where to find the same? There are many online writing groups to choose from (here are some Facebook groups for writers to get you started).
You can also reach out to writers you know and ask to create an in-person writing group for accountability. Some writers even commit to writing at specific times with other authors, alone together.
If you’re looking for more personal support, ask a friend to hold you accountable to the word or page count you’ve committed to writing each day. Check in with them at the end of the week and report your progress.
Reward your progress
I remember when I first realized I needed an agent to represent me to traditional publishers. I spent a very long time, and an exorbitant amount of effort, trying to secure the right agent.
Then I received an offer. I did my due diligence looking into the contract and signed. I officially was an author with representation!
Looking back, I’m not sure I celebrated—and this was a tremendous feat (some say securing a literary agent is as difficult as securing a traditional book deal).
If you want to know how to stay motivated when writing your first book, one of the best ways to do so is by celebrating your progress.
Celebrate writing your word count each day for a full week. Celebrate missing one day but then catching it up the next week. Have a party when you reach your halfway mark.
Bake yourself a cake (or whatever you do to celebrate) when you complete your manuscript’s first draft. Whatever it looks like for you, reward your progress.
Of course, do so in moderation. It’s unlikely every writing day needs a participation award, but you get the point.
Forget about motivation
Since this entire post is about how to stay motivated when writing your first book, forgetting about it entirely may feel counterintuitive.
Remember my friend’s phone call from above? The secret to his weight loss wasn’t just that he ate healthy or made sure to get out in the sun to move when he happened to feel like it.
Consistent effort, over time, yields great results. This goes for just about any endeavor you undertake. You can write a 50,000 word book in about 90 days if you type just two pages per day—and those are double-spaced pages!
The key to motivation is compounding motivation: the more you do, the more you feel motivated to do.
Is writing your first book the hardest?
Writing your first book can feel like the most difficult book to write simply because it’s your first time. Whether you want to write a standalone novel, memoir, or book series, of course the first time will be difficult.
If you’d like some help on the journey, schedule a free consult with one of our team members. We’ve helped 80,000 authors and today, they have over 100M books in print. Yours could be the next!
Stay motivated to write your first book, today!
Now that you have six steps to help you stay motivated when writing, start your journey today. You never know where this creative path may lead you!
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