If you’re feeling stuck with your writing, it can seem like you’re locked up in a box with no way out. This isn’t a nice feeling. You can get frustrated and even depressed. Often though, all it takes is the right type of questions to help you get unstuck. Check out the following 6 questions to help you write better:
1. What Would it be Like If You Could Write Better?
Problems with not being able to write the way you want to, usually arise when you’ve been overcome with negative pictures in your mind about your struggle with writing. Instead, take conscious control over what you see in your mind, and just consider the possibility of what your life would be like if you could write the way you want to?
2. What Would that Successful Writer Do in this Situation?
If your writing flow has been interrupted for whatever reason, you can feel helpless. Remembering that you can look at the situation differently usually goes right out of the window. An effective what to overcome this problem is to consider your favourite writer who inspires you the most. Ask yourself what that individual would do to deal with the issue. Before you know it, your perspective will have quickly changed for the better.
3. What Can I Do To Help Me Get Back into Writing?
The key word in this question is can. By asking yourself what you can do to get back into writing, you move into solutions mode. The word can demonstrates willingness and action. Just notice how the way you feel changes when you tell yourself that you can write well.
4. What Will I Do To Help Me Get Back into Writing?
The power of this question is equal in magnitude to the previous one. The word will is the key one. Tell yourself now ‘what will I do to help me get back into writing?’ As you do, notice how your mind searches for options to help you get back on track.
5. What Will Happen If I Don’t Take Action to Help My Writing?
This question has a certain shock element to it. What you do is consider how you are currently feeling about yourself as a writer, and look out into the future at the consequences of what will happen if you don’t try and help yourself. By taking this perspective, you will most likely notice your situation getting worse. This deteriorated vision can usually be enough to pluck you out of any problem and motivate you to take action.
6. Is This the Legacy I Want to Leave as a Writer?
Whether we like it or not, we’re all here on borrowed time. As the saying goes, with life comes death. When your time to leave the world comes along, how would you like to be remembered? As an aspiring writer who never quite made it? Or as a hardworking, talented writer who refused to quit when the going got tough, put out his or her work for the world to see, and found the perfect audience who purchased every new book released.
Hopefully, it is the latter.
Image credit: Andreas Levers on flickr and reproduced under Creative Commons 2.0