10 Ways to Stay Inspired and Passionate about Writing

Photo courtesy of Elspeth and Evan

Staying creatively inspired and passionate about your writing can be challenging, especially if you write every day. Some days, I have no clue what I want to write about, and I end up writing dribble or half-completed poems. While bad, uninteresting, and uninspired writing is a significant part of the creative process, it can feel defeating to go several days or even weeks without writing something that truly sparks my passion. As a result, I’ve learned to turn to tricks and topics that keep me inspired and passionate about writing.

These suggestions may not help if you’re truly creatively stuck. In that case, you may want to try Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way, which I wrote about in this article. Also, these suggestions won’t help much if you’re avoiding writing altogether. In that case, embrace your procrastination and check out this article.

But if you’re simply bored or honestly feel out of ideas, then these suggestions work for me, and they may work for you as well.

1. Be present. Get still and silent. Try to connect to the present moment by paying close attention to your surroundings, your body, and your emotions. Observe and ask yourself questions: What do you see, hear, feel, taste, or smell? If the room is silent, what does that taste like? If the trash truck is clattering down the road or sirens are blaring in the distance, what does that smell like? How does the sound of snow melting from the rooftop make you feel? The past is over, and the future is undetermined. The present moment is the only moment we truly possess; so, write about it.

2. Write about your everyday experiences. In his correspondence with Franz Kappus (Letters to a Young Poet), Rainer Maria Rilke wrote:

“Therefore save yourself from these general themes and seek those which your own everyday life offers you; describe your sorrows and desires, passing thoughts and the belief in some sort of beauty—describe all these with loving, quiet, humble sincerity, and use, to express yourself, the things in your environment, the images from your dreams, and the objects of your memory.”

We are told repeatedly to write what we know, but often we find our own lives uninteresting or difficult to creatively tap. Yet, it is precisely our dreams, our homes, the people we know, our sorrows and our joys that provide the stuff of poetry. So, try looking at your life in a new and loving way. What’s utterly fascinating, funny, sad, or ironic about your life?

3. Write about memories. Related to writing what we know is writing about the past experiences that have shaped us, our lives, and the meanings we make of the world. Look at old photos and school yearbooks. Read past journals, and thumb through scrapbooks or boxes of memorabilia. You might be surprised by how much you’ve forgotten, and in the process of remembering, you may find some inspiration.

4. Look to nature. There’s a reason why nature features so prominently in poetry. It’s ready-made inspiration, just waiting to be written about. Sure, it can inspire a lot of clichés. Sylvia Plath wrote in her journal, “It is raining. I am tempted to write a poem. But I remember what it said on one rejection slip: After a heavy rainfall, poems titled RAIN pour in from across the nation.” But if W.S. Merwin, who twice won the Pulitzer Prize for poetry, had veered away from writing about rain or using images from nature, we wouldn’t have this poem from his 2009 award-winning book, The Shadow of Sirius:

Rain Light

All day the stars watch from long ago

my mother said I am going now

when you are alone you will be all right

whether or not you know you will know

look at the old house in the dawn rain

all the flowers are forms of water

the sun reminds them through a white cloud

touches the patchwork spread on the hill

the washed colors of the afterlife

that lived there long before you were born

see how they wake without a question

even though the whole world is burning

So, don’t worry that every poet has been inspired by nature. Let yourself succumb to the natural beauty and inspiration of our world and write about it.

5. Keep a journal and take it everywhere. If you don’t already write in a journal, or a small, portable notebook, then get one and take it with you wherever you go. When you can, take time out to jot notes about what you’re experiencing. These notes are great for later when you might want to use an image or jog your memory of an event.

6. People watch. A great use for your journal is to write your impressions of other people. Cafes, malls, grocery stores, libraries, parks, the bus stop—these are great places to pay close attention to others and their actions. How they talk, walk, laugh, frown, or pick their teeth are all fodder for interesting and inspired characterizations.

7. Try something new. If you normally write poetry, then try writing flash fiction or a short story. If you usually write in first person point of view, then try second or third person. If you typically write on the computer, then try writing longhand. If you tend to write free verse, try a little formalism. Mixing up your writing styles and habits or trying on new perspectives not only helps to diversify and hone your craft but also offers an opportunity for new creative insights.

8. Re-read and edit previous writings. This trick often works for me. Sometimes, I re-read my poems that I think are successful in order to give myself a small ego boost, which, often enough, is exactly the inspiration I need to write something new. Other times, I re-read poems I’ve stashed away because they’re disastrous and try to “fix” them. Working on a “bad” poem provides an excellent opportunity to hone my craft. It teaches me to identify problems, to figure out what works and what doesn’t, and to discover new ways of exploring meaning through words and images.

9. Be honest. Be brutally honest. As humans, we lie. We lie a lot. We lie to others, and we lie to ourselves. Consider the lies that you’ve told in the past. What was the lie? Why did you lie? What is the truth? What made the truth difficult to tell? Uncover your secrets and lies, and write about them. Readers often deeply identify with telling lies or being unable to tell the truth, and we all read poetry to discover some insightful truths about ourselves and our world. In the process of getting honest and writing about my lies, I often stumble upon important and even necessary truths. And these poems invariably become ones that audiences and readers seem to appreciate the most.

10. Wait. We’re often told that we should not wait for inspiration in order to create. To a certain extent, this is true. I write in my journal every day, whether I feel inspired or not. This habit has become absolutely necessary to my creative process. Some days, if I didn’t whine and moan in my journal about not feeling inspired, then I wouldn’t write at all. However, forcing our art does not induce inspiration. As Rilke suggested, “[Progress] must come from deep within and cannot be pressed or hurried for anything.”

Rather than forcing, it’s important to coax and nurture our creativity in positive ways. Sometimes, that means that we should take time out to feed our creativity by taking care of our emotional and physical needs or by focusing on other creative activities. When I don’t feel that creative urge to write, I sketch, play the guitar, knit, work a puzzle, read, meditate, cook a nice dinner, bake some cookies, take a walk, or go to the library. These activities are significant ways in which I nurture my creativity.

However, often enough, we must simply be still and wait. In a letter, Charles Bukowski wrote:

“Somebody at one of these places [...] asked me: “What do you do? How do you write, create?” You don’t, I told them. You don’t try. That’s very important: not to try, either for Cadillacs, creation or immortality. You wait, and if nothing happens, you wait some more.”

“Patience is everything,” Rilke emphasized. He wrote:

“Everything is gestation and then bringing forth. To let each impression and each germ of a feeling come to completion wholly in itself, in the dark, in the inexpressible, the unconscious, beyond the reach of one’s own intelligence, and await with deep humility and patience the birth-hour of a new clarity: that alone is living the artist’s life.”

When all else fails, sit still and alone with your thoughts and wait for the “birth-hour of a new clarity.” Trust and believe that inspiration, truth, and poetry will visit you, and they will.

How do you stay passionate, inspired, and challenged in your writing?