How to Get Out of a Writing Slump

"Girl Reading in the Orangery" by Charles Edward Perugini

Ah, Sunday evening...dinner has been eaten, dishes are done, time to relax and prepare for the week ahead. A quiet time for contemplation. Today, I'm here to tell you how I got out of my years long writing slump. A bit more than a slump really, more like a drought, but nevertheless! I used to write constantly as a child/teenager. Then I became ill and diagnosed with a variety of mental illnesses and that really hit me hard and made it difficult to write. 

You see, any writer knows that while writing is an art, there's also a bit of a science to it. You must follow certain rules of grammar and structure to get your story or whatever you're writing across to the reader. I just couldn't bother with that when my mind was in turmoil so these past 6 years I focused mainly on art...which has NO rules, yay! I digress. Here's what I did to get out of my writing slump. 

1. I just wrote bits and pieces of poems, stories, and descriptions for quite awhile. It felt really good just to write something again, even if it had no beginning, middle, or end. Just write! A certain well written phrase can spark an entire novel and tah dah! You're back in business. 

2. I wrote about what I loved and interested me. Don't pay attention to what's popular or "sells". Write the story that your soul wants to tell. Write about things that you are head over heels in love with. Write what you want to read. For this, you will need to follow your heart, not your head. You know what rings true to you. DO it! 

3. Now this is VERY helpful for me and possibly other chronically ill writers. You guys know energy is a low supplied commodity when ill, so it must be used smartly and sparingly. I found that my mind just could not wrap itself around the outline of an entire 80,000-100,000 word novel. BUT! My mind can now handle a 5,000 word short story! I can easily write one of those and then move on to the next one and ya know what? Soon I'll have an entire collection of short stories that will be novel length! My point here is to break things down into SMALL increments. You don't have to write short stories if your calling is a novel, but be sure to take things one chapter at a time with lots of breaks in between. You can do it! WE can do it!

And that's where I'm at right now, working on a short story collection of YA Fantasy stories about...MERMAIDS! Yup! I'm so excited and in love with my stories and that is how I know I'm out of my slump. 

I truly hope this helps someone! Happy writing and have a great evening y'all!

Alette