On Getting Back on the Horse

There's a particular feeling that every writer knows. You sit down to write and nothing comes. Or you don't sit down at all. You find something else to do — something easier, something with a clearer outcome. The dishes. Your email. Anything but the page.

It's not laziness. It's not a lack of discipline. It's what happens when we don't quite know where the writing is going, whether it will be any good, or whether anyone will care when it's done. When the uncertainty feels loud enough, the easiest thing in the world is to wait until it quiets down.

The problem is that it never does.

Every writer experiences this. Every single one. The ones who finish their stories aren't the ones who figured out how to feel certain before they sat down. They're the ones who learned to write anyway — through the doubt, through the not-knowing, through the days when nothing felt inspired. They moved through it, and the moving is what got them there.

So how do we do that?

Start by being honest about where the uncertainty actually lives. Name it. Are you unsure where the story is going? Whether the writing is good enough? Whether your characters are working? Whether anyone will want to read it? Get specific. Because here's the thing about those questions — almost none of them can be answered until you've written more. They are, by their nature, unanswerable from where you're sitting right now. The only way through them is forward.

So set that aside, and set a timer instead.

Not a word count goal. Not a completion target. Just time. Twenty minutes. Thirty. An hour if you have it. The goal is simply to spend that time with your story, as undistracted as you can manage. And here's what I want you to know: the win is not what you produce. The win is sitting down. The win is showing up and giving your attention to the work. That's it. That counts.

When you sit down, bring a question with you. Something to follow into the writing. It might be specific — based on what I wrote last time, what might happen next? What problem could arise here? How would my character respond to this? Or it might be more open — what do I want to explore today? What am I curious about? What am I angry about, moved by, drawn to?

It doesn't always have to be the same piece. Sometimes the way back to your writing is through any writing. Find whatever gets your pen moving — not perfect, not polished, not even necessarily right — and follow it.

Don't make a weekly plan. Don't map out the month. Just write today. Then tomorrow, do it again. Writing is an in-the-moment practice. It's expression, it's art, and it happens one session at a time. The way we erode procrastination is not by solving it — it's by writing in spite of it, over and over, until sitting down becomes more familiar than staying away.

You don't need to see the whole path. You just need your next step.

Take it.

Wishing you and your stories all the best, Trevor Martens Founder, I Help You Write Things

P.S. Set a timer for four minutes. Don't plan. Just write.

Prompt: "What I didn't see coming"