motivation

A quote for a productive summer.

Not everything blooms in spring. Your season might be autumn. Keep going.

– James Clear (Atomic Habits)

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When you start to question yourself, when you feel like no one’s listening or that you don’t have anything worthwhile to say, remember that, in 2025, in a long-running high-quality writing magazine, there appeared an article that began with this bit of insightful advice:

Today’s best crime fiction leads with a crime, a criminal, and a victim. 

And they paid someone to write it.

Keep doing what you’re doing. You’re good.

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Two recommendations and some hard facts.

Recommendation:

James Clear, author of Atomic Habits, has a weekly newsletter I enjoy. In his “3-2-1 Thursday” email, Clear shares 3 ideas, 2 quotes, and 1 question to consider. Falling somewhere between philosophy and productivity advice, the email blast is short enough to read in about 2 minutes, and almost always includes at least one interesting concept among its six meme-like tidbits. You can find it here.

Hard facts:

In one his recent emails, Clear shared a quote from the semi-anonymous Loopy, a writer and life coach. In one of his short essays, Loopy identified activities that aren’t the same as doing the thing:

• Preparing to do the thing isn’t doing the thing.
• Scheduling time to do the thing isn’t doing the thing.
• Making a to-do list for the thing isn’t doing the thing.
• Telling people you’re going to do the thing isn’t doing the thing.
• Messaging friends who may or may not be doing the thing isn’t doing the thing.
• Writing a banger tweet about how you’re going to do the thing isn’t doing the thing.
• Hating on yourself for not doing the thing isn’t doing the thing. Hating on other people who have done the thing isn’t doing the thing. Hating on the obstacles in the way of doing the thing isn’t doing the thing.
• Fantasizing about all of the adoration you’ll receive once you do the thing isn’t doing the thing.
• Reading about how to do the thing isn’t doing the thing. Reading about how other people did the thing isn’t doing the thing. Reading this essay isn’t doing the thing.
• The only thing that is doing the thing is doing the thing.

I can add a few of my own:

• Worrying about what other people think about the thing isn’t doing the thing.
• Wishing you knew more people doing the thing isn’t doing the thing.
• Berating your skill at the thing isn’t doing the thing.
• Wondering if you’re too old to do the thing isn’t doing the thing.

Recommendation:

You can follow Loopy at Strangest Loop and/or Embracing Uncertainty. He also has X and YouTube accounts.

Bonus Recommendation:

Go do the thing.

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The above quote has been touring the internet for awhile, and the first time I saw it, it hit home pretty hard. I’ve run across it a few times and it hasn’t lost its punch.

This applies to me both personally and creatively. I was raised in a very conservative fringe religion, which I rejected in my late teens. I came out in early twenties and never looked back or played it straight. In my thirties, after leaving an emotionally abusive and controlling  relationship, I spent a long time working through my anger and rebuilding my self-esteem and friendships.

I’m not the writer I thought I’d be when I was a kid. But I’m not an automaton operating at the behest of misogynist gaslighting religionists, I’m not cowering in the closet, and I’m not afraid of doing the work it takes to not be an asshole. I fought hard not to become those things. Life would have been easier if I hadn’t had to. Maybe I would have been on that creative path I always dreamed about. But, that wasn’t the choice I was given.

I’m not yet the best version of myself, but I’m far from the worst.

When the going gets tough, when you feel that you haven’t made the progress you should have or you haven’t been as successful as you could have been, remember what you’re not. Celebrate who could have become but didn’t, whatever that means to you.

I’m tired of thinking about all that other crap, so today I’ll celebrate that I never became the person who quit.

Because you are.

I came across two good motivational articles this week, both encouraging writers to do more of that thing that they seem to hate doing more than anything else: write.

Not me. I love writing. I wish I could write all day, every day. It’s not always easy, I don’t always know the right choice to make, and I don’t always get good results, but I never hate it. I never bitch about it, I never suggest that my creativity is anything less than a blessing and a gift.

Awhile back, I accidentally said something insightful to my therapist.

“I’m me when I write. I am most myself when I’m writing.”

Don’t know what that signifies, and I don’t care. I burped that out in the middle of a rant about something completely unrelated, and it caught us both short. Definitely a statement that demanded attention, which we gave it. I don’t like to examine it too closely, though. I have a tendency to over-think, so scrutinizing one of the few things in life that brings me unconditional joy seems unwise. Better to embrace and cherish it. I have no need to understand where it comes from.

But if you’re one of those writers who struggles with it – even when you love it – and you find yourself holding back or – worse! – dreading your writing time, a couple of recent articles had some good advice.

On his blog, Steven Pressfield shared advice that might help you get started when you feel stuck or unmotivated or even unworthy or unable.

When you sit down, place your fingers on your keyboard or pen, and say to yourself “And the bad version is … “ and then start to work. You can do that. You can write the crap version of whatever idea is in your head, and believe me – the crap version is better than no version. As someone wise once said: You can rewrite a bad draft. You can’t rewrite a blank page.

Another good article has advice for training yourself as a writer, so that you get stuck less and maybe write crap versions that are less crappy.

In a post on the BookBaby blog, C. Hope Clark says you don’t have to wait for your anointed writing time to write. While it’s great to have a dedicated time, you can use that time more efficiently if you train yourself to write all day. Clark suggests writing in snippets – jotting down ideas the moment you have them, in between emails or while you’re on hold before a conference call. Resist the urge to doom-scroll your social media when you’re bored, and write a few lines instead. When you reach your dedicated writing time, you’ll have filled in gaps or given yourself ideas for your next scene or story. You might even hit your daily word count before you start. Now, that’s motivating!

Clark also says that the more you write, the more you’ll write. You’ll want to write more and more often. You’ll reclaim time from other tasks or hobbies that might start to seem less important. And the work will come more easily. A lot of writers don’t like to hear this, but creativity is a spigot. The wider you open it and the longer you leave it run, the more you’ll get in return.

If you needed this advice today, I hope it helped.

BookBaby: Train Yourself to Be a Writer

Steven Pressfield: And the Bad Version Is…