How to Write with Enthusiasm – Even if You Don’t Want To

After a busy day of writing, it dawned on me just how much I was getting done on my new eBook (Jump Start Your Freelance Writing Career) that I’m going to be launching soon, especially considering the lack of enthusiasm I had after freewriting the entire eBook (there was just so much work I had to do!).

Photo by Cordey (flickr)

I now have 1 chapter left to write, with over 68 pages of information-rich content already written. To top it all off, 20 homework assignments are already set up and ready to go in the workbook. It won’t be long now until I’m completely satisfied with the end result.

The fact is, even if you love the topic you’re writing about, getting started can be the hardest part. It’s difficult to write enthusiastically when you’re staring at a huge document and realize that there’s still so much more content you have to cover before you can finally call the document complete. (more…)

How to Tackle Motivation Head On and Get Your Life Back

Do you dread waking up each morning, knowing that there’s a long day ahead of you? Is every work session a struggle, and do you find yourself on the losing end?

Like dedication, motivation is a critical element to success. You want your work to progress. But, at the same time, you also want to laze around your bed reading and breathing in the bed’s softness… until reality strikes you between the eyes, and you hurriedly get up out of bed, fall down the stairs and force out some sentences on your keyboard, hoping your client won’t notice your futile attempts of an article. In times like these, how can you possibly get any work done, knowing that you’d be just as content doing nothing?

Photo by Nick Sitton (flickr)

I mentioned several ways that you can find motivation to become more productive in my post Finding Motivation: How to Adapt a Routine. However, since motivation is something many of us struggle with, I wanted to expand on this topic and talk about my own writing journey.

I first started blogging in 2008. I had created a lifestyle blog and was writing in it on a daily basis. Everything was going well, and I was getting a pretty good response rate. I was actually very happy with how well my blog was doing. However, motivation became a serious problem.

Writing for the blog became a chore, and I often found myself struggling each day to keep up the post frequency. The quality of my posts suffered, and I dreaded the beginning of each new day. I was losing the spark of excitement I once had, until I just stopped posting in the blog altogether. I abandoned the blog after 60 posts, and I started to focus on other things. (more…)

Finding Motivation: How to Adapt a Routine

While browsing Google Reader, I came across an article called Finding the Rhythm by Trent Hamm, author of the finance blog The Simple Dollar. This article discusses key methods on how to know when your work rhythm is failing and how to pick it back up again to become more productive. While reading the article, I thought about past activities I’ve done and how they’ve affected my productivity.

Photo by Julie Jordan Scott (flickr)

For example, this morning I took a nice long shower before beginning my day, when usually I would take a shower later in the evening. After the shower, I proceeded to drink my daily cup of organic coffee and then got to work. What a difference! Drinking coffee didn’t exactly make a noticeable difference, since that was something I was already doing anyway. But the shower, without a doubt, increased my productivity a great deal. Having a shower in the morning by itself probably wouldn’t have done much. But combining the shower with the cup of coffee made a complete difference in how well I worked throughout the day. I was no longer drowsy, my damp hair emitted a nice pleasant smell of violets and blueberries, and my skin just felt incredibly soft and clean. (more…)