How I Got My Writing Mojo Back By Diane Barnes

Like many novelists, I rely on my full-time job to pay the bills.  Fortunately, I enjoy my daytime gig. My co-workers are smart, supportive, and funny. We share a lot of laughs throughout the day, and I get to do what I love — write.  So except on the occasional bad day, I’ve never seriously dreamed about being able to quit my job so that I could stay home and write fiction full time.  Instead, I fantasized about not having to commute so that I’d have more time to work on my novels. 

On a good day my commute is just over an hour each way, but anyone who lives in the Boston area and drives on Route 3 to get to work will tell you that when it comes to commuting on that highway, there aren’t many good days. So each morning and evening as I sat in bumper-to-bumper traffic , I dreamed about how much more of my novel I’d have done if I could only use my drive time for writing.  

In mid-March 2020, I got to find out. COVID-19 had reached the United States. To keep employees safe, my employer closed their offices around the country and set up employees to work from home. I don’t have kids to home school and my state had closed down and encouraged residents to shelter in place so I didn’t have anywhere to go. Suddenly, I had a lot more time for writing. In those first five or six weeks as a work-at-home employee, guess how many pages I added to my novel? Not one. I completely lost my writing mojo.

Instead of working on my book, I spent my extra time napping, baking, reading, binge watching TV shows, and doing puzzles. Every day I didn’t write, I beat myself up for squandering the opportunity to make the most of these difficult times. I needed to figure out why I wasn’t writing.

Before the lockdown, I met regularly with other writers.  We’d go for walks or out for drinks and we’d talk about books and writing. I also met a few times a month with my writing group.  Talking with other writers, reading their work, and seeing the gleam in their eye as we discussed their pages energized me. I needed to get that back.

In trying to figure out why I couldn’t write, I also remembered advice I’d once received from my literary idol, Elizabeth Berg, who told me: “You need to write what brings you joy.”  The novel I was working on is about a couple struggling with infertility, a darker book than the feel good novels I usually write. 

I’d been working on it for over two years and had received a lot of positive feedback. In workshops, two agents who sell a lot of women’s fiction critiqued the opening pages and asked to see the entire manuscript when I finished, which should have been enough to motivate me to complete it and send it off to my own agent.  Instead, I dreaded opening my Word document.  I have never not seen a manuscript through to completion so it took a lot of internal debate to convince myself to put this one aside. Clearly writing about this subject during these difficult times wasn’t bringing me joy.  

Just about the time I made my decision to switch to a light-hearted topic, I saw a posting for an online class, How to Plan Your Novel in Four Weeks.  I’ve taken similar classes in the past and have three published books. I know how to plan a novel. Still I signed up for it. It’s the best decision I could have made for my writing during this time.

Before the class even started, I came up with an idea I’m jazzed about and wrote a preliminary synopsis. During the class, I had the opportunity to collaborate with other writers who were also planning a new book. We ran our ideas by each other and offered and received honest feedback, we pointed out plot holes and brainstormed solutions, and we critiqued early pages.  We were all excited about our projects and fed off each other’s excitement. By the time the class ended, I had a loose outline, a rough draft of the first few chapters, and a list of over 75 possible scenes.  

More importantly, I have a story that brings me joy. I look forward to working on it and have written every day since that class started in early May.  I plan to finish my draft by the end of the summer. 

My work-at-home space for the day job is in my dining room, and I use my office for fiction writing.  At the end of each work day now, I make a five second walk down the hallway to my office, excited to start working on my novel.  Just like I always imagined, I’m using my commute time well. I have my writing mojo back.

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Diane Barnes is the author of MORE THAN, MIXED SIGNALS, and WAITING FOR ETHAN. She is a marketing and corporate communication writer in the health care industry. When she’s not writing, she’s at the gym, running or playing tennis, trying to burn off the ridiculous amounts of chocolate and ice cream she eats. She and her husband Steven live in Massachusetts and dream of moving to Turks and Caicos – at least for the winter months. She hopes you enjoy reading her books as much as she enjoyed writing them.

Follow her on Twitter  https://twitter.com/DianeBarnes777

Find out more about her on her Website https://www.dianembarnes.com/

MORE THAN

“You are obese, Mrs. Moriarty.”

Peggy Moriarty is stunned by her doctor’s words. She knows she’s let herself go a bit, but she thinks the young, skinny physician is exaggerating. Her husband’s death fourteen years ago left her to raise their twins, Grace and Greg, alone. But now that they’re teenagers, doing their own things, her only hobby is watching Messages from Beyond, a show about a medium who connects the grieving with their deceased loved ones.

When the twins leave for college, they give Peggy a gift certificate for an exercise class. At first, Peggy is insulted. But once the sting wears off, she realizes if she gets in shape, she might gain the confidence she needs to go on her favorite TV show and talk to her husband one last time.

With help from her new friends at the gym and Carmen Tavarez, the mother of Grace’s boyfriend, Peggy begins to emerge from her prolonged grief and spread her wings. She may soon discover that her sum is more than a mother, a widow, and her body.

 

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Category: Contemporary Women Writers, How To and Tips