A guest Post by Annabel Candy of Get in the Hotspot

Have you noticed how easy non-writers think writing is? When you’re a writer that can be frustrating.

There are three main things about writing that make it lack the social proof people expect of professional activities.

• It’s intangible – Many people don’t seem to consider writing a proper job, maybe because often writers type away for days with apparently little to show for it. Yes, there may be the occasional article in a newspaper, possibly even a published book you can actually show people. But even then that small book, an object you can hold in one hand, isn’t a good indication of the many hours, months or possibly years of work that went in to actually writing it.
• It’s unpaid - This is true even of successful, established and published writers, people like Zen Habits and Write to Done founder Leo Babauta who still regularly give away his writing on his own blogs and elsewhere. Many writers have blogs they write unpaid and if you’re not paid for something then other people tend to see it as a hobby and an unnecessary indulgence when for most writers creating a blog is a carefully planned career move.
• It’s intellectual – People see hard work as being physical like laboring, or stressful like being a fighter pilot. They don’t realize the kind of mental determination that writing calls for, the inner motivation that’s required to get you writing and keep you going until you actually finish the work.

No wonder writers often struggle with motivation.

Writing is a common dream for people. Yet most people who dream about writing don’t actually do it. Some of them hardly even read. Meanwhile writers who do actually earn a living from their work still struggle to stay motivated and keep writing.

Faced with all this opposition, both external and internal, how can we motivate ourselves to get writing and keep at it?

Here are six ideas that work :

1. Get motivated
   Accept responsibility for you own actions. Acknowledge that you’re the only person who can do this. That if you don’t glue your backside to the chair and first start, then finish writing your article or book, no one else is going to do it for you.
2. Create tight imaginary deadlines for yourself to spur you on.
   Try pretending you only have one hour to write today and that can be a good incentive to get on with it. Or ask yourself what you’d start or finish writing if you only had a month to live.I motivated myself to write a 70,000 word manuscript by telling myself that if I didn’t write it that year I never would. These scare tactics do work and best of all no one has to die in the process.
3. Commit to your writing.
   Work out how much time you can give to your writing and when. Schedule it in your diary it. Make it a part of your routine and keep at it until it becomes a true habit.Now stay focused. If it’s a book you need to be able to maintain your focus for months. For a shorter piece like a blog post or an article you need to focus for one or two hours.
4. Remove all distractions.
   You know what they are. Unplug the phone, turn off your router, find a place where you can write away oblivious to the household duties which are being neglected.Try using a kitchen timer to keep you seated and writing. Set the timer for an hour and write away. When the time’s up have a five minute break then repeat until the piece is finished.
5. Use motivational tools.
   Don’t dismiss Twitter as a waste of time waster or, at best, a simple networking tool. I’ve found it a powerful way to motivate myself and other people. It surprised me too but here’s how it happened.I followed a well known novelist and journalist called John Birmingham @johnbirmingham on Twitter.I noticed that he constantly tweeted how many words he’d written on a project and how many he was about to write. He’s prolific and his word count put me to shame so I decided to try his tactic and see if it helped me.First thing in the morning, I’d tweet:”Three jobs: edit chap two of fiction manuscript, finish short story for the competition, write blog post for Get In the Hot Spot.”Then I made updates on my progress via Twitter, as the day went on, such as:”Chapter two edited and looking good. About to update my blog now. Hope you’ve had a productive morning too.”

   I know this sounds ridiculously simple and unnecessary too, but if it works as a motivational tool, that has to be a good thing.

6. Try co-motivation
   Sometimes on Twitter I’ve challenge other writers or bloggers to a word race if I know they’re in the same boat as me. As we both write more than we would have otherwise, we both end up winning. I’ve found that innocent bystanders who’ve seen my word count tweets are motivated and inspired by that just as I was by John Birmingham.This type of motivation even has a proper name. Appropriately enough for writers it’s called “bookmarking”.

   Basically, you tell someone your goal and then update them regularly on your progress. It may be a friend, but it can be anyone, and it can also be done on the phone, with a text message, face to face, or on Twitter where you don’t even need anyone specific to report too.One brilliant side-effect of this is that as well as John Birmingham motivating himself and me, my progress reports have motivated other people too.

   One man told me that my tweets about writing and my word count have inspired him to start writing again. Another Australian writer Peter Moore @travdude who’s published six travel books, emailed me saying”I’m impressed that you’re knocking out those kind of numbers in a family environment.”

Final word on motivation

Who cares if writing’s intangible, unpaid and misunderstood? We mark our progress in words written and don’t worry that most of them will be removed in the end. We pay ourselves a favor each time we put pen to paper and practice our craft. We wage a war against lassitude and writer’s block on a daily basis and we win.

We just sit down to write no matter how hard it is, because no one else can write it like us.

How do you start writing and stick to it even though it’s easier not to? Please share your tips in the comments.

On the Internet it’s just the same as in real life ~ if you spend time with positive, inspiring people, you’ll be motivated to improve yourself and work harder.

Brrng, Brrng! Got to go now, the timer’s ringing. Have a super duper and highly productive day everyone.

Annabel Candy writes about self improvement at Get In the Hot Spot. She runs a web design company with her husband and manages to stay mostly focused on her writing despite the general mayhem created by their three children. To have as word count race or boast about how much you’ve written, tweet her @inthehotspot

Image credit: Photo by CarbonNY

A guest post by Bamboo Forest of Pun Intended

Wouldn’t it be fantastic if there was a method ensuring every article you wrote was concise, relentlessly focused and said everything you wanted it to?

There is.

I recommend using a thesis statement and outline for many posts that you pen.

Jesse Hines has written,

“A thesis statement is generally one or two sentences in which you clearly lay out your focus, idea or argument.”

While in an academic setting a thesis statement is included in your actual paper, I’m referring to something you write just for yourself. Write a thesis statement before you begin your post and it will set the tone for the rest of your article. It will encourage you to stay consistently aligned with what you’re trying to get across, making your article stronger and better.

After the thesis statement has been made, you’re now ready for the outline.

Have you ever gone to the grocery store without a grocery list? I don’t know about you, but I have. And the outcome often results in forgetting important items that you really wanted to purchase. It’s a real bummer, isn’t it?

This can happen with your writing, too. If you write a post without first gathering exactly what you want to include, you’re bound to forget a few important points that would have made your article better. Let’s not do that.

Prior to writing an outline, I recommend you first look over any notes you have pertaining to the post you’re about to write.

Then, simply break it down. I take a real relaxed approach to writing an outline and I recommend you do as well. Remember, we’re not submitting this outline to a stuffy teacher. We’re simply preparing ourselves to write the best post of our life.

I break my outline down using capital letters, A;B;C; etc. After each letter I include an important point that I don’t want to forget while writing my article. The outline ensures that everything I wanted to get into my article, does. It also keeps the order and flow of my post logical.

Another benefit of using an outline is it encourages†very tight writing.

Jesse Hines has written,

“Once I’ve developed a solid outline, writing the article is, in a sense, simply filling in the blanks.”

When you know from the beginning exactly what your article is going to encompass, you fill those blanks in with ultra focus. You say only what you need to say to get the specific points across.

Of course, as you’re writing your post and referring back to your outline — you’re not beholden to it. You can change the order as you see fit.

Also, youíll most likely include more information in your post than your outline lays out. This will happen organically from the main points you wanted to ensure got included in your post.

Using a thesis statement and outline in your writing is like laying down a strong foundation before building a house. Your architecture will end up stronger, and more beautiful.

P.S. — This is my outline for this guest post:

A. Wouldn’t it be great…
B. What’s a thesis statement?
C. It helps you stay focused and not drift all over the place
D. An outline works like a grocery list
E. What’s an outline?
F. Conducive to being concise, because now you’re essentially filling in the blanks.
G. Conclusion: The preparation stages are like laying down a strong foundation to a house.

Bamboo Forest writes for†Pun Intended, a blog that will make you laugh and feel inspired. To ensure you don’t miss all the goodies,†subscribe†here.

A guest post by Diggy from UpgradeReality.com.

Let me paint a little picture. Allow your imagination to go to work.

It’s a beautiful sunny afternoon, you’ve just stuffed yourself with a great lunch and you’re all stretched out on your couch. Flipping the channels on your TV to find something that you will allow to steal your afternoon away. You have plenty of ideas you want to start and projects you want to complete, but you can’t get yourself off that couch and get motivated to get to work and start writing.

How Do You Find Motivation?

The answer to this question is often what stands between you (right now, far from your goals ) and reaching your goals and being successful. That reason or thing that sparks us to take action, (the carrot in front of the donkey’s nose) is what we need to find or create. Everyone has a creative genius inside of them. There just needs to be a reason to let that genius come out to play.

I think there is little more motivating than a near-death experience or a loss of something you’ve always taken for granted. Getting told that you only have one year left to live or surviving a head-on collision are examples of events that change everything. After one of these events you will focus on the things you truly care about and spend as much time with the people and things you love.

The secret to being continuously motivated is realizing why your whole focus shifts after you nearly lose something very important (like your health or freedom).

If you can understand that principle and apply it BEFORE something bad happens to you (i.e. pretend or imagine how you would feel if you indeed lost something very important), then you would truly live your life to the fullest. You will love with all your heart, work with all your energy and enjoy everything that this world has to offer you. You will see every day as a gift that allows you to be creative and share your thoughts and writing with the world.

Imagine that you only have one year left to live, would you waste it by sitting on the couch and watching tv? I highly doubt it…

Find Motivation By Setting Imaginary Rewards:

Fear is usually a bigger motivator than dreams and that is why the process of nearly losing something really important to you makes you so much more motivated to live your life to the fullest.

However, you are the only one that knows what you really desire in your heart. This means that you can use that desire as a source of motivation.

Let’s say for example that you really want to be financially independent so that you are able to travel the world and wake up to a tropical beach and aqua-blue sea every morning. If you really really want that tropical beach, it will always be on your mind. When you wake up in the morning you can remind yourself how much you want it and that you are going to do anything you have to do to reach that goal. You can find a postcard or photograph of that beach you want to be on and pin it on the wall behind the desk you work at. That way you will want to write as soon as you see that postcard.

You need to determine if you are someone who is more motivated by fear or by dreams. I am not able to tell you that. What is the thing that is going to make you get out of bed on a Sunday morning or motivate you to work late into the night so that you can achieve your goals?

The Lance Armstrong Story

I’m pretty sure that you know the Lance Armstrong story or have at least heard about it.

Lance Armstrong was a top-athlete at the peak of his career in 1996. Back then, he had just won the World Cycling Championships. He had become the first cyclist to clock the widest winning margin in the U.S. National Road Race Championshipís history. Even more, he had also signed a 2 year contract to ride with a famous French racing team for an amount of $2.5 million.

Later that year, Lance was diagnosed with an advanced stage of testicular cancer. The cancer had spread to his lungs and brain and doctors gave him a 50/50 chance to live. An urgent operation had to be arranged to remove his swollen testicle that was the size of an orange. Lance had cancer cells the size of golfballs in his lungs. Doctors and others were really not optimistic about his recovery.

Lance however, was determined not to give up and to beat his illness. He underwent the surgery and the chemotherapy and lost a lot of weight in the process. Amazingly he was declared cancer-free after he completed his chemotherapy and he went back to his cycling.

For the next 7 consecutive years, Lance proceeded to win the Tour de France. He went from facing death and having people tell him he was going to die to winning the largest cycle event in the world 7 cosecutive times in a row. At a later stage, Lance wrote that he chose overcoming cancer to winning the race. It was the former that allowed him to ignore the negative predictions that his doctors gave him and focus on his own strength and faith.

Lance Armstrong published a book titled “It’s not about the bike” which is a really inspiring and beautiful story to read. If you haven’t read it yet I really suggest you get hold of a copy.

The reason that I told you this story is that you should never give up. You are much stronger than you think and you are capable of withstanding much more than you think. Don’t allow the negativity of others to drain your life or motivation out of you, it’s not over until it’s over.

Let Me Give You A Boost:

Everyone has days where they can’t find motivation and they are a little low on confidence or self-esteem. You may not have the urge to write on these kind of days which can turn into weeks or months if you let them. Even if you have been writing for months without results and your efforts seem fruitless, then remember the Lance Armstrong story. You can be facing what seem insurmountable odds, but you can still conquer them with hard work,persistance and determination.

If you are having one of those days where you don’t feel creative, let me help you by telling you the following:

1. You are alive
2. You are enough
3. You are unique
4. You are cool
5. Never give up

Always remember this! Now get off your butt and go and write some mind-blowing articles (Just do it)!

Diggy writes all about self improvement at his blog UpgradeReality.com. If you are looking for motivation, inspiration or useful tips to live a better life, subscribe to his articles via RSS FEED or EMAIL

A heads-up for WTD readers
Leo and Mary will run the next A-list Blogging Bootcamp, How to Create a Blog that Rocks from 13-17 February. Everyone had a blast last time! We’ll be emailing some great articles on blogging. Get yourself on the mailing list by clicking on Leo’s report below.