10 Ways to Regain Your Writing Mojo

Okay, I admit ... it can be really difficult to write during the summer. Whatever free time we have, we want to spend at a music festival or prepping for the neighbourhood barbeque or attending a family reunion, or maybe even just lazing in a hammock with the latest Grisham novel.

It's so hard to get back to writing, though, once we've dropped the ball. You know that feeling you get when you look at your WIP and realize you haven't touched it in weeks? Yeah ... I don't want to feel that way either.

If the ball has already been dropped, if it's rolling down the sidewalk even now, we can catch it! Try one of these ideas, tomorrow if not today, and your writing mojo will be crawling in the doggy door before you know it.

How to Honour (or Toss) Old Bits and Bobs of Writing

If you've been writing for any length of time, chances are you have some old writing laying around (unless you're incredibly ruthless about purging nostalgic clutter and/or terribly crafty about finding ways to re-purpose it, in which case can I please borrow some of your magic?).

I've been helping my mum sort through stacks of old files and paperwork this week, and I stumbled on a handwritten story snippet, about half a page long. By the time I was a paragraph in, my shoulders were tense and I was waiting for the no good horrible thing to happen (hint: it involved a ransom note), and then - AHA! I burst out laughing, the tension defused. Mum had pulled off one of the best reversals of tone, and false alarms, I've ever read.

When we were done giggling about it, we started to wonder, what to do with it now? It's years old and has no connection to any of her current stories, but it's a nifty piece of writing, and worth keeping.

Still. What to do?

I've been thinking about it, and I think we have a few options when we come across an old piece of writing.

Quotation Adoration