Are you unable to write?
Don’t worry if you fear you’ve lost motivation. I don’t know who said it, but “writing is like a disease. It may go into remission, but it never leaves you.” This sounds like a negative analogy (because as author Lev Raphael says, “writing is a gift, not a disease”) but it’s also true. Let me tell you my story.
I stepped away from my writing for nearly two years after my son took his own life in 2011. During this time, I didn’t look at my short stories or half-started novels. I did not revise the manuscript I had finished, the one I loved best, the one my then-agent couldn’t sell. I did not write or revise a single poem.
While I was grieving, focusing on my writing seemed hedonistic, almost sinful. Not to mention, my ability to concentrate flew out the window. I shut my computer down. I let it all go.
I had to trust that the desire to write would return when I was ready. If not, well, that was okay, too.
Eventually I wondered if I would ever write again. What if I had used up all my good ideas? What if I only had so many words, phrases or sentences in my vocabulary that could be put on paper, and now they were all gone? Where would I find inspiration? Would I ever feel the same thrill when I discovered a new angle in what I was revising? What if everything I wrote really sucked?
Have you ever feared the same thing?
Rest assured
The writing, along with the motivation to write, will come back to you.
After my break, I returned to the novel I loved and started revising, and, what do you know: I found myself thinking like a writer again. Ideas flooded my head. Okay, maybe not a flood, but when I was driving to my daughter’s late one night, I had to pull the car over to take notes. When walking the dog, I had to whip out my cell phone to dictate an idea. It made me so happy that I found my jam again. I hired an editor and rewrote the entire novel.
It’s true, writing is a disease. A wonderful disease. I didn’t worry about whether or not the writing sucked because it just felt good.
All I’m still writing years later. Since In the Context of Love was published, I wrote and illustrated a children’s picture book, a poetry collection about my late son, and now my second novel, Love and Other Incurable Ailments, will be published by Regal House Publishing in 2026.
So, if you have to take time off from your writing to concentrate on caretaking, work, grieving, or for whatever reason, don’t worry. It’s going to be okay. You are always a writer, even when you’re not actively writing.
