Some days the words will flow like water. Sometimes they won’t flow at all. You can have the best routine, the most solid ideas, and know where you want to go as well as how to get there, but sometimes the words just don’t come no matter what you do.
It happens to us all. You can do everything right and sometimes it just doesn’t happen. Well, what do you do then? You rest. You can work on a side project, like a short story, or brainstorm a different idea. You can storyboard something completely different, or even just detach totally and come back to it in a day or two. Sometimes we need time to reset, after all. It happens to every last one of us. Sometimes you just can’t force it, and you have to take a break. And that’s okay. It happens to us all at some point, so try not to beat yourself up.
It’s important to not let these days get you down. It can be soul-crushing, especially when you’ve settled into a groove and have been making steady progress. It can be humbling, but also aggravating, especially when your time is limited due to a regular job, parenting, chores, or other obligations.
But what to do? Well, do you do anything else creative? Do you draw, paint, or knit? That would be a good use of your time here. It’s still creative, and it will help refill an empty reservoir. Beyond that, you can read, watch TV, or play video games, anything that is a story you can consume would be a good use of your time, too.
You can also work on side projects. I know I do more than just novels. I also do essays and poetry and short stories, and I have more than one novel I’m working on. I’ll work on brainstorming, outlining, or character creation for those ideas. I also have group projects I’ve been invited to work on that I’ll spend time on as well.
Sometimes, though, the reason you can’t write isn’t so benign. Sometimes it’s been too stressful of a day, too much has happened, or something happened that you have to deal with. It’s okay to prioritize other things in life, especially if they’re emergencies. This is a good time to use coping skills because they’ll help you weather both the hard times as well as help refill your creative well. Some of us are lucky in that writing can help us process emotions, so it’s okay to take the time to switch gears and work on something that will allow you to purge the feelings and move on with your life. You can work on a different scene that might deal with the emotions you’re struggling with, or you can work on something completely different. If this is not you, though, don’t beat yourself up. Take some time for self-care. Do the things you need to do to settle, as well as focus on things like eating and sleeping if you can, to take care of yourself.
It’s important that just because you have an off day it doesn’t always mean you’ve burned out. Burned-out creatives need to rest too but we all have our off days here and there, so while the same rules apply it’s still not the same thing. Just know that it happens to us all and that in order to be successful you have to be able to take the good days with the bad.