It’s every writer’s worst nightmare. The dreaded lack of motivation or lack of inspiration that leaves us spinning our types in the sand. Maybe you’re lucky and it only lasts a week or even a month. But when it drags on for years as it has in my case (3 years and counting) you’re left feeling like a pup chasing its tail, caught in an endless catch-22 where lack of inspiration leads to no motivation and no motivation drains you of inspiration.

Often it can feel like you will never be able to dig yourself out, and believe me when I say that between things going on in real life and trying to fight against the worst writer’s block I have ever experienced I came close to giving up entirely or more than one occassion. Just delete everything and move on. Accept the fact that I didn’t have the skill or the inspiration to continue writing.

And yet somehow, despite the apathy and despair I often felt towards my works in progress, I couldn’t bring myself to pull the plug. Maybe it was a lingering sense of obligation to my best friends (both writer’s, one a screen writer and the other currently working on her first novel) that I owed it to them to keep going. 

Early in my writing days they served as my sounding board, fueling my desire to writing, but no longer living in the same country and the demands of adulthood have all but robbed me of the fire that drove me. Gone are the days when I had more ideas than I could write. Now I struggle to even complete a paragraph.

It wasn’t until a day ago, when a drunken conversation lead to the discovery that new member of my current social circle was an avid fanfic reader and writer, someone literally overflowing with the excitement and passion for writing that I had pretty much lost over the past 3 years. 

Talking with her gave me something I had been missing, the desire to get back into writing and to actually break this cursed writer’s block. Of course a single drunken conversation is not enough to break the writer’s block entirely. It’s not enough to suddenly fill me with inspiration and writing ideas, but at least it has given me the motivation to try and do something about my lack of inspiration, which is where this blog comes in. 

I may not have any new story ideas, and I may have lost steam and direction with regards to my current works in progress, but the best thing I can do right now while I have the desire to write is to just write, even if it isn’t fanfiction. I need to sit down and right, even if it is just my thoughts on my own writer’s block. So that is what I am doing. 

I plan to set myself the goal of writing a blog post a day on whatever comes to mind, be it fandom, real life or my dog. I need to get back into the habit of translating my thoughts and ideas into text.

And with that so ends the first of my blog posts. The first step of many on my journey back to a passion I had lost. Wish me luck.

Reiye [Peace]