How to Write When You're Not Interested

My husband is getting ready to start a blog. Not being tech savvy, he's handwriting all his posts, which I will eventually transcribe. I don't mind doing it; it's important to him and I certainly don't have anything else going on.

He said something the other day that resonated with me. "It's hard to write an essay on a topic I don't care about." I'm struggling with that right now as well. I have a few articles I'm supposed to compose, yet I really don't want to write them. Because I don't care about them. 

As you know, I maintain a music blog (the link is right over there ← ). "Maintain" is a misnomer of late, since I haven't published a post in two months. And there are a couple of notable deaths I really need to acknowledge, especially one artist who was a giant among giants in music. Part of my hesitation is that hundreds of articles about his life have already been written, and the only perspective I could add would be to recount my memories of his music and how it affected me growing up. Which isn't a bad way to go about it, except that I'm not in a musical headspace right now and I haven't been in a long time. I don't know what happened to music and me. Once, music was everything; now I rarely even open Spotify. My music blog is heavy on videos, and this would be a post that called for their inclusion, but it all just feels like work at this point.

I know from my fiction writing experience that if something feels like a slog, I'm not approaching it from the right perspective. That happened with my latest novel's opening. It was originally bogged down with back story, and even I realized that no reader would want to wade through all that slosh. I cared enough about the story to work hard on making it "not slosh". 

But now, even with nothing to occupy my time, instead of writing those posts, every time my conscience starts nagging me, I swat it away. My issue might have to do with the different style of writing required. I guess I would make a terrible non-fiction writer; I like the imaginary world where anything can happen, but this world is real.

Then there's the article I stupidly volunteered to write for a book reviewer's magazine. If I want to get eyes on my novel, this article is kind of a big deal. It needs to impress a reader enough to spur them to try out my book(s). And there's my problem ~ too much pressure. (A secondary problem is that I don't have a good topic.) I began writing something a while back that tied my musical life to fiction writing, and while it's a unique approach, I suppose, it's just so boring. Ever have what you think is a great idea, but when it comes time to execute it, you discover that you actually have nothing?

I can't seem to write on demand. To me, writing is fun, or it was when I was actively doing it. Yes, I did force myself to work on my novel, even when I didn't feel like it, but at least I had a goal. This stuff I'm putting off has very little purpose (well, I guess the magazine article does ~ or could). 

Sometimes I miss drinking. Seriously. Not enough to return to it, but a drink or two worked wonders in freeing up my creativity. I loved everything I wrote 😇 and I found it to be absolutely scintillating, until the next day when I read it back. But drinking at least got my creative juices flowing. 

My advice, to myself and to others, is that if you have to do it, find a new way into it. If you hate what you've written, start over from an off-the-wall perspective. It just might work, and if nothing else, you'll end up with something unique.

Then reward yourself, just not with booze. Unless you want to. None of my business.