Writer’s block doesn’t exist and it’s time we found the inspiration to overcome it.

Ever been in one those crazy, distressing, awful writer’s blocks? Ever felt demotivated to write something, and thus chosen the easier path of binge-watching a TV show or scrolling through insta reels?

Ever wondered if you’re alone? No, you’re not.

Ever wondered how to find inspiration for writing? Yes, you have.

Writers very frequently get demotivated to write things, or are just plain tired, or maybe don’t like what they write, all of which are a result of a lack of inspiration in them.

A lack of inspiration for writers is what we commonly call writer’s block. But the thing is that writer’s block doesn’t exist and is just a fancy name for the procrastination and the lazy process. (This is not to condemn the writers out there; I know all all of them work really hard to finish their books and get the fame.)

All of this having been said, I’ll address the dooming question hanging over the heads of all the writers: how to find the inspiration for writing? Okay, I agree, finding inspiration and motivation at the moment is hard.

So, how do we find the inspiration for writing and finish our book even when it seems like all hope is lost and our story’s gonna go down a ditch soon enough? How do we always keep ourselves equipped with the writing inspiration and befriend our muse? How to find inspiration for writing, for real this time?

Without further ado, let’s dive right in.

How to Find Inspiration for Writing?

1) Try New Experiences

This is not just said, this is actually true.

I remember this one time I was a little kid and had at last decided to listen to my folks and go out of the house to this park for a walk. At seven a.m. It actually, really worked. I wrote this one short story that day and did its mystery climax and it was one of my very best short stories ever.

Trying out new experiences, doing things you haven’t done before, learning and mastering new skills all has a great impact on your writing too. (There was this one time I had fainted out of exhaustion and the only thing going through my head was that I could now write clearly and correctly about this one character of mine who had to faint in the novel.) This is a writer’s mentality.

Trying out new experiences will help them in finding writing inspiration as it will open up their minds to new possibilities and wider horizons, and also give them more stuff to write about.

2) Make Pinterest Boards and Use Tumblr

Pinterest is fab. Tumblr is artistic.

Pinterest is, without a doubt, one of the best ways of finding wriitng inspiration, prompts, examples, advice, techniques, do’s-and-don’ts. Pinterest has everything. So if you’re a writer, you probably should already have a pinterest account, and if you do have one you should start using it to make the best out of it, if you aren’t already.

If you want to start somewhere, look at this Pinterest board I’ve created for writing.

Write.

Let’s talk about Tumblr.

Whenever I open up Tumblr, I leave with a mind that’s awaken and a heart that’s heavy with sadness and the utter…I dont know…beauty of life. I know that’s ironical.

There’s so much art and creativity and quotes and literature lines and aesthetic vibes in Tumblr, that they’ll keep your writer self motivated.

3) Try On-the-Spot Writing Prompts

I went through a time when I really had no inspiration to write stuff, nor to work on my blog, or plot, or Pinterest or Instagram account strategies. That is over. The one thing that I did during that time was open up a random prompt generator and start wriitng.

To top it off, it was one of those writing sites which have a timer, so if you haven’t written anything for, say, a few seconds, there will be a red light blinking upon your head and all your progress will be deleted.

This pushed me. This reminded me why I had begun wiring in the first place, for the thrill, for the excitement that it brought.

So, if you’re too struggling to find inspiration for writing, trying out new writing prompts is a great way to start. Here’s a list of some I found on the web that were actually, really cool: 100 Awesome Flash Fiction Prompts.

4) Wake Up Early Morning

Does this even need to be said?

Steven Kotler, a NY Times bestselling author and award-winning journalist, upon telling his daily routine says:

I get up at 4:00 AM and write from 4:00 to 8:00 AM every morning…I’ve been doing for over 20 years.”

James Altucher, blogger and author of the book Choose Yourself, sums this up pretty nicely:

The earlier the better. Nobody is up. I’m creative. I don’t have the worries of the day infecting my thoughts and I am calm. I think some people write better at night but I always sort of think the whole point of “night” is that people are tired (the brain and body become tired) and that’s why we sleep. To rejuvenate. So when I am fully rejuvenated, I write.

All the writers get the big, epic ideas early mornings when they’re distinct from themselves, when their responsibilities and duties and the worries of yesterday aren’t hanging over their heads, when their social lives are far out of reach.

Along with waking up early morning, another necessary thing that shouldn’t be dispensed with is taking care of your sleep. Because many people forget to do that while pursuing their goals.

So, in addition to spending their mornings working on their novels, writers should make sure they get enough and nurturing sleep.

5) Study Other Masterpieces

These masterpieces don’t just need to be other authors’ books and witten works.

Anything that is artistic and awakens something deep inside you—a thought you didn’t know about before, a feeling you hadn’t felt, an idea you never had—anything that makes you find this spark is a masterpiece.

Masterpieces can be books, movies, music, or art.

If you look at other people’s masterpieces, you’ll get new ideas of your own.

As Austin Kleon says in his book Steal Like An Artist:

The artist is a collector. Artists collect selectively. They only collect thing that they really love.

You’re only going to be as good as the stuff you surround yourself with.

-Austin Kleon, Steal Like An Artist

Steal from anywhere that resonates with inspiration or fuels your imagination. Devour old films, new films, music, books, paintings, photographs, poems, dreams, random conversations, architecture, bridges, street signs, trees, clouds, bodies of water, light and shadows. Select only things to steal from that speak directly to your soul. If you do this, your work (and theft) will be authentic.

-Jim Jarmusch

6) Read Books (Obviously)

Since we talked about other people’s artworks previously, it’s only justified to talk about books here.

There’s this quote I found somewhere on the internet that was something like, when you can’t sleep, write. When you can’t speak, write. When you can’t read, write. But when you can’t write, read.

There have been some books that have always helped me find motivation and get my creativity back in dire times. Some of these are these children books I read once upon a time in my childhood. They are still close to my heart.

15 Best Middle Grade Books I’ve Ever Read.

7) Changing The Scenery

Visit new places, no matter how much you want to stay home and bury yourself in your cozy place to write the story with a cup of coffee. (I’ve had this deseire more than once.)

Talk to new people, no matter how shy you are and how much you hate people and how much you dislike the social typical norms of socializing. (People? Eww.)

Visiting new places and interacting with new people actually helps the writers (or any person looking for creativity, for that matter) to find new ideas and inspiration for the bestseller books they dream of writing.

Maybe take your notebook somewhere else and start writing under the different conditions and environment of that place. This makes a versatile writer, who knows how to block out all the distractions when required to produce quality content.

8) Take A Journal With Yourself Everywhere

Start collecting everything.

Writers can find inspiration at literally any place, in anything or any person. There’s no restriction, really. If you find something worth collecting somewhere, some great quote or poem or idea, or some literature dialogue, or movie scene, or song lyric, or maybe some extraordinary, unique thing, like a weird-shaped leaf or a stone or a shell or anything that looks pretty enough—collect it.

Make your own museum collection.

And then when you’re low on writing inspiration, try writing about the story behind one of these objects.

9) Have A Writing Kit

This is my personal favourite.

I love the idea of a writing kit where you have all your writing material in one place, like it is in case of an art kit, toolkit etc.

Writing kit? I’m in.

I like the collection of pens and pencils and erasers and highlighters (even though I might never use them anyway), and the notepads and the cute accessories.

This writing kit can also be your bag, consisting of your notebooks, stationary, favourite books, laptop, airpods, phone chargers, water bottle, coffee mug, your kitten’s food, your dog’s sweater, literally anything that helps you in your writing time.

It will provide you with the necessary writing inspiration that you desire.

10) Remember Your Why

Why? Why did you actually start writing in the first place?

Did you start for the thrill, for the mystery, for the otherworldly feeling of experiencing fantastical incidences that wouldn’t have happened to you had you been an ordinary 9-5 job-worker? I did.

I wrte for all these amazing feelings, the burst of emotions, the familiarty of the characters, the experiences of being able to live so many lives all at once.

Whenever I’m deviating from my path, whenever I’m forgetting the start, or losing the motivation or hope, I remind myself of my why.

This gives me with the necessary writing inspiration in itself.

11) Form Habits

Motivation doesn’t last forever. That’s why discipline is important.

You won’t always be inspired to write or find the perfect inspiration for writing your novel or article, that’s a given. There will be days when all the plotline will be lost and all characters left astray, when you’ll wonder why you even bothered to do this in the first place.

Beware of those dark ages. Prepare yourself. Form a habit of wriitng, incorporate it in your routine in such a way that it becomes an indispensable part of your day.

Don’t ever negotiate. Don’t exchange that time with anything else, be it your favourite TV time, or extra sleep, or meeting up for parties.

Don’t compromise, because this is your book we’re talking about. And you have to show up every day to do your art. That’s how art is done.

12) Don’t Edit As You Go

There are some writers who, upon seeing some mistake or potential correction in a previous sentence, break off their current stream of words and go back to do it right again.

Editing should be strictly avoided while writing, because you don’t have to look back at what you’ve done and then feel particularly demotivated and judegmenetal of the scene whe the scene hasn’t even been completed it.

An advice for this I once read on the internet was to write with your font colour white, so that you really, without a doubt, have no means of letting your eyes stray upwards at the previous pages.

This is actually a really great method to avoid editing your novel while writing it.

Editing and writing are two very different processes (and that’s why they require two different people to do so) and a writer doing them single-handedly for their own book needs to have two different mentalities and thoughts in mind while performing either of them.

I think what particularly summarizes this nicely is, you write for yourself, but you edit for your reader. So, don’t edit. Don’t look back to what you’ve written.

Come back later to polish your work up.

13) Don’t Forget Yourself

This is actually just a complementary point in this list—while writing their books and putting their dreams on paper, writers frequently need to be reminded that they’re actual human beings and need to work like them too.

I’ve struggled with this thing called writer’s fatigue (which is the writer’s burnout) for longer and more times than I wish to accept.

I experienced my first burnout right after I published my debut book. It was this poetry compilation called Say Something and held close place to my heart because of obvious reasons, it being my first and all. I just never knew that this very treasured book will bring a hard time for me, as I’ll spend the rest of the three months of 2022 wondering if I was actually supposed to be a writer or not (or if this was just a phase).

Burnout is what happens when you try to avoid being human for too long.

Michael Gungor

So, no matter what you do, how hard you work, how early you wake up, how much you sacrifice, just never forget to take care of yourself. Trust me, if you haven’t been there, I’d tell you that burnout is no fun. (And I hope you never go that road either.)

For the writers’ minds which are always awaken and at unrest, burnout sucks. In addition to it, burnout is what we call a lack of inspiration. So one way to find inspiration for writing in life is to avoid burnout, and writers should take care of that before they lose themsleves in the work.

So, stay hydrated, practice self-care, gratitude, happiness and your art, and you’ll realise that you find all the inspiration for writing in places you’ll expect it the least. All the best.

Conclusion

These were the 13 ways for how to find inspiration for writing when writers are stuck with the ideas and don’t know where to go. There’s always a way and you always figure it out. Come on, you do.

So, stay positive, stay healthy and happy, stay safe, and share this blog.

Writers do dream of changing the world, you know. They are dreamers, after all; they don’t leave their dreams on the pillow, and they are adamant on following them. If you’re a writer like me who dreams of changing the world, actually bringing a positive change for the the better of the people, here’s your go to. Become a reader of this extensive blog post series My Formula for Changing the World where I discuss life-changing situations and thought-provoking ideas that will aid you in your own journey to ruling the place.