Writing Stamina

Writing Stamina

Have you ever heard of writing stamina? I hadn’t until somebody mentioned it to me the other day. They asked, “How do you maintain your stamina?” I had no idea what they meant, but when they explained that if we don’t continue writing, then we fall out of step and find it difficult to ‘get back into it’ as it were. Finding the motivation for writing when we haven’t got the stamina is very difficult. I write every day except on weekends, sometimes my novel, sometimes my blog, but often it’s both. This is why I haven’t noticed a lag in my performance. But if I was to leave my work for more than a couple of days, I would probably find it difficult to regain my stamina.

I asked this person, a successful author of some years, what they did to maintain writing stamina, and their answer was simple.

KEEP WRITING!!

But what if we can’t think of something to write? That’s was my worry, but he had an answer for that too. Don’t worry if you have nothing to write about, write about having nothing to write about. Doesn’t matter if you’re writing a novel, a script, a poem, a diary or a letter to yourself, just write something, because once you lose the stamina, the ‘get up and go’, it is very hard to get back. This made sense, but I’d never thought about it before, and that got me thinking. If I had never thought about the stamina, it would probably have crept up and got hold of me at some point in my career without my realizing it. What else was out there that authors can suffer from, or problems they can come across that I don’t know about? If you know of any, please let me know.

One other worry I had was, if this already happened to someone, what’s the best way to get their stamina back? His answer was the same as before, just write and keep writing. Start off with some small stuff until you are able to write the way you used to and you shouldn’t have any problems after that.

Let me know what you think. Read, follow, comment and enjoy. M x