How to Generate Passion for Your Writing

Passion is the fuel for our stories. It helps us to keep going and keep writing and keep striving. It’s the airbag that protects us from insanity when we think we’re headed for disaster. It’s the compass to a safe haven when we think we’re lost. Passion not only makes writing worth the angst, it also makes our work shine.

Can we learn passion? Many might argue we either have it or we don’t, however, I believe we can learn passion. I believe we can grow it and nurture it.

Focus on the positives: While it’s important to think of writing as a job if we wish to pursue it as a career, it’s equally important to remember why we originally took on this mammoth task.

To find passion for anything, we have to focus on what we like about it. The more we focus on those aspects, the more ‘like’ will become ‘love’. People fall in love with each other when they focus on the positives. They fall out of love when they focus only on the negatives. The same goes for our manuscripts — especially in the editing phase when it’s our job to find the faults.

Have ownership: Passion has a way of growing when we invest ourselves into a project—our unique selves. Because of that uniqueness, we will each find something different to get passionate about. Trying to write someone else’s story won’t generate any excitement for the story. This is why writing to trends doesn’t always work. Passion starts from that unique place deep inside.

Do your best: When we strive to do our best we can’t help but build a passion for it. How can we love a half-hearted effort? To put our all into our work, we have to care about it and we have to know it matters. That caring is the seed which will lead to passion.

Can you think of other ways to generate passion? What helps you get through a huge project?