Writing can be a pain in the butt! It can really be hard to sit down and write sometimes. Other times it just rolls off the fingertips (or the pen, if you are old school). I had an epiphany last week when Jasper was finishing his Middle College application. He sat down and wrote his essay in 40 minutes. When he finished, he stood up and announced, “It’s easy to write when you are motivated.”

At the time I said, “Yes, it is easy to write when you are motivated.” I also added something to the effect of sometimes you just have to sit down and write painfully, one sentence at a time until you are finished.

Motivation is a funny thing.  If you are internally motivated to do something it feels very easy and time seems to fly while doing the activity. Playing trombone was like that for me. I could practice two hours a day in high school and still be ready to play.

Writing, on the other hand, is not like that for me. Well, I should say, most writing is not like that for me. Sometimes when writing a blog or an article, it just all comes out when I sit down to write. But more often than not, it comes out as a thought, or as a few thoughts. Or it comes out as an outline with three points that I want to make about a particular topic. Sometimes, I just have to sit down and write because everything, the idea, the points, the words, the sentences, everything all want to come out, right then. It’s writing at times like that that keeps me coming back to writing. (It’s kind of like golf, you have that one very long straight tee-shot that keeps you coming back to your driver with the hope and confidence that you can do it again, each time!)

I told Jasper that most writing is more like a slog – you have to slog through your writing one sentence or sometimes, more painfully, even one word at a time. But eventually, with persistence, it gets done. I’m not sure what happened to turn Jasper off from writing (other than the Odyssey and Romeo & Juliet his freshman year of English), but he used to love writing. He used to have really awesome ideas and he used to be able to just sit down and write. Now he is on the procrastination trail, like me.

Procrastination seems to become an Olympic sport when I sit down to write, and I’ve noticed the same thing happening to Jasper in High School. So I encouraged him to find the motivation when sitting down to write his next assignment. Now I need to do the same thing for myself!

I want to be able to find my own internal motivation, every time I sit down to write. Or maybe that is asking too much of myself. I don’t think so, I just need to look at it differently. Whether it is sitting down and having a whole article tumbling out at once or if it is a writing session with one sentence being written at a time or, God forbid, a writing session with one word grudgingly written and then the next word being written 5 minutes later. Each of these methods gets something written. But Jasper’s exclamation is important to remember — yes, it is easy to write (or do anything else) when you are motivated! It’s finding the motivation that be tricky sometimes!