How to Stay Lit When Writing No Longer Excites You
Why writing into the silence awakens the voice you’ve been longing to hear
I spend my days proofreading, editing, and formatting other writer’s work. I love this part of my writer’s life, but this is soul-crushing and voice-enslaving work.
When you spend as much time as I do immersed in a babel of writer’s voices, your own writing voice slowly starts to fade away, and you may find it hard to tap into it when the time comes for you to sit and write your own story.
So what do I do when the cacophony becomes so loud that I barely hear myself think?
I get up, grab a sheet of paper, and move around the house as far from my office chair and my laptop as I possibly can. Sometimes I even find myself writing while standing.
The point here is to change your perspective on writing.
I can already guess the thoughts running through your mind.
Write what?
When I’m teaching creative writing to my students, I like to use an analogy my teacher in the sacred alchemy of writing preached.
I turn to my class, and I question.
“Do you ask yourselves why you pray?”
True believers never stop to question why they pray.
They just do it.
And when their prayers are on a fixed schedule, they do it even when they are not inclined to do so.
The best way of changing from your everyday hat to your writer’s hat is to turn it into a decisive action.
Believers get down on their knees and grab hold of their blissful restraint, and they succeed.
They wait for grace, and sometimes it comes.
As my teacher used to say:
Writing is praying without a god to pray to.
Writing as a prayer
A prayer without a receiver is just a conversation with yourself.
So is writing.
Maybe that’s the point.
Writing is a dialogue with the void until your reader gives it meaning.
When you decide to write, this is an act of faith.
There’s no audience while you’re writing. There’s only this ambiguous “something” some call your ideal reader, but that’s like the philosopher’s stone in the alchemist’s dream.
During mass, we pray along with a cacophony of voices, but at home, we pray in silence. Praying alone may seem frustrating at times, and that’s why many religions favor community praying.
Writing in silence, like praying, can be liberating.
That’s why I move away from the screen and back to the blank sheet of paper.
There’s something organic in the weight of a pen on my fingers and the silent page waiting for my voice to scream. Then, suddenly, the white void becomes a mirror.
What do you see when no one is watching?
Focus on the ritual, not the revelation.
I used to pray a lot. I was raised by my grandparents and ritualistic prayer was something we did together.
Every night we would pray the rosary. The point here wasn’t any religious epiphany, but the simple act of showing up.
When inspiration fades, lean into discipline. Let burnout be the friction that ignites the match.
The habit of writing is never empty if you commit yourself voluntarily to it.
If you write from both your heart and your mind, it becomes its own kind of faith.
Pray not for answers, but to honor the question.
Write until the routine itself becomes the revelation.
The sacred discomfort of oblivion
Our prayers thrive on the mystery, but we go on writing to a god of a thousand faces.
If your writing sometimes feels stale, it’s often because you’re chasing certainty, the “ideal reader,” trendy topics, or the most promising niches.
I instead make this active choice of stepping away from my office chair to rise above the obvious and face the unknown.
Praying isn’t about getting what you want. You pray to confront what you fear, the unknown, the oblivion of death, and the annihilation of the miracle of you.
Writing is no different.
Write to exhaust the noise
For some, praying is a spiritual purge. I’ve long forsaken any pent-up doubt weighing on my shoulders every time impostor syndrome would loom into my writing.
When you step away from your comfort zone, you’ll notice how writing becomes a lever to expel the clutter of detrimental expectations.
When you take out the trash of perfection, originality, and every ounce of self-doubt, only raw honesty remains.
Write until you’re sick of your own voice. Sick of metaphors, sick of metaphors for being sick of metaphors. Then go deeper into the abyss of you.
What’s buried under all that noise?
The answer isn’t a sentence. It’s the quiet after the thunder.
If you’re writing yourself to boredom, you might be avoiding the hard questions and looking for answers in all the wrong places.
So, in the foam of days and amidst the clamor of a thousand voices, ask yourself, why am I writing on repeat?
Step away from your comfort zone. Write not about what you like, but about the things you despise. Write about what you loathe. About what sickens you.
Write to flip the narrative on your own beliefs, and you’ll be one step closer to breaking free.
Don’t be afraid to go against the grain. Stop caring about what others might think.
Chaos isn’t a pit, it’s a ladder.
That’s why no tree can grow to Heaven unless its roots reach down to Hell.
So close your eyes, take a leap of faith in yourself, dare to jump off the bandwagon, and never mind the gap.
Write to get sick of it, of not knowing. And there you’ll find your answer. Not in the words, but in the willingness to keep praying into the dark.
Rui Alves is a language teacher, published author, international book judge, and publisher. He runs Alchemy Publications and serves as editor-in-chief for Engage on Substack, Life Unscripted, Musicverse, Writelicious, The Academic, Portugal Calling, Engage on Medium, Rock n’ Heavy, Beloved, Zenite, Poetaph, Grind, and Babel.