by Alyssa Ast

Over the past 2 years, my writing career progressed quite nicely. It was a steady flow of work that gradually increased, and each milestone I reached seemed to be better than the last. I was more than pleased with how well my career was moving along, but out of no where, WHOOSH, I fell into a rut and didn’t realize it for many months. Now that I’m aware of this rut I’ve fallen into, I’m trying to climb out without causing my writing career to move backwards to any permanent extent.

Climbing out of my writing rut

I fell into my writing rut because I became too comfortable with where my writing career was at. I stopped spending time marketing myself, stopped searching for better gigs and, overall, just stopped trying to move my writing career forward. I became so comfortable with where my writing career was at that I no longer strived to more my career forward. But overtime, I began to realize that where I was at with my writing, wasn’t where I wanted to be. I realized I became lazy. I didn’t give up, I just became lazy and didn’t spend the time doing things I should have been doing to progress. Now that I look back on those lazy months, I see I’ve really limited my potential of accomplishments for this year. I’m now kicking myself because it was valuable time wasted. I lost my motivation to do better, and that never should have happened.

So now I’m trying to climb out of my writing rut. I’m looking back at what I feel were mistakes, or wrong paths I’ve taken since beginning my writing career. I feel now that I have a good foundation for my writing career, it’s time to think about the future and where I want to be in another 5 or 10 years. Although I don’t know exactly where I want to be in 5 years, I have a general idea of what I would like and what I would like to have accomplished.

The biggest change I’m making to climb out of my writing rut is to think ahead. Since I began my writing career, I’ve looked at money now better than money in the future. A guaranteed paycheck tomorrow is better than a possible paycheck in the future, right? That’s how I thought, but now I am realizing I was wrong. By setting forth a plan for the future, it could very be the thing that launches by writing career to where I want it to be. Yes, there’s no guaranteed profit, but should it work out the way I hope it to, the pay off will be far greater than the paychecks I’m getting currently. To me the risk is worth it even if it may be a lot of hard work for nothing.

Have you ever fallen into a writing rut? What do you think caused it and how did you get out of it?