Blank Pages: When the Spark is Gone....

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Have you ever lost your spark? Have you ever been in that position where you feel like your WIP is merely existing and that it has no meaning? Do you have a lot of blank pages you can't seem to feel? 

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I write.

A lot.

Though if you hadn't noticed that by now... than yeah...

It used to be fun.

I think it still is fun.

But I lost my spark....

I have a lot of blank pages.

Pages that I'm not sure will ever get filled.

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Type. Type. Type. Don't stop. 50,000 words until finished. I think... maybe it will end up longer, or maybe it will end up short. I don't know yet. All I know is that I'm no where near the end, and I have to keep going. I have to make my word goal today or I won't be able to finish. Type. Type. Type. 

Read over what I just wrote.

See how awful it really is. 

I will never be able to get published. 
Where's all the excitement? 
It's all...dull.

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I just finished a third draft of a novel I have been working on for over half a year. It was my pride and joy. Cyborgs. Princesses. "Knights in Shinning Armor" coming to "Save the Day". Death. Fighting. Agents. It was exactly what I loved. I had spent MONTHS developing my MC's Archer and Sylver. I had spent MONTHS plotting the novel and outlining. And then writing time came. The entire story seemed to flow, taking me less than two months to write the entire first draft. It was beautiful in my site at the time. But I wasn't finished. I didn't give myself but a few days break before I started on the second draft. I sent the second draft to a friend so she could help me with the mistakes that I might have missed. She gave me feedback and I started on my third draft about a week later. I knew what I wanted the end to look like. I had pictured glorious victory.

But when I finished my third draft I didn't feel excited like I thought I would. I have seen people get so excited about finishing their first draft. I wasn't even happy about that. I didn't feel the joy that is supposed to come. Instead, all I could think about was how imperfect the thing still was. And as soon as I set the novel aside, I realized that I didn't want to mess with it for a while.  

I was burnt out. 

Burnt out about how fast I wrote the first draft. 

Burnt out that all my creativity had to come to an end. I think that is the saddest part about writing. Finishing and not feeling like you have finished.

Burnt out. 

It had been months since I even attempted to write a poem.

Mainly because I was too scared that everything I wrote would stink because I was so brain dead. 

It was too hard to place any kind of emotional investment into a poem or any other kind of writing. It was as if I had spent all my emotional investments into this one novel. I burned it all like one would burn a hundred dollar bill: in the matter of seconds.

But writing is my life, right? I can't just quit writing for a while. So I figured I would try working on another project. I try and rewrite the first book in a series I am working on. And I can't get past 1,500 words at a time.

And I cringe every time I read over what I just wrote. Like, I am to be a WRITER. Why can't I WRITE?! Why can't it at least make sense? 

School.

Work.

Fighting sickness.

Everything drained me.

It drained my creativity.
It drained any ideas I had flowing in.

So I took a deep breath. I stopped writing for about a week and I just read different things. Read blog posts about writing, read my favorite novel, read the Bible (because that truly is the most awesome book ever and it has a lot of inspiration).  

I was experiencing a type of writer's block. The type where I can still writing, and I can still have ideas, but I didn't enjoy the ideas. I didn't enjoy the ways my characters were turning out.

So I went searching for inspiration. And in my inbox were several unread emails from a blog called This Incandescent Life. Truth was, I didn't want to read a blog with beautiful words. I didn't want to see how this wonderful writer was doing. I was too far burnt out to look at her inspiration, because it was so amazing. (And you should seriously check it out). But I needed something to help me. So I clicked on a post that seemed interesting to me. And I read it. And I saw that I'm not the only one who is experiencing what I was (and still am) experiencing. I took the advice on it. And I took a walk. I cleared my head.

I still don't feel the joy in finishing a third draft. It's melancholy hope that I might be able to finish the series that that single book belongs it. 

And I think that's it.

I wasn't finished with what I was working on.  

It's not just a single novel. It's a series of four books. I wasn't finished. It wasn't completed. Only part of my plot was fulfilled, only a little bit of the timeline I had created had played out, only some of the villain's work was destroyed. There's so much more to do. So much more to write still. 

And I got to thinking...

God's our author. It's not just about one chapter of our lives. It's not just about one novel of our lives. It's about the entire series. It's about the entire plot, the entire timeline, and the complete destroying of life's greatest antagonist and villain. Just like I know that my work isn't quite finished, that all four books are needed for it to be complete, God's saying that about our lives. He knows the plot of our lives, He knows what's coming next. And He's looking down from Heaven and telling us that the series isn't over yet. Yeah, that book has finished, but there's still so much more He still has planned for our lives. 

It won't be completed until the entire plot is fulfilled. 

My spark isn't back completely. My joy isn't there, and I'm not sure why. Writing had become more a "had to" thing in my own mind that I made it more of a job than a hobby. I'm still looking for the inspiration to get the spark back. I still write. Just slowly, and I take more breaks in between writing so that I don't feel so burnt out.

Writing isn't an easy task. I used to think it was. All you do is put words on a computer screen, right?
Yeah... not. It's so much more. It's an investment of time, emotions, creativity and so much more.  

Do you have inspiration to keep you going?

Do have a bunch of blank pages?
Is your spark gone?