For the first time in my technical writing career, I’m finding that I have lost a bit of my inspiration for writing. That’s mostly due to the trying situation I’m going through at my current full-time employer. (I won’t bore you with all the details, but suffice to say the lack of process at my company is causing all departments a lot of problems.) Trying to deal with the process issues leads to a lot more administration, and a lot less writing on my part. I consider myself a writer first, so the fact that I don’t do as much of it anymore bothers me. Funny, this is one of the reasons that I’ve always said I don’t want to be in management, because I don’t want to have to deal with all the administration, but yet here I am, a senior technical writer, dealing with almost as much administrative minutae as my manager!  Just crazy.

Since I see that creating more writing time at work will prove very challenging, I’ve decided I’m going to try and create more writing time outside of the office. Whether that’s in my freelance writing career, or just writing more of my novel, it doesn’t matter. I want to get back to the part of the job that I like: writing.

To recapture the inspiration I’m going to try and take some time this weekend and just write. Turn off the tv, the radio, open the curtains, let some sun in (hopefully!) and write. Just write whatever. I’ve got to send a package off to a cousin, so maybe I’ll start with something small like writing a letter. Then move on to a short story, then move on to some more blog posts for this site.  I’m looking forward to recharging my batteries on this long weekend (it’s Family Day here in Ontario on Monday), and just get back to writing.

How do you get back your writing mojo? What do you do for inspiration?