Not to brag, but ever since I started writing novels in high school, I’ve never lacked motivation. I’ve always been excited about what I’m working on, and if I’m not excited, I know there’s a problem and fix it. Then I move on to the next novel (either a first draft or a stage of editing). I haven’t ever had to struggle with the lack of desire to work on something.
Until now.
In January of 2023, I started experiencing a pain in my left foot. After being diagnosed with plantar fasciitis by a podiatrist, I began treatments to get rid of the pain. I tried so many and none of them worked. Finally, after ten months of doing everything possible to make my foot feel normal again, my new doctor suggested an MRI to see what was going on. Turned out, I didn’t have PF. I had an atrophied nerve. After trying a few more treatments that also failed, my doctor told me surgery was my only option left. So, on April 23rd, I went under the knife.
And when I emerged from anesthesia, something happened to my motivation to write.
It vanished.
Part of the blame can be put on my mental head space post-surgery. For anyone who’s never had foot surgery before, the worst part is after, when you can’t put weight on your foot for two and half weeks. For seventeen days, I had to get around using crutches and a scooter and it SUCKED. I’m a very independent person and I had to rely on help from my family for things that I normally could do myself. Being in such a helpless state really put me in a funk and when I would open up the draft I’m currently editing, I would just stare at the page, totally uninterested in reading my words. So I’d force myself to edit at least a page or two, then I’d close the document, and look up recipes or watch YouTube videos.
I thought when my doctor gave me the okay to put weight on my foot again, my motivation would come back…but that hasn’t happened. Granted, it’s only been two days so I probably need to just give myself some more time.
But I’ve never felt this weird antipathy toward writing before and it’s scary. It’s a scary feeling when writing is one of the most important things in your life and you find yourself not caring if you put words on the page or not.
I hope when I write my June blog post I’ll be able to tell you that my motivation is back, but for anyone else out there grappling with a lack of motivation, my heart goes out to you.