Tara Tomczyk 

The One Thing That Gets Me Writing When I Don’t Want to 

December 9, 2025

I haven’t been posting lately (sorry!). I’ve had a lot going on, including the lingering effects of the semi-crippling depression I’ve already told you about recently. Though I may not have been posting, I have still been writing—maybe not as much as I do when I’m feeling happy and optimistic (as opposed to depressed, hopeless, and borderline suicidal)—but yeah, I’ve been writing.

That fact got me thinking: What, exactly, IS it that keeps me writing even when the world is falling down around me? And here’s what I think is the answer:

First off, there’s reading. 

Despite the fact that a scary-large number of the authors I’ve worked with admit that they don’t read much (or at all), I can’t imagine not reading—not for a day, practically not for an hour (which may be why I chose to read for a living). What I’ve learned over the years is that I love to read not just because I love to lose myself in a great story (or another world entirely), but also because reading always—ALWAYS—inspires me to write. 

Next, there’s habit (and maybe just a smidge of discipline, but not much!).

My “#OneSentenceADay” writing routine, going on now for almost 14 years, is one habit I just can’t break. It’s become such an integral part of my daily life that I will drag myself to my computer or notebook to jot down my one (or more) sentence no matter how awful I might feel. Discipline plays a part, I think, but for me, it’s less about forcing myself to write than it is telling myself “I’ll feel better if . . .” That is, I know I’ll be better off if I write, even when I have no desire to do so, than if I skip it. So, I tell myself that I only need to do a little (as little as “one sentence”) . . . and usually it turns into more.

Finally, and most important, the thing that keeps me writing when I don’t want to is fear. 

Fear is by far my number-one motivator. What, you might ask, am I afraid of? A few things: I’m terrified of breaking my streak of daily writing, which, as I’ve already mentioned, has been going on since the spring of 2012. Doing something every single day for over a decade makes you feel invested in it and you become pretty reluctant to give it up.

But more than that, I fear myself. If I could ever let myself break that streak, undoing all those years of dedication and hard work, I’m capable of anything—and not in a good way, but in a dark, scary way.

So yeah. I’ll keep writing, at least my one sentence a day, even when I really, REALLY don’t want to, just because the alternative scares me more than any horror movie.