{"id":2033,"date":"2010-10-22T08:00:50","date_gmt":"2010-10-22T13:00:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.christophergronlund.com\/blog\/tjw\/?p=2033"},"modified":"2010-10-21T19:59:29","modified_gmt":"2010-10-22T00:59:29","slug":"stuck-in-a-rut-try-something-new","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.christophergronlund.com\/blog\/tjw\/2010\/10\/22\/stuck-in-a-rut-try-something-new\/","title":{"rendered":"Stuck in a Rut: Try Something New"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignright\" title=\"A tulip blossom.\" src=\"http:\/\/www.christophergronlund.com\/blog\/tjw\/images\/tulip.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"250\" height=\"373\" \/>All this week, I\u2019ve written about ways to get out of a writing rut and  recapture the spark from when you first started writing.<\/p>\n<p>Monday, I wrote about <a title=\"Link to The Juggling Writer article about visiting old friends.\" href=\"http:\/\/www.christophergronlund.com\/blog\/tjw\/2010\/10\/18\/stuck-in-a-rut-revisit\/\">revisiting old friends<\/a>. Tuesday, I wrote about <a title=\"Link to The Juggling Writer article about rereading writers and stories you like.\" href=\"http:\/\/www.christophergronlund.com\/blog\/tjw\/2010\/10\/19\/stuck-in-a-rut-reread\/\">rereading some of the writing<\/a> from when you first started writing seriously. Wednesday, I wrote about <a title=\"Link to The Juggling Writer article about revisiting old haunts.\" href=\"http:\/\/www.christophergronlund.com\/blog\/tjw\/2010\/10\/20\/stuck-in-a-rut-old-haunts\/\">revisiting old haunts<\/a>. And Thursday, I wrote about <a title=\"Link to The Juggling Writer article about rerreading your old writing to see what you've always done right.\" href=\"http:\/\/www.christophergronlund.com\/blog\/tjw\/2010\/10\/21\/stuck-in-a-rut-old-work\/\">rereading your old writing<\/a> to see what you&#8217;ve always done right.<\/p>\n<p>Today, I&#8217;m writing about trying something new to help you get out of a writing rut.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">*\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 *\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 *<\/p>\n<p>One of the easiest ways to get into a rut of any kind is to just do the same old thing, day in and day out. Work becomes boring when there&#8217;s no variety or challenge; we sometimes come home after a long day and don&#8217;t want to cook because when we think about dinner with a frazzled mind, we often come up with the same meals. Even if you go out for dinner, you probably go to the same places, simply because it&#8217;s easy or convenient.<\/p>\n<p>The same goes for writing. When you&#8217;re writing the same kind of things over the years, you tend to go for what&#8217;s worked before. Do that long enough, and even with all you can change from story to story, at some point&#8211;things seem familiar. Sometimes, they even become boring.<\/p>\n<p>When most of us find a new recipe for dinner or a new place to eat, we&#8217;re often excited about it. We tell others about what we had the next day at work; we tell our friends, &#8220;You&#8217;ve gotta try this!&#8221; or &#8220;You need to go eat there!&#8221; It&#8217;s not that we don&#8217;t enjoy eating&#8211;it&#8217;s that we naturally gravitate toward certain things for a variety of reasons, and over time, those things can lose their spark.<\/p>\n<p>If nothing else I&#8217;ve recommended this week helps you get back to writing, try something new. If you focus on fiction, try a different genre or challenge yourself to pitch an idea to a magazine. If you write non-fiction, pitch something you normally wouldn&#8217;t write, or to a publication that you usually overlook.<\/p>\n<p>Sometimes just trying something new reminds us of the days when <em>everything <\/em>we tried was new, and we couldn&#8217;t wait to write.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s not very hard to recapture that feeling if you&#8217;re brave enough to try something different.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>All this week, I\u2019ve written about ways to get out of a writing rut and recapture the spark from when you first started writing. Monday, I wrote about revisiting old friends. Tuesday, I wrote about rereading some of the writing from when you first started writing seriously. Wednesday, I wrote about revisiting old haunts. And [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":""},"categories":[24,23,59],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.christophergronlund.com\/blog\/tjw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2033"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.christophergronlund.com\/blog\/tjw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.christophergronlund.com\/blog\/tjw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.christophergronlund.com\/blog\/tjw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.christophergronlund.com\/blog\/tjw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2033"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.christophergronlund.com\/blog\/tjw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2033\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.christophergronlund.com\/blog\/tjw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2033"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.christophergronlund.com\/blog\/tjw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2033"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.christophergronlund.com\/blog\/tjw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2033"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}