Rediscovering the joy in writing

Every so often, a writer may find that they just don't enjoy what they're doing anymore. For some, this growing apathy may manifest as a kind of writer's block and grind their progress to a halt. For others, the ability to create may still be there, but the work is halfhearted (and starts to read that way). When the work that you love and that usually invigorates you becomes a slog, it can start to become worrying, especially if it hangs around. What can you, a desperate writer, do to get that joy back?

Every situation is a little bit different, and every writer is going to find motivation in a different set of things. Just like a great many aspects of creative work, a foolproof strategy for one person is likely to be completely counterproductive for someone else. This does mean, rather annoyingly, that if you find yourself stuck in a predicament such as I've described it can take some experimentation to figure out what's going to work for you.

I've collected some assorted options below that may be worth trialling if you're feeling lackluster about your work. Who knows, maybe one of them will be the one that works for you!