As a writer, you might have days when everything's going beautifully. The words flow from your fingers, a reader leaves a lovely comment on your blog, your editor praises your work ...

... and then there are the days when things are going far from brilliantly.

Maybe you wake up to an email from a client who's had to cut their budget (or who's decided AI text is good enough for their needs!) ... and they no longer have any work for you.

Maybe you have a piece rejected by an editor.

Maybe you were so happy that you were finally making progress with your writing ... but you got sick, or your child got sick, and now that you've finally got some time and energy again, diving back into your project feels really daunting.

It can be tough to get going again after a writing setback. You may feel that you've lost all your momentum, or it might even seem like you've fallen behind and you're in a worse place than before.

Here are some practical (and gentle) things you can do to pick yourself back up.

#1: Take a (Deliberate) Break from Writing

It's so very easy to let a setback put you off writing. You might not make an active choice about it, but instead, you may find yourself skipping a planned writing session ... then skipping the next ... and so on. Weeks or even months might go by before you come back to the project.

Instead, give yourself a deliberate break from writing. It's okay to take breaks as a writer: we all need them at times. 

Give yourself a set period of time to take "off" from writing, so you can do so without feeling guilty. Maybe you'll decide to take a week off, for instance.

If you're freelancing, or on a deadline, then you may not be able to take much time fully off. You might decide to have a full day, or a morning/afternoon off from writing completely, then arrange things so you're covering the minimum you need to get done, and resting from writing as much as possible, for a little longer.

#2: Be Kind to Yourself

Our inner critic (which I'll be covering on the blog in a couple of weeks) can get especially loud after a writing setback. You might find yourself thinking things like, "I might as well give up" or "I was never going to be a writer anyway" or "I made a stupid mistake."

Please be kind to yourself, just like you'd be kind to a writing friend who was going through a hard time. Find thoughts to counter those negative ones. You might some of these helpful:

• All writers have setbacks, whether they're just starting out or they're bestselling authors.
• Writing is often hard ... and that's okay. If you're finding it hard, that doesn't mean you're doing anything wrong.
• There are multiple different paths forward. If one route is closed to you, there'll be another way.

As well as trying to talk to yourself in a kind and supportive way, you can do kind things for yourself. That could be buying a box of your favourite chocolates, taking some time off just to relax and do something you really enjoy, preparing a meal that you love, or anything else that you can do purely because you want to.

#3: Talk to Someone You Can Trust With Your Emotions

Facing setbacks, particularly if they involve rejection, can be so hard. You might have a lot of different emotions going on: maybe you feel angry, frustrated, sad, or you have a sense of dread about going forward with writing.

Talk to someone who you can safely share your feelings with. That might be a family member, a good friend (perhaps a fellow writer), a writing mentor, a life coach, a therapist, or anyone who plays this kind of role in your life. 

Tell them how you're feeling. Ask them to just listen, if that's what you need, and not offer advice. Often, just being able to share how you feel can help you start to feel better.

#4: Find Something That You've Learnt from the Experience

Sometimes, our greatest successes can come out of our failures or tough times. I've been reading Tim Ferriss' Tribe of Mentors, which is a series of different answers from a bunch of well-known figures to a set of questions, including 'How has a failure, or apparent failure, set you up for later success? Do you have a "favourite failure" of yours?'

It's always fascinating to read the answers to that question in particular! So often, the people interviewed say that a failure completely changed their life or led to their biggest success.

Whatever writing setback you've had, you can learn something from it. That might be something practical, like, "Next time, I need to allow extra buffer so there's no chance I'll miss a deadline." Or it might be something bigger-picture, like, "I'd like to focus on a different type of writing."

#5: Make a Small Steps Plan to Get Moving Again

How will you get going again with your writing? It's important to think about this, especially if you're having some time off.

You might find that you need to take little steps to get back into your writing. That could mean:

• Take a full week off from writing.
• Read over my last chapter (or more) to get a good sense of where I was in the story when I stopped.
• Jot down some ideas or a rough outline for the next chapter.
• Experiment with writing a small part of this.

... and so on, breaking it all down into steps that feel manageable. You'll likely find that, once you do get moving, resistance magically melts away.

If you've had a writing setback recently, you've got my sympathy: I know what a discouraging time this can be. I hope you can be really kind to yourself, take a break if you need one, find the support you need, look for anything to learn from the experience, and then get back to writing again.