i’ve been seeing a lot of people recently complaining about losing motivation to role play / feeling super ooc / or losing the will to write. canon muses or oc’s alike, people have been down in some creative dump everywhere. and i feel like that it’s time that i said something. i’ve given advice to some of the people i’ve seen but the number keeps growing so i figure i’d make a post about this:
i have been rping for 12+ years now. when i started i didn’t have a care in the world. i was doing what i wanted to do. but then i did start caring about my portrayal and what i was doing. i wanted to do the best i could and shovel out as much as i can. i wanted to try and give my fans what they wanted to see.
this is a huge mistake. and i didn’t really learn it until just a few months ago.
i’ve noticed that i tend to feel ooc the most when i’m pushing too hard. when i’ve been going for too long or when i force myself to do more than i can. i used to try and reply to things daily. i used to cry a lot because i would get so stressed about being accurate. which admittedly, is both good and bad. it shows that you care about what you’re doing and that’s good, but at the same time a hobby shouldn’t force you to be down in such a drastic low.
if you start to feel that you can’t write as well, stop. if you start to feel ooc, stop. if you start to feel like you’re doing too much, stop. it doesn’t mean that you have to stop completely by any means! but just don’t do anything. your brain is done. you don’t want to write anymore. you don’t want to role play. your body, your mind, even if it’s subconscious, wants to do something else.
does that mean you’re done forever? no. does that mean you’re actually ooc? absolutely not. it just means that you have lost the luster for that specific day. you can always come back later when you want to role play. when you want to write. i don’t mean take a break. because i know that doesn’t help everyone and it often leads to people never coming back. but, when you feel that you can’t do anything else but write / role play / die without getting a headcanon down on a post, that’s when you need to come back. when that urge or that desire or that muse hits you.
tl ; dr – if you’re feeling unmotivated for whatever reason, don’t force yourself to keep going. that will make you want to rp less. do it when your mind and body wants you to, and you’ll find yourself twice as motivated as you were before. even if that means not being online for two weeks.
