There are habits that are hard to break, and there are lessons that are hard to take. If you struggle with writing at times, then you're like me. Maybe you haven't heard the lesson, maybe you're still internalizing it. Here it is in its most basic form.

If you're not having fun writing it, your reader won't have fun reading it.

For a long time after I heard those words, I still let myself get stuck in a scene. The main character would be doing something—making breakfast, preparing for an adventure, shopping—because that's what naturally followed in the story. The story demanded a shopping-for-supplies scene. I sat static, shuffling my feet through the torturous sequence of menial tasks and exposition. When I finished the scene, I knew it stunk.

I should've trusted myself from the beginning. I slouched through the scene because I wasn't having fun writing it. What fun could someone have reading something that it felt like work to write? If you can, try to add elements to the scene to make it more interesting. If you can't, write a different scene instead. The important thing is that you write, and if you're not having fun writing, you're going to get stuck. Your reader, luckily, has the option of skimming through that crap. You don't. You'll have to pour through it later when you edit the scene again and again, trying to add the elements that you would've had to add anyway, or cutting the scene altogether because it's boring and you know it.

If you're not having fun writing it, your reader won't have fun reading it.

Now that it's happened to me again this NaNoWriMo, I've given myself a moment to sit with those words and really work to internalize them. After this moment is over, I'm going to return to that scene and cut it altogether. Then I'm gonna move on to a scene that's a little more fun—the one that follows.