I know the feeling! I have a bunch of ideas. Sometimes I just write them down or sketch out what I'd do with them, but yeah I usually only work on one project at a time. Sometimes, in my idea folder, I find a way to combine my ideas for one story. But you'll definitely have to temper this with discipline. If you set a goal for yourself, you'll find that it's not so hard. My original goal was to write 1000 words a day, and that's really not hard at all if you outline your stories. Good luck! Get to writing!
Ever heard of Fort Minor? They wrote a song called 'Remember the name' One of the very few rap songs I like. The chorus goes... "This is ten percent luck, twenty percent skill Fifteen percent concentrated power of will Five percent pleasure, fifty percent pain And a hundred percent reason to remember the name!"
I say this a million times, but writing is like a muscle. I think, at first, many of us want to write for the wrong reasons. Writing because you have an idea, or because you want to make a bestseller, might not be enough to get you to the finish line. LOVING to write makes the difference. I think most (not all) professionals genuinely like what they do. As you force yourself to write, you should start to like it more. You should be building "writing muscle." If you're more or less a normal person, and you're still at the "idea phase" of your writing track, I'm willing to bet you have a long way to go towards achieving good, strong writing. The longer you stay at the idea phase (and I consider never finishing a rough draft of anything to be well stuck in the idea phase), the longer you sit at the starting line. Make no mistake, the "idea phase" is very real. I went through it, and enough people have posted the very same problem as the one you have, for me to know that others go through it as well. Your issue is a normal one. But only you can push yourself to get things rolling. @Link the Writer You seem like a smart, eager guy. Please stick to buffing up those word counts.
Planning, research, character sheets, even outlining (at times) are all ways of not writing the story. Pick one idea and write the thing. Finish it. Then pick another idea and write the thing. Finish it. Rinse and repeat. Remember, you're not going to write the Great American Novel on your first try (or maybe even your tenth or 100th) - and you sure as hell aren't going to write it if you don't even start. Anybody can have ideas - writers do something with them.
They will be buffed up! Describing scenes seem to be my weak point, so I'll work on that. Off I gooooo!
Just pick an idea and write! Before each session be confident, be excited, be enthusiastic, be brave, and believe. Try your best to have faith when your writing takes you to scary places you haven't planned on. Stephen King once compared writing a novel to crossing an ocean in a bathtub. A huge deal is about blind faith. Good ideas can be your downfall as much as having bad ideas can. Sometimes an idea lingers in your mind so long that it can feel sacred. You feel intimidated by the scale and awesomeness of your own idea that you never render it into reality. But the secret is that ideas are cheap. Think of ideas as the Hydra heads from Greek Mythology. Everytime you chop a head off, more emerge in its place. Never be intimidated to write a great idea, be brave and make that idea your bitch. More will come.
If I get a lot of ideas at one time I write them all down and file them away for safe keeping then later when I have writers block I look at all the ideas that I filed away and I see if one of them would make a good story.
I have never experienced writer's block, since I am still an amateur. But my advice is: go for a walk. I've met lots of great people who always go for walks, usually early in the morning. It is a great way to refresh your mind, and it might be the perfect cure for your writing issue.
When I get writer's block, I usually take a break from my writing by outlining or setting up a timeline. Sometimes it even helps to go back through all my notes and review them - a lot of times I will find an idea that I'd forgotten about.
After taking a one-year post-grad programme in scriptwriting, I found myself unable to write for almost ten years. It was hell, but not because I couldn't come up with ideas. It was because my brain simply refused to go into writing mode. Perhaps I burned out or it may have been something else; I don't know. BUT... If you're still getting ideas, you aren't blocked. The fact that you're rejecting all the ideas you get sounds more like one of two things, maybe both, are the problem: 1) you're fighting where the story wants to go, or 2) your inner critic is sabotaging you. I may be way off base, but I'd suggest you write down all those 'bad' ideas. You'll end up with one of two possibilities: 1) You may find that, once you're seeing them all together, they aren't so bad after all, or 2) clearing the baffles, so to speak, will allow 'better' ideas to flow.
I've had problems in this area myself in recent times. (One of the reasons I'm here actually). Part of my problem is just out of the habit of writing. I spent several years as part of an online Star Wars club that centered around developing your own character in the SW universe and writing him/her into stories either by yourself or co-writing with others. It was a great way to improve your writing skills and we have quite a few really good writers. Once I got pregnant with my son though, I didn't have much time for the club and now I'm ready to branch out into other things. Before that club, I wrote, but not as much and not as well. Problem is...now I'm only used to writing stuff for Star Wars. I think my biggest problem is I get a seed for a story, start writing and haven't decided what the overall plot is. All I have is that seed. I have found that outlining can really help. Even if your story line changes some as you go, an outline can help you stay on track.
Hey everybodyyy. I joined this forum years ago and I have lurked from time to time and I really need to get back into my writing since it's the only thing I like to do. I guess I'll post an intro or something just to do it right or whatever. Anyway, I have been struggling with drug addiction and depression since 2009 and I'm finally kind of coming out of it. It started getting better when my daughter was born in 2013, but I haven't written a damn thing in so long and now I'm afraid of it. I've spent so much time criticizing authors and now I'm paranoid that I'm secretly a horrible, horrible writer, and will never finish a book, and I am just so swamped by this crap. Writing is my only hobby, or passion, and I am just so afraid of sucking. And thanks to the fun side effects of depression it's hard to feel inspired. All of my previous stories have just kind of fizzled and died, and I've gotten preoccupied with making sure my stories are socially conscious as well as, you know, good. Ugh it takes so much energy to put myself out there. People terrify me, but I'm pushing myself because I'm never going to accomplish anything in life if I'm not writing books. This is a horrible jumbled post. I'm sorry. I'm pregnant and tired. I hope I am posting this in the right area and such. I guess my purpose in posting this is just to ask you guys if you have struggled with bouts like this, struggled to balance your writing with mental illness, and how did you begin to overcome it? How do you stop hating yourself and comparing yourself to others and thinking that your story ideas are horribly unoriginal? Or am I alone? That would suck. And how do you let an idea go? I've been writing this huge epic fantasy in my head for ten years and the characters are almost a part of me but the story just never seems to work. I have tried to just scrap it all and start fresh but remnants of my story always find their way into the new one. I wonder if that would be better as a separate thread. Another day.
Oh yeah, for sure. I don't overcome it, I let it overcome me (ETA: I sound like a total douche here). I dunno, I feel like I write better when I'm depressed. But yes, it can be hard to become motivated. When I do, I sit for hours. I've considered taking antidepressants, but I'm concerned that they'll mess with my current state. I dunno, it's stupid. I've never struggled with addiction, but many of my family members have. It seems it stems from their depression. Have you tried taking any kind of antidepressant?
I'm a practical person. I may think something I've written probably isn't amazing or groundbreaking, but it certainly can't teeter on outright sucking. At worse, it can just be mediocre, but not totally unacceptable. Though, if something actually is unacceptable to me, I'll rewrite that part. I may rewrite it once, or maybe I'll do it a few times, but every iteration is better than the last, and eventually I'll be satisfied with it. I have a mood disorder (undiagnosed, but not strictly bipolarity, according to the doc), so I'll get bouts of depression where I question the quality of my work, and if I managed to force myself to work, I'll push out like, a single sentence or paragraph before getting bored and doing something else. If I really want to get work done, I'll force myself to write an entire section/scene/chapter. Writing one good paragraph motivates me to write another, and before I know it I've reached my goal. But most importantly, just don't stress yourself about it. Think of writing as a reward in itself, not work that leads to a reward. I suggest you don't let your ideas die. I had an idea for a story once, I didn't know how I would make it a book, but I tried. It... didn't work. But I kept thinking about it anyway, constantly redoing the idea, changing out plot points and climaxes. Eventually I actually did rework the idea into something usable, and I'm writing it right now. I think any idea is usable if you give it enough of a chance.
I never thought of using it as a tool. It's the dead, apathetic kind of depression mostly as opposed to the sad kind, which is far more useful for writing. But maybe I could churn out some crap about a psychopath or something. Use the lack of emotion to create something, at least just to be writing.
That's what mine's like, too. I dunno that there really is a sad type. Is there? No, I describe mine as "disconnected from happiness." I still write better, though. But maybe it's because of the genre I prefer.
I sometimes go through periods where I'm just horribly sad all the time and I hate myself and want to die and I actually prefer that to the numb kind, just because I like to feel things. And I can channel sadness into writing, yknow? It's so hard to make yourself do something when your brain is just like "Nope, you're tired, you want to sleep. You also suck at writing so there's that."
Yep. I have an accountability partner, and we give each other deadlines. It only helps in the sense that I will complete them just barely before they're due.
Well, I doubt it'll help any, but I don't allow myself to get that sad. I get mad. I get mad at myself and my own inability, I get mad at the world for doubting me, and it causes me to build up the desire to show everyone, anyone that I'm more capable than them. It's a great motivator. Sometimes I tell myself to write just to defy someone specific, and it feels great. I love doing things that piss people off.
I feel like I could have easily written this, wow. I also feel the same way. I don't know what to tell you. I'm working on an outline now of a series I've been writing for three years and every time I'm halfway into it, like right now, I start doubting myself and whether my idea is good or original or not. It happens every time. But I keep going. Not because of some passion or that I like writing or that it's a compulsion but because, I feel, without this story, without writing it, I'm not anything in this world and I don't have any worth and that I should just kill myself; my life literally is that uneventful, boring and depressing; that the only reason I don't kill myself is because I tell myself, "I have to write this story; it's me." But I'm also writing a fantasy and a "what the hell was I thinking" kind of story.
People with treatable depression often self-medicate with alcohol or street drugs. Antidepressants are much improved these days, have you considered an SSRI instead of other mind-numbing options? I speak from experience and a long family history of using the mind-numbing options. I prefer the SSRIs. As for the writing, I say consider developing the epic and if you don't use it, why would you mind using pieces of it to grow another? I fail to see the problem.
I think some of this self-doubt derives from us expecting three things: + We're going to get it right the first time. + Our first draft is going to be the next biggest thing since Stephen King or JK Rowling. + Our first draft will define the literary genre as we know it. While this is a commendable goal, and yes we want our story to be at least readable and well-structured, it's sort of being too harsh on yourself, I guess? I read this comic once, long ago, where it basically compared the first draft of a story to an infant learning how to talk. No sane, decent person is going to verbally bash the infant for not speaking with perfect grammar and syntax right off the bat. Or say the infant sucks and not worth anything. No, you keep going; you help them. You're patient with them. This is what the first draft is. I know it's easier said than done (I have Generalized Anxiety Disorder and it's got its talons firmly clamped down onto my creativity), and I know it's probably insulting if I say, "Just don't be so hard on yourself". This is just what I've observed about self-doubt over the recent months.
A huge epic fantasy! No wonder you're in a spin. Why not manage your expectations and start with short stories and build your confidence from there? You can still get these published through various channels and if they are good enough even get paid for them IF there is a workshop forum here that is not visible to the search engines you could also ask for crit before you submit them. Very few problems are insurmountable if you are prepared to be flexible and don't always charge at them head on.
