Trouble Starting

Well, sometimes a fresh page frees you up to do things you couldn't otherwise do just by editing

And I forgot to say congrats @A.M.P. !!

 

A new page? What are you, a senator?

Joking aside, I don't really want to focus on the things that break the flow. Sure, there are chapter breaks and scene transitions, but the last thing you should want is a break (brake?) in momentum!

 

I don't really consider it a break in momentum as such. When I start a blank page, it's usually a new file (and therefore a different section of the book) and it's usually because I have either come to the end of or hit a brick wall in the current section that I'm working on.

So the blank page is sort of like a fresh start but it always gives me the heebie-jeebies. I just find it really scary, that blank page staring back at me. Once I get half way down the page, I'm fine.

 

I get stuck on new pages sometimes. Other times, it's really exciting to see that blank page just waiting to be filled with words (that is, if you have a good idea what you want to happen in the particular section). Sometimes it even helps to start fresh, to just start writing and see where it goes, and just maybe write yourself out of a block.

 

Hello All

Been a while since i've been here, had some personal things to work through, but thats by the by. Anyway I have picked up a story I was working on about 30k words in and whilst I still like the general story the way it is being told after re-reading I think will ultimatley limit where I can go with it.
So I am thinking of starting it again? Do people generally do this part way through a first draft? I have completed other stories and not felt the need to change the way the story is told but think it is needed for this particular tale. Any thoughts?

 

I paid a ghostwriter to write an entire first draft of a story for my publishing company, based on an idea that I just could not force onto the page no matter how much I tried. I read her work, and stuck it in a drawer for a year as I didn't have the time or energy to edit it to publishable quality. Opened the drawer just the other day and re-read it, then re-read my own draft. $125 to decide that my original draft was the way to go.

Not exactly the same thing, but I think close enough.

 

I think complete re-writes are common for first novels, and not exactly a rarity for the next couple.

 

Novella, but yea. It wasn't terrible for someone who was writing english as a second language, just needed far too much work to make editing it worth the time. All in all $125 to get perspective on a WIP I hadn't been able to make headway on for about a year prior doesn't seem like a bad cost.

 

Hi, I'm in need of some help. I recently allowed a young couple to move into my home, as they were homeless at the time, and one of them stole all of my external storage devices which contained all the copies of my writing in the world. I feel so lost.

All my original work included full first drafts of story ideas which inspired me, or which I was inspired to write. Some of my work included partial 2nd drafts, and rewrites of screen plays I'd written. I typed them out hard, exposing my inner demons and working out the finer points to sentence construction.

I'm running at a loss now, as I attempt to dive back into writing. I feel that I could have benefited as a writer by far to a greater extent, if I had my previous work to look through. I'd also like to recover my novel and my screen play as I think I would have liked to see them published one day. So I feel a bit down about the loss.

What could I do/write to help me overcome my losses as a writer?

 

I'd say you have two choices - either try to duplicate/recreate what you lost, or give it up and move on.

Recreating it will be difficult, obviously, and won't be complete, but you may find that you've managed to remember the most important bits from the various stories you lost? Enough to give you something to work from, at least.

The other option is the one I think I'd personally choose. Let it go. Write yourself an obituary to lost ideas, then start building new ideas. Honestly, if none of the stories were good enough to get written right away, it seems quite possible that they were never going to get written at all. Most writers I know have more story ideas than they can shake a stick at; assuming you're in the some boat, the ideas will just keep coming, new ones piling up on top of old ones, and you'll never manage to catch up and write them all because you're emptying a river with a teaspoon.

This could all be a blessing. I think it can sometimes be paralyzing to have too many possible projects. In the immortal words of Billy Joel (okay, immortal might be a little strong): All your choices make you change your mind. Now that all the distractions are gone, you can pick one story and stick to it. Write it all the way through, edit it, find an audience for it. (assuming an audience is your goal).

Ideas are the easy part of writing. Finishing things is the hard part. (at least for most people I know).

 

Man, I can relate. I can't count the number of projects that I've lost thanks to losing save files, corrupted hard drives, or even from erasing huge blocks of text and saving it at just the wrong time (I'm very clumsy, in other words). It really does feel like a missing limb, or a broken rib, especially when you go to recreate the work and corrupt yourself with self-doubt.

There's an old writer's axiom that I heard some variation of from Ray Bradbury, in that you should write a million words and then throw it away; after that, you're ready to begin. This link explains it better than I can, and maybe it can instill some optimism in being able to move forward with a new resolve toward future projects. You may not have done it by choice, but you pretty much burned up your figurative first million words; are you going to try and get them back, or use the practice they taught you for new stuff?

It's a tough one, and believe me, I know all about wanting to hold on to the past and make sense of it. But if you're being afforded this opportunity (provided you can think of it as an opportunity), you're in a good position to take it.

 

Condolences @jedicounsellor . Move on. Embrace the clean slate. If you've written one worthwhile thing, you can certainly write another.

 

Thank you for your contributions, BayView, N.M. Long, and pyroglyphian. You have all been helpful during this trying time. I think I could use this experience as an opportunity to learn and grow as an individual, and writer, in the same way I used my time incarcerated to reflect on how to better my life! Writing serves this need toward self betterment, and offers me a medium of expression which I can't find elsewhere. These are all good reasons to continue writing. I especially enjoyed the comment "If you wrote something good before, you can write something equally good." I'm feeling a little uplifted

Thanks, guys.

 

You're going to be starting over again; you have no choice about that. But just as nobody steps in the same river twice, you can revisit the plots you like and re-create them, knowing that you'll write them better this time, because of the perspective you've added over the years.

And I agree with N.M. Long's quotation from Ray Bradbury, about how most of what you've written up to now has been practice. Now you're ready to use what you've learned on whatever you like ... old plots, new plots ... knowing that you may now be worthy of doing them justice.

And next time, don't rely on external storage devices. Instead, store them off-site. Most of my shorter stuff can be found on my blogs, while my two books are stored with CreateSpace. From what I can see, there's nothing that prevents you from loading your book as a "work in progress" and delaying the actual publication. Or you could avail yourself of the various ways to store stuff in the "cloud."

 

Thanks JLT, you've inspired me to use better methods of storing my work. I suppose I'm still trying to let go of the loss. I feel I can make a fresh start, though.

 

I'm also printing mine. Retyping it isn't such a bad last-ditch solution.

 

Thanks ChickenFreak,
I've thought about rewriting but think I'd just have to start fresh rather than try to recreate the original. On the plus side, there was still a lot of work to be done on my work.

 

Would it help to think of it as "I was going to have to write another draft anyway"?

 

Yeah, that does help a little bit.

Thanks, Simpson17866.

 

If you are young, take comfort in the fact it has happened to all of us old timers, or at least something like it, at some point in our lives. And we've learned things but still felt varying degrees of pain.

I've had detailed policies I worked hard on end up being lost with a computer crash. I found a recovery software program and was able to get most of it back one time. Another time we took the computer in for a repair and the repair guys were able to recover the dead half of the computer hard drive along with creating a new sectioned off drive.

So what's the deal with external drives? Any chance the files exist on your hard drive even though you saved them on external drives?

Currently I keep my files on my notebook and on 6 flash drives though one of those is corrupt, so I really have five. One goes everywhere with me in my pocket. Another goes with me in my purse, and the other 3 are stashed in different places around my house.

Flash drives are cheap.

I rotate updating them and whether I carry them or stash them so I don't have to update all five every time I add to my WIP.

But this is because I learned the hard way so I feel your pain.

 

That's terrible And you did such a good deed too, helping a young hopeless couple. You didn't deserve that sort of theft, and I'm sorry you lost such valuable information.
I agree with everyone in the thread so far. You need to continue writing, but you don't have try and re-write what you wrote from memory. Don't let this data loss discourage you from writing the next best thing
I will add this: Please consider backing up in the future. This advice may be sour right now since it won't return your data. However, its always good to learn from mistakes. I recommend.

• Writing in Evernote. Evernote is a useful note application that allows syncing and automatic saving. When I write there, I never have to worry about losing data because all my notes are saved online. I can even access them on multiple devices. I think you can do the same thing with Google Docs and Word online, but I'm not familiar with those.
• Backing up with a cloud service, such as Google Drive or Dropbox. Uploading constantly might be annoying though, and syncing can work against you (accidentally deleting a file from the computer means the file will be deleted on the cloud as well.
• Saving your files in multiple places. Aside from saving on a flash drive, for instance, save on your computer and then send it to your phone. This may be tedious however, so you'll be more tempted to skip this measure.
• Emailing to yourself. This is a tried and true method, and it doesn't take very long. You can also email to a trusted friend.

Best wishes.

 

I'm so sorry you had to go through with this, don't give up writing. I needed to take a break after it happened to me because I had so much and I am someone who is focused on one character, wanting to write their story.

First, I had to rewrite because it started off as a collaboration with a friend. She decided it wasn't what she wanted, okay that's fine.

Second, years later I move in with a crazy bitch who said she wanted to help me and then scared me so badly I had to leave without taking my things. Most of my information was in binders, on paper. I lost more than half of it, besides some world building I still have.

You don't need to re-write but if you remember your characters well, you could write them a new story? I don't know how to help honestly, when it happened to me I stopped for a while and then only wrote poetry and short stories not related to my main character. It helped me heal a bit from the loss though, maybe you need to do that too if you haven't already.

Now I write in microsoft word online, it's connected to one drive I believe. It went down yesterday, so I'm not very confident about it right now, I'll have to back up my stuff somewhere else too! thank you to this thread for reminding me

I hope you're doing better now, and that you've found some idea to delve into.

 

So sorry that happened to you. But you are a writer, and it doesn't matter how many computers get taken from you. You will still be a writer. I've lost work on more than one occasion. It really sucks. Just know you have way more stories in you than were ever on your computer.