Is it guilt? I'm in grad school now, with a full time job. When i was an undergrad, I was in 3 clubs, as well as athletics, and had a part-time job. I feel like I shouldn't have free time. And when i do/did have free time and want to use it to write, I feel/felt guilty because I should be focusing on my studies. However, during the summer and the holiday breaks, I found it easier to write steadily because there wasnt that guilt there. Have you always felt like this or is it just harder to write now that you've started your senior year?
Hear, hear! Even if all you end up with is an extra paragraph, or even a sentence, daily effort will become routine and even with little production is still time your brain can focus and learn to do it. But that only happens with repetition, like training for a sport.
You're right in that I feel guilt but it's the opposite. I feel guilty that with the free time I have I don't spend enough of it writing. Even when I'm exceling in my classes I feel like it amounts to nothing if I'm not working towards my goal. So by all means I should be able to focus more on writing, but ultimately I haven't.
The thing is, I can get myself to write whenever I need to. However what distinguishes it from being actual writing and not just a jumbled mess of a story depends on if I can focus or not.
@LexStorm -- Why do you want to be a writer? I ask this question seriously. It's going to take work and even the best beginners aren't all that good and make a lot of mistakes. It's a process. If you can't bring yourself to go through and even start the process, I don't understand to desire to do it. When there is a movie you want to see, is it too much for you to bring yourself to watch it? A book you want to read? A party you want to go to? Writing is a choice just like any other choice when it comes to doing what you want.
What inspires you? If you arent inspired by or passionate about your WIP, why force yourself to continue it? I'm a firm believe of the idea that if you have something to say, you'll be compelled to write about it and keep going back to it. You will WANT to finish it despite the roadblocks you experience. If you don't feel this way, writing becomes a chore. I'm sure @deadrats and @Cephus are passionate about their current projects even though they say that sometimes they don't feel like writing. They keep going back to it, in part because of discipline, but I cant imagine them wanting to continue with a project that they don't feel passionate or strongly about (correct me if i'm wrong). Why get into a profession that you are not passionate about? (and I know people do it out of necessity, but this doesnt sound like necessity to me)
I guess I just have really high standards for my own writing. A few years ago I wrote around 250 pages of a novel but it wasn't great. Most of it didn't work but I kept writing anyways and ended wasting a whole bunch of time. I don't want to do that again so I'm trying to make sure everything I write is of good quality.
I LOVE my story idea. I draw my characters and world a lot (even though neither look that great) and I still get excited when I have an epiphany of which direction my story will go and the characters I create. But when I go to write it I just get anxious and have a hard time focusing. Maybe it's because my own standards are too high... Honestly, putting out my writing issues here is really helping me figure things out.
You need to train yourself to be better. All of that comes from hard work. It's very rare when I don't hit my 5k a day goal. The last time, I was dog sick and literally couldn't sit upright in my chair. I still got myself to do a couple of thousand words before I gave up and went to lay down. And I still feel bad, months later, that I missed it. I have a job to do. This is the job I am going to do and I don't allow myself to fail. It has to be completely out of my hands for me to miss my goal. It's all dedication.
If I start a project, I finish that project. But because I write so quickly and plan so heavily, I'm never stuck with any particular project until it wears out its welcome. This year, I spent almost 6 months writing a trilogy, but by the end, I was ready to move on to something else. I still liked the characters, but it was time for something new. I didn't regret that the main character that I'd been with through three books had died in the end. It was his time to go. I have at least ten books scheduled to do next. I'm always moving forward. I am passionate about it, but I don't pretend that the only reason to do it is because you're passionate. If you think that, then any job you have will disappoint you because you simply cannot maintain that level of passion for long. This is a job, like it or not. If you don't want it to be a job, if you just want to write fanfic or create a story every now and then, there's nothing wrong with it, but for people who are dedicated to finishing books, and that has to be your goal, it's less about passion and more about doing what you're dedicated to doing.
I have an idea: in college, one of the professors in the Writing Popular Fiction department, when I told him about my writers block issues, suggested I just write scenes from my WIP. He says they dont have to go in order. Perhaps I have an idea for a scene that happens toward the end of the story. Dont wait to write it! Write it out anyway. Organize it later. I dont know if you've tried skipping around in your plotline. If you cant start from the "beginning" then start from the scene or character that you have on the mind currently. If you drew a character, it means you are thinking about that specific character. Start writing about that character, even if it is describing what you drew. Maybe your first step should be to just write- about anything, not necessarily related to you WIP- just to get into the habit of writing. Pick a time of day and just have at it. You'll train yourself to just sit down and write. lol, I've unconsciously conditioned myself to be more productive at night. I'd start writing around 9pm (in high school, that was when I actually had time to myself). College wasnt any better; I once stayed up all night working on a paper on Shakespeare because I was on a roll. I'd had all day to start writing it, but once the sun went down, I suddenly had the creative energy to sit down and write the whole thing. This is how I am now as an adult. I have a lot more time in my day (like today is my day off from work and I finished my homework assignments this morning), I cannot focus on my WIPs. I know that when the sun goes down and it gets closer to 9pm, I'll start to want to write again. It never fails....
Are you happy? I've always been of the mindset of "If you do what makes you happy, it will never be a chore." Sure, my job may frustrate me. Sometimes the projects make me angry, but over all, I am happy with the profession I chose. I am passionate about what I do. There are people who love their jobs, for better or worse, their entire careers. My parents wanted me to be a lawyer. I would have been VERY unhappy as a lawyer. If I had taken that route, and just treated it as a job, and dedicated my time and effort to something that ONLY paid the bills and doesnt fulfill ME, I would be very unhappy. and unhappiness and a lack of passion, in my opinion, leads to "ok" work. You do your best when you believe in what you do. you do "ok" when you do something you feel you are obligated to do. I dont ever want to do "ok" work
I have a cheap Raspberry PI 3B dedicated to writing only. I got my best ideas after going from fiber internet to a limited data plan with 7GB/month for all my activity. Then I dim the light down or use yellow light to relax mentally. No slacking off on YouTube or streaming television shows, just feels like I have all the time in the world. Both creativity and originality increases when there's no media consumption. The plot gets deeper with more connection to the characters. Most importantly, avoid sugar, caffeine, mobile games and any other unnatural sources of dopamine. If you feel restless, take a bath instead of playing computer games. Less dopamine makes the brain more sensitive to rewards again. Once you've maximized your brain's dopamine receptors, your book will not feel boring anymore and the characters come alive and tell you what to write.
"Oh yeah, well look what I can do!" "But what does that have to do with anything?" "No, no... He's got a point."
I used to be able to recite this movie from start to finish. And I still don't get what that has to do with anything.
I write more than I publish. Time wasted? Sometimes we have to write the bad stuff to be able to write the good stuff. You're not going to get better by not writing. So, I don't really see what high standards have to do with anything. Unless you're thinking that's it's just going to somehow one day instantly hit you. Even good writers get better. It's just something that goes on. But you've got to start the process. I've had my work rejected a crazy amount of times. There's a long-running thread on it. I was rejected hundreds of times and God knows how many stories I wrote. But all that led up to some really great stuff. I wouldn't be writing at the level I am without a lot of hard work. I've got an unpublished novel. I kind of wrote it to see if I could do it. Of course, I fell in love with my practice novel. It was rejected from everywhere. But forget that one because my new novel is just a lot better in so many ways. And I think it's a good thing that this one isn't the first novel I've written. I do have higher expectations for this one, but if it doesn't work out I'll write another. Publishing is a tough business to break into. Even the amateurs are up against the professionals. I assume you were talking about the waste of time was that your novel was never published. But if you're on the sidelines, you're not even playing the game. You've got to get things wrong to get them right sometimes. I mean it's not like you have to show anyone or can't delete it all. Another way to improve is to read a lot of good books. You can often tell who is well read and who isn't in their writing.These things show and will improve your writing, but if you're not even going to do it...
It takes approx. 17 minutes for the Human mind to focus on a thing. (Source) You need to cut down from any kind of distraction. Put your phone on silent mode, clear your desk, switch off the TV, use a silent place to write. Decide in your mind what you have to write and just put yourself on DND mode. Once you start writing, your thoughts will automatically flow down on paper. If you feel stuck and your thoughts get stagnant, go for a walk. Engage yourself in other activities and take your time to gather your thoughts back.
I find that while I can edit at any time (and in small chunks, if need be) I do my best creative writing first thing in the morning. When I was working, I used to get up at 4.30am every day, and write for a couple of hours before heading off to work, which started at 8am. Yes, it meant I needed to go to bed earlier in the evening, but it meant my brain was fresh, ready to be creative, and not distracted with the doings of the day. One thing really helped. Don't do social media or check emails before you begin. Leave that till after you've done your stint of writing. It won't matter. In fact, if you weren't getting up so early to do writing, you wouldn't be getting to the messages till later on anyway—would you?
I've had massive issues with writer's block. Worse than that is writing just awful stuff you know is terrible and doing it with no enjoyment. Writing and thinking, 'this isn't expressing myself, this isn't anything!' Sometimes it seems all I am able to write is free writing about how much I hate myself. It could be a self-esteem issue, and maybe there are mental health issues at play. You have to get past all that to be creative and playful and have fun with it all. Life is full of unfun things. Work and bills and problems. I guess the only way to have fun with it is to keep trying. Eventually it will come if you look for it. It's like digging for gold though. I'm also a firm believer that time away from writing and living life improves writing. If you have more fun in life it can be easier when you return to the page to have fun with that too.
Sorry that you're struggling. I hope you feel better about life and yourself soon. If you're free writing about yourself is really coming out great, why not use that material. You could tun it into a personal easy, a piece of narrative nonfiction. Or you could use it as a jumping off place for your fiction. If you want to use it for fiction, I would continue writing in first person because it sounds like that's something that's working for you. Go ahead and make your narrator just like you. Only allow things to change if you get ideas along the way. Then enter situations from your imaginations, but think about how you would act or react. My characters usually start off as some version of myself, but I wouldn't say they stay like that. It is a great place to start stories. I strong voice is really key in a lot of fiction. If you've got that, work with it. Please try not to hate yourself. You've stumbled on a great community of writers here. I hope you stick around. I wish you a lot of luck with both life and writing.
