How do you stick with writing?

I have a problem, it doesnt just effect my ability to write, but everything I do.

I've taken a lot of criticism in the things that I do throughout my life and its got to the point where I don't want to do anything through fear that it won't be good enough. I don't want to take up a hobby, I don't want to write a report for work, and I don't want to write... but I do. I want to do those things, in my heart, its just my head goes, fck it, someone will just rubbish it so why bother.

So, just in relation to writing, how do you get over similar issues. Maybe you write something for the first time and dont like how it looks on paper, or you decide that a particular part of your plot is weak, or, like me, you're worried you are just wasting your time.


Another issue I have, which is kinda similar, is that I can create (what to me sounds like) brilliant descriptions and conversations in my head, but I never seen to be able to translate that on to paper. I dont get that. What makes me write like Tolkein in my head and a halfwit on paper?

 

I live by shtty first drafts because I'm the same way. I spend hours writing the book in my head and then when I got on paper, it doesn't sound the same. Somewhere along the way, I decided that every first draft I would just let it be bad. Whether it was the first draft of a line or a scene, I'd let it be as horrible as it could be and that took pressure off of it for me for some reason. I forgot who said it or where I saw it, but I saw that every first draft is perfect because it exists. Writing is in the revisions, at least for me, and I think that's what keeps me motivated.

 

Im not talking about ideas, I mean i actually think as if im reading a book, the words are there, in my head. Its actualy dialogue and description that im thinking.

 

Yeah for sure! I'm the same way, I write the scene in my head but then I go to my notebook and my computer and it just doesn't come out the same way because I forget exactly how I got to this point in the dialogue or how I describe it and it frustrates me. That's why I had to let go of having it the way I did in my head. Its definitely different for every person, but that's just what works for me

 

Everyone from Ray Bradbury to Stephen King to countless random bloggers gives the same advice more or less: Just start writing. It doesn't have to be perfect. That's what editing is for. Practice also counts for a lot, so get something on the page and keep at it. You'll see. You'll get better at it the more you write. When you're struggling with something specific, do your research or come on here and ask a question, but otherwise keep plugging away and don't stop.

Use the Workshop here too. (After completing the prerequisites) Post a snippet or a chapter and get advice that will hopefully help you improve. Just don't take anything too personally. Your first time in the Workshop can feel pretty brutal, but it's all meant in the spirit of helping you achieve your goal of improving your story.

I don't know why it's so hard to get what you want on the page; it just is, but it does get easier. I promise.

 

The answer is, you just do it. You put your ass in a chair and you get it done. Writing is 90% self-motivation. If you want to do it, you'll do it. If you don't, you won't. There are a lot of people who don't really want to write, they want to "have written". They want to get to the end result without doing all the hard work in the middle.

Sorry, it doesn't work that way. Writing is hard. If you want to write, do the work to earn it. I don't always want to sit down and pound out 5k+ words every day. There are times I just want to do something else. Too bad, I do it anyhow. I don't get up until I'm done and if you're serious, you won't either. You can never get to "having written" without putting in the hard work to write. It doesn't get any easier. This is what writing is.

 

The amount of work involved in artistic pursuits is often underestimated.

I do think it gets easier, like any discipline does when you adapt your mind and apply yourself. You get better at it, and to a degree don't even notice the improvements. Draw a parallel with musical instruments—a lot of time/effort/practise has to go in for anything even remotely good to come out. Not only effort, though, commitment as well. Commitment is hard.

 

I had the same situation as the OP, my father always discouraged me from writing. It took decades before I could overcome the inner voice, planted by my father, that told me writing had no value. Finally, now I'm in my fifties, I do write, but I never show what I've written to my father.

 

I love that ...write like Tolkien in my head and a halfwit on paper. I suspect you do have the soul of a writer, to come up with an observation like that.

First of all, and this is vital. You do NOT have to show your writing to ANYBODY. Not ever. Not unless you want to.

If you do want to, wait till it's done to your own satisfaction. Don't be timidly and apologetically putting a few lines or chapters out there asking for feedback/brainstorming, etc. That way you end up writing by committee, with somebody else chairing the meeting. Your writing is YOURS until you decide to show it. Obviously you'll want feedback on what works and what doesn't. But just like a violin student doesn't go out performing until he or she has achieved a certain degree of expertise on the instrument, don't feel as a budding writer, that you need to put yourself OUT THERE until you're ready.

In fact, unless you're sharing a computer or workspace, you don't need to even tell anybody you're writing at all. As a good artist/writer friend of mine put it recently, "I'm always very furtive about what I'm creating. I don't show it to anybody or admit to anything until it's done."

So ...basically...writing is a risk-free activity! You will take risks with how and what you write, but the risks will only be known to yourself. You will have nothing to live down, or explain, if it doesn't work out. Just keep it to yourself until you have gained confidence. Don't rely on others to give you that confidence. They might well tear you down, for reasons best known to themselves. Just write until you're satisfied that what's on paper matches what was in your head. It may actually surpass your original idea ...surprisingly enough ...because as you write, new ideas will come to you ...about what your characters are like, maybe a few connections between them that you hadn't thought of at the start, maybe a new plot development that is more exciting than the original ...or links a couple of subplots together, etc.

Remember as well, that until you actually get published (either self or traditionally) NOTHING you've written is set in stone. You can change anything you don't like. So don't be afraid to 'make mistakes.' Just don't rush to publish them.

By the way, constructive criticism should NEVER make you feel bad. Instead, it should point out things you missed, and maybe offer a few suggestions to improve the piece. After constructive criticism, you should be going 'YES! That's it! That will make it a lot better. Thanks!'

The saying goes: write the book you would want to read yourself.

I think that is the best piece of advice out there, really. Aim to please yourself. Tell yourself that you will write honestly. You're not writing to please your dad, your grannie, your peer group, your teachers, bosses, etc. You're writing to please yourself.

And two: don't be afraid to take your time. Fill in the details. Don't just skim over the surface with they look like this, they look like that, they did this, they did that, this happened that happened, the end. That's a summary, not storytelling. Think about the books you loved as a child and books you love now. I mean, Tolkien ...he started LOTR with a birthday party. A party that took up a whole chapter, then bled into the next as well. During that party we met several of the main characters, got to know something about hobbits, and had a really good time. Don't be afraid to let your readers relax and get immersed in the world of your story. Take. Your. Time.

I also have found that it's fun to write scenes AS THEY OCCUR to you. You don't have to write them in chronological order. Nor do you have to spend a lot of time with boring scenes. Just write the exciting ones, the ones you have spent a lot of time imagining. The scenes you most want to write. Amazingly enough, if you do that for long enough the whole story will get written. If you envision fight scenes or romantic encounters, or scenes of interpersonal conflict, or even the end of the story ...write those scenes. You can put them into the proper order later on. (You can do this whether or not you use an outline, or just feel your way into the plot.) You'll probably find that the boring bits don't need to be written at all ...they can just be referred to in a transitional paragraph or two.

I also developed a wee trick that might work for you. Imagine a person you're telling the story to. It might even be somebody you know, but it's got to be somebody who will not be critical, but will be hanging on your every word. If you don't have somebody like that in your life, imagine somebody who would fill that bill. You might even be telling the story to a younger or older version of yourself. Write the story as if you were talking to that person alone, and they were paying rapt attention and begging for more. This trick helps you to focus on the reaction you want your words to create. (One word of caution, though. If you imagine this person to be quite young, you may end up writing in a style that's more childish than you want the book to be. )

Also, keep a notebook to hand, so when you create those brilliant conversations in your head, you can quickly scribble them down, so the words don't get lost. I did this a lot while walking to work, while lying in bed at night or the morning, riding a bus or train, etc. Nothing more frustrating than to think up some great scenes, encounters, or connecting ideas, and then lose them later on. Don't let these moments of inspiration slip away.

 

The way the language centres in our brains work, speaking and audible input of sound waves into our ears are handled slightly differently than our reading minds - for the obvious reason that one is using our ears and vocal chords and the other our eye or mind. Things can sound perfect in your head, but not look as great when on paper. I know this myself - once upon a time I tried writing via a dictating sound recorder program I found. It sounded great in my head but was a disordered mess when it was down on the screen. Writing needs to be ordered and refined for the most effective transfer of information from your head to another person.

People also do not speak with perfect grammar, syntax, or even with the correct words, so on paper it can look slightly off if you scrutinize it. I find I write my best dialogue when I speak or act it out myself aloud (or mumbling mostly) and then hurriedly write it down. I make sure not to alter it to "perfect" English afterward because then it loses its authenticity.

But as to your ultimate problem, @Stephen1974 , (and I hate that I keep using this metaphor) is that writing is like sculpting. It will *never* come out perfect first-time...ever. No writer writes like Tolkien straight out of their fingers and onto the keyboard. Not even Tolkien. That's the common fallacy of many writers who get frustrated. Not even your favourite authors do that. Writing is about revising and editing. Taking the clay from the rough and ugly shape that was in your head (even if it seemed perfect at the time) and chipping away at it, molding it, smoothing it, until it is the polished, condensed, and concentrated potion of magic that you imagined it to be.

 

I'd say there's even another level of difference with internal thought. The only way to fully focus thinking is through language, either written or spoken. When it's just in the mind, even if you're thinking in words, it's largely unconscious. It's only processing it through language that draws it out through the conscious apparatus, and that's the only part of the mind that can organize it in a way that really makes sense.

When you're thinking it, even if it's in words, you can't see it all on paper and check for mistakes or to see if it really makes sense or not. For that you need to be able to see it all recorded on paper (or digitally, whatever) where you can check it all. You can't really check the nebulous ideas drifting in bits and snatches through your mind. Parts of it make sense (or seem to) but the parts don't really fit together into an organized and sensible whole. It's sort of like the way words are used in dreams (those are products of the unconscious, but without any organizing influence from the conscious mind). Words are put together for qualities like rhythm, texture, atmosphere—poetic and aesthetic reasons that have very little if any logic to them. They seem real pretty until you wake up and think about it. Then you're all like "Green jelly dragons emaciate weathered lagoons??!!" Really?? THAT was what seemed so profound in my dream?

It's not that bad if you're thinking while awake, because there is some collaboration between the hemispheres (the conscious and unconscious), but still the words are being formed partly by the unconscious for the reasons it prefers, which have nothing to do with logic and reason.

The only way you take full conscious control is by writing and editing it. Speaking does focus the ideas, but there are problems. First, if you're having a conversation with somebody you can't control where it goes. Second, even if you're just talking to yourself, you can't remember exactly what you said a moment ago, much less half an hour ago.

 

Guys, you think to write dont you. When you are physically doing it, thats what you are doing, thinking the words before you write them. Thats all im doing away from the paper. The problem is I cant think in the same way when im at paper.

 

Yeah, I do most of my writing when I'm away from the computer. When I do sit down I generally have to jot down notes of what ideas occurred to me. You don't do the actual word-for-word writing when you're away, just ideas. At least that's how I do it. The word by word stuff has to be worked out and edited before it works, and it'll never be exactly like what you imagined.

I mean, if you try to work it out word for word in your head and then write it, you won't be able to remember more than a sentence or 2.

I have to come up with enough ideas, and make sure they all fit together decently, so it seems like there's a potentially good story there, and then I either try to work out a plot line through outlining, or just wing it and write straight ahead (guided by the ideas). But the writing is it's own thing, it won't be identical to what you thought of in your head, for the reasons I explained above.

You don't work out a story by thinking "The day was beautiful, and George had nothing on his mind as he lay back in the grass, feeling the breeze across his skin...". It's more like 'Ok, so I'll start with him lying in the grass on a beautiful day, and then suddenly a UFO lands in his back yard...'.

You have to work it out in these big story beats so you can see how they fit together. Just as you don't build a house with no floor plan by just laying one brick and then another—you need to plan it out and know where the various rooms are going to be etc, at least roughly.

 

I continue to write every day due to the fact that once I developed a habit of writing, even if I am very bad mentally and psychologically. Even if I physically cannot write more than one paragraph, I will still write at least a few words or sentences. I made discipline more important than motivation.

 

Yes, that can and does happen BUT most so, after middle age (45-50yo) bracket. Some refer to this as "with age, comes wisdom".

That said, I'd try social media such as Quora and/or using an app such as Grammarly.

As for writing, you'll be able to fine tune your writing further from here. The other option is join a writing group? This can be via online or weekly meet-ups.