It's becoming harder over the years to find the headspace I need to conceive stories. I used to have a lot of time to myself where I knew I would not be interrupted, but that seems to be gone forever. In fact, as I wrote those two lines I had two interruptions that had nothing to do with the price of eggs. (One was a question about a book that's lying on my bed, the other was a question about a plastic bag.) I can get me-time to actually write (if I snarl and put signs up on my office door) but it's the space I need to daydream and conceive stories that is sorely lacking. I no sooner start to think and drift into story mode than ...somebody wants something, the phone rings, he's just got to ask me one teeeeny little question, somebody's at the door, bla de bla. And if these things don't actually happen, I'm on edge expecting them to happen. What I need is about a month, here at home with my research materials around me, where nobody speaks to me AT ALL. Life has changed a lot over the past year and a half, and I'm just not adjusted to the 'new normal' yet.
Staying focused. When I start writing, my brain kicks into overdrive. Words just fly through my head. Ideas come thick and fast and it's hard to pin them down. Then I can't sleep properly, ever, when I write. And if I manage to dream...I dream in words! It's really weird...it's like my mind takes my dreams and narrates them to me through a novel being written as it's happening. After 3-4 days of this, I'm exhausted, my work/home life starts to suffer and I have to stop.
Time. I need AT LEAST eight hours of solid sleep a night to stop me being a grumpy twat the following day, and I need winding down time after work to calm my little introvert soul. With family commitments, it doesn't leave many hours for writing. I find it very hard to come up with ideas, but I only need one 3x a year so it isn't a massive problem. Sometimes I can't translate the scene in my head to paper--can't get across the emotion I want to. That's very frustrating.
I'm in much the same boat as you, @jannert . Too many exogenous shocks and I'm no good at rolling with them, can't just finish some household chore and then sit down and write/think for 15 minutes and then go do something else. A few tricks I've learned that may help: I use the "notes" app on my phone to keep a running list of ideas, then when I do have some free time I copy all those over into a word document on the computer I use for writing. I always have my phone with me so I can write things down as they come to me, and then writing them down a second time helps keep them fresh in my mind. Then I can revisit them when I do have more time. I've also, through a bit of practice, gotten good at writing one or two page less-than-drafts but enough to get the ideas/feel of a story down. I'll just write up as quickly as possible a scenario, maybe the beginning of a plot, a few setting and character descriptions etc. in a loosely narrative fashion. Then I can come back to it later, come up with an ending and polish them up a bit. That approach really works better for something flash or short story sized though, not sure you could use it with a chapter of a novel.
For me it is hammering out that first draft. Plotting, revising/editing and such, that's much easier (and more enjoyable) as I see it.
freaking WRITING. i have my 30-day trial of scrivener primed on my computer, about 30,000 words of thoughts and ideas in a massive word document, and a constant penchant for daydreaming about new plot twists and character ideas. but when it comes time to put pencil to paper (whether literally or otherwise), i am a masterful excuse-maker. right now my brain is telling me that i just need to find a less stressful job, THEN i can find the time to write the way i want to. because that's totally how it works.
Yes, I do lots of that stuff as well. I've always got a notebook handy. However, I need the freedom to daydream, and that's what I don't get. There are no ideas to jot down if I can't get the space I need to think them up. Somebody said once, "You need a holiday." I said, "No, I don't need a holiday. I need everybody else to take one!" For me, envisioning scenes and allowing the characters to inhabit these scenes is crucial. It's not 'ideas' I need, it's pictures, sounds, environment, feeling, etc. And that's what I need time and uninterrupted space to create. I'm working on how to do this, in my 'new life.'
Being an amateur writer, the hardest part of writing for me is always the phase I have no experience in. It used to be staring at a blank word document, then it was making 140k words coherent, then it was cutting those 140k. Now it's trying to write queries. I suspect that after that, trying to figure out all the rejections will be the hardest part, and so on.
Sticking with the idea and having the fortitude to go through with it even if it looks terrible upon first revision.
The hardest part about writing is the first sentence. The second hardest is the last sentence. Twenty years separated those two events on my first draft.
Getting it going. Once I've got an opening I like, I almost always finish the story and polish it until it's the best it can be. But if the opening just isn't coming together, I tend to get bogged down, then get bored with the idea and move on to something else. It's worse when I'm aiming at a market with a deadline.
Have you tried getting out of the house, if possible, and write in a public place where no one will bother you? It works for some people. To answer the OP, the hardest part is editing.
Yes. The best thing for me is a bus trip. It's not the writing time I need. It's the thinking time. If I've got to sit several hours on a bus, that works well. I just plug my iPod in, to drown out the mobile phone conversations going on around me, and can usually conjure up a few scenes. However, life has changed to the extent that I'm not really able to get away from the house much any more. To put it in perspective, I used to have 5-7 hours per day (during the day) at home, on my own. Now I get ...zero. It's made a big difference.
I see what you mean. I need the time to daydream as well. (And yes, the thought of suggesting you'd go on a bus trip did occur to me, so I'm on to something here, but I don't know your circumstances well enough). What about a walk outside on a nice setting, like the beach or the woods, whatever you have available? Nature is very inspiring for me. Or... kick them all out of the house and demand some "me" time. Or simply close the door. I would do it even if I weren't a writer. Just tell them you're "closed for business" from Xpm to Ypm. But like I said, I don't know your circumstances. This advice is not regarding writing anymore but life in general. No one should be available to others 24/7 to the point that one feels deprived of quality time to oneself. Just my two cents. And I know it's easier said than done.
For me, the hardest part of writing is the characters. I'm not great at creating proper, fleshy characters. Especially names- that's the hardest part for me, usually. I think about it by this quote: "A writer's job is to get a character up a tree, and once they're there, throw rocks at them."
Yes, your advice is sound. I'm just trying to find a way to put it into practice. My husband is now pretty much housebound, due to a health issue which developed over the past year or so. He can get around the house fine, but he can't really go out as he has trouble walking any distance that's more than about 50 yards at a time—so I'm the one who has to do errands, shopping, whatever comes up. He spends a lot of time on his computer, reading and watching TV, but he likes to be able to chat as well. This can happen frequently. Not deep chats ...he's not got a great attention span ...but just walking into whatever room I'm in and making a few statements and walking out again ...like every 5 or 10 minutes or so. He will stay away if I ask him to, but that creates an 'atmosphere.' I feel sorry for him, trying to figure out when it's okay to talk and when it's not. He really does try, but it's not a natural state of affairs for either of us. I feel constantly on edge and pestered. I'm sure it will even out eventually. In the meantime ...well, I can always edit!
It's a mistake to stress over character names, and even worse giving those characters, pretentious, often silly names that telegraph their purpose in the story... leave that nonsense to JK Rowling... it's the, 'Charles Dickens', School for Naming Fictional Characters'. Give yourself a time limit, take no more than ten minutes to name a character. The characters thus far in my WIP... (Rosemarie, Mabel, Adeline, the main protagonists), Gael (male), Claire, Valerie, Lazare, Hector, (Marat, Antoine, the main villains)... and you get the idea. Keep it simple.
Haha. I used to base my characters on semi real people. I'd take their names but change everything else. I stopped doing that quite a while ago, but I have a list of names I like..I just don't want to overuse them.
See, I love having character names that are inspired by their journey. I'm not sure having it so 'on the nose' is a great idea like you see in a lot of fantasy, but a scientist with the surname Rutherford, or a writer with a drinking problem with the surname Williams. It just adds a little bit more to that character.
I enjoy writing post apocalyptic stories. The hardest thing for me is knowing how the world would be in a future different from our own. The fear that some reader out there will call me out on a point that I was making that was not the way things would actually be. I try to do my research well and take information about such things from other similar material, but all it takes is one mistake to tear a large plot hole into your story.
