...without wanting to go back and change something. Hello readers, I have been lightly considering seriously taking up writing as one of my many full time hobbies but I simply lack the follow through to plow though that urge to perfect everything as I go. I also have many other flaws that make writing very difficult for me. I don't like reading. I can't spell. I use lots of run on sentences. Ellipses... are... awesome...! I'm a perfectionist who's far from perfect. I don't like to proofread and I am instantly disgusted at what I have written. What I do like, however, are the stories I can tell. I was introduced to something called Dungeons and Dragons when I was 12. It was the best format I've found to tell my stories. All I had to do was get the ball rolling and the momentum would go where ever it wanted to. All I had to do was fill in the gaps with some clever description here and there, some cool villain, or interesting situation and my players were happy! Some of these stories evolved in such a way I wanted to share them with others. Unfortunately, actually sitting down and writing a story with a blank page and eternally blinking cursor mocking me is a lot different than the off the cuff and lightly sprinkled story telling I'm most comfortable with. So now I'm here, with literally enough of an epic story to cover 5 novels locked away behind a frustratingly stubborn perfectionist mentality where I'm more than likely to delete five hours of work and quickly click "Save" than try to get through it. I'm hoping I'll find the motivation somewhere. Perhaps here. -Chaos Inc.
There are plenty of articles and forum topics about writing methods all around the net (including this site). I suggest that you read some of them and try out different methods to find out which suits you best. Maybe you need to do more planning (not just thinking about your ideas but write down the plot and characters) at the beginning and then write the first draft without looking back. As you wrote you will be "instantly disgusted" so you may allow yourself to change the storyline one time and the individual scenes of the story in 3 turns. You may not be satisfied with the result, however you can show it to a close friend asking for his opinion.
Welcome to the forum. Some of the members here are actually published writers, but most of us are, like me, still in the "aspiring" category, at varying stages of progress and levels of seriousness. I like to equate this forum with a study group, with all of us helping each other. I think the first thing you need to do is ask yourself why you want to write and what you expect to get out of it. There is no wrong answer, other than an untruthful one. We humans frequently lie to ourselves but this is one case where what you don't admit to yourself can hurt you a whole lot. If you are writing for your own pleasure, with no expectation to be able to publish, then pretty much any way you want to approach it is fine. You can follow the rules you like and ignore the ones you don't, because the only thing you are looking for is your own enjoyment. If, OTOH, you are dreaming of publication at some point, of actually enjoying some public success with your writing then this: ...is a deal-killer, particularly the first one. SPaG errors can be avoided with practice, and proofreading, editing and critiquing are skills that can be acquired. But a writer who doesn't like to read is doomed to never emerge from the cave. How can you possibly know how a well-written story is crafted? Or what truly riveting characters are made of? How can you ever appreciate the essence of the basically good character with the fatal flaw that dooms him to disaster? Or, for that matter, what really drives a "page-turner"? I learn something from every book I read. It might be how to do something. It might be how not to do something. It might be a character I can't help but love, or one I detest. It might be a great device for telescoping time, or a way to bore the reader silly that I have to remember to avoid like the plague. I might see myself. I might see the man I wish I was. A writer who doesn't read is like a nuclear physicist who doesn't like math.
