1. DREWSKY

    DREWSKY Member

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    Style New Writer, How to get over the hump?

    Discussion in 'General Writing' started by DREWSKY, Jan 4, 2021.

    As I am just beginning my journey as a writer it's becoming impossible not to label everything I'm putting on the page as complete Horse Crap.

    I love reading and have been exposed to many styles of writing over the years but without having practiced, none of this exposure seems to be relevant. In my current short story (flash fiction) every paragraph feels like a complete strain on my creative muscles. Not to mention a lack of understanding of punctuation, conventions in sentence structure, plots, ...

    The ultimate goal is to be a bonafide and respected person in the writing community and publish my work.

    Hit me with some inspiration of how you overcame a lack of self worth and confidence as a new writer. How did you continue on your path when everything you made was a complete train wreck or required ages to edit and complete?
     
    Last edited: Jan 4, 2021
  2. TWErvin2

    TWErvin2 Contributor Contributor

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    Your first draft is not going to in any resemble the final draft of anything you write.

    The important thing is to get it down. If, for example, you are writing a first novel, you will notice from the beginning to the end, how much you have improved--even in the first draft.

    Writing is not easy. It takes effort, dedication and a focus on learning and improving. Often it is fun and interesting, but it is often work.

    Hang in there and press on.
     
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  3. J.T. Woody

    J.T. Woody Book Witch Contributor

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    I didnt start writing with the intention of selling or letting people read my stuf. I started writing because i wanting to get my stories out on page. I'd type them up, put them in a plastic paged binder, and that was the end of it. I guess, for that reason, i never thought my work was crap or became down on myself because i wasnt writing for anyone but myself. I wasnt trying to impress anyone.
    So my self worth was never tied to whether or not my writing was GOOD. It made ME feel good to write.
    Eventually, i started posting fanfiction and people actually like it.

    I guess the confidence to submit my own original work that was not school related (english teacher in middle school and high school urged the class to submit to youth stuff), was in college one night.
    I did it on a whim and the very next day, they emailed me back wanting to publish it.

    I have a fee peices that i dont like and have let sit for a long time. I have a few that i like NOW but disnt like then. I have some that im still editing. Those dont make me want to stop and they dont diminish my self worth. I write because i like it FIRST. If you arent happy with what you are writing, maybe switch to a new writing project... One that makes you happy and makes you WANT to write it :)
     
  4. Lifeline

    Lifeline South. Supporter Contributor

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    I remember when I started writing. Not back when I was a kid, but when I was older in my twenties and for the first time ever—gasp—put pen to paper in english. It's not my native language, y'see. I stopped after a few pages.

    But years later I got the itch again, and this time it refused to go away. The story wanted to be told (my first one, the dark fantasy that sits in a drawer and won't ever see the light of day), and what did it matter that I couldn't string a paragraph together proper? I had time. No one else but me saw what I typed on my notebook. No one to judge me.

    So my advise is essentially the same as @J.T. Woody , just write for yourself. Write to get a story out, write to get better because your first story probably won't be fit to get published, and most importantly, write because you like writing. Because it makes you feel better.

    Command of language will come. Paragraphs and beats will get easier. In time, you'll even know when and how to set punctuation. Give yourself time and don't expect mastery to occur overnight. You're in for the long haul. Fame and fortune to follow ;)
     
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  5. big soft moose

    big soft moose An Admoostrator Admin Staff Supporter Contributor Community Volunteer

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    and everyone has the feeling that what they write is shit... i once heard lee child (author if the jack reacher books) at thriller fest say that he has a point half way through every first draft where he is utterly convinced its unpublishable crap.

    the thing to remember is that you can always edit to make it better, but you can't edit an empty page , so just get it down
     
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  6. ISalem

    ISalem Member

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    When I first started writing, I wasn't writing for anyone. I was writing for myself. I didn't pay much attention to how good or not good my writing is (and that was the key to start writing and carry on). I started writing to express my thoughts and release my feelings. Every time I get inspired ideas of what to write about, I just put my ideas and words down. I didn't start writing to publish. (That was the other key, you shouldn't pay attention to publishing when you first start writing, just write for yourself. This keeps you motivated and help you carry-on. Writing gets better by practicing and writing more. Just put it down and carry on.

    Welcome to writing , a world of creativity. Wish you a wonderful journey.
     
  7. Reece

    Reece Senior Member

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    I want you to embrace the horse crap. Pretend no one will ever look at it. Write your dung. Get yourself a whole book of dung and then edit until the thought of having a stranger read it doesn't cause you crippling anxiety. People pay a lot for that coffee that cats crap out ;)
     
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  8. Cave Troll

    Cave Troll It's Coffee O'clock everywhere. Contributor

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    Baby steps. First sharing work that you feel confident enough to share.
    Then edit, rewrite, or shelve and start something new.
    I am pretty sure everything I write is garbage, but some seem to enjoy it,
    so I work harder to "Git Gud', as they say. Takes time and with some
    decent help with the things you're not so good at, you will improve.
    Keep the bad works, and learn from the mistakes you made with them,
    so you don't repeat them (Unless you're famous, then people don't really
    pay attention to the fact that you just bashed your skull on the keys for
    200-300 pages of nonsense dickery. Or are a marketing genius.) :p

    Remember; the rough draft is so named because it hasn't been sanded
    and sculpted into the final result yet, just more a basic shape or frame
    of what you want to add to. Rough drafts are always crap, until you put
    in the hard work on your second draft to mold it more into the story you
    want to get out of it.
    Good Luck. :supersmile:
    [​IMG]
     
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  9. Homer Potvin

    Homer Potvin A tombstone hand and a graveyard mind Staff Supporter Contributor

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    Meh. So what if you write a pile of crap? It's better than writing nothing at all. I can't even write a kernel of crap these days. Not even a rabbit turd.
     
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  10. DREWSKY

    DREWSKY Member

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    Sometimes it's easy to look at the end result of someone successful and not take into account their motivations + the work they put in. There is a personal satisfaction to just getting internal ideas on the screen. My main focus for right now is writing for the local chess community and email newsletters.

    I'm sure taking off pressure and expectations to get results will ultimately create better conditions. Something to keep in mind.

    One of my friends tried it years ago at a fancy restaurant. I asked him how the "Crapachino" was.. He told me "it was the shit!"

    Thanks, there is a big load of fertilizer here in the pasture to grow some shrooms and flowers.
     
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  11. Freespiritgirl

    Freespiritgirl New Member

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    I too only started writing last year. I joined a college creative writing course and we were given topics to focus our writing. We then read them out and we’re given very brief critique. Useful to some extent but I don’t feel I’m going to make real progress if I don’t get more constructive critique. How do I go about getting that ? Especially now courses are not happening due to lockdown.
     
  12. big soft moose

    big soft moose An Admoostrator Admin Staff Supporter Contributor Community Volunteer

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    you can get constructive critique in our workshop... just remember to also give like you'd like to receive
     
  13. zoupskim

    zoupskim Contributor Contributor

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    Write everyday.

    If you can't think of something new to write then proofread something you've already written.

    Nothing new to proofread? Read a book about writing, or a book in your favorite genre, or the comic on the back of a cereal box to see how they use dialog tags.

    Always spend an hour a day doing some activity that id directly related to literature because it's a better than spending four hours a day refreshing Facebook pages for stupid memes to repost on Facebook.

    Also, make this your desktop background.

    should-you-be-writing-right-now.jpg
     
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  14. Cephus

    Cephus Contributor Contributor

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    Here's the reality: Everything you are writing right now *IS* horse crap. How could it not be? You haven't learned how to write yet and the only way to learn is to spend time writing horse crap while learning how to do better. Nobody is magically good at this. The best writers of all time were once in your shoes and they only got better by spending years pounding out complete garbage that the world never saw.

    That's what writing is. It's being terrible while learning to be better. The only way to learn how to better is to figure out how not to be terrible and that takes a lot of time and hard work. Keep at it. You'll get there eventually. It is going to take a very long time and a whole lot of hard work, but eventually, you will improve. It's all up to you.
     
  15. cosmic lights

    cosmic lights Contributor Contributor

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    Other people! In this community people know how to give damn good feedback in my opinion. They don't trash you're work and destroy your confidence but they don't just sugar coat and make you feel like they are just being nice. I posted a piece of work on here, when I honestly felt it was crap and was surprised by the responses I got. It wasn't perfect, obviously, but no where near as bad as I thought. They were honest and it really helped my low confidence.

    Forget ambitions. As soon as I started with the 'I wants...' and the 'my dream is...' stuff I became overly hard to myself. I became obsessed with making my novel publishing material, and as a beginner, I was miles off that. So I'd set the bar too high and it was impossible to reach due to my lack of experience and knowledge. So I had to change thinking. I would write for fun, when I got an idea I really liked. And if I finished it and if people liked it I'd attempt to get it ready for publishing, and if not, I could just enjoy my escapism hobby. Writing became a lot easier when I wrote for myself and not for the masses. It also made me realise I really did enjoy writing and wasn't just doing it to get published. If an oracle told you, you'll never publish anything ever, fact. Would you still want to write? If the answer is yes, this is a hobby for you with possible career potential.

    Reading is important of course. But what is important is what you've read and not how much. Are you well versed in the genre you want to write? Have you read good material? Plus, reading a book isn't going to help as much as then studying that book. It worked even full of cliches, why? These characters were loved, why? How did the author make them loved by an audience? How did the author create voice, tone? How was theme handled and how was it explored? This villain was one the audience loved to hate, this other villain in this other book fell flat with the audience - why? Study the works of the great and why they worked. Even reading bad books can teach you what not to do.

    Make sure you write everyday. Show it to others who will be positive yet informative. Begin learning your craft.
     
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  16. Kehlida

    Kehlida Member

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    Ask yourself, why do you write and who is it for? Ask yourself, why do you want to become a respected author? How do you think you'd feel about yourself in the future if you quit right now?

    You can write without passion- chasing money and fame, but even the most driven writers suffer. It is not glamorous. Most writers will not be paid for their work or earn enough to consider it a side job. Most authors will be lost in the vast sea of struggling authors. Sound depressing? It absolutely can be, but if you truly love writing you will find something about the process is worthwhile. Would you keep writing if you knew you wouldn't see a cent for it?

    Just about anyone can write, but only a handful will be writers by choice and fewer will become writers out of leisure. For me, it's this glowing pride when I see something I've completed. It's this anxiety-inducing vulnerability when I push myself to show off my work- not just to critics or target audience, but to open up to my friends and family. I sent my work to select family and friends like I'm a child who wants their drawing hung on the fridge. It's one of the last things I let love interests see. It's this neat thing I've written that reflects pieces of me and my feelings, it's a sense of therapy... I turn my joy and misery into art. And deep down I know it's beautiful to someone, even when it's not "perfect."

    " The worst thing you write is better than the best thing you didn't write." - Sol Saks

    ~ Extended personal story ~
    I remember being nine, I finished a book about my stuffed animal's adventures. At twelve, I put tens of thousands of words into another story. I still have part of it on my computer, and I look back and see errors, plot holes, and an absolute mess, but I remember the intent and how freely I typed it all out. I revised it to the best of my ability too. It became a bi-monthly event for me to read my latest chapters to my closest family. I openly admit to writing "Moose People" because it reminds me of how it felt to write solely for my enjoyment and to empty my mind- before society got to me, before I no longer felt "good enough" and before rigid form poisoned my curiosity. Writing's something I tend to pick up, get overwhelmed by, quit and return to, because I know deep down it's the one thing I feel passion for. I am a writer at heart.
     
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  17. alw86

    alw86 Active Member

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    You say you're writing flash fiction, I can't help but wonder if that's the nest thing to start with, unless you're naturally inclined that way? Just because it's short doesn't mean it's easy, in fact IMO the super pared down length makes it more demanding because you have less flexibility to get things wrong.

    I'm the last person to insist that everyone must start with short stories, but there's a reason many people do. Giving yourself a wordcount of 5-20k gives you enough room to 'waste words' playing with plot, character, pacing and atmosphere, without the structural demands or sheer overwhelming size of a full length novel.

    Unless you have a particularly strong affinity for flash fiction, I would strongly recommend giving more conventional short story length a try.
     
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  18. GraceLikePain

    GraceLikePain Senior Member

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    Write. Write a lot. Then keep writing.

    There's really no trick to getting good at writing. You just have to do it, and then become aware of your flaws afterward.

    Emphasis on afterward. The best thing about starting writing as a teenager is that you think you're so great, and even though you're not, your naive arrogance will keep you going. But in case you're not a teenager, just focus on something you really, really, really want to write. Write it as well as you can, and the desire of the idea will keep you going.

    Or you could just hang out in the fanfiction realm until you feel good about yourself, I dunno. If you have strong storytelling principles -- moral principles where you don't write slash and you try to maintain the essence of the characters from the source -- you'll rise above the fray fairly easily. Since fanfiction is generally about people's desires, it has a tendency to be incredibly indulgent, and lower quality as a result. So it's a great place to get practice without feeling inadequate.
     
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  19. alw86

    alw86 Active Member

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    Alternative viewpoint on this: Like a lot of folks, I cut my teeth on fanfic as a teenager, and honestly I wouldn't have got half as much out of it from a learning to write perspective if I'd stuck rigidly to the source material. Fanfic is useful because it comes with a set of predetermined characteristics, which are useful not just to teach you to write consistently within them, but because once you've mastered that you can start taking them apart one at a time to see what happens. You need world-building practice? The gang find a portal. You need help building interpersonal relationships? Enemies to friends/lovers, crossovers. You need to understand how past events intersect with the character's innate traits to create the person they are now? Remove that one person the character was close to growing up and trace their development to the present time and see who they are now.

    But then the greatest piece of fanfic I ever read back then was an AU slash piece in which one character was a department store mannequin who was in love with the other character, an employee responsible for dressing him. So what do I know. ;)
     
    Last edited: Feb 1, 2021
  20. GraceLikePain

    GraceLikePain Senior Member

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    You know NOTHING!

    Kidding, kidding.

    But seriously, no, the entire point to adapting a work is to retain the characters. Characters are the most important part of any story, and by maintaining strictly their natures, you not only learn to respect other people's characters (which is helpful both in betas and adapting other peoples' work professionally), but you learn to respect your own. Characters change only when their circumstances allow them to, and by understanding why a character is written a certain way, you develop a deeper understanding of writing. Changing setting is fine, changing plot is fine, but characters? Nope. If you're going to change the nature of the characters (changing occupation is generally fine so long as it's not OOC), then you might as well just write your own characters and leave other peoples' alone. Because you will never rise above the fray if you don't understand that characters are an expression of author intent.

    Slash is garbage. Just gonna say it. People might enjoy it, but it's indulgence and nothing more.
     
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  21. IHaveNoName

    IHaveNoName Senior Member Community Volunteer

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    This is what got me too. I started writing when I was in third grade; by the time I was in college, I'd convinced myself that I'd never be good enough and I quit. Then along came this damned idea that wouldn't let me go - I'd scribble down some notes, set it aside for a few years, then it would rear its ugly head again. A few years ago, that damned idea got its claws in deep, so I joined this forum and found out about e-publishing. You don't have to mess with agents and contracts and editors - it's almost just writing for yourself, with no pressure. That's what I wanted to do, and that's what got me back into it.

    I'm still working on that damned idea. It's ballooned into a huge project, but I will finish it, and I will post it.
     
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  22. alw86

    alw86 Active Member

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    You say pure indulgence like that's a bad thing. ;) Personally I would argue that most fiction, fan or otherwise, is 'pure indulgence" one way or another, and that there's nothing wrong with that.

    I'm not going to get into a debate about this. You obviously have very firm opinions on the subject and you are absolute entitled to them. My purpose in responding was just to show OP, as a new writer, that that opinion is not universal. They should feel free to explore a new medium based on how it works for them, not for you or for me.

    Personally, fanfic stopped interesting me as both a reader and a writer many years ago. Nevertheless, if I could make even one person care enough about my original characters to devote time to writing bizarre AU slash of them, I would legitimately consider it my crowning achievement as an author.
     
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  23. GraceLikePain

    GraceLikePain Senior Member

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    If that's what you want, sure, but it isn't generally quality writing. I was just talking about how having principles makes people better writers than they would otherwise be. People can say slash fanfiction is fun, but it's still drivel. And no, "pure indulgence" is not all writing -- indulgence is when the author does what they want without caring about things making sense or being quality, they're just doing it because they have an impulse.

    OP asked about becoming better, I answered. Playing the bongos with your feet is funny, but it's not as impressive as a master pianist.
     
  24. SlayerC79

    SlayerC79 Banned

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    You just have to face the possibility that you'll never not think of your work as crap.

    I've been writing for about 20 years. Been published a few dozen times in local and national periodicals, but I still cringe when I put words to paper. I literally have to force myself to proof-read. I even balk at re-reading emails that I've written.

    The best advice that I've heard is "Give yourself permission to fail". It's sagely advice, but very difficult to take on board.

    If you look at it from a certain vantage point, the seering self-criticism and self-loathing can be looked at as a positive.

    Never being happy, or even satisfied, with your writing can spur you on and motivate you to improve and grow as a writer.

    I'm not saying that everyone reacts the same way when faced with self-doubt, I'm positive that self-doubt has put paid to many a-writers' careers even before they had begun.

    All you can do is write, give yourself permission to fail and try to improve.
     
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  25. zoupskim

    zoupskim Contributor Contributor

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    Hold on bro, broette. Bowsette. YOU

    What, specifically, are you struggling with when you write?

    Take me; I struggle with transitions in narrative pacing. Like "bla bla" dialog tag, close descriptions of a finger in a nose then PARAGRAPH BREAK Long flowy sentence showing the passage of time within the narrative despite the fact that I was just describing a character was picking their nose.

    That's MY problem, specifically. What is YOUR specific problem?
     

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