I think there's a thread somewhere for helping overcome discouragement in writing but I can't find it. Anyway, I found this by John Steinbeck in his Travels with Charley: "When I face the desolate impossibility of writing five hundred pages a sick sense of failure falls on me and I know I can never do it. This happens every time. Then gradually I write one page and then another. One day's work is all I can permit myself to contemplate and I eliminate the possibility of ever finishing."
I have also heard that one can write a couple of hundred words a day, and you will have a novel within a year. 500 words a day makes for a 182k word novel. Half that and you'll have a 91k word novel. If you sit down and write, things will go faster than you imagine.
Dean Karnazes, the ultramarathoner (no I don't do marathons or recommend them) said something similar. He was asked about how he does it (he once ran over 250 miles with no stopping) and I thought he'd say something profound but he just said he looks forward at some landmark like some tree in the distance and thinks "If I can just get there..." and once he reaches that, he looks forward for a new goal. Probably BSing though.
I love Travels with Charley( I don't think I've met anyone who's read it ), and the quote feels true. Not thinking about the whole picture but focusing on tiny goals with no other thought in mind seems like the way to go. I don't have personal experience, though. Hopefully one day I have a solid reason to stand behind this Steinbeck quote!
Yes, but then there’s the editing… and the scrapping of 50k words because they don’t make any sense… and the re-writes…. I don’t know why people call me a pessimist.
A quote from my favourite author, Wilbur Smith, regarding writing; “Write for yourself, not for a perceived audience. If you do, you'll mostly fall flat on your face, because it's impossible to judge what people want. And you have to read. That's how you learn what is good writing and what is bad. Then the main thing is application. It's hard work.”
I find things I want to start writing about, or at times there are things suggested to me, and I start writing, for those things. If I plan much detail ahead it is hard to have my writing from my creativity conform to that. I just will write on, not with a number or time in mind, but generally not wanting to stop continually writing for what looks promising enough to continue trying with adding more to it. My writing often gets quite long that way, as I am adding more every so often, while actually I have a few works I alternate between while doing that. More than one thing interests me to start for writing, at overlapping times.
Travels with Charley is a wonderful book. It's also largely fiction, as an investigative reporter found out some years back when he tried to duplicate the trip. That shouldn't stop one from appreciating the book for what it is, though.
Kurt Vonnegut said that he didn't write for a perceived audience. He wrote for one person: his dead sister. He wrote what he thought would have pleased her had she survived. I sometimes think I'm writing for my dad, or for some other specific person, depending on the content. But I never write something that I've tried to tailor to some nebulous audience. That sort of pandering doesn't come naturally to me.
