Alright, alright, alright. Anthony Michael here. Real pleasure to be a part of this forum. I'm an actor/writer who is (finally) committing himself to the Stephen Adley Guirgis writing philosophy of "Sit Down. Stay Down." That is, having the professional mindset of diligently cranking out the pages. At 27-years-old, I'm finally coming to grips that I've been doing this writing thing entirely wrong. Most of my projects are unfinished, a byproduct of a self-destructive, perfectionist mentality that never got me past the halfway point for countless first drafts. So I'm rewiring my neural-pathways by allowing my first drafts to suck. Big time suck, in every way possible. By doing that, I've rediscovered the joy in writing again. I also decided that finding a community of other wordsmiths would do wonders for accountability--in addition to learning more about the craft. Anywho, that's all she wrote in a nutshell. Pleasure to meet y'all.
Sup, fellow millenial. good to know i'm not the only one in this boat. it's unreal how liberating it is to give yourself permission to write a bunch of stuff that isn't good. i've lost count of the number of times that i've recoiled from writing something because i hate how it sounds, and now i'm working to train myself to say "nothing is wrong here. everything is fine". the act of writing something imperfect is surprisingly scary and yet fun in a rebellious kind of way. best wishes; i've had a lot of fun tooling around in these forums, and there are a lot of really helpful people. hopefully you'll find inspiration and a handful of ideas along the way!
Howdy. What works for me is to commit to writing at least three hours a day. If i'm feeling stuck, i do rewrites. I take weekends off. And yes, some stuff comes out in very rough form when i first start a new story. Also, what helps is sharing my woes and successes in this forum. So welcome to one of the biggest commitments in your life.
I think that mindset is extremely helpful, I can relate, sometimes I've had an awesome idea with so many cool possibilities in my head only to have almost utter nonsense come out on the page, thats an awesome insight to allow yourself to be crappy. I'm new here too, so good luck, nice to meet you and hopefully we'll talk in the future.
