I find writing about stuff on an internet forum about writing helps a lot to get me used to typing a lot.
I've written and finished over ten novels (all over 100,000 words) and I never outlined one of them. I don't know what my next sentence is, never mind what's coming one hundred pages down the line. Outlines stifle my creativity. Where's the fun in writing if you know what's going to happen? Allow yourself some liberty and write without the crippling inhibition of an outline.
I like the idea of just writing, nonstop, just making it up as you go, as a way to break free of internal inhibitions. I'm reminded of the scene from "Dead Poet's Society" when Keating covers the eyes of the shy student and makes him just shout out images in his head from a photo of Walt Whitman hanging on the wall.
I agree with everything that has been said by others, but one reason can also be that the idea you have formed in your mind is not sufficient enough to begin writing. In my own experience the process of writing actually involves spending more time thinking than actual writing. My process is this: a vague idea and chars are formed, I write one or two sentences, then based on the lines I wrote I spend hours developing the chars/scene in my mind, once I have done that sentences comes easily. You can try that.
Submit the stuff. If it gets published--great. Even so, yes you might look back on it twenty years from now and think it's crap. It might not be, but you might have changed as a writer and person, or maybe it will be crap in your opinion. But perfection is almost never achieved. Accept that. With writing, there is no real consensus on what is perfection either. So submit if you feel it is good enough. The only way to grow is to get out of your comfort zone.
You said you have an idea and characters, but do you have a plot when you try to start? By idea do you mean plot or premise? I get lots of ideas about situations or settings, and about characters, etc. But unless I can think of a good conflict to put them in that I care to write about I have nothing.
You're published... and that's already amazing! As another young writer (only a year off from you haha...!) I can say, I don't know how long you've been writing for, but look at stuff you produced when you first started out. Unless you are an absolute genius and perfected your technique from Day 2, you will think it's of a lesser quality than what you (albeit slowly) produce now. When I read back over a freshly-composed page and feel like the dog's dinner, I pull out a MS I completed when I was fourteen. One-sided characterisation, despicable grammar and non-existent plot seem painfully obvious now, but back then, I literally thought it was wonderful, so wonderful in fact to ship it off to Scholastic and (oh my DAYS!) Oxford University Press for consideration... needless to say I'm not an embittered old celeb now... but the funny thing is, I can't remember polishing it that much. Yes I sat down every night and read through it, changing words here and there, but I cannot remember a point when even my fourteen year-old self looked at the mess and envisioned a floating Nobel Prize for Literature... My rather rambling point is, just don't perfect. Send in an imperfect submission, something you're pleased with but still think needs more work, and see what happens/absorb critique. It sounds like you may have a great reputation already but fortunately, we're young enough for as many comebacks as we need
Perfectionism is a curse I suffer from as well. In all my creative endevours I have tended to let it get the better of me. With painting and music at least, I let myself finish before tearing it to shreds and starting again, seldom on the same thing, though. With writing, I find it hard to endure the perfectionist's voice. All I can say, as a sufferer, is to differentiate between perfectionism for your own sake, and perfectionism due to what you perceive are others' expectations. Screw them. You will probably never meet them, and half of them are just grazers, suffering the same doubts that they put on others, intentionally or not. If you can seperate those, you can transform your perfectionism for self into a good work ethic and a willingness to go the extra mile to achieve what you want. That's what I'm forcing myself to do, but it's hard. What's that thing about the multiple "I"s? There's the one that is YOU, but there is also the one that you THINK others SEE as you. There is also the one that you wish to PROJECT to others. Those last two are dengerous to creativity. The first one says, "they'll all hate it!", the other one says, "Oh that's too showing too much of me!".
I'm new here and just feeling my way around but wanted to chime in the writer's block thing. Joan Dempsey, who created the program Literary Living with wonderful eBooks, states in her first book "How to Stay at the Writing Desk..." that writer's block is often a symptom of our fears about our writing. That by not writing we are guarding ourselves against failure--we can assuage our pain with the knowledge that nothing ventured, nothing lost. But this is silly. She offers some really great tools for breaking through this. And yes, we are always writers, we must only do the work, get the words on the paper, so to speak.
Please, I need some bite-sized shots of kicking up the ass here... I have the Block (although I don't agree with that term anymore), or rather, specifically, I'm afflicted by these same ol' problems trying to write my novel: Am distracted as heck, by Facebook, and this site (sorry). Managed to switch off the TV, though. I don't think what I write is good enough. The words jar in my head, always slumping out with the sneaking suspicion there are better ones in there, and when I look over what I've managed to cobble together I cannot imagine anyone being delighted at reading it, and now that includes myself. When I was nine I wrote purely for myself - now I'm caught up in starry-eyed visions of publication, and I can't help it, I can't write thinking like that! Also, I am sorely tempted to move onto another project. I have at least a dozen on the go, but, understandably, none of them get finished because of this reason, I always switch when I get stuck then rewrite all I've done. Do you guys have any mantras, any bite size pieces of advice, preferably very harsh, so I can repeat them over and over and hopefully get this done? I hate the feeling I'm losing faith in my worlds, but they're just not fun to write anymore :/
Hmm... I don't actually think a kick up the rear will be the best thing to do given your circumstances. If you're writing for publication, don't write out of obligation because it will likely come out in your work. If you want to put the water back on the boil, try some short writing exercises and alter them to make them relevant to what you're writing. Spontaneous scenarios and prompts are a good way to get an idea of characters and descriptive prompts are a good way to envisage environments. Take a look at the Writer's Digest for a few possibilities. My personal mantra isn't PG rated, so I'm afraid I can't share =P
Download a free, full-screen text editor. WriteMonkey is good for Windows. I like Pyroom for Linux. You cannot see any other part of your computer screen, nor can you simply switch windows with your mouse. You need to use key strokes (CTRL-W in Pyroom for example) to exit the text editor and look at any other window on your computer. I use it a lot because I also tend to get distracted online, and when I'm using one of those editors I don't see any IMs that come through, no email, nothing. Just the screen I am typing on.
Accept that you -don't- write good enough all the time. Thats why you practice. No musician, writer or athlete is at their top of their game all the time, and it is okey to even suck at times. That is why you practice.
Deadlines helps. Try setting yourself imaginary deadlines/temporary goals... got to finish this chapter in a week, 10 days something like that.
The 3 am epiphany and other guides have great ideas and information in both. These can help you with your plot/characters.. and in general the craft behind your writing. These for me have helped improve my ideas about my own writing. I no longer feel I'm a horrible writer, I just realize how much work I need to do to get to the point where I want to be. If your procrastinating because your stuck.. read other peoples work, it can give you insight into what problems your having. Get other people to read your writing as well as it can help too, and by other people I don't mean friends, family, or co-workers. As much as they love us most of them can't really give good advice on what we are trying to do. Give yourself a strict writing space, and time frame. If your distracted at your computer.. Don't use it. Go back to the old pen and paper, or just unplug your net connection. Limit your writing time between one and three hours, either working on what your stuck on or some of the other writing exercises you find. There are two types of writing, hard writing like editing and actually writing, and soft which are the times during your day when you see random things or just think about your project with out actually writing. But mostly the best advice I can give.. just write and don't be hard on yourself. If you love it you can't go wrong.. and so what if it needs a little work? That's half the fun.
self-control is just as vital a requirement for writers as talent and skill... no one can give you that and there are no tips for how to aquire it... you must make yourself have it, period!
The first million words of writing is apprenticeship work. Some of the time, as you write, you will feel that the story is clunky, the characters unrealistic, the grammar poor, the sentences blocky and unprofessional. That's okay. Just keep writing, and when you finish one project, start working on another one. If the Internet is a problem, if you keep getting distracted with small things, then set up a writing schedule for yourself. If you have evenings free, set aside a block of time (an hour, two hours, whatever) for writing and writing only. Then stick to the schedule. The only way to be a writer is to write. If you don't write, not only will you never finish anything (dooming your characters to die when you do) but you will never get in the necessary practice that will make you a better writer. So find a way to write, and keep going despite whatever flaws you find in your work.
A dozen projects is too many by any method of counting. I would pick one or two that you feel are the most promising right now, and put the rest "in a box" and keep them there until you feel it's right to pull one out. Misdirection is common, but you still have to resist it.
The the X isn't anything naughty this time. Just a general number. We all have out moments of hesitation and I noticed this often happens at the specific breaking points, varying between individuals. After how many page or how long into the story do you have some sort of writing crisis? A block, a need to rewrite everything, a peak in feeling that what you written so far is crap, or whatever it might be. Me I have a 15 pages crisis. After 15 pages I want to redo something about what i written so far, maybw a change of POV, maybe a change in the setting, maybe starting the story at a different point.
I dont really have a number of pages or word count. I just wake up the next day, read what i have written the day before and than start editing, rather then writing new material. Has to be in the top 5 crimes of writing. But i can't help myself. I am getting better though. Much better actually.
Well, I usually have two crisis. First is right at the beginning, worrying if have right POV or setting or beginining doesn't feel right. This crises happens often and unfortunatley is unavoidable The second crisis I hit around thirtytnth page. It's when I realize that I've written a lot, and then start wondering is it good enough. Perhaps I should rewrite some chapters, or I just have too many info dumps and stuff like that. After that, there's no real crisis. By then, I'm happy with the result and want to finish writing as soon as possible so I could edit everything
Hmm, when i write i don't plan. I mean sometimes i have an idea where i want it to go, but otherwise i just type and it goes where it wants to go (As long as i mark of my checkpoints). Which is probably why i don't have issues with settings, POV and so fourth. It's just my lack of knowledge in writing that kills me and forces me to edit. i think.
I dont plan either. But still i have a whole bunch of 15 pages documents on every harddrive i owned. I do get past the 15 pages point too, but I realized but when i do abandon a project its at 15 pages. It might be because i gotten so far that I can see thinks finding its shape, but not gotten dedicated to it yet, not sure it optimal, still willing to start over and see if I can tweak the concept a little.
I am not nearly disciplined enough yet to work out what % or how many pages in I have my myriad crises, they just tend to surprise me :/ In one WiP I didn't outline beforehand, I wrote about 60,000 words and realised I had only just hit the middle, that triggered a crisis of overcompensation... another novel I bombed through and it ended up over one hundred and seventy thousand words... that triggered a crisis of how-on-earth-do-I-edit-this-itis... recently I'm struggling in my sixth chapter, having the nothing-I-ever-write-will-be-good-enough-crisis... and then there's the extra bonus crisis of knowing you're a rubbish undisciplined non-writer for worrying about your other crises and not getting on with it... ...I'm expecting the next crisis to be when I get to 1000 posts on this forum and have a crisis of thinking just how much of my novel all those words could have made...
