Writers Egyptian Tomb

[Quiver]

Like writers block, but, like... worse. Way worse.

I want to write, at least in the most abstract sense. I have some ideas I think would make for kind of neat stories (cosmetic magic, naval fantasy, chiromancy), as well as a couple of fan fiction projects rattling in my grain.

The problem is, when I try to actually write... I can't. I get stuck; whenever I do manage to actually get words on page. They never sound right, and the whole thing doesn't work quite the way I was hoping it would in my head.

Any advice on overcoming this?

[A Joe in the Bush]

Just write nonstop for an hour, don't even look up from the Keyboard. Don't let yourself stop. After the hour is up, go back and edit for an Hour. Or make a google doc, share it with someone, and both of you write. I did that with a friend, both of us being different characters, and it went much smoother.

[Gamma Fiend]

I feel like this is where I may actually be able to be of help! For I suffer from the same exact problem.

And honestly, I really think this is the problem that a majority of people who try writing face at first. As horrible as it sounds, I have really found only one possible solution.... and that's just to write. It will be bad at first. You will not like what you put on the page.

But don't delete it. Keep going, keep adding to it. Keep thinking about, and be aware of what you don't like about it! So you know what to avoid/watch out for as you keep writing!

And I actually have personally yet to actually follow completely through with this advice, but I really think this is the only real solution. Just keep writing until you actually feel comfortable with it.

Hope that helps! And Good Luck!

[Lightsworn Panda]

Get drunk, start writing. Become sober, look at your writing, edit it, and pick out good ideas. Apparently, that's how ancient Chinese writers got their poems and novels. I haven't tried it yet. Sounds fun.

[Baine]

Or, If you're Mormon like BS, stay up until you're an incoherent rambler and then write!

[A Joe in the Bush]

Fall asleep at your Computer, with Word up and running. As soon as you wake up, start writing hat ever you were dreaming about.

[Swimmingly]

Listen to a song you've never heard before, preferably one without words, and write as fast as you can for the duration of the song. Expand on your ideas afterwards.

[Lightsworn Panda]

Heh. Look at your reputation level and that post, Swim.

[Endurant Archivist]

@Quiver how long have you been writing?

 

Personally, I struggled with this in my first book. I had to complete the whole book, then look back and see, "This didn't work, this did, this didn't" judging it just like I do with other authors. But I had to finish it, even though it didn't "work" how I wanted it to. At all. It was pretty horrible, actually.

 

The act of finishing the work let me see how my ideas got out of my head in a complete way. As an artist too, it's similar (for me) to sketching something on paper, but it doesn't work and you drop it in frustration. Yet you never add shadows so it looks false–filling out the rest of the picture does wonders for how real it looks. When I wrote my second novella, the ideas flowed much, much better, filling out the rough structure I had in my head. By my third, the ideas are coming out much closer to how I want them to, which is exciting to see.

 

So all that to say, my ideas were either too broad to be captured in a moment of writing or I lacked the experience needed to get them into a string of words that captured them. The first you can resolve by just narrowing down the concept to be specific and writable. The second is something that can only be fixed by–you guessed it–writing! Good job @Gamma Fiend for pointing that out.

 

Hope this helps, keep us updated with how it goes. 

 

@The Only Joe I've never heard of writing with a friend actively. It sounds fun, what kind of stories have you guys created that way?

[Gamma Fiend]

And like Jain pointed out above... one of Ernest Hemmingway's most famous quotes...

Write drunk, edit sober

[Delightful]

I have two opposing suggestions that basically boil down to the same thing.

 

1)Try NaNoWriMo or something that will force you to write quantity over quality. Then at least you can say "hey, I actually finished something!" no matter how bad that something may be, it can really boost your confidence. And the quality doesn't matter because, as you said, you're not happy with it anyway. Then, either go back and edit it, or write something else completely and just keep going and it'll get better as your practise. And I'll just throw in a quote I saw recently "Every first draft is perfect because all it has to do is exist." Quality on draft one doesn't matter so much, it's the editing and rewriting that brings the quality.

 

2) Alternatiely, try something shorter first, so you're dealing with less concepts, less characters, less different emotions etc. so it's not a massive overwhelming story. Write a short, simple story, and then go back and edit and edit and edit again until you're comfortable with it. Each time you edit, pick one thing to fix, like making the dialogue or the descriptions better, or fixing the logic and sequence of the plot etc. But write something first so that you have something to work with.

 

You could also try something like typetrigger.com which gives you a short writing prompt which you have 300 words to write about. It doesn't have to be good or make sense or anything, but it's a useful way to make yourself write at least in  short bursts that can help get creative momentum going.

 

 

[Swimmingly]

Heh. Look at your reputation level and that post, Swim.

I don't get it?

[Delightful]

I don't get it?

I'm guessing he was referring to you talking about songs =Lightsong which matches Taracin Superstar?

[MozytheHealer]

There's this site called Write or Die and it's beautiful and motivating. Always remember that you can edit when you're done. 

[A Joe in the Bush]

@The Only Joe I've never heard of writing with a friend actively. It sounds fun, what kind of stories have you guys created that way?

 

Mostly, not very good stories. We just do it for fun.  We mainly do Short stories, where one of us is Team Evil. Half of the time when we write, it'm just a bunch of conversations. Neither of us are good at fight scenes.

[Endurant Archivist]

@The Only Joe it sounds like something my brother and I did as kids. We would both be characters in our imaginary world and then just talk through stories or worldbuilding. It was pretty crazy looking back at it, but we made progress. Fight scenes would be hard. 

 

It'd be a fun exercise to do here, maybe in Reading Excuses. Someone lay out a plot idea and pass out characters. Then people tell the story how they think the character would talk.

 

Anyone up for that? @Quiver it could be a good way to get some writing practice in!

[Sir Jerric]

It'd be a fun exercise to do here, maybe in Reading Excuses. Someone lay out a plot idea and pass out characters. Then people tell the story how they think the character would talk.

 

Anyone up for that? @Quiver it could be a good way to get some writing practice in!

That sounds a great deal like what goes on over in the Role-playing Forum, except with a plot idea and a pre-framed cast. Might be better to try it there. =)

From my own experience, I read a ton of fantasy, and always teased that I would eventually write novels of my own someday. But despite my breadth of experience in the genre, I would never make more than two pages before I would be at a complete loss for ideas.

I decided that what I was missing was a plot. I had world building down pat. I could design characters that I thought interesting. But all I ever seemed to have for plotting was everyday life, or big events that had no structure. I didn't know how to lead up, or build up.

I finally fixed this by metaphorically bashing my face against the grindstone. A raw, brute force approach to sculpting a plot. Writing Excuses had suggested borrowing from fairy tales, so I read about half of the Grimm's fairy tales, trying to find a plot framework that appealed to me. And once I had that, I had to fit it into the world and the characters. Or I had to fit characters and world building into the plot. Or maybe fit the plot onto the seven-point structure. Or the Hollywood Formula. Or the Hero's Journey.

The whole process was a huge trial-and-error mess. I must have put in fifty hours of mental labor trying to design a plot for that novella. And when I finally got one working well enough to start, I had to patch it after a single scene. And after the next one. And the next.

The novel still isn't finished a year later. The plot is still rickety. But over the past year, I've already pieced together ideas for four more plots, and it seems to get easier every time I try.

In summary, I'm saying about the same as several people before me. Write. Even if it hurts. Even when its awful. Until you work through it, your problem will still be there. So pick a tool or two, and chip that writer's block away, word by word. If the progress isn't going well, change tools and compare. Find the ones that fit you. And write.

And by the way, Quiver, I thought your Paladin of the Sea bit had some excellent world building and character. Come back and share some more. =)

[Quiver]

Haven't been replying here, which doesn't mean I haven't been reading. Thanks for your suggestions guys,, and I do intend on getting a reply to all of the stuff you've suggested... just trying to structure it with quotes and unquotes and so on is a little more time consuming than I thought it would be.

 

But... thanks. Honestly, this board is the reason I joined the forum to begin with. I've wanted to write since I was... nine or ten? not sure of what I wanted to write exactly, but in a curriculum that was annoyingly sports-focused, reading was the one thing that appealed to me, and creative writing assignments were my favorite.

 

The fact that I haven't ever managed to actually complete a piece of work since then has been... disheartening. I didn't start actually, actively trying to write until my teen years, which were mostly fan fiction (abandoned after a chapter or two) or some attempts at original fiction (likewise). 

 

As I say, I do think I have some ideas which, if nothing else, aren't terrible. But whenever it comes to actually writing about them, I always get these feeling like I'm polluting or not doing right by them. It probably doesn't help that I'm kind of a perfectionist, and I hate even the best things that I do.

[Swimmingly]

A good start might be to set out goals for your writing that have nothing to do with quality - you could say, "my goal is to finish this", or, " my goal is to write 2000 words every day for a week". Get to the point where you don't need to deliberate over things like structure and phrasing, so you can dive into the meat of the piece.

[Delightful]

There's this site called Write or Die and it's beautiful and motivating. Always remember that you can edit when you're done. 

Doesn't Write or Die start deleting words if you aren't writing fast enough?

 

 

As I say, I do think I have some ideas which, if nothing else, aren't terrible. But whenever it comes to actually writing about them, I always get these feeling like I'm polluting or not doing right by them. It probably doesn't help that I'm kind of a perfectionist, and I hate even the best things that I do.

As a fellow perfectionist and someone who also spent a lot of time writing endless chapter 1's, I totally get where you're coming from.

The hardest and most important thing you can possible do right now is give yourself permission to be bad. Seriously. Be okay with the fact that what you will write will be garbage, but you will write it anyway because you need the garbage before you can write anything decent.

 

 

It was actually NaNoWriMo that helped me the most on that, because the goal there that you can be a  perfectionist about is your wordcount in a particular timeframe. The words don't matter, terrible plot doesn't matter, just getting those words out and forcing yourself through the sheer quantity you have to write really helps with this.

 

(Just to clarify: NaNoWriMo = National Novel Writing Month, in which the goal is to complete a 50,000 word novel, FIRST DRAFT over the course of November, which amounts to 1337 words a day. That's the aim anyway. I am yet to get best 24,000 words in the month, and my first and only longer work I've finished, which began as a Naniwrimo novel,literally has about 5 different storylines and at least as many major changes to the characters as I wrote, but it taught me to just get the words and the story out. (I also haven't gone back to edit it yet because I don't know how to fix such a mess yet. But I moved on to writing other stuff that, I hope, is slowly improving).

 

If it makes it any easier to write badly, pick a topic that is undeniably a spoof. Write a fanfic about MLP taking over 17th Shard and fighting off spambots or something. Just something totally silly and fantastical that doesn't need any sort of logic or sense, just for fun and to get the writing going.

[Gamma Fiend]

Oh, and the one thing I had a friend say to me once that really helped put things in perspective:

We are basically comparing our starting, roughest material to all of our favorite author's finished products. Even if it happens at a subconscious level, we still do that. And that really messes with the whole process, because we know where where want to take it, and how we want it to look, but we're trying to make rapid, running strides when we're basically getting used to our baby steps.

^This advice above had really helped me a better view on everything and my writing, and I found I have become a lot less critical of what I'm writing since applying that way of looking at it.  Hope it helps here!

[Delightful]

Oh, and the one thing I had a friend say to me once that really helped put things in perspective:

We are basically comparing our starting, roughest material to all of our favorite author's finished products. Even if it happens at a subconscious level, we still do that. And that really messes with the whole process, because we know where where want to take it, and how we want it to look, but we're trying to make rapid, running strides when we're basically getting used to our baby steps.

^This advice above had really helped me a better view on everything and my writing, and I found I have become a lot less critical of what I'm writing since applying that way of looking at it.  Hope it helps here!

This is why it helps to look at something like Brandon's original WoK draft vs the final, or the original Wabreaker draft (I presume, I haven't read it), and also why I really want to buy Shadows Beneath.Or even just compare the quality of Elantris to Emperor's Soul.

Nothing like seeing bad first drafts of your favourite author to help you along.

Edited July 3, 2014 by Delightful

[Gamma Fiend]

This is why it helps to look at something like Brandon's original WoK draft vs the final, or the original Wabreaker draft (I presume, I haven't read it), and also why I really want to buy Shadows Beneath.Or even just compare the quality of Elantris to Emperor's Soul.

Nothing like seeing bad first drafts of your favourite author to help you along.

 

Well, actually.... I read White Sand Prime, and even still, that is some fantastic work! I know that wasn't his first, first writings. Just his first full length novel (I think?) But yeah, I still wouldn't compare my starting writings to some of Sanderson's early stuff. He's just a freakishly good writer. >.<

[Swimmingly]

Well, that goes without saying.

[MozytheHealer]

Doesn't Write or Die start deleting words if you aren't writing fast enough?

Only on Kamikaze Mode. You can have it merely make noise at you until you keep writing. Also, it's not about speed, it's about consistent writing. So, if you write slowly at a consistent pace, it'll be fine, but the minute you pause for too long, it'll start to get mad. Also, they have some new things which I haven't gotten to try yet, but it's also rewarding motivation now, as well as scary motivation. :{D 

 

(Write or Die is how I've won NaNoWriMo the last three years. It's wondrous.)