So I have been writing since… I can remember, let’s say at least 15 years. From short stories about all kinds of stuff to more fleshed out things, I just love expressing myself creatively, you get what I mean right?
So anyways, since I would say 3 years or so I couldn’t write anything. I really want to continue, but I just can’t get myself to do it. And I don’t want to force myself because maybe then it turns out to be just bad, you know?
Maybe it’s my personal situation that has changed, maybe it’s just something that keeps me from it… but I would like to know what you do of you experience a writer’s block!
BTW this is my first post on here since I just registered on here and I want to try leaving Reddit… just FYI
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Apologies for responding to an old thread, but I’m newly joined and excited to participate. :-)
Best advice I’ve heard for this is - Make a goal that you will write one sentence per day. And write that one sentence no matter what. No matter if you do think it’s bad.
The reasoning is - some days you will just sit down and write one sentence, and that’s fine. But other days you’ll find that sentence turns into a paragraph, or a page, or five pages. But if you never sit down to write that one sentence, you never give the chance for those other days to happen.
That advice came from B. Dave Walters from the podcast “Writing about Dragons and Shit” - which is my second bit of advice to you - find a writing podcast you like and listen to it regularly.
I’m on my third pass through the back catalog of “Writing Excuses”, but there’s a few I listen to. I get motivation, inspiration, and education from them and I try to listen to at least one episode of one writing related podcast daily. It keeps me thinking about my story and usually makes me daydream about how something they are discussing would work in my story.
And I don’t want to force myself because maybe then it turns out to be just bad, you know?
Also - and I say this as someone who is still a couple tens of thousands of words away from the end of my first draft - you are going to have to revise your draft when you are done no matter whether you think it came out bad or not. So don’t worry about that.
Another B. Dave Walters nugget: “The worst thing you write is better than the best thing you don’t write.” An awesome story that lives only in your head lives only in your head.
Hope this is helpful and good luck! I have a hard time getting started again when life gets in the way sometimes too.
And my apologies for replying so late, but that is a really good advice that I will surely try to follow. Thank you very much for those advices, it really speaks volumes to me to be honest. I will try my best and I hope you do too!
Really glad to have helped even a little. Best of luck to you! 😀
Hmm, I never have general writer’s block beyond being too tired/unfocused at the moment. If I have trouble with my main story, I have two side stories I am slowly developing, plus short stories set in the same world as my other stories, plus lore excerpts I can write for the world … yeah, I always have something to write about.
I guess I have enough confidence from feedback that my writing itself is decent enough quality, so I don’t suffer there. As for whether or not people like my work, well, I’ve got feedback there too. It’s not as popular as I would like, but I know at least a decent number of people enjoy it, and I really want to tell this story anyway, so I am going to continue.
That sounds great! So you would say that basically, the feedback gives you the “strength” (if you can call it that) to continue? And you don’t seem to be too focused on just one story, saying that you are working on multiple ones, but how do you keep track of everything, like knowing where exactly you left of, what’s the next big step and all that, you get what I mean?
I would say that it is closer to the feedback having given me the confidence that I don’t have to fight my doubts so much. But it is also feedback from a lifetime of experience, from having read novels for 40ish years and having been doing online, text-based roleplaying in both chat rooms and forums/play-by-post. I can compare my technical writing against the works I’ve read, and I can feel confident that my ability to write a character is at least up to average.
My story feedback initially came mostly from my wife, but I also took a chance and started writing a serial story on Royal Road (my story here ). I am currently approaching 900 followers, over two hundred of whom have marked it as a favorite, and despite some clearly trollish or hostile/anti-competitive 0.5 ratings, my story has remained about a 4.3, with 5.0 remaining my most common rating. So I have developed feedback that complete strangers like my story to keep reading 100+ chapters later.
Now, for keeping track of my stories: All three of my stories are taking place in the same world/setting, so a campaign website is useful (there’s tons of them out there, they offer different things at the free level and have different organization, pick the one best for you). This means the general details of my fantasy world are all in one place.
The stories themselves: I am writing very character-driven stories. I only need to know a few details about what the future holds for me to keep writing right now and develop as I go. So for each story I have a ‘notes’ file, and I reference that to keep track of what I have already done or what I have named certain characters etc. And I have organized the notes into relevant sections, such as all of the royal family that has been named being grouped together.
To get into the headspace of a particular story, I just reread the last chapter. I know where I am at, what people are doing, and I can move on. If there are multiple character perspectives and I need to focus on a character we haven’t seen for a few chapters, I go read the last chapter they were in.
I mostly focus on little steps, but I have certain external forces set to act at certain time periods, but those aren’t completely pre-determined. It’s closer to “when these characters have reached this point in their story or development, that’s when event X should happen.” and I don’t worry too much about the details of event X until I get close to the point where it’s going to happen.
My antagonists have developed from the backstories of my protagonists, which I started detailing after the story got going. I didn’t need to know the details of the antagonists because the story of my protags is about what they are doing, and the antagonists are in part responding to them. This is a bit of a script flip from the standard fantasy story where the protagonists are reacting to the actions of the antagonists.
Though I suppose it depends on how far back you want to go about who is reacting to whom. But for the purposes of what you are seeing in the written narrative, it’s the antagonists who are responding to the protagonists.
That was quite the ramble. Sorry. That last bit had me looking at my story in a new light, this script flip was not premeditated. XD
No worries, I actually enjoyed reading this much about your story and your, let’s say, journey so far. I mean, you get into detail which helps me quite a lot. Even tho my story is not as character-driven as yours, I would say there are still some very helpful tips in it! Even though your part with “how to get back into the story” is my main problem. My story tends to be very complicated on times. I have now boiled it down to basically two perspectives, the protagonist and the antagonist, but it’s still very convoluted when you meet all kinds of characters over a short amount of time. I did that on purpose though: my story takes place in a city where all hell breaks loose, so people are panicked, and they are running around, meeting dozens of other people. Some of them stick, but I wanted to bring that feeling of chaos and helplessness to the reader, so I don’t start slowly, you know. After a few pages, you are already in it, deep nose-dive into the chaos with no way of finding a way out. Sounds kinda weird now that I read it.
Yeah I guess I just have to get in the right state of mind to get back into my story. I worked on this for so long and I just wish it would be finished sometime soon haha
Depends on the day, really, but I usually do some combination of the following. (I mostly write non-fiction.)
- Read a bunch of different books
- Take notes as I’m writing, writing down any thoughts I have or anything that captures my interest (I do this for both fiction and non-fiction)
- Look back over my notes every now and then, looking for recurring themes or interesting links
- Schedule some time for writing and, when I sit down, copy a random note into a doc
- Add any relevant notes and move things around until I have the basic skeleton of something
Basically, I do a bunch of little things too, (a), stoke my curiosity and, (b), do as much as possible before I need to write anything.
I’m also a copywriter by trade and I do similar things when I’m stuck on a project. They mostly boil down to “If I can’t think of one idea, think of 20.” It’s much easier to aim for volume instead of quality (and edit for quality later).
So basically, you suggest to just write down whatever you can think of and later sort the … not so great stuff out haha? I mean sounds like an idea, but since my work is fiction, it’s hard to just write down everything when it has to make at least a little bit of sense inside the world that I try to create. Am I making any sense right now?
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Thank you very much for that! Yeah for me the problem is, my writer’s block has been “active” for so long and I really want to continue with my project and get other projects done as well. I want to make this my first published story, whether or not someone reads it, I don’t care, but I want to achieve that, you know haha. So yes, I will try what you said and just write, whatever comes to my mind haha
