Things I Do When I Feel Like Crap About My Writing

Things I do when I feel like crap about my writing

This is mostly for me but I thought I’d share in case it helps someone else:

Tell yourself it doesn’t have to be that good. Give yourself permission to suck. - My number one thing that has helped me push past and keep writing. This is not to say that you actually suck. It’s just surprising how much writing I do where, while creating the draft, I’m like, “Fine, this will just suck, whatever, I’m just gonna do it anyway” and then I come back to it and think, “oh, huh, that’s not as shitty as I expected it to be.” You have no idea how good it is or isn’t; don’t trust yourself about this particular thing.

Remind yourself the words will come back. - If you really need a break, or you took a break and you’re having trouble getting back into it, try not to stress it and just write and let the quality fluctuate naturally. It’s all good. See number one above: it’s okay if you think it’s not very good - you might be wrong about that.

Work on other parts of your life / fix underlying problems / clear out your TO DO list - this is what I’m doing right now. Looming anxiety affects your creativity; try and take care of other shit that’s been bothering you. (I really hate this one but it is helpful.)

Reach out to your beta(s) / a trusted friend, or pretend to reach out to them. Sometimes it helps immensely to have to explain your concepts to another person who has zero context. Even if you never send the e-mail draft explaining it, the act of trying to establish said context can be powerful. (Fun fact: In programming we call this Rubber Ducky-ing, i.e. explaining it to a Rubber Ducky.)

Do a different hobby - Drawing, photography, knitting, sculpting, exercising, watching TV, you name it. Do something totally unrelated, work a different part of your brain.

Give yourself some idle time, i.e. think about your writing but don’t write - I realized that, since my gym closed and I don’t have a morning commute, I had no time to just listen to music and let the movies of my plots play in my mind. That time is invaluable for working out transitions, character development, etc. You need more than 5 - 15 mins in the shower. Give yourself time to go on a walk, do a non-taxing hobby, ride a bus to somewhere, and just think abstractly without the need to slave over a thesaurus and obsessively check word counts. In short, work on your ideas and not your words.

Consume other non-fic media, particularly published books - Read things written in first person, read a new author, read poetry. Go to a museum, go down a rabbit hole on wikipedia… Get out of your box. Deconstruct how others do it. You don’t have to agree with everything an author/artist/director does to learn something from it.

Sometimes helpful but also double-edged swords:

Stop writing whatever is making you frustrated - Only you know if this is really what you need. Sometimes stopping is the right call, other times it’s pushing past and making yourself do it (see above re: giving yourself permission to suck.) Hard choice.

Research more - Sometimes you’ll have a breakthrough and sometimes this is just more frustrating.

Go back to your outline - Sometimes forcing yourself to write a detailed outline is awesome, sometimes it can be depressing. It can be both, actually. Use with care.

Look at fanart related to your story - This can literally get you through a story (like, seriously, I owe all the fanartists so many snacks and hot beverages of their choice), or it can derail you completely.

Go back to canon - You are probably already doing this so this may be a moot point, but occasionally you’ll see something you didn’t before.

coincé

Star-Buck'd Lovers

read it on the AO3 at https://ift.tt/330ryLX

by Dominae7

Another tedious working day at Starbucks for Yoongi and a nerve-wracking weekend ahead. To top it all, it rains as hell. Fucking fantastic…

Hopefully it can only get better than it started. Hopefully.

Words: 11820, Chapters: 1/1, Language: English

Fandoms: 방탄소년단 | Bangtan Boys | BTS

Rating: Teen And Up Audiences

Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply

Categories: M/M

Characters: Min Yoongi | Suga, Kim Seokjin | Jin, Jeon Jungkook, Park Jimin (BTS), Jung Hoseok | J-Hope, Kim Taehyung | V, Kim Namjoon | RM

Relationships: Jung Hoseok | J-Hope/Min Yoongi | Suga, Jeon Jungkook/Park Jimin, Kim Namjoon | RM/Kim Seokjin | Jin

Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Coffee Shops & Cafés, No Angst, can you believe it, Fluff and Humor, Attempt at Humor, at best, Side Pairs: Jikook and Namjin, Two Cents Romance, Falling In Love, Too Much Sugar In This Fic

read it on the AO3 at https://ift.tt/330ryLX

This is just horrendous!

On fans reporting other fans to censors in China

However, the worst instance of censorship [of Chinese fanworks] is that of the ongoing third wave. This censorship campaign relies on a large-scale, omnipresent reporting system. Many reports come from informants inside the community, especially antifans of a certain genre of writing, or even antifans of certain slash pairings. Using the power of governmental censorship to persecute people of a different fannish position has been a common practice since 2014, but it has reached new heights in the past year or so.

Zheng, Xiqing. 2019. “Survival and Migration Patterns of Chinese Online Media Fandoms.” Transformative Works and Cultures, no. 30. https://doi.org/10.3983/twc.2019.1805.

New moodboard for my latest fic on Ao3

やっぱりふわふわピンク髪の春ジミンさん好きだなあとか、やっぱり笑顔好きだなあとか…