Writing Things - Tumblr Posts
The biggest piece of advice I can give to writers like myself who struggle with losing motivation partway through a WIP, or not knowing how to start it off, is to write it for yourself.
I think many of us tend to subconsciously worry that what may be a good concept to us, may not be that good of a concept to our followers, or that the way we present said story won't be good enough.
So, to combat that, I've been writing all my stories as if I'm the only one who's ever going to read them, and It's helped immensely when it comes to reminding myself that writing should be fun! It shouldn't be a chore, or something you do because you feel like you have to. You shouldn't be obsessing on other people's opinions on your story, something that you've written because you enjoy doing it, even though I know so many of us do.
I think that's an important thing to remember.
you know that expression, "dance like no one is watching you?"
try writing like no one is going to read it
it's easier to let yourself go and just enjoy the process of creation when you aren't also playing 6 dimensional chess with your insecurities and anxieties
write because you have fun writing and if you never post it anywhere that's totally fine because you enjoyed your time with the process
Rehab for writing injuries
You’ve heard of “making writing a habit,” and you’ve tried, but the pressure to write fills you with horrible pain and dread. You spend all your time wishing you could write but somehow never writing. The “make it a habit” approach doesn’t work for you. But you still want to write, maybe even regularly. Is there nothing you can do?
Here is an alternative approach to try. A rehab program, as it were, for writers with a psychological “writing injury” that has destroyed their desire to write and replaced it with shame, anxiety and dread.
If you have a writing injury, you probably acquired it by being cruel to yourself, by internalizing some intensely critical voice or set of rules that crushes your will to write under the boot-heel of “you should.” “You should be writing better after all the years of experience you’ve had.” “You should be writing more hours a day, you’ll never get published at this rate.” “You should write more like [Hilton Als/Jeffrey Eugenides/Octavia Butler/Terry Pratchett/etc.].” “You should write faster/more/better/etc./etc.”
You know what, though? Fuck all that. Self-abuse may have featured heavily in the cool twentieth-century writer’s lifestyle, but we are going to treat ourselves differently. Because 1) it’s nicer, and 2) frankly, it gets better results. My plan here is to help you take the radical step of caring for yourself.
1) First of all: ask yourself why you aren’t writing.
Not with the goal of fixing the problem, but…just to understand. For a moment, dial down all of the “goddammit, why can’t I just write?” blaring in your head and be curious about yourself. Clearly, you have a reason for not writing. Humans don’t do anything for no reason. Try to discover what it is. And be compassionate; don’t reject anything you discover as “not a good enough excuse.” Your reasons are your reasons.
For me, writing was painful because I wanted it to solve all my problems. I wanted it to make me happy and whole. I hated myself and hoped writing would transform me into a totally different person. When it failed to do that, as it always did, I felt like shit.
Maybe writing hurts because you’ve loaded it with similarly unfair expectations. Or maybe you’re a victim of low expectations. Maybe people have told you you’re stupid or untalented or not fluent enough in the language you write in. Maybe writing has become associated with painful events in your life. Maybe you’ve just been forced to write so many times that you can no longer write without feeling like someone’s making you do it. Writing-related pain and anxiety can come from so many different places.
2) Once you have some idea of why you’re not writing…just sit with that.
Don’t go into problem-solving mode. Just nod to yourself and say, “yes, that’s a good reason. If I were me, I wouldn’t want to write either.” Have some sympathy for yourself and the pain you’re in.
3) Now…keep sitting with it. That’s it, for the moment. No clever solutions. Just sympathize. And, most importantly, grant yourself permission to not write, for a while.
It’s okay. You are good and valuable and worthy of love, even when you aren’t writing. There are still beautiful, true things inside of you.
Here’s the thing: it’s very hard for humans to do things if they don’t have permission not to do them. It’s especially hard if those things are also painful. We hate feeling trapped or compelled, and we hate having our feelings disregarded. It shuts us down in every possible way. You will feel more desire to write, therefore, if you believe you are free not to write, and if you believe it’s okay not to do what causes you pain.
(By the way: not having permission isn’t the same as knowing there will be negative consequences. “If I don’t write, I won’t make my deadline” is different from “I’m not allowed not to write, even if it hurts.” One is just awareness of cause and effect; the other is a kind of slavery.)
4) For at least a week, take an enforced vacation from writing, and from any demands that you write. During this time, you are not permitted to write or give yourself grief for not writing.
This may or may not be reverse psychology. But it’s more than that.
Think of it as a period of convalescence. You’re keeping your weight off an injury so it can heal, and what’s broken is your desire to write. Pitilessly forcing yourself to write when it’s painful, plus the shame you feel when you don’t write, is what broke that desire. So, for a week (or a month, or a year, or however long you need) tell yourself you are taking a doctor-prescribed break from writing.
This will feel scary for some folks. You might feel like you’re giving up. You might worry that this break from writing feels too good, that your desire to write might never return. All I can say is, I’ve been there. I’ve had all those fears and feelings. And the desire to write did return. But you gotta treat it like a tiny crocus shoot and not stomp on it the second it pokes its little head up. Like so:
5) Once you feel an itch to write again—once you start to chafe against the doctor’s orders—you can write a tiny bit. Only five or ten minutes a day.
That’s it. I’m serious: set a timer, and stop writing when the time’s up. No cheating. (Well…maybe you can take an extra minute to finish your thought, if necessary.)
Remember: these rules are not like the old rules, the ones that said, “you must write or you suck.” These rules are a form of self-care. You are not imposing a cruel, arbitrary law, you are being gentle with yourself. Not “easy” or “soft”—any Olympic athlete will tell you that hard exercise when you’ve got an injury is stupid and pointless, not tough or virtuous. If you need an excuse to take care of yourself, that’s it: if you’re injured, you can’t perform well, and aggravating the injury could take you out of the competition permanently.
For the first few days, all of the writing you do should be freewriting. Later, you can do some tiny writing exercises. Don’t jump into an old project you stalled out on. Think small and exploratory, not big and goal-oriented. And whatever you do, don’t judge the output. If you have to, don’t even read what you write. This is exercise, not performance; this is you stretching your atrophied writing muscles, not you trying to write something good. At this stage, it literally doesn’t matter what you write, as long as you generate words. (Frankly, it would be kind of weird and unfair if your writing at this point was good.)
6) After a week, you can increase your time limit if you want. But only a little!
Spend a week limiting yourself to, say, twenty minutes a day instead of ten. When in doubt, set your limit for less than you think you’ll need. You want to end each writing session feeling like you could keep going, not like you’re crawling across the finish line.
Should you write every day? That’s up to you. Some people will find it helpful to put writing on their calendar at the same time each day. Others will be horribly stifled by that. You get to decide when and how often you write, but two things: 1) think about what you, personally, need when you make that decision, and 2) allow that decision to be flexible.
Remember, the only rule is, don’t go over your daily limit. You always have permission to write less.
And keep checking in with yourself. Remember how this program began? If something hurts, if your brain is sending you “I don’t wanna” signals, respect them. Investigate them, find out what their deal is. You might decide to (gently) encourage yourself to write in spite of them, but don’t ignore your pain. You are an athlete, and athletes listen to their bodies, especially when they’re recovering from an injury. If writing feels shitty one day, give yourself a reward for doing it. If working on a particular project ties your brain in knots, do a little freewriting to loosen up. And always be willing to take a break. You always have permission not to write.
7) Slowly increase your limit over time, but always have a limit.
And when you’re not writing, you’re not writing. You don’t get to berate yourself for not writing. If you find yourself regularly blazing past your limit, then increase your limit, but don’t set large aspirational limits in an effort to make yourself write more. In fact, be ready to adjust your limit lower.
When it comes to mental labor, after all, more is not always better. Apparently, the average human brain can only concentrate for about 45 minutes at a time, and it only has about four or so high-quality 45-minute sessions a day in it. That’s three hours. So if you set your daily limit for more than three hours, you may be working at reduced efficiency, when you’d be better off saving up your ideas and motivation for the next day. (Plus, health and other factors may in fact give you less than 3 good hours a day. That’s okay!)
Of course, if you’re a professional writer or a student, external pressures may force you to write when your brain is tired, but my point is more about attitude: constant work is not necessarily better work. So don’t make it into a moral ideal. We tend to think that working less is morally weak or wrong, and that’s bullshit. Taking care of yourself is practical. Pushing yourself too hard will just hurt you and your writing. Also, your feelings are real and they matter. If you ignore or abuse them, you’ll be like a runner trying to run on a broken ankle.
I know I’m going to get someone who says, “if you’re a pro, sometimes you gotta ignore your feelings and just get the work done!”
NO.
You can, of course, choose to work in spite of any pain you’re feeling. But ignore that pain at your peril. Instead, acknowledge the pain and be compassionate. Forgive yourself if pain slows you down. You are human, so don’t hold your feet to the fire for having human limitations. Maybe a deadline is forcing you to work anyway. But make yourself a cup of hot chocolate to get you through it, literally or metaphorically. Help yourself, don’t force yourself. If you’ve had a serious writing injury, that shift in attitude will make all the difference.
In short: treat yourself as someone whose feelings matter.
Try it out! And let me know how it goes!
Ask a question or send me feedback!
Since I started writing I really have searched some very odd things. Sometimes very random things that likely make me look very suspicious but at the same time I have learnt so many things that I never would even knew existed if I never started writing. Just to give a few examples, honestly quite a lot of random historical people whose name's I somehow thought of when naming my own characters. That alone has taken up much of my time just reading about these supposedly famous historical people.
Then on the complete other side in one of my later chapters I have one of my races who have made a city basically inside a volcano and I did an absurd amount of research into rocks, lava, magma, how volcanoes work, whether certain aspects would really make any kind of sense and many other odd things.
Though the worse things I have researched are most likely to do with necromancy, I mean anyone who has a load of searches looking up the dead/undead and trying to find out if there are any ancient necromancy books probably look a tad bit suspicious (Not that I secretly want to be a necromancer or anything).
But honestly I think it is all worth it, I really enjoy having the excuse to learn all of this stuff that without writing I never would have even considered.
Chapter 2: Exile is live on Tapas! Go give it read if you have time ^^
Sneak Peek below:
The third guard's eyes darkened. He reached into his jacket and Fabrian braced herself for a weapon to be pulled. Instead, it was a folded piece of beige paper. The guard handed it to her. “Never, not once, did you treat us as anything more than dirt. And yet here you are, talking to us like equals. I've never seen you so adept or perceptive.” He clenched his fist. “You hated us more than anything. All of us. So if we help you here, I want you to know that we were the ones who did so. Poor common folk who you'd snivel down on.” Fabrian frowned, what kind of woman was this queen? “It was wrong of me. I'll work the rest of my life to make sure that I won’t do it again.” The three guards observed her for a long time, before stepping back into the shadows of the building and disappearing into the crowd on the main walkway. Fabrian did not see them again, even as she left the city outside the castle walls, and their presence only disappeared once she reached the town borders.
Me every single day of my life. I'm happy that I'm getting close to finishing my first fantasy book but in my mind I am already multiple books ahead. My writing speed doesn't keep up with the speed that I can think of more story.
Even though I'm still on Book 1, I've been taking notes for the third book in the series that I'm writing even though it will likely be a few years or more before I even start it.
On my current chapter that I'm writing, my favourite race that I've made is currently fighting what is basically an underwater creature that can sort of do necromancy. I don't want to go into too many details or it will take up this entire post but anyone interested will see when they read my book. Even as I write this, I'm thinking much further ahead, but I suppose that's all part of being a writer and making sure things actually connect and make sense in the context of your world.
Me: Opens document with unfinished writing
Me: Yep, it still exists *closes document*
.
I know adverbs are Controversial, but “said softly” means something different than “whispered” and this is the hill I will die on.
Why theme is more important than plot
A super important lesson about writing that completely changed my mindset a few years ago, and I hope it helps you get there yourself if you’re stressing too much about the plot.
Worried about your plot not being good enough? It might be time to switch gears.
Any good story that stays with the reader will have compelling themes. You might not remember exactly what happens in the book, but you’ll remember how it made you feel. Wanna know why?
Because it had a strong theme, message or story question. So let’s break this down.
The theme → the true meaning of the story and its existence The plot → a device that delivers the theme in a digestible sequence of events
Do you know what your theme is? Do you know what question you’re asking with your project?
To figure this out, you need to understand why you chose this specific moment in this specific character’s life to tell the story.
What sort of change occurs in them?
What sort of message do they learn?
Why is this a pivotal moment in their life?
This is how you’ll learn what your story is truly about, underneath the plot. Think of your plot as the vehicle, and your story question/theme as the driver.
If your plot doesn’t carry the subtext of your theme, it’s going to have a hard time sticking in your reader’s head.
Also...
Did you know I have a Youtube channel? Subscribe and watch my latest videos through [the link here] or below!
DESCRIBING THE PHYSICAL ATTRIBUTES OF CHARACTERS:
Body
descriptors; ample, athletic, barrel-chested, beefy, blocky, bony, brawny, buff, burly, chubby, chiseled, coltish, curvy, fat, fit, herculean, hulking, lanky, lean, long, long-legged, lush, medium build, muscular, narrow, overweight, plump, pot-bellied, pudgy, round, skeletal, skinny, slender, slim, stocky, strong, stout, strong, taut, toned, wide.
Eyebrows
descriptors; bushy, dark, faint, furry, long, plucked, raised, seductive, shaved, short, sleek, sparse, thin, unruly.
shape; arched, diagonal, peaked, round, s-shaped, straight.
Ears
shape; attached lobe, broad lobe, narrow, pointed, round, square, sticking-out.
Eyes
colour; albino, blue (azure, baby blue, caribbean blue, cobalt, ice blue, light blue, midnight, ocean blue, sky blue, steel blue, storm blue,) brown (amber, dark brown, chestnut, chocolate, ebony, gold, hazel, honey, light brown, mocha, pale gold, sable, sepia, teakwood, topaz, whiskey,) gray (concrete gray, marble, misty gray, raincloud, satin gray, smoky, sterling, sugar gray), green (aquamarine, emerald, evergreen, forest green, jade green, leaf green, olive, moss green, sea green, teal, vale).
descriptors; bedroom, bright, cat-like, dull, glittering, red-rimmed, sharp, small, squinty, sunken, sparkling, teary.
positioning/shape; almond, close-set, cross, deep-set, downturned, heavy-lidded, hooded, monolid, round, slanted, upturned, wide-set.
Face
descriptors; angular, cat-like, hallow, sculpted, sharp, wolfish.
shape; chubby, diamond, heart-shaped, long, narrow, oblong, oval, rectangle, round, square, thin, triangle.
Facial Hair
beard; chin curtain, classic, circle, ducktail, dutch, french fork, garibaldi, goatee, hipster, neckbeard, old dutch, spade, stubble, verdi, winter.
clean-shaven
moustache; anchor, brush, english, fu manchu, handlebar, hooked, horseshoe, imperial, lampshade, mistletoe, pencil, toothbrush, walrus.
sideburns; chin strap, mutton chops.
Hair
colour; blonde (ash blonde, golden blonde, beige, honey, platinum blonde, reddish blonde, strawberry-blonde, sunflower blonde,) brown (amber, butterscotch, caramel, champagne, cool brown, golden brown, chocolate, cinnamon, mahogany,) red (apricot, auburn, copper, ginger, titain-haired,), black (expresso, inky-black, jet black, raven, soft black) grey (charcoal gray, salt-and-pepper, silver, steel gray,), white (bleached, snow-white).
descriptors; bedhead, dull, dry, fine, full, layered, limp, messy, neat, oily, shaggy, shinny, slick, smooth, spiky, tangled, thick, thin, thinning, tousled, wispy, wild, windblown.
length; ankle length, bald, buzzed, collar length, ear length, floor length, hip length, mid-back length, neck length, shaved, shoulder length, waist length.
type; beach waves, bushy, curly, frizzy, natural, permed, puffy, ringlets, spiral, straight, thick, thin, wavy.
Hands; calloused, clammy, delicate, elegant, large, plump, rough, small, smooth, square, sturdy, strong.
Fingernails; acrylic, bitten, chipped, curved, claw-like, dirty, fake, grimy, long, manicured, painted, peeling, pointed, ragged, short, uneven.
Fingers; arthritic, cold, elegant, fat, greasy, knobby, slender, stubby.
Lips/Mouth
colour (lipstick); brown (caramel, coffee, nude, nutmeg,) pink (deep rose, fuchsia, magenta, pale peach, raspberry, rose, ) purple (black cherry, plum, violet, wine,) red (deep red, ruby.)
descriptors; chapped, cracked, dry, full, glossy, lush, narrow, pierced, scabby, small, soft, split, swollen, thin, uneven, wide, wrinkled.
shape; bottom-heavy, bow-turned, cupid’s bow, downturned, oval, pouty, rosebud, sharp, top-heavy.
Nose
descriptors; broad, broken, crooked, dainty, droopy, hooked, long, narrow, pointed, raised, round, short, strong, stubby, thin, turned-up, wide.
shape; button, flared, grecian, hawk, roman.
Skin
descriptors; blemished, bruised, chalky, clear, dewy, dimpled, dirty, dry, flaky, flawless, freckled, glowing, hairy, itchy, lined, oily, pimply, rashy, rough, sagging, satiny, scarred, scratched, smooth, splotchy, spotted, tattooed, uneven, wrinkly.
complexion; black, bronzed, brown, dark, fair, ivory, light, medium, olive, pale, peach, porcelain, rosy, tan, white.
writer: ah, yes. a brand new idea, a brand new word document, a brand new creation.
word doc: |
writer: ok… if this is gonna work you gotta stop blinking at me like that
word doc:
writer: good
word doc: |
writer: ma'am, you had ONE JOB-
Me: I don't have commitment issues
Also me: *Gets a quarter of the way through any WIP and suddenly feels the intense urge to delete it all*
my new notebook is seducing me…
Me: happy cuz I’m almost done with the three chapters I want to update this weekend
My brain for not reason: I SEE A LOT OF MISTAKES HERE
help…
I lost it. I lost the idea I didn’t write down fast enough :/
I consider the correction of pronouns of my translator unfairly homophobic. It’s not a him/her type of story is him/him and her/her. bitch do better
writing is the most insane hobby it's like,
is it easy? no
is it fast? also no
but is it fun? well,
Writing is all fun and games until you have to describe a room.
Why is me a simple being (frustrated fic writer) who did no harm (just trying to write tbh) having to look into the horrors? (searching about medicine books)