Trouble getting started with projects

[SotaMursu]

So, I'm often showered with ideas and rough concepts in my mind, which I've started writing down a few years ago. My problem, however, is that whenever i start trying to actually put things into words, i seem to kind of think whatever i write is not worth wasting the ideas on, because of self-doubts from my inexperience as a writer, or whatever other excuse my mind comes up with.

First I tried to write up smaller "just for practice" -stories, but I couldn't really get myself motivated and/or find the inspiration when I'm forcing myself to write it.

I was thinking about just writing up rough, less detailed stories and keep filling it up with details once the story itself is "already written", working my way up kind of layer by layer instead of trying to write up things chronologically, but i thought it would be worth asking for advice from more experienced writers over here.

 

[spectre]

I've taken pieces of my story and updated it with a new layer. The only thing is depending on how long your away from your writing the pacing might get off at different points in the story but as far as your trouble with ideas, you can see hear and taste them in your head then you put them down in rough draft words and yeah it seems like a waste sometimes. You just need to really take the time to fully write out your idea and maybe flesh it out a little. You're doing the right thing in writing your ideas down.

Sent from my Alcatel_4060O using Tapatalk

 

[Chessie]

If you have a ton of ideas, that's going to work well for you. If you're new at this, it's important that you understand that you're going to improve drastically over the years, so don't think of your ideas as being wasted. Pick one. Just one. Flesh it out and start writing at a point that is comfortable for you (depending on whether you outline or not). Don't hold yourself back because you think you're wasting words. No such thing! Practice makes perfect, right? Practice, practice, practice. Write as much as you can as often as you can, even if it means setting up a schedule with 300 words a day for a while. Just set up something that works well with your schedule and devote yourself to not only writing, but learning the craft.

Read a lot of fiction, read a lot of craft books. Watch youtube videos on craft. Talk to other writers. Get your work looked at here or by a writing partner. Support is important too because it'll also help you grow. It seems impossible at first and like you're never going to get better, but all of those ideas you have--once you start writing them, you're going to get good!

So, don't be scared to mess up those ideas with crappy prose. Just do it. Writing and more writing is the only way to get better at this gig.

 

[DragonOfTheAerie]

So, I'm often showered with ideas and rough concepts in my mind, which I've started writing down a few years ago. My problem, however, is that whenever i start trying to actually put things into words, i seem to kind of think whatever i write is not worth wasting the ideas on, because of self-doubts from my inexperience as a writer, or whatever other excuse my mind comes up with.

First I tried to write up smaller "just for practice" -stories, but I couldn't really get myself motivated and/or find the inspiration when I'm forcing myself to write it.

I was thinking about just writing up rough, less detailed stories and keep filling it up with details once the story itself is "already written", working my way up kind of layer by layer instead of trying to write up things chronologically, but i thought it would be worth asking for advice from more experienced writers over here.

Your enemy is your fear. You're afraid to write your ideas because you're scared of messing them up, but when you try to write stories 'just for practice,' you can't invest yourself emotionally because you aren't passionate about these ideas. You don't care about them. The ideas you're afraid of messing up cause you fear and anxiety because you care about them.

I've been through this. i can tell you that really, the only thing to do is to be brave and mess up.

Whenever you put ideas on paper, you ALWAYS mess them up a little. They're never nearly as good as they seemed in your head...at least not in the first draft. They'll get better as you edit them, don't worry. But you have to dare to fail and screw up and fall short of your own expectations. It's really the only way out.

The only way you get to be a better writer is by writing, and by that I mean getting down and dirty with a story, wrestling with it, riding the waves of despair and euphoria, machete-ing your way through every writer's block you run nose-first into. You get bruises and calluses and scabs and scars, you'll come out stronger. if you don't write these stories you're afraid to write, you'll never get to the point of feeling ready to write them.

I don't think you ever feel ready to write a story you love. Even for experienced writers, it's usually not like "Oh yeah I got this." A lot of times it'll be more like "I'M DROWNING HALP." Every story you write will gut-punch you in a way you didn't expect no matter how many you've written and you have to figure out how to work your way through it. There is no end to learning, which implies that there's no end to problems. (There isn't.) So don't put things off until you feel ready, or feel good enough. You never are. You write and you learn from it.

And what is this idea about "wasting" ideas? You can always go back and rewrite them. If you don't execute them properly the first time around, there's always the second time, and the third time, and the fourth time. If a story is being especially tough, lay it aside a few years. You can always come back and your characters will still be there to greet you, albeit a little dusty.

 

[Chessie]

Laying a story aside for a few years because a story is difficult to write really doesn't do anything for a writer in the skills department. All that does is stunt growth and promote the idea of the "easy" button where you give up when things get tough and start fresh on something else. How many threads have we seen here lately of writers who are having difficulty finishing projects?

We learn the best by actually finishing what we start. Maneuvering through the tough spots of a manuscript is what pushes us to the next level. It's where we learn to write a middle, to write the climax, to write the end. Most writers start to flail in the middle. So if everytime we reach the middle of a story and give up to start something else because it gets hard, then how are we supposed to learn what tactics work/don't work in getting us through those tough spots? I'm sorry but I believe that's dangerous advice.

EDIT: I also wanted to mention that if a writer has publication goals in mind then learning how to finish projects is imperative. You can't do much with a handful of unfinished manuscripts, but a lot can be done with two crappily written ones.

 

[DragonOfTheAerie]

Laying a story aside for a few years because a story is difficult to write really doesn't do anything for a writer in the skills department. All that does is stunt growth and promote the idea of the "easy" button where you give up when things get tough and start fresh on something else. How many threads have we seen here lately of writers who are having difficulty finishing projects?

We learn the best by actually finishing what we start. Maneuvering through the tough spots of a manuscript is what pushes us to the next level. It's where we learn to write a middle, to write the climax, to write the end. Most writers start to flail in the middle. So if everytime we reach the middle of a story and give up to start something else because it gets hard, then how are we supposed to learn what tactics work/don't work in getting us through those tough spots? I'm sorry but I believe that's dangerous advice.

EDIT: I also wanted to mention that if a writer has publication goals in mind then learning how to finish projects is imperative. You can't do much with a handful of unfinished manuscripts, but a lot can be done with two crappily written ones.

That's true, and I used to think that way. But my advice comes from my personal experience. I got stuck in one of my projects for two years, and after I got out of that I realized my stubbornness for those two years hadnt been helping at all. The plot was complicated, way above my ability to write (as in so far above I couldnt do a thing with it) and I had so many expectations and ideas I hadn't figured out yet. Two POV's, vast conspiracies...every snarl in the plot I fixed seemed to make it knot up somewhere else. So I made the very reluctant, very painful decision to work on something else, and plunged right into another project (which isn't proving easy either...but I'm pushing through it and I'm getting somewhere.)

I have to add that my anxiety was deeply involved in this choice. I had built up so much anxiety around that project that I was paralyzed every time I tried to write. And being stubborn wasn't alleviating the anxiety. I hated every word I wrote. So, I thought, "I'm still really young and this is a really ambitious project. I still have the rest of my life. Maybe it's better to work on something else for now."

By all means be stubborn. But trying to shove through a story that won't budge will actually stunt your growth rather than help it...something I wish I had learned earlier. (I have improved a lot in writing generally over the past two years, but my actual novel writing skills are back on the level of 14 year old me...because I haven't actually written a novel since then. It was a frustrating discovery when I began my current project and now I have to work my way through it. Ugh.)

It's okay to lay aside a story sometimes. The problem arises when you can't complete *anything* because of this fear. Sometimes it's the best route as a last resort...but you're right. Don't make it a habit.

I highlight the fact that I started a new project literally the day after I quit the other one. The worst thing you can do is to not be writing.

 

[skip.knox]

SotaMursu, how far do you get into the writing? Do you quit after the first page? The first chapter? Fifty thousand words?

What is it about the writing that causes you to give up? How many times have you tried and given up? Twice? A hundred?

Do you know your characters? Is the plot clear in your mind? Have you fleshed out the world in which they exist?

I'm just trying to understand the context here. There are a million ways to stumble. Most of us around here have tried them all.

 

[Caged Maiden]

Yeah, we hear this sort of thread a lot. People have ideas but writing them well is hard. Well...it is for all of us. You aren't the oddball who is struggling. Everyone does.

Skip's right. Figure out WHY you stop writing. Is it that you get a few chapters done and then don't know where to go? An outline might help. A three act structure might help. A flow chart may help for tricky bits where you know A and G and just need a few steps in the middle.

There's tons of help available out there for each problem a writer faces, but everything in this thread is right. You have to just write it, crappy as it may sound to reread. Just write the story, skip past the really uncomfortable bits (and go back later to fill them in), until you type THE END.

Get that story down, and then get a writing partner to read the whole thing and offer some suggestions for the parts that aren't awesome. Or do what I did and just keep writing the next idea and the next.

They say it takes a million words to be proficient at this thing, and I say that's true...if you're lucky and study hard. It took me even more. Almost double that.

Right now, I'm rewriting a book I wrote in 2008. SO, that's what people mean by letting it sit a few years. Keep writing, and when you're a more experienced writer and have more tools in your arsenal, go back and edit the hell out of those stories you love but that look like shambling zombies of awfulness.

Anne Lamott tells us to write "shitty first drafts" and use "short assignments", sometimes breaking down things into chapters, scenes, paragraphs, and even sentences, whatever it takes to not feel daunted and overwhelmed.

Your first three or four books will all look terrible. It's okay. It happens to everyone. Books are hard. If you want to build some momentum, try short stories. Take one or two of your ideas and write them in 10k words or less, practicing your skills on beginnings, plotting, and endings.

Whatever it takes to actually put words on paper for a few months, every single day. That's how people become good writers. Consistency, experience, and constantly learning.

The thing I'm sure we're all terribly aware of and would share with you, is that those first story ideas are really great now, and the probably feel like they'll never be topped...but the thing is, you'll find even better ideas as you gain experience. Trust me. You will. You'll get better and better, and you'll discover huge gaping problems with some of the first stories. If you're like me, you'll throw out the first three novels because the ideas are so weak compared to the latest ones. And it isn't wasted effort. Just like jogging around the neighborhood isn't wasted effort for the would-be marathoner. Writing great novels is a marathon, and you can't possibly hope to run one without doing a fair amount of jogging around the neighborhood.

Best wishes!

 

[Penpilot]

Lots of good advice above. Think on it.

As for ideas, the only wasted idea is the unused one.

I used to think a lot like you but I soon realized ideas are a dime a dozen. The more you write, the more you live, the more ideas you'll come up with.

I've got a wiki full of ideas and every day I add more. If I never come up with another story idea, I'd still have more than I could use in my life.

Ideas accumulate like plastic shopping bags. No matter how hard you try, you always end up with a bin full of them.

 

[Demesnedenoir]

Ayup, as folks have said, write. It's the only way to learn, and here is another tidbit, you need to write so you learn how to structure (both small and big picture), rewrite, and edit, the latter two being crucial to being able to say you know how to write.

And get used to forcing yourself to write, that's the key to getting into a rhythm and routine. At some point (in particular if you get to having deadlines) forcing oneself to write is going to be a must for 99% of writers... only because I hate speaking in definitive terms, LOL.

 

[Chessie]

Forcing yourself to write is a skill in itself. It's kind of like not wanting to exercise when you're tired or grumpy but are always glad that you did. Even the smallest amount of work lays another step for you to build on. It's so, so important and I'm glad you mentioned it, Des.

 

[DragonOfTheAerie]

Forcing yourself to write is a skill in itself. It's kind of like not wanting to exercise when you're tired or grumpy but are always glad that you did. Even the smallest amount of work lays another step for you to build on. It's so, so important and I'm glad you mentioned it, Des.

This is what i always think of when people tell me "write because you enjoy it, don't do it if it isn't fun," It's a commitment. It's not GOING to be fun a lot of the time.

 

[K.S. Crooks]

Keep the joy in the act of writing. Enjoy the characters, including or especially the villains. Enjoy the scenes and situations. Enjoy putting your characters in danger and determining how they get out alive. Write because you enjoy creating something you have never seen before. Writing is an art, like finger painting. Keep it fun, keep it messy and wash up before eating.

 

[skip.knox]

I side with the Dragon on this (always side with dragons). I have never understood the Joy of Writing school. It's mostly work--being careful, making corrections, getting stuck, writing while hoping.

The fun part comes at the start. Coming up with a new idea, a new character, before I have to start knocking off the edges to get it to fit the story. Research is fun for me, being an academic at heart. But the best, the very best of all is being done. Not with the first draft. It's having the story published. In the can. Released into the wild. Because then I no longer have to fuss with it. It no longer follows me around the house, nagging at me, pointing out how very long I've been working on it. I wouldn't call the feeling joy, but it is deeply satisfying.

 

[Heliotrope]

Yeah, I can't say it is super fun, honestly. I mean, it is, but I see it the same way Chessie sees it, like sports.

When I was four my parents put me in swim club and I hated it. I never dove in the water, ever. I didn't swim any of the races, I just cried and cried on the pool deck.

But they wouldn't let me quit.

Then as a child I had meets on the weekends so I could never go to sleep over party's with my friends or even stay late at birthdays. I hated it.

But they wouldn't let me quit.

Then as a teenager I got good. Really good. Record breaking good. I got invited to prom by a Canadian Olympain. Yep. That's my claim to fame. And I loved it.

Loved it.

And that is how I see writing. Most of the time it sucks. But the better I get and the harder I work the more enjoyment and satisfaction I get. It is not easy. Ever. But it is very rewarding.

 

[DragonOfTheAerie]

I don't love laying down word after word like bricks in the same crappy and boring wall. (How I'm feeling about my WIP.) But I do love being passionate about my characters and seeing them come to life. I love seeing that word count go up, hitting those milestones. I love the rush of satisfaction when I reread something I wrote that was good and think, "I wrote this!"

Is it fun, exactly? Uhm. Like, this morning, I definitely wasn't exactly having fun. It's drudgery a lot of days. Sometimes it's agony. But not writing is worse. That's all I can say, lol.

And don't get me wrong, it is pretty amazing feeling sometimes. Like when you're writing a scene you've been looking forward to and its turning out in a way that pleases you. But if I wrote only when it was fun, I never would have fun because I never would write.

 

[DragonOfTheAerie]

Yeah, I can't say it is super fun, honestly. I mean, it is, but I see it the same way Chessie sees it, like sports.

When I was four my parents put me in swim club and I hated it. I never dove in the water, ever. I didn't swim any of the races, I just cried and cried on the pool deck.

But they wouldn't let me quit.

Then as a child I had meets on the weekends so I could never go to sleep over party's with my friends or even stay late at birthdays. I hated it.

But they wouldn't let me quit.

Then as a teenager I got good. Really good. Record breaking good. I got invited to prom by a Canadian Olympain. Yep. That's my claim to fame. And I loved it.

Loved it.

And that is how I see writing. Most of the time it sucks. But the better I get and the harder I work the more enjoyment and satisfaction I get. It is not easy. Ever. But it is very rewarding.

Wow.

Writing hasn't gotten me asked to prom yet, lol.

 

[Penpilot]

This is what i always think of when people tell me "write because you enjoy it, don't do it if it isn't fun," It's a commitment. It's not GOING to be fun a lot of the time.

I think part of it is one has to determine what one wants to do with their writing. If you want to be published, yeah, it's going to be work, and work isn't always fun. But if all you want to do is write for yourself, then do it or don't.

But like I said, if you want to be published, it most definitely is a commitment. It's commitment to yourself to getting better, to become the best writer you can be. And that means writing when you're happy. Writing when you're sad. Writing when you don't want to. Writing when you don't have time. It means making time to write no matter how filled up your life is.

When I was going to school, I didn't have much free time. I was always tired from studying, but I still managed to write a little. I did it during my breaks in studying. Nothing spectacular, a page or two of what ever came to mind at the moment. Sometimes it was describing what I saw out the window of the library. Other times it was short bios of some of the strangers studying in the library with me.

I never did anything with it. Those bits of writing are weaved into my the pages of my math, physics, etc. note books, and they're all sitting the attic, never to see the light of day again. They were a way to stretch my writing muscles. I'm sure there are some cool ideas amongst the chaff, but meh, plenty more where that came from.

 

[Demesnedenoir]

Early morning tangent run:

Writing is a bit like bull riding, rather than other sports... not only is your success dependent on the mood of the bull, your payday depends on a judge too. 8 seconds means you met the minimum criteria, woohoo for you!

8 seconds is a bit like finishing the novel, the ride is all the technical skills which we hopefully develop, and the bull is all the story and plot stuff. As the writer we have advantage (or disadvantage) of creating the bull (pucky in many cases) but in the end we rely upon a judge to tell us whether we've done better than the other po' cowshmuck dumb enough to jump on a friggin' bull. And worse, there aren't any rules for scoring (outside of meeting technical elements) and it comes down to whether a judge likes the bull (pucky) we've splattered on the page.

Unlike the great sports involving a timer, swimming and track and such, it's almost impossible to tell whether we're improving the bull (once past basics), and the human psyche likes to have that clock to tell them they're getting better. In some strange way, this is probably a part of why word counts matter to so many writers: They can't tell if they're writing worth a pucky but they can at least measure the number of words they've written today. If writing were like World of Warcraft and you could see your improvement in a "skill number"... damn that'd be nice.

Yeah, I can't say it is super fun, honestly. I mean, it is, but I see it the same way Chessie sees it, like sports.

When I was four my parents put me in swim club and I hated it. I never dove in the water, ever. I didn't swim any of the races, I just cried and cried on the pool deck.

But they wouldn't let me quit.

Then as a child I had meets on the weekends so I could never go to sleep over party's with my friends or even stay late at birthdays. I hated it.

But they wouldn't let me quit.

Then as a teenager I got good. Really good. Record breaking good. I got invited to prom by a Canadian Olympain. Yep. That's my claim to fame. And I loved it.

Loved it.

And that is how I see writing. Most of the time it sucks. But the better I get and the harder I work the more enjoyment and satisfaction I get. It is not easy. Ever. But it is very rewarding.

 

[Chessie]

I would love to hear the Pip Boy leveling up sound whenever I reach new heights in my writing skill. Then I could open it up and choose a new skill perk like "Antagonist Supreme--you now know how to write villains that strike chords of fear in your audience."