How to maintain confidence over the long haul?

[Incanus]

I mostly like the way my current project is going—for one thing, I haven’t abandoned it like so many others. With the momentum I’ve got, I will almost certainly see it through.

But I still have nagging doubts, sometimes (thankfully, not all the time). What if there is some fatal flaw that dooms the whole thing and I can’t see or identify it? What if the problems I do know about prove much harder to fix than I anticipated? What if some of the problems aren’t fixable at all? What if I’m the only person in the world who seems to enjoy the story? How might I feel after realizing I’ve spent 3000 hours generating garbage?

It will likely be a year before I have the opening chapters up and running, and ready for a little feedback.

My tortoise-rate of production works against me here, I think. On average, and I’m kind of guessing, I think it takes me about 3 hours to get 300 words of poor quality initial draft. There will be at least 2 major revisions to run, and then polishing after that.

Is this pretty normal for writing a novel? Do you have doubts, but just suck it up somehow? Or do you just plow ahead and not worry about such things?

 

[Jackarandajam]

I mostly like the way my current project is going—for one thing, I haven’t abandoned it like so many others. With the momentum I’ve got, I will almost certainly see it through.

But I still have nagging doubts, sometimes (thankfully, not all the time). What if there is some fatal flaw that dooms the whole thing and I can’t see or identify it? What if the problems I do know about prove much harder to fix than I anticipated? What if some of the problems aren’t fixable at all? What if I’m the only person in the world who seems to enjoy the story? How might I feel after realizing I’ve spent 3000 hours generating garbage?

It will likely be a year before I have the opening chapters up and running, and ready for a little feedback.

My tortoise-rate of production works against me here, I think. On average, and I’m kind of guessing, I think it takes me about 3 hours to get 300 words of poor quality initial draft. There will be at least 2 major revisions to run, and then polishing after that.

Is this pretty normal for writing a novel? Do you have doubts, but just suck it up somehow? Or do you just plow ahead and not worry about such things?

Here's what helped me.
I realized that in order to finish (anything), I needed to be:
1. Smarter about it
2. Dumber about it.
Hear me out.

1. Smarter about it:
I didn't know what I was doing, and that generated a thousand fears.
I would finish something and feel okay about it, then hate it later.
I couldn't read my stuff like an outsider.
So, I studied writing.
I'm not going to go off on a big rip about this, I already did on another thread.
It's not for everybody, I get it.
But for me, it calmed a huge majority of my fear that I didn't know what I was looking at and might be wasting my time.
Confession; it's actually REALLY important to me that my stories are enjoyable for other people. That's not really in vogue to say in writer world, I know, I'm supposed to be perfectly self-satisfied with my work, but I'm not.
So I got audible and started downloading books on writing that were either very highly rated or by very respected authors.
I'm now 1,000x more confident that what I'm writing is going to be worth a damn to other people. I can write a piece, realize what it still needs, and know I can plug it in on a later draft or just go ahead and do it.
I don't know everything, but man, I'm not a kid with a pipe dream anymore, I'm an amateur technician, and that feels really good.
I'm still going to have to go through tons of beta readers and editing, but I feel so much better about it being more informed of expectation.
I can recommend a book or two if you want.
2. Dumber about it.
Like full on, "ugh, Mongo no think, Mongo do."
I can't think about how long it's going to take.
I can't think about how complicated the whole process is.
I can't think about how much time I will have wasted if it doesn't go off well.
I can't worry I'm not making the right plot decisions.
I can't wait on the BEST story to pop into my head.
I gotta shut off some of those higher reasoning skills and just get in the present and grunt my way through it.
How do you eat an elephant?
Start with the a**hole and get it over with.
Jk.
One bite at a time.

 

[pmmg]

The reality is few, if any, will read your book. Most likely, not enough to get back your investment in it.

But so what... If you believe in the story and have to get it out, then you are doing what is best. When you have it in your hand and can show it to others, it may be a thousand hate it and pull it apart, but there will be some who love it and want more. Those are the ones you are writing for. That's what makes it all worthwhile.

All the rest...here are some platitudes.

Write it ugly
You can edit what not written
One in hand is better than two not written
300 a day is better than 0 a day
Words on page beats thinking about words on page
No one ever got better at writing by not writing.

 

[Penpilot]

I get it. Been there. Done that. Got two t-shirts and a bunch of cool scars. Like Jackarandajam one of things that helped me quite a lot was simply learning about story, from books, from author interviews, from podcasts. What this did was allow me to understand what the general process of writing was like. And you start to realize a lot of the fears you face, pros had them, pros have them, so it's not uncommon.

Some of the things I things I try to keep in mind in no particular order.

- It may suck now, but I can always make it better later
- A little planning plus a little forethought can save a world of pain in terms of revisions.
- worry less, write more

To put things bluntly, you're at a specific skill level. We all are. There's nothing you can do about that except get better. How do you get better? You write. You make your mistakes. Hopefully, you learn from them. And then, you write the next story and it's a tiny bit better.

One of the biggest lessons I learned writing my first novel was knowing when to walk away. I'd spent a couple of years writing and revising and realized the story was going to need more revisions. It's 275k book. That's when it hit me. This is about as good as I can make that story right now. Instead of going through another extensive revision process my time was better spent writing the next one.

I did that, and the next book was way better. Then, I did it again, and again. And if I want, I can always go back to previous works later.

This brought me to my next realization. The more stories I write, the less precious I become about each one. I write the stories, I make them as good as I can, and I move on.

It's like if someone only has one cookie, and they think that's the only cookie they'll ever have. Every tiny nibble becomes precious, and it feels like each nibble taken must be at the perfect time and place to maximize enjoyment. But if someone has infinite cookies, one nibble doesn't mean as much. Each bite doesn't have to be perfect, because there's always another cookie.

In terms of your pace, 300 words in three hours is a bit slow, but everyone writes at their own pace. If that's your pace, that's your pace. BUT if you keep at it every day, in a year, you'll have written around 100k words, which is a good size book.

Generally speaking 2k words a day is considered very good. In his prime Stephen King wrote 2k words a day. But there are working writers, who can do way more on a deadline. I remember Michael Stackpole doing NaNoWriMo one year, where he set his goal to be double the 50K word count. He wrote 100k words in one month. But that's probably not a sustainable pace.

Which as I write this, I'm thinking that maybe you could try something like NaNo as a writing exercise for yourself. Give yourself 31 days and try to write a 50k word story. It doesn't have to be a good story. This is about letting go and just writing. It's low stakes because you know the story is going to be garbage and you're just going to chuck it into the drawer.

I did NaNo two years in a row, and it was very liberating. It showed me what I was capable of. To write 50K words in a month, it requires 1666 words a day. Now, that word count isn't daunting in the least anymore.

my2cents


P.S. as an aside. Have you heard of this Novel After by Anna Todd? It started off as a Harry Styles fan fic on Wattpad. It became huge on that platform, which garnered her a book deal and that book turned into a movie. From what I hear the story isn't really well written in a traditional sense. Think Fifty Shades. But I was listening to an author talk about it. They were saying Todd was just having fun writing a silly story about a band she really liked. It was far from perfect, but it found an audience that was down for some silliness, and it made the author realize, your stories don't need to be perfect. They just have to entertain.

This made me think for a bit. There are a lot of really-really well written, serious books/stories that I don't think I will ever read/consume again. And there are a lot of really-really silly books/stories that I know are poorly written that I constantly revisit.

 

[Finchbearer]

I don’t know how my brain works but this reminds me of a song by Dethklok called The Lost Vikings;

So much time has passed since we left our land
That we've become concerned
And we'll never find the battle
That we should have fought and won
But we won't stop searching
Lost but still we ride
Search until we die
We ride
We ride
Hungry and tired the frigid plain yields little
We trudge on further, eating pride and snow that's brittle
We ride
We ride

I mean it’s tongue in cheek death metal, but you get the point.

 

[Prince of Spires]

I think many writers at one point or another during a project experience some doubt about their project. The simple reason for that is that when you're writing, you're stuck inside your own head. There is no outside feedback (and there shouldn't be in most cases in my opinion, see pmmg 's rule #3). It's also a lot of work. Even writing fast, you can easily take 100-200 hours to finish a novel. That's a lot of time to be enthusiastic and confident about the whole project.

Like the other's here, I've done a few things to help. Studying the craft is a good approach. Though that mainly appeals to your rational side. Which can help, but doubt is very much an emotional thing.

I do a few other things. I track my word count religiously. If needed, I could tell you how many words I wrote on march 12th 2021. What this does is make my progress visible. Even if I only write 300 words (and there are days when that's all I manage), then that's 300 words closer to the end. It's going from 26.312 to 26.649 or something like that.

I also trust the process. Here it helps that I've done it before. I know that if I just keep writing I'll get to The End eventually. It won't be perfect, but it will be done (and ready for editing). Tracking the word count helps, since you can see yourself getting closer to the end with each step.

And then there is the brute force approach. When doubt rears its head, I ignore it. I push ahead despite feeling doubt. Beat it into the ground, tell it to shut up, and sit down and write anyway. Doubt passes. At some point, I hit a stretch I feel confident again and I conquered doubt for a while.

This doesn't mean I don't feel doubt. I do. Just posting a snippet of my work for it to be judged on here is hard. I always worry that it's not good enough. Or sharing the story with beta readers. Or publishing it. But then I get feedback and people seem to like it. At least that's what they tell me (though I don't fully believe them...).

And I write stories to be read by others. It doesn't have to be many people (though that would be nice of course). But just seeing people read my book helps. It's why I write them. If no one would pick them up I think I'd give up.

As for your word count, 100 words an hour does feel on the low side, though that might just be your speed. Practice could just make you faster (as could not doubting yourself by the way. Just write that sentence without thinking it through 4 times, which is part of what limits my speed...). Also writing frequently helps. The deeper you're still in your story, the easier it is to pick it up again. So writing every day (or 3-5 days a week), even if it's only half an hour can make you faster.

One blog post that helped me increase my speed is Guest Post: How I Went From Writing 2,000 Words a Day to 10,000 Words a Day - SFWA Now, that's going from a lot to an even more gargantuan number, so ignore the totals, but look at the principle. Especially knowing what to write has helped me immensely in increasing my speed. Just taking 5 minutes and thinking through the exact steps of the next scenes makes it a lot easier for me to write the thing.

Trying Nano is another good suggestion. Just write. Even if you fail, it should still teach you a lot.

 

[Mad Swede]

For me this is about three things: your reasons for writing, your self-discipline and finishing what you write.

We all write for different reasons. Knowing why you write may help you stay motivated when things seem like they're going nowhere fast. For me this motivation is what drives me on in my writing.

Self-discipline matters. You must write when you sit down to write. That means you need to be able to write even when you're not in the mood, because that's the only way you ever get things finished. That is especially true when you have a publishing contract with deadlines in it, but it is also true if you self-publish and have promised the next book by a certain date. You have to deliver, and that means you have to write it and finish it.

You must finish what you start writing. The first time you do this your confidence in your own writing takes quite a big step up. It's much bigger than you think. Only when you've finished something can you and others judge whether it is any good or not.

 

[TWErvin2]

A lot of good infomation/advice/suggestions above.

Remember, do not compare your initial draft(s) with the finished product of books that have been published.

100 words per hour is not really very fast. That's not quite 2 words per minute. But also remember, there are quite a few people who type no faster than 40 words per minute. And they are not usually doing intense creating as they go along. Many full-time authors produce 3000 words per day. And, I suspect, as you get better at it (future novels), you'll have developed skills and confidence and some techniques that will elevate your words per hour.

Many people think about writing a novel, some even start. But few, in comparision, actually do what is necessary to complete that novel. If it was easy, nearly everyone would be finishing at least one novel.

 

[Incanus]

Thanks for all the thoughtful replies. It is appreciated.

There can be little doubt I’m one of the slowest writers around (the last three nights were below average--more than 3 hours, less than 300 words). I’ll never be a journalist, that’s sure!

A couple things right off. I think I can safely say this issue has little to do with knowing/learning/reading about the craft. I’m hardly an expert, but I’ve read probably around 30 writing books (some of them a bit old), spent many hours reading online material. I’ve seen most of the ‘rules’ several times over at least. I attended a writer’s convention for several days, a few years back too.

Also, I have to say the NaNo thing is a non-starter for me. I have no interest in it at all. I can’t see any value in trying (and failing) to write 50K in a month that I’m just going to toss. I could get several chapters of my project done in the same time. That has much more value to me.

I got my first novel done by doing the ‘dumb’ thing that Jack mentioned, or ‘brute force’ that Prince mentioned. I knew it wasn’t very good most of the way, but just did it anyway. It’s a poorly designed story with bad structure, that happens to be fairly well written (showing where my strengths/weaknesses are).

I think the things that make me feel this way are—maintaining the patience to just continue blindly, with little to no feedback (I do discuss a few things with my best writer-friend). The originality of the premise and setting puts me truly in ‘no-man’s-land’. I can’t research an event that’s never happened in history before, and have to guess at how it might play out in a relatively realistic way. It’s a pretty ambitious project.

I think I have one idea about how to manage this a little better though. I’ve had three encounters with professionals that have all been positive in one way or another (briefly—a random ‘prize’ I won at the convention I attended was for free feedback on 3 chapters (from my first novel); I touched them up and sent them out, the response was ‘I apologize, but I could find little here to improve’. Another instance was a pro editor that couldn’t find much to fix on the first chapter. The last was a short story contest (the biggest one in the U.S.) run by pros where my story placed higher than thousands of other entries, though I still didn’t win).

Most of the time, I don’t think about those experiences, but I’m starting to think I should recall them whenever the pangs of doubt strike.

 

[pmmg]

I think the things that make me feel this way are—maintaining the patience to just continue blindly, with little to no feedback (I do discuss a few things with my best writer-friend). The originality of the premise and setting puts me truly in ‘no-man’s-land’. I can’t research an event that’s never happened in history before, and have to guess at how it might play out in a relatively realistic way. It’s a pretty ambitious project.

Writing is a solitary venture. You have to believe in yourself. Long long hours of little contact, secrets you keep from others until you get to the end, no useful advice or direction.... That pretty much how it goes for me.

But I'm not stopping till I hit the end.

 

[Prince of Spires]

Also, I have to say the NaNo thing is a non-starter for me. I have no interest in it at all. I can’t see any value in trying (and failing) to write 50K in a month that I’m just going to toss.

It doesn't have to be that way. That's just one approach. I've done Nano twice (and failed to get to 50k words twice). And both times I took a work in progress and simply tried to add as many new words to it in a month as possible. They were all words I kept (or at least, kept as much of as with other works, it still got edited afterwards). So you can do just that.

Both times I got to just over 30k words. And both attempts taught me a lot about my process and how to get faster.

One other thing I've tried which makes me faster is to write in short sprints (also sometimes called the pomodoro method). Set a timer for 20 minutes, and in that time the only thing you can do is write. No research, no getting coffee, no thinking of a new character's name. Just write. If you get to an unknown, make a note and return to it after your 20 minutes. Then continue writing.

Of course, you don't have to become faster. George R.R. Martin has been working on the next song of ice and fire novel for 15 years. So there's that as well. But if you do want to become faster, try a few things and experiment. See what works and build on that.

 

[Incanus]

Thank you Mr. Spires. I think what you are saying here could benefit many writers. I'm probably a difficult case though. If anyone finds anything of value from Nano, then I'm all for it.

If I'm going to trying to make an effort to increase my output, I'll be doing it today or tomorrow, or whenever I decide. It seems weird to wait until November and then try to do this when other people are too. (I don't do new year's resolutions for the exact same reason--don't wait, make the change now.) What is the point of doing this Nano exercise at the same time as other people? I never could get that part of it.

A hypothetical--if given a choice between writing faster or writing better, I'll choose the latter every single time. I'm aiming high. I want to be distinctive. I do compare myself to the greats because I'd like my works to be potent like theirs.

The best I can reasonably hope for is nibbling around the edges. I have great difficulty with concentration (I started a thread a few weeks ago in Chit Chat about having trouble concentrating). Writing does not focus my attention the way music does. Music is in real time, so there's no time for my mind to wander. A half-filled page of writing does not concentrate my mind, so my thoughts race all over the place. I've been this way my whole life, so it's not something I can just change.