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Try writing the ending first, then work your way back.

Trapped in the Attic said:

I also can't stop editing as I write, even though I know this is a bad idea and I try not to.

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Well, you already know the answer to this one. It is satisfying to sit down and read what you wrote the day before. Inevitably you will edit as you go along. So, your ten-minute reading recap can turn into a two-hour edit job. Then, you're out of time and have nothing new written that day. Doing it this way can reeeaaaaaally bog you down.

The best advice is to pick up right where you left off and keep going, one word after another. Set a goal. One page, two pages, etc. If you can write one hour every day, you will get something accomplished.

Write now, edit later. What you get down won't be all that great, in fact, it might be horrible. But that's OK, because what you're writing is a first draft. Cleanup comes later.

While you're here, please read the Learn Writing with Uncle Jim thread and the wealth of other forums. The Uncle Jim thread is an awesome resource for any writer.

Meanwhile, welcome to AW!

underthecity

Hiya, Trapped.

If the initials BIC don't mean anything to you yet ... they will.

Not to blow my own horn too loudly, but page one of this thread explains 'em.

Just to add to what everyone else has said, you can always just jot down a few notes of what you want to edit, DON'T EDIT IT, and remind yourself to go back and do it when you've reached the end.

I find this helps me when I get that impulsive, eye-twitching desire to fix things.

Now, I'm gonna go against the grain a little here. I found that editing as I went along really got me into the rhythm that I desired. It worked-out the kinks and the more I did it at first, the less I needed to do it as the project progressed. Sometimes, this editing-as-you-go is really just a means of finding your voice. So, it'll be slow going at first, but I found it triumphant to rework a bit and sit back and say, "Now THAT'S what I really meant."So, personally, I wouldn't beat yourself up about it. Somedays, you'll get a lot done and somedays not so much. But sit there anyway and try to enjoy. Just the fact that you have the brain-power and freedom to indulge your dream is a wonderful thing! And maybe someday, you'll even get paid for it....

I think trying BIC is a good idea, and giving yourself permission to write crap (if I didn't give myself that permission, I'd never write a thing). I think once you finally complete a novel length work, this particular block will diminish or leave completely.

Trapped in the Attic said:

Does anyone have any suggestions that will help?

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Read Becoming a Writer by Dorothea Brande. It gave me wings; it might work for you too. It's that kind of book. Nothing technical, but helps your inner writer to unfurl and take off. I hadn't written anything before that book; afterwards I just couldn't stop.
Whatever - best of luck!

I've had problems with the same thing, and I was starting to creep back into that recently (I had to throw out a lot of material in the last 1/3 of my WIP; talk about that sinking feeling). That's when a book I bought about a year ago popped up from out of the mess known as my house.

The 10% Solution by Ken Rand. In only 60-some pages, he not only tells you what's worked for him (he has novels and short stories out there, so obviously he has some wisdom to impart), he also tells you how he writes first without regard to grammar, etc., and THEN edits.

His writing style is funny and engaging, and he's not beneath poking fun at himself.

I know it's not easy to let yourself go, and as I'm going back into that "just write" mode for that portion of the book, I'm grateful to have found the book again.

Good luck, and keep your chin up!

~Nancy

Anxiety certainly doesn't help, so dealing with that seems like one piece of the puzzle. Anxiety disturbes concentration, and even memory. So, it's like a car not firing right. The engine goes slower.

First, don't try to write ahead. This means, you have to start where you are at, and you can only go at a pace that's comfortable. If you are worrying about, "What's next"...you can't enjoy the moment.

Here's a game. (I don't know your Genre-but it should work) Write down five names that aren't in your novel. Make some male and female.

Now look at them, and determine where they fit. "Aunt" "Uncle", "Dwarf", "Starship captain"...etc. Now write only a single paragraph about each one, to define what you think they are like, and what they look like.

If you only add one character to your novel, and think of who they are and how they relate, you've added a lot of story line. You can make "Crazy Uncle Harry" a recurring theme in a romance. Will the new boyfriend tolerate him when he comes downstairs drunk and in his underwear.

How does the boyfriend react?- humor, mortified, joins him for a beer acting like its an every day thing.

You can also do this with a place. Let's say everything takes place in the home and the hospital? Think of one new place. "Ah, the park?"

Why do they want to go to the park. What does the park look like? Hmmm, do they trip over a body in the park, and suddenly, they're sucked into a whole new drama.

If you look at the story as this exciting thing, where "You" are the first one to make discoveries, it starts to be fun.

Oh, no! The body in the park is her weird uncle, and he's in his underwear-the last person to see him alive was her boyfriend...

How many novel-length-work attempts are we talking about here? One of the tests for whether an idea is appropriate to try writing a novel about in the first place is whether you really love it and feel compelled to write a whole novel about it. If you are really in love with your idea this helps fight depression and anxiety because hopefully you feel at least as compelled to write about it as you feel afraid of doing it badly. And after all, writing is supposed to be play - would any of us do it if we didn't enjoy it? We're probably not doing it as a get-rich-quick scheme... Remind yourself to enjoy it.

And I'm with perks - I edit as I go along, usually while re-reading the last session's writing.

I also recommend naps - if you feel creatively and emotionally drained and just can't make yourself write a nap is just the thing to reset your brain and come at the task with your emotional equilibrium and energy restored.

editing

The thing about editing as you go is this: does it work for you? If editing as you go doesn't stop forward progress on the novel, then edit as you go. But if editing as you go means the novel isn't getting written, then stop editing as you go.

In the end, BIC, and pure self-discipline, which you need to make BIC work, anyway, is the answer to most such problems.

I have not experienced depression or anxiety, but I think I can relate to your feelings. Until recently I wasn't able to get much of anything written because of that blasted Internal Editor. Not quite an editor, actually -- more a source of endless ridicule and little if any constructive criticism.

Aside from the incredible advice you've gotten so far, I would like to add a couple of suggestions, based on what has helped me resist self-defeat:

1) Meet people in "real life" who are aspiring and/or published writers

I have a good friend who worked very hard for many years and has now published 25+ short stories and two novels. He made me aware of just how much work goes into writing a quality manuscript, and that very few first attempts are ever worthy of publishing. His career reminds me that a tenacious individual will hammer away at those attempts and potentially create something great.

2) Meet people via online forums who are aspiring and/or published writers

Someone here has a sig file that says, "A professional is an amateur who didn't quit." That one line has encouraged me almost as much as the more lengthy Uncle Jim thread.

This may sound glib, but when I started writing my first novel, I really kept getting attacks of "Who do you think you are?" and "You didn't even go to school for this kind of thing" and worst of all, "There is so much competition out there, why do you think it'll ever be YOU?"

I got over it by realizing that it happens. It happens for people of all walks of life with wildly variant degrees of experience and education. And it happens every day... so why NOT me?

This is no way a guarantee. I have yet to see my first novel published. (I'm just adjusting my Templar tunic at the start of my First Crusade - the quest for the Holy Agent.) It may never happen, but I work hard to improve my writing and I love it so much. The willingness to learn to write and to learn to love the process (yes, even the criticism, rejections and the unavoidable editorial threshing) is, as far as I'm concerned, the only dues I need pay to join the club.

(Still, I'm not entirely convinced. I have yet to put writer/author/novelist in the 'occupation' blank of any form. )

Trapped in the Attic said:

I find it very hard to settle down to write at all, this is not helped by having depression and anxiety....Does anyone have any suggestions that will help?

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Do the depression and anxiety pop up only when you're writing (or trying to), or are they with you more generally? D & A will interfere with most anything a person wants to do. My suggestion is to address them directly. I mean get medication or talk therapy or whatever works for you. When they improve, writing will be easier.

I went through many of the same things when I first starting writing. My first four attempts at writing a novel are busy collecting dust somewhere on a floppy disk. Now I've finally got something worthwhile under my belt, but I'm in the reverse situation of you...it's far too long and I have to chop out a lot of fluff.

I found that if I didn't like something I wrote, or wasn't satisfied with it, I kept hacking away and editing until it DID please me, and that really helped me go on and write more. Or I got rid of it completely and moved on.

At the same time, I also found that supressing the critical side of my nature was necessary at times just to get the ideas and words out on paper. Sometimes over-analyzing everything is counterproductive. One thing I've found to be true is that what I write will eventually fall into one of two categories: 1) it can be refined into something worth keeping or 2) it's junk and should be deleted. But there's no way to know that until you write it. Not every sentence, paragraph, page or chapter is going to be worth keeping, but you often need the entire amalgam in front of you to judge what lives and what dies, so to speak.

It's kind of a delicate balance, I guess. It's taken me eight years worth of writing to get to where I am now, and I'm still not done yet. Just don't give up!

I even edited this short message, so there you go.

No professional therapy? Okay, aerobic exercise is a temporary antidepressant and costs nothing. Relationships with kind, sensible people help, too.

Depression tends to spiral downward by causing behavior that's depressing, such as spending an unhealthy amount of time alone and not accomplishing enough. It's hard to do anything, so you do little, and you feel worse. Forcing yourself will break this cycle. Assign yourself small tasks at first.

Something that really helps my co-author (aside from the BIC thing, which I do too, but had never named it... ) is to "interview" your characters.


Pretend that you're sitting across a table from your hero and you're getting to know him over coffee. Where did he go to school? Does he have siblings? How does he like his job? What's the most embarrassing thing that ever happened to him on the job?

See, what I've found is that sometimes why it's hard to concentrate on NEW writing is that sometimes the story fizzles out when the people inside it aren't real enough to take control of the plot and move it along. You're moving puppets and it's a struggle to write because you feel like you're forcing them into a pose and they just stay there.

But they are people with likes and dislikes, favorite foods and allergies. A lot of what you write down in your interview (and yes, please DO write it down) becomes "back story" You may never need it, but YOU know it and the character needed it to exist where and when you've placed them. Your story is only a tiny bit of that person's life. They lived before the reader opens to the first page, and they will keep living when it's closed.

For example, in a future book of ours, a secondary character of a book walks out of a restaurant abruptly every time she sees apple pie on the menu, or becomes physically ill every time she smells apples baking. The casual reader will think it a bit odd, but will mentally file it under "quirks" of the character. But we authors know her back story: that when she was five years old, she was climbing in the apple tree behind her grandmother’s house when a bad storm came up suddenly and a tornado appeared. She rushed into the house and her grandmother hurried her to the storm cellar, but then went back into the house to turn off the oven, so a pie didn’t burn. The tornado hit and she was killed. The character unconsciously ties the two together, so that even twenty years later, she can’t stand baking apples. If the secondary character reappears in future books, it might be explained. But for the purpose of the storyline she’s a part of, it’s not important for the reader to know anything more than she is going to walk out of the restaurant at a critical point that plays into the plot. Often, the plot creates the necessity of a quirk that then becomes back story.

So my advice is to interview your characters. You're probably going to find that you get excited about them (and the story) again. Good luck!

Cathy, you are not alone, and I would be happy to offer up some suggestions:

1) Try accepting writing spurts and creative lapses as being part of the territory.
2) Don't worry about having the urge to edit something you've written, as long as it's critical to what you are writing forward. Otherwise, save it until the MS is completed. That's when you edit the whole shebang down to perfection.
2) Spend what you think is down time plotting, outlining, and developing characters. Whenever you can, write in the head, dictate into a tape recorder, or make story notations on paper. Just keep writing.
3) Don't shy away from social invitations, but if you are itching to write and it would only cause more writer anxiety, it's up to you whether you attend or rain check your buddy's wine and cheese soirée. Just don't let yourself become a hermit like I did.
4) If you need to be reminded to work on that scene or chapter, and there's no one around to kick your patooty to get to it, leave post-it notes to yourself on your favorite shelf in the frig. It helps if they're edible post-its.
5) Find a time and writing space where you can shut out the world. Enter a setting in your story, sit, and wait to see what happens next.

Whenever I start to shut down, I close my eyes and mentally transport myself to a place in my story where I meet and interact with my characters to where it is a daily event. I can't start a chapter or scene until I meet with "the cast" and reach an accord about what I should do. Don't hesitate to look within for your special formula to writing.

Hang in there!

Here's one other suggestion to help you continue from one day to the next with your writing.

When I finish writing for the day, I write one more sentence or a half sentence. Then, rather than reading what I wrote the day before, I simply read the sentence and begin from there. It broke me of editing what I wrote the day or week prior and gives me a line to start fresh with when I begin the next day.

There's plenty of time for editing when you have a complete manuscript finished. And when you wait to edit, the story isn't so fresh in your mind, you'll find errors much easier this way.

Good luck.

I read over the last page or so fo what I wrote the day before--I don't edit no matter how bad I find the prose. I have at times found that I was heading in "my" direction vs my character's direction and backed up until I got back under the character's steam.

But I don't edit until I get to the end.

Shawn

Hi!

I am sorry you are running into all these problems. If the editing as you go isn't working for you, and you no matter how hard you try you can't keep yourself from going back, then keep each chapter in seperate documents. That way you don't have any past chapters to go through, make each chapter or section of the story short, like 5 pages. Something that you can write all at once. Then when you are done, compile them. If you tend to forget things about your story like hwere you left off and such, write a summary in a notebook or in another document and only review the summaries before continuing with your writing rather than the work you have done.

I hope this helps, it is the best I can come up with to counter the temptation to go back and edit.

Sara

You have to find a way to enjoy it. Uncle Jim made a comment, and I paraphrase "there are a million ways to make money..."

I know there are artistic hearts that bleed for their craft. I come from a family that boasts a few of these. But I can't see doing it that way. You'll get stuck, it'll cost you some sleep, but still... it's wonderful. I'd like to believe in reincarnation, but I'm not betting on it. If you're of a creative bent, you get to live your life, plus the life of every character you create. You pay yourself as you go, in sheer experience. You get to be the good guy, the bad guy, the fool, the saint. You get to be the murderer, the savior, the sage, the innocent. Your options are boundless.

Write, doubt, curse, write some more, submit, get rejected, curse a blue streak, get rejected a bunch of times... just revel in the moments that you love it.

Blah, blah, blah... what is this thread doing to me?

Personally, I swear by outlines. (Sometimes I swear at them, too, but nothing's perfect.) If you can outline a whole novel, and keep showing up for your BIC time, you will write that novel. Maybe you'll find out that your outlines peter out after a couple of chapters, too. This is great news! It is so much faster to write a failed outline than a failed novel. You can get through 100 false starts this way. Finally, you'll have an idea you can work through to a conclusion in outline form. Then you should be able to write the whole novel.