Is writing hard for you?

I was that way when I first joined AW. The more time I spent here the more inspired I became. Now I am on a schedule and write one chapter per week. (I just started doing this six weeks ago) I do a short grammar edit at the end of each chapter and an outline, again short, two or three sentences, on Sunday. Start the next chapter on Monday. It is working out very well for me.

Good luck
Jane

Sometimes. I had a spurt a few months ago but it fizzled out. I've had a rough year through debt and depression and my output dried up.

I'm raring to go, but sod's law I'm buried in University work (it's my Honours year!)

Suggestion: start reading the "Learn Writing with Uncle Jim" thread(s) in the Novels forum. I think the original thread is now stickied to the top of the forum.

BIC = butt/bum in chair. Get into the habit of sitting down and writing. If you don't write, you're not going to produce that novel.

Remember that your first draft is just that: the first. It's all right if the first draft is flawed. Expecting perfection on the first go-around is a wonderful way to paralyze yourself. Use the first draft to get the story down, and use the revisions to polish it up.

Good luck!

Yes

But if you want to be a writer you have to actually write something. Sometimes it's harder than others - but it's rarely easy, or everyone would do it. So:

• procrastinate, under the guise of "doing research"

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  Turn off the internet, get rid of any other distractions and just write.

• get frustrated, because the words just aren't there

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  What you mean is the RIGHT words aren't there. Don't expect to be perfect first time out. Can a great chef cook a perfect Beef Wellington the first time he cooks? No. He has to practise. So practise

• start thinking my premise is stupid, cliched, and that no one will be interested in what I have to say, so I try to come up with a new "what if," and find myself drawing a blank

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  First get it written - then get it write. Get into the habit of getting words on paper. THEN worry about what you've written

Open up Word and worry about nothing except getting words on paper. When it starts to flow, then worry about making it great.

I understand exactly what you're saying.

By the time I sit down at the computer, close firefox, play a game or two of solitaire, and on and on, it's difficult to get out all of the words and ideas in my head.

My advice, which I say with the knowledge that it is obvious and much easier said than done, is to force yourself to do it. A lot of time I write out my first draft freehand, which stops me from pausing to rewrite each individual sentence. I've also had a lot of fun with Write or Die : Dr Wicked's Writing Lab. If that doesn't make you get words out on paper, maybe you just aren't made for the craft.

In the end though, especially when continuing the same piece from day-to-day or week-to-week, is some sort of dedication and self-belief that must be learned, but is impossible to teach.

With all your ten page false starts, maybe you are built to be a short story writer.

Hi, Fredster,

Yes, I have the same problems with writing as you do. In addition, due to a head injury, I have severe memory problems. If more than a few hours go by, I can't remember what I have written. So each time I sit down to write, I have to re-read what I have written so I know what my story is about, who the characters are, etc. I'm at around 35K words and it takes me 3-4 hours to read that much, so I don't get much actual writing done. My eyes get a little fatigued from staring at the monitor for so many hours!

I'm trying a new method of outlining the story in advance with detailed information so I can try to write a scene without re-reading the entire manuscript. Part of my problem is that I just don't get the brilliant ideas I need to make the story interesting, especially if it's going to end up being 80K words.

I attended a workshop this weekend at the Foolscap convention--it was about writing in collaboration. It occurred to me that maybe what I need is an actual writing partner, who can come up with the ideas, give me a chance to write some bits and then go over it to make sure the continuity is there. Maybe you could use a writing partner, too? I dunno, just brainstorming here...

thinking about a story is much easier than writing it.

Procrastination is my biggest problem. I end up playing around online or watching TV because I'm usually tired from traveling. When I have no distractions (like in airports because I never buy internet in airports) I get a lot of writing done. It seems like it would be easy to just "turn off tv" or "not use the computer/internet", but THAT's the hard thing for me to do

Let's see: have I done these things before?

Fredster said:

• procrastinate, under the guise of "doing research"

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Check. I second the advice to either turn off the internet or write longhand away from the computer.

Fredster said:

• get frustrated, because the words just aren't there

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Check. My solution? Set a timer and write without letting yourself stop to think until the time is up. Remember that writing something is better than writing nothing. Words can be edited later.

Fredster said:

• start thinking my premise is stupid, cliched, and that no one will be interested in what I have to say, so I try to come up with a new "what if," and find myself drawing a blank

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Check. Solution? Don't let yourself quit on the current story. Continue to work on it even if it seems stupid. It probably isn't as stupid as you think, just rough which is why they're called "rough drafts." Plus no matter how it turns out you'll get to feel a sense of accomplishment knowing that you actually finished a story and that's a great feeling.

Join the club, brother.

I think writing's hard for almost everybody, at least initially - until you develop your own pattern that works for you.

There are also all kinds of individual factors, internal and external that influence how we feel about writing on a particular day.

But practice and development of a good writing regimen is probably the best way to overcome this problem. Unfortunately, it's not always easy.

Is writing hard for me? Today it is--dear god, is it ever.
Tomorrow it may be easy or it may be more difficult. I'm all over the map.

For me, writing is the easy part of the process. I can spend forever coming up with an idea, analyzing if I think it's good enough to work on, and debating if it's something I want to spend time working on. Once I actually kick myself in the rear and get started, the rest of it is easy.

Fredster said:

I wanted to see if I'm alone in this boat.

I like the idea of writing quite a bit, but when it comes time to put fingers to keyboard, I tend to do anything BUT write. I ---

• procrastinate, under the guise of "doing research"
• get frustrated, because the words just aren't there
• start thinking my premise is stupid, cliched, and that no one will be interested in what I have to say, so I try to come up with a new "what if," and find myself drawing a blank

What happens is that I either don't write, or write very little. I don't think I'm a bad writer, but almost every word is like pulling a tooth. I've only ever been in the "zone"---where the words are practically writing themselves---a couple of times.

Anyone else find it easy to think about writing, but hard to actually do it? I have about six 10-page novel starts that just end in the middle of a sentence because the spirit just sort of leaves me. I'm hoping maybe someone else out there has dealt with this.

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Hello Fred. Welcome to AW! I clicked on your thread thinking I was going to jump in here and say NOT AT ALL! But you got me on the last bullet point you made. (-; Writing is not hard for me. I write every day. I LOVE writing every day. I never experience an ebb in my output. BUT then there's that big "start thinking my premise is stupid, cliched, and that no one will be interested in what I have to say, so I try to come up with a new "what if," and find myself drawing a blank" thing. Lucky for me I don't listen to that nagging brute who says my premise is stupid, cliched and that nobody would be interested. I do think these things...but I don't let these thoughts stop me from writing. I can't really give you the reason...other than to say a day of writing bad crap is still better than a day of not writing. I love to write. I don't always require the product of my sitting and writing to be wondrous words. I only hope that between the miles and piles of bad stuff...I get to glimpse some diamonds.

Just write through all the negative crap. It's hard to do this...but once you find a way to do it, you won't look back.

Enjoy your time here at AW.

Well, my desk is hard, and my keyboard too, as evidenced by the waffle pattern of keys on my forehead.

Writing is hard work. What's difficult for me is carving out the time to do it, between work and home and kids and friends. You're right; thinking about writing is easy, and can be done just about anywhere. Taking those thoughts and making them real words on a page (or screen) is the extra step some find difficult to make.

I love to write and try to do it every day, however, on average, 4 days out of 7 I don't manage it.

Writing might be work. It might be hard sometimes. But it's always fun and the solutions to any perceived problems are always simple. Nine out of ten of them are solved with BICHOK. So however difficult I think writing is, it's never as difficult as anything else I could do and it's always my perception of my writing that changes (dependent on mood and/or health), not my actual ability. I like writing. So I just...do.

I used to find writing to be like pulling teeth. And then it wasn't. Eventually, it just became what I did, back when I was a policy analyst.

I write a weekly column for a small local paper. That is usually very easy. I start with an idea or a sentence to get me going (my all time favorite is, "Jonah was such a whiner") and go from there for a thousand words. Revise and polish, and it is done.

I'd probably write a lot more if I did not prefer to spend so much time reading.

BTW, the greatest motivational tool I've found is a DEADLINE. That worked wonders when the job at hand was a complex report that might take a half year of grinding research and analysis. I knew the due date, and worked backwards from that.

--Ken

P.S. I have a book on overcoming procrastination. One of these days I'll finish reading it. I started maybe 20 years ago.

Fredster

I can safely say that for many, writing does not come easy. It takes real effort and patience to create publishable written work. If you plan to publish your written work then treat writing as if it were a job because, in a sense, that is what it actuality is.

With all jobs, there are times when you may feel bored, feel that you do not want to do your work, or feel the desire to procrastinate. If you follow through with any of these feelings in a job, you may get fired by your employer. By procrastinating, not sitting down to write, and not doing research and reading to improve your writing ability, you are ultimately firing yourself as a writer.

In order to successfully complete a written work, you may need to change your mentality. In a sense, you may need to treat writing like a job.

If it weren't for deadlines, I'd write nothing at all.

Writing fiction requires us to think, play, do and reflect. Many people who dabble with writing are drawn to just one or two of these, and try and avoid the others. But we need to complete whole circuits for our writing to progress and our manuscripts too.

I know some writers who'll study and research all day long, but neglect to anything with it. Others who'll build worlds and characters interminably but never fit a story to them. Others who'll write whatever's in their heads and call it beautiful before it even makes sense. Others who love to edit and critique but produce very little material themselves.

If you find that you're falling short on one of these then my suggestion is that rather than trying to do all at once, you focus on the one you fall short in. If 'doing' is your weakness then putting your butt in a chair isn't enough. You need something to focus on. So do exercises: write single scenes in which there's a situation, a conflict and a risk of disaster. E.g.


If 'playing' is a weakness then give yourself timed exercises: develop a full character inside 20 minutes say. Appearance, personality, history, job, relationships, opinion of self, key events. Or invent a story made up of three random images from the Internet. Or pick a portrait of someone you don't know and describe the personality of the person depicted.

If 'reflecting' is a weakness then go out and critique other peoples' writing. Read books on critique. See if you can apply the lessons of those books to your writing and others.

And if 'thinking' is a weakness then write some non-fiction for a while. Try to describe in 200 words what it is that makes someone you know, unique. Or explain to a Martian how an egg-beater works and why you'd want one. Or explain why we have wars. Or why we don't talk to children about sex. Or why we're scared of the dead. And whether it's sad or happy to be old. Or what football's about and why we should care. Or what made the tree by your childhood home, special. Or why you loved your favourite toy.

Hope that helps Fredster. Remember: no excuses.

I give myself permission to write crap knowing I'll edit it later. I've been doing the BIC thing and sometimes I'll write LALALALALA DODO DOOOOODODO. just to break the monotony. I figure an object in motion will LALALA DOOODO DO.

Write or go mad?

Can I do both?

When someone says "writing a novel is easy", I'm reminded of the adage about taking candy from babies. Anyone who thinks taking candy from a baby is easy obviously hasn't tried.

An Alphasmart is a great tool for first drafts. Simple to use and few distractions. There are a couple of AW thread on the virtues of Alphasmarts.

Pen & paper are also good tools. I find it easier to compose longhand, type it in as a first revision, then edit on the computer.

Fredster said:

.Is writing hard for you?

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Yes.

...What?

You wanted more? <g>

Oh, and welcome Fredster.

Hope you like it here.