I've lost all enthusiasm

arainsb123 · Jan 8, 2007

Reading back through my current novel-in-progress, I love what I have. I like my characters, and they reside in a fleshed-out world which I enjoyed inhabiting through writing. Notice the past tense: I haven't worked on it in more than a week. I've tried, and written perhaps a few hundred words, feeling lackluster and unenthusiastic all the while.

This happened in November with my NaNovel, which I completely lost interest in around 30,000 words and haven't touched since, even though the same things I said about my current novel-in-progress (Seagod) apply to it. I've finished novels in the past; I'm currently submitting one to agents, and have received a partial request based on a query.

But I just. Don't. Care. I feel lethargic and leaden at the keyboard. Writing fiction doesn't interest me, and I hope that someone else out there has experienced this same kind of awful feeling. Switching over to short stories or different projects has done nothing to help my apathy.

Has this happened to you? What did you do?

PeeDee · Jan 8, 2007

It happens to some writers in the middle of the book. It's going over a hump, and it can be deadening.

What do I do when I don't feel like writing the novel? I switch projects. Or, if I need to get it done, I get on with it. It's easy to be disciplined when you love the project. The tricky bit is when you would rather be doing something else.

If all fiction is making you unhappy, perhaps you need to step away for a way. There's no law against taking a sabbatical from writing. It would probably kill me, but I hear some people do it. Come back when you're going mad from staying away.

Alex Bravo · Jan 8, 2007

Read a great book or watch a great movie... that usually pumps the life back in to me.

Have you tried going back to NaNovel again? Maybe you can ask some drastic what if questions that turn that world upside down. Someone else had a great post about middles, and getting stuck, let me go see if I can find it.............................

IrishScribbler · Jan 8, 2007

I have experienced the same...in fact, it's going on right now (unfortunately)! Switching projects doesn't work for me, either. Last time I did a lot of reading and editing when I felt I couldn't write. I also did journaling, which eventually transformed itself from nonfiction to fiction, and then I was able to write again.

I don't know if that'll help for you, but just be aware you're not alone!!

Alex Bravo · Jan 8, 2007

........................................ here it is. This was really good...

HConn said:
Here is the latest installment of Jim Butcher's essays on writing. It's about a way to combat mid-book slump:

http://jimbutcher.livejournal.com/1865.html

Here is the main page for his livejournal:

http://jimbutcher.livejournal.com/

I recommend scrolling all the way down the page and starting from the first entry.

Jim Butcher is the best-selling author of the Dresden Files novels, a series of urban fantasies which are being adapted for the Sci-Fi channel.

Carmy · Jan 8, 2007

Even writers need a holiday.

Give yourself permission to walk away and not think about writing for a week or two. When I do that, I end up with a desperate need for the "drug" of writing and creating and come back to steam up the keyboard.

Good luck!

arainsb123 · Jan 8, 2007

I have no novels to edit, or I'd be doing that. Scratch that: I have two completed first drafts which I have no intention of ever editing, or even opening. Let's not go into that.

I have been writing fake news for my blog, but that doesn't satiate me. I feel this need to produce fiction, but at war with that need is a far stronger sense of malaise. I'll read blogs of brilliant writers like Holly Lisle, and read brilliant books by Stephen King and George RR Martin, and read old stuff of mine that seems pretty brilliant itself. And then my fingers will not feel brilliant. They will feel like bricks, weighted down with lead anchors.

I guess a week isn't that much time. But I feel like I'm going insane. All I do is go online and click through site after site ... I'm a runner, and I'll go run and feel great and come home and try to write and I'll end up clicking through mindless constant inane blogs and Google searches and Wikipedia, and if I disconnect the Internet I'll just lay about thinking and pondering.

I've been doing worldbuilding, but too much time spent on that starts really irritating me. Once I have a basic skeleton in place, I worldbuild as I write, and no writing means no worldbuilding! And besides, I have two unfinished projects, one at 30K (the NaNovel) and the other at 42K (Seagod), and like I said I think they're great but they're not compelling to me.

arainsb123 · Jan 8, 2007

In response to the suggestions that I take a sabbatical:

You're right. I feel like a lunatic the longer I go without doing it, so I just need to build up the pressure. And maybe in the meantime find some non-writing-related hobby that I can pour myself into.

greglondon · Jan 8, 2007

Why are you writing?

If you're writing to be the next Stephen King or something, you're gonna run into some problems.

If you're writing for all the egoboo and glory that you expect your book to give you, you're gonna run into some problems.

If you're writing because of something it gives you, you should remind yourself of that, and get back to writing.

So, why do you write?

Alex Bravo · Jan 8, 2007

Actually, I did that, worked on my novel for four years, then got tired of it, started playing golf, invented a putter and started a business; but then my writing started calling back to me five years later so I started writing again and this time my business, which was taking off, tanked.

And I find myself wasting time right now as well, waiting to hear back from four publishers... it's been six months and still nothing, ARGHHHHHHHHH!!! I know I should work on something else, but...

LitFa · Jan 8, 2007

I haven't worked on my novel either. The problem is that I actually get too excited and the whole thing is already written in my head. I just get too distracted when I get on the comp to type it out. It was part of my New Years resolution to write 5 pages a day and I only wrote like 4 the first day and then I started surfing the net, playing card games etc. I haven't written in a week. But i go through bouts of writing lots of prose (Like I wrote 100 pages in a week) then nothing for weeks. Um, i'm a manic writer perhaps? I see where you said you should take a break...yeah, that's probably for the best.

arainsb123 · Jan 8, 2007

I have been writing on-and-off for ten years, since well before I'd read anything by Stephen King. I write because -- usually, at least -- I love it more than anything else in the world. Telling a story and playing with words and exploring worlds of my own creation are wonderful.

At the same time, I also don't want to have to go into some miserable minimum wage job or wile my life away working in a corporate office, and so I write because I want to make my living in a way that will grant me maximum freedom and happiness. Maybe I'm too focused on the "time's running out I have to get published, and lucratively, and quickly!" aspect of this.

Maybe that IS the difference. Even when I do'nt feel like going out to run, I do because on a deeper level I know that I'll feel much better while running and afterward. And I do. Whereas I think, "the writing will get easier after a few hundred words." Up until recently, that was true.

Or maybe I'm overblowing this whole thing in my mind, as I have done in the past, and it's just a temporary funk.

arainsb123 · Jan 8, 2007

"The problem is that I actually get too excited and the whole thing is already written in my head."

I know that feeling! It's the opposite of what I have now, but I've experienced it in the past. It's preferable to apathy by a gaping margin, I have to say.

PeeDee · Jan 8, 2007

The thing about a temporary funk is, a writer has a constantly running brain willing to turn it into a major catastrophic meltdown. Don't let it.

Treat it like running. You may be winded after the first few hundred words, but keep going, it just means you haven't found your pace yet.

Going "AAAH, I've got to get published now, I'm running out of time, I'm wasting my life away" is indeed the wrong thing to worry about. Worry about writing more gooder fiction and selling it to people. Let a career build itself out of that. Otherwise, you'll be accepting a Nebula going "Do I have a steady career yet? Am I stable yet? What if the next book flops? What then?"

Novelust · Jan 8, 2007

Try re-outlining from your stopping point on. Just knowing the darn thing is going somewhere helps me keep on going.

arainsb123 · Jan 8, 2007

PeeDee: I think you're exactly right. It may also be a problem with this new writing software I have, Jer's Novel Writer. At first it galvanized my writing, but now it makes everything feel meticulous and careful. It includes a database utility for keeping track of characters and places and such, and an automatic outlining tool, and a bunch of other really cool tools.

But all the books I've written previously, I didn't need it for, and maybe all this cool stuff is just slowing me down, and getting me to think too much. Consciousnsess during writing never bodes well. Perhaps I should go back to NeoOffice and let my subconscious take over again.

Novelust: I have an outline that goes forward a few scenes, and maybe *that's* the problem. Perhaps I should scrap it, scrap these latest few leaden scenes, and start over from where the writing was last flowing in a torrent.

PeeDee · Jan 8, 2007

Ah! There's the problem! Screw that noise! The first thing I do when I get a fancy new writing software is turn everydamnthing off! What I want is a typewriter, without the "CLACK CLACK CLACK" noise that would offend the neighbors.

(Honestly, I just want a typewriter again)

Simplify your writing. Go write by hand for awhile. Go write in Notepad. Kill your novel writing software. Fugeddaboudit!

arainsb123 · Jan 8, 2007

Notepad! Oh, I'd forgotten how I love Notepad! It's where I first began drafting A Hungry Hades, which I recently finished editing and which has ellicited the praise of agents. You're RIGHT!

I've been focused too much on the intricacies of this world and of all my minor characters, which numbered far greater than I'd imagine. (Many dozens!) The expense of this has been the story itself.

Unfortunately the Mac doesn't have NotePad, but I could try going back to my AlphaSmart Neo (http://www.alphasmart.com/), which is currently sitting forlornly on the bookshelf. That's about as simple as simple gets.

I used to write on a Windows 95 with PFS WindowWorks, a piece of software which came out in '92 and which I don't believe has existed in at least a decade, installed. And oh, everything was so simple and carefree, and writing was a pure escape, as it should be. So I'll stop belaboring conscious decisions about scene placement and structure and whatnot, and trust the underconscious!

PeeDee · Jan 8, 2007

Ye gawds, if I did all that stuff out loud and consciously, I would have stomped off long ago. Just write. Just let everything else sort itself out and just write. If ANYTHING feels complicated aside from your story, then tell it to Shut the BadWord Up.

I tend to act up and kick out when things get unnecessarily complicated. Writers worry about way too many things. Get as basic as you can, find a bit smoewhere that you really want to write further from, and do it. If this means deleting other work to get back to the point when you were enjoying it, then do it. Just keep writing. That's important.

ANd keep reminding yourself "I don't have to do this; I can walk away any time I want. I can go for a jog."

It helps if the writing is I wanna and not I hafta.

arainsb123 · Jan 8, 2007

Fellow Mac users might want to check out WriteRoom for really simple writing software; for Windows, there's darkroom. It's like the old green-on-black terminals, with autosave and such built in. I'm downloading it right now!

MidnightMuse · Jan 8, 2007

It might not help, 'cause we're all different and all, but I find if I'm feeling stagnated, all I need is a quick weekend away. Nothing fancy, but if I can get myself somewhere that has no computer, no typewriter, and no notebook or anything else aside from sand to write in -- being unable to write for a weekend gives me all manner of inspiration.

Then I'm back, only missed a couple of days, and got all inspired-like in the process

PeeDee · Jan 8, 2007

I hadn't seen that before. That's a fun idea. I recommend it, then. Go write something. Even if you have no use for it.

Petroglyph · Jan 8, 2007

Here are some of my ideas (cause, I truly understand! I have been there, and sometimes I still go there):
1) Would some kind of deadline help? When I have no one to answer to but my own little self, I can moan and procrastinate and get nothing done for a rather impressive amount of time. If I have a deadline, then I push myself through my funk. Is there a contest you could enter? In the fall perhaps?

2) Talk up your book. There are those who roll their eyes when they hear someone is writing a book, but then there are those who get excited and are rooting for your progress. Craig Johnson (author of Cold Dish, and 2 other novels) told a sheriff in his town that he was writing a novel. Some time passed (7 years maybe?) and he was getting gas and he ran into the Sheriff and the Sheriff asked him, "Hey, Craig, how's that book coming?" and then Craig got off his duff and got it written.

Perhaps some type of accountability will light your fire?

Other than that, my advice would be: Write anyway.

Good luck.

PeeDee · Jan 8, 2007

Accountability is fun. I like deadlines. If all else fails, just put it in your signature "I will be done on January 12th, at 12:53 AM" and then be done by then. Talk about it around the forums a little. I did a Novel Deathmatch with another author in order to get a book written. If I were doing a book now, I'd race you too.

Diviner · Jan 8, 2007

After completing almost four novels, I still feel like a newbie half the time. I get off on reading writing books and AW when I hit a down spot. It always gets me back into it if only to check my prose, look for adverbs, tune up sentences. I find I can always hunt through what I have written for tells and turn them into shows. Even if I later decide not to keep what I have written, it gets my enthusiasm back and running.

Software is great but nothing is more fun for me than writing middles. The only thing I forget about what I have written is names. I may outline my next effort--or the one after that, but so far every attempt to outline just sucks the adventure out of writing.

I've lost all enthusiasm

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