Stamina Issue

There really isn't any way to get rid of it. Sit down every day and write, that way you can slightly stave off the loss of interest.

Mostly, you eventually just have to soldier on through it. Write in cold blood. It's not pretty, but there isn't any pixie dust as a substitute.

Eleasha said:

I have tried that, and it does work, but it makes me write soooo slowly it's painful. I took six hours to churn out 3 pages. :S

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Some days, it just can't be helped. And really, perhaps you're just not built to write novels? You don't have to write novels, you know. Nothing wrong with short stories. They're certainly my preferred medium.

To be a writer takes many things only one of which is actual writing. Having the fortitude to actually finish a project is one of those things.

The best advice that I can give you on how to accomplish that is to set yourself attainable goals for routine (hopefully daily) writing on the same project without allowing yourself to work on a different project unless you have finished the quota on your initial project. Having a day where the writing is hard is not a good excuse: Always get your quota done.

What is probably hanging you up most is the same thing that hangs most people up: You think you are writing crap because you don't 'feel it' that day. And, hey, perhaps you are writing crap -- but writing crap is ten times better than writing nothing at all. Here's the key: Crap can be turned into gold during a rewrite, whereas non-writing cannot.

It doesn't matter how good or bad your first draft is, or your second, or your third. All that really matters is how good your last draft is. Get through the first draft and then start the editing process. The bad parts of your first draft where you wanted not to write anything at all becuase you knew what you would write would be crap may very well be the parts you like the most in your second draft because it gives you an excuse to write instead of just edit.

Good words from Havlen there.
I can use his advice as well. My WIP has been getting stuck recently because I watched movies or TV stories that gave me inspiration for future novels of my own. But writing down pages of ideas for those future books is keeping me away from my WIP.

Hi to all here, and to all a good write !!!

Eleasha:

Do you plan/plot out your projects?

I know for me, that kills a project. I get bored if I know how it all turns out. Obviously I have a vague idea of how things conclude, but I rarely have a step-by-step map of how to get there.

I put in a lot of work to a project that I thought I needed to seriously plot out. Every chapter noted, all the characters, what they did, where they did it. Even wrote the last chapter.

80 pages in and I was bored.

I've shelved the project now and when I go back I'll start from scratch and just wing it.

My advice, make some characters, given them a problem, then settle in and enjoy the ride.

PS. PeeDee writes short stories 'cos he can't count that high. I believe beyond...

one... two... some... lots... more... red-neck-family-picnic...​

he's lost.

It's different for everyone, is, I think, your short answer.

For me, plotting works. I even draw up a rough plot outline for short stories. I write slowly, and having a structure written out actually helps me finish something after the first mad wave of writing passion has worn off.

I'll echo what PeeDee said: sometimes writing is simply - in the words of PG Wodehouse - applying the seat of the trousers to the seat of the chair.
And getting on with it. Plodding thorugh it.
I'm stuck myself at the moment on a couple of stories, & I should really take my own advice.

So I'll go log off now.

Eleasha said:

I have tried that, and it does work, but it makes me write soooo slowly it's painful. I took six hours to churn out 3 pages. :S

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If they were three good pages, you've moved toward your goal--you've moved the story along. That's progress. Writing novels is not a race. Success shouldn't be measured in how many words you put down per day. Success is in the story--moving is along, finishing it. With experience, the production rate will pick up.

Interest

Honestly, interest isn't a factor for me. I'm not sure how to phrase it, but writing is what I do. If you have a day job, you can't tell your employer "I'm not going to finish this project because I've lost interest." Not unless you want to get fired.

If I start something, I finish it. Maybe it's because my real interest lies in what happens after the book is complete, and I know if I don't finish the book, what comes after, publication, money, the ability to go to a bookstore or library and pull one of my books off a rack or a stack, will never happen.

But it really comes down to writing is what I do, so I show up each day and write for the prescribed number of hours.

Some of the greatest short story writers can't write novels to save their life. Some novel writers can't write a good short story. It happens.

But if I waited around for my interest to perk up to finish a novel, I'd never finish one. The muses are a fickle bunch, but they love the aroma of hard work.

Eleasha said:

I took six hours to churn out 3 pages. :S

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I may know this phenomenon of which you speak - I call it the 'grind to a halt' - I got to the point where it was taking me ... I dunno - 30 minutes or more to write a two sentence paragraph - and then I found that I was really writing the same two sentences everyday, just using different words. I think sometimes you can push your way thru things, but other times these points are actually our systems ways of pointing out to us that we are doing something that isn't working. I think that at some points in figureing out how to write, we need to go back to the drawing board and find out what to do to be in touch with the thing that works best for us.

Eleasha,

Maybe instead of looking for amount of writing completed, you should just make a habit of time spent writing. Start with a set time, for a set amount of time. For instance, I always write from 7:30 to 8:30 every morning. If I get more in than that, great, but I just make sure that that hour is mine, everyday. Even if what I write doesn't feel fully formed or fully productive I keep writing. I don't worry if one day I get 200 words because I know on another day I'll get 1000. Some days you click, some days you don't click so well, but that's okay. Allow yourself to have off days.

Another good piece of advice I found is (from Hemmingway I believe, but I'm not certain) to end your writing time on an upnote. In other words, when you have a some writing that is working well and moving nicely, quit while you feel that momentum is still going instead of writing till you feel you've spent all your energy. The theory is that if you finish feeling good about what you wrote then you'll look forward to coming back the next day and hitting the pages again. I'm not saying quit after five minutes because you wrote a nice sentence. I mean, if your set writing time is drawing to a close and you feel like you have accomplished a lot, feel free to put the pen down and keep the next scene in mind for the next day.

Good luck,
Sean

So, maybe you are just a short story writer?

Or maybe you're just a slow writer who take a while to complete a novel.

Nothing wrong with either of those, unless you want to make a living as a writer.

Eleasha said:

I'm doing excellent if I can maintain interest in a 25 page story long enough to finish writing it. The longest thing I've ever written was 24,000 words long (a really bad unfinished novel). I'm freaked that I'll never be able to finish anything novel length because of massive losses of interest. I've been writing seriously since I was eight years old, so I don't think this is one of those things that will get better with time. Is this a normal affliction, and does anyone have any ideas on how to get rid of it?

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I had this feeling too before I began my novel.

I'm sure we've all had it at one point in time. Hang in there.

This is pretty basic advice, but maybe your novel should be "structured" in a way that will allow you to write in large separate-but-not-separate chunks of text.

For example, in my novel each chapter is a week. I detail everything that went on that week, and then I move to the next.

It's a gimmick I put in for two reasons: (1) I wanted to set a good pace for the book, and (2) I wanted to know that I would finish it. If each week was 50 or so pages, then I would have a 200-250 page novel if the book took place over the span of a month.

You may hate gimmicks like that. I sort of enjoy them, and I found that that one worked. It got me through the book.

You're not in trouble until you've reached the James Joyce level of angst about your writing and you're producing seven words a day.

(You're really in trouble if you start sounding like James Joyce, too. It means you're accidentally typing with your feet.)

I'm with a couple of the above posters - the cold-blooded approach pulls me out of tailspins.

If you're not totally against plotting, I'd recommend at least a rough outline. Just mark the major points of interest (i.e., the interesting and fun-to-write scenes) on the map - this is where the MC fights with his parents, this is where we meet the evil dragon, here's where the Vikings arrive. Then treat it just like a map. Ask yourself what the next step is to getting to your first landmark. Many times, I'll find myself writing gibberish or pages of nothing. Then I'll sit down and think, 'Okay, what absolutely needs to happen in this scene to move this story along?'

Once I know that answer, I find it's much easier to push through to the next scene, and the next. There's no shame in allowing more than your writerly instincts to see you through.

Then I'll sit down and think, 'Okay, what absolutely needs to happen in this scene to move this story along?'

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Many times, I've written exactly that at the top of the page. After I've answered that question, I can write the scene.

If you're built for short stories, but would love to write a novel, try writing several short stories that are connected to each other. Overlapping characters, related events in the plots, what have you. I write fantasy, so an example for me would be a Conan-esque character who is after One Big Thing (a kingship, an ancient weapon, a crapload of treasure) but accepts jobs as an assassin/thief/toilet cleaner until he gets that One Big Thing. That way, I could have several shorts that are self-contained but are part of a bigger story, throw them together, and all of a sudden have a novel.

Charles de Lint has done this a few times. Check The Wild Wood.

Let the frustration build, try to appease it with writing short stuff and working on your voice and style. If the urge to write a novel gets too strong drop out and spend a month alone writing furiously racing to the end and then spend the rest of your life cleaning it up.

engmajor2005 said:

Charles de Lint has done this a few times. Check The Wild Wood.

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Ray Bradbury and Harlan Ellison have both done it several times too.

Actually, it's just not a bad way to work.

Do you really care about the characters you've created? Have you created enough peril for them? These might be a couple reasons why you get bored. To me, the writing experience is like the reading experience. If I'm reading a novel where I care about and really sympathize with the characers who are in a really interesting/perilous situation, I can't wait to pick it up to continue the story, and usually don't want it to end. Same for writing. If I did my job right, I have pretty interesting characters and pretty intereting situations worked out before I start writing. That way, just like reading, I can't wait to sit down to continue the story and don't want the experience to end.

Of course, this requires some pre-planning like character sketches and, at least, some (even subtle) outlining, but it works for me. Incidentally, this pre-writing is what i find a chore and where I can get bored. This is what I consider the "work" where writing the novel is the fun. And if I can't plod through this phase, then I don't bother writing the story. It's not gonna work for me. But I'll save the notes for possible use in future projects.

Hope this helps. Good luck.

ETA I don't outline too in-depth. I have a bunch of scenes in mind that I think naturally lead me to a pre-conceived conclusion. Most of them I use, some i don't, and I come up with others that present themselves along the course of writing. That leaves me enough room for exploration without meandering too far offcourse. This still makes it exciting for me and I discover new things along the way. And, I usually don't end up at exactly the same conclusion I started out with. But the map usually gets me in the ballpark.

I am just now suffering from a severe lack of stamina almost 100k into a (fantasy, so not done yet) novel. But it IS the longest I've done so far, in five months, so maybe this time...

That said, the advice above about writing short stories that come together into something larger sounds really good to me, and I'd try it. I did something similar for fun once - it didn't turn out to be novel-length, but I very much enjoyed it nonetheless.