What Is The Hardest Thing You Ever Wrote?

In my case, I have no problems in writing anything, but sometimes I suffer the 'cut the crap' process. I love my crap

A 1,600 word research paper, in Spanish, about a Comanche Medicine Woman. The class read several novels in Spanish dealing with brujeria--witchcraft. We were supposed to research and write on that topic.

I have a close friend who is Comanche. Back in the eighties she told me about the medicine woman and her story. I could have chosen a subject with a Spanish background but wanted to know more about this woman, Sanapia, because she was a strong woman, but witty and not always confident in her calling. She came into her power, almost accidentally, after menopause.

The paper was especially difficult because the research material could only be found in English and then had to be translated. This was before google translate. It is easier to research in the language you plan to write in.

I was facing personal setbacks, financially, spiritually, professionally and with my daughters. The paper took up most of one summer and, this might sound goofy, but somehow the medicine woman became alive to me. Weird things happened. Like I said it was a very hard summer but after that paper was finished, things began to come together. I picked up my own abandoned stories and began finishing them. Finishing a novel was a piece of cake after that research paper. And I regained something spiritually--s6

My last novel. The others came to me like little gifties primed for unwrapping. That one refused to reveal itself, constantly kicking me in the proverbial nuts for even thinking about writing the thing.

The hardest, most agonizing thing about writing for me is naming characters and places. I'm not kidding. It takes me several weeks. I don't know why but names are important to me. They have to be perfect.

My book that was just accepted by my publisher. It is erotic paranormal romance, but I wanted to have these big magical paranormal scenes in it, I didn't want the magic to be small and minor. So it was hard to pull it off the way I wanted, but I finally did it.

Now my problem is deciding which of my many many ideas to concentrate on next, which is no small problem. It actually has me in a horrid, confused limbo. :-(

Emotionally, this thing about my cat.

Technically, the second version of my first book nearly broke me. It wasn't right, but I wanted it to be right so badly, and I kept pushing and pushing at it until I couldn't think straight. In the end, it all went in the bin.

Anna Spargo-Ryan said:

Emotionally, this thing about my cat.

Technically, the second version of my first book nearly broke me. It wasn't right, but I wanted it to be right so badly, and I kept pushing and pushing at it until I couldn't think straight. In the end, it all went in the bin.

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I binned the first book I ever finished, or rather I gutted it and completely changed it, and it kind of is the novel I just got an offer on, except that only the prologue, the setting, some of the characters and some of the ending is the same. It's in other ways a very very different book.

I got traumatized when I was 19. I'd rather not talk about it but...
I can't for the LIFE of me write M/F stuff. Especially sex scenes. I usually stick to m/m though I've been trying write f/f. And I find sex scenes in general to be hard to write.

Fictional Cowboy said:

The hardest, most agonizing thing about writing for me is naming characters and places. I'm not kidding. It takes me several weeks. I don't know why but names are important to me. They have to be perfect.

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This. Even worse is the title of whatever I'm working on. It's one of my little authorial quirks, if the title isn't right then I won't be comfortable enough to write the story. Title is both King and Queen for me, it has to be perfect for whatever stage I'm at with the story.

Case in point, earlier today I looked up the latin word for vampire for the name of a scifi novel about vampires being a subspecies of humans. I checked and rechecked a half dozen times before I was satisfied with the translation. The damn thing is still in just the concept stage! It's a good title though, based on the scientific propensenity for naming things in latin, Homo Sapien Lamae. Vampire is Lamia in latin, and homo sapien is the species name for humans.

I used to struggle with naming characters too, but then I decided to just give them the first name that popped into my head as I was writing, and put up with it until something better came along. That way I could get on with writing without losing impetus, and I knew I wasn't committed to the name so it didn't seem too important if I got it wrong.

I've given my characters some brilliant names this way; names I would never have found if I'd spent a lot of time thinking about it. Often, it's good not to think to hard about things.

Lillith1991 said:

This. Even worse is the title of whatever I'm working on. It's one of my little authorial quirks, if the title isn't right then I won't be comfortable enough to write the story. Title is both King and Queen for me, it has to be perfect for whatever stage I'm at with the story.

Case in point, earlier today I looked up the latin word for vampire for the name of a scifi novel about vampires being a subspecies of humans. I checked and rechecked a half dozen times before I was satisfied with the translation. The damn thing is still in just the concept stage! It's a good title though, based on the scientific propensenity for naming things in latin, Homo Sapien Lamae. Vampire is Lamia in latin, and homo sapien is the species name for humans.

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You'd probably be better off with Homo Lamæ; all species in the Homo genus are human, it's just that Sapiens are the only ones still kicking about. I'm not an expert, so Homo Sapiens Lamæ may well be valid
too, though.
Personal preference abounds.

On topic: the only thing I ever really balk at is writing cards for birthdays and stuff. At this point I generally write them in whichever language is tickling me at the moment and relish the chance for a little extra practice; people just write it off as me being eccentric(more likely weird).

When my uncle died from cancer. I've tried writing about the experience, but I can never get past the second vignette.

...and whoever said titling books. That's always a horrendous mess.

In my current WIP, the main character has to kill his daughter after she becomes a vampire.

I used to laugh at writers who talked about how hard it was to write emotional scenes, but I wound up having panic attacks while writing that one.

NRoach said:

You'd probably be better off with Homo Lamæ; all species in the Homo genus are human, it's just that Sapiens are the only ones still kicking about. I'm not an expert, so Homo Sapiens Lamæ may well be valid
too, though.
Personal preference abounds.

On topic: the only thing I ever really balk at is writing cards for birthdays and stuff. At this point I generally write them in whichever language is tickling me at the moment and relish the chance for a little extra practice; people just write it off as me being eccentric(more likely weird).

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Hmmm, just like mutants in X-men are Homo Superior. *rolls name change on tongue* Homo Lamæ it is then!

Poetry. I can NOT write poetry. In school when we had to, I'd cringe in mortification.

The hardest thing I wrote was this oneshot about a story I heard from a guy in my Cognitive Behavioral Therapy group. He was talking about how he was boarding and airplane, which was one of our immense fears, and he explained how he had a sort of out of body experience thinking he had an outburst before the plane took off. He had 'attacked' one of the flight attendants and had to be escorted off the plane all in his mind. But in order for me to accurately represent being on an airplane (I haven't been on one in over ten years), I had to do research and remind myself what it was like. I threw myself into so many panic attacks trying to write that, but I got it done.

JetH7 said:

Beginnings. The entirety of the first act is so hard for me to get right. There's just so much you have to do; introduce the main cast, setting, plot, themes, and so much more. And then on top of that you have to make it actually interesting to read (Meaning I can't just make a 'things you need to know for the interesting part of the story to make sense' list.).

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Seriously. Thanks for saying this! I rewrite my beginnings about a million times every time I start a project - lots of times after I've finished the entire draft. There's just so much pressure to make an impact immediately, in order to keep a reader wanting more... I'd love to just give them the query letter to show them why they want to keep reading.

So yes. I agree. Beginnings are the worst.

Writing comes easy for me but blogs seem to be the toughest because I want to keep it succinct but also pack it full of good content.

As has already been said the middle of the book. Normally I have the start and the end but half way through I will always (even with short stories) be hit with a wall of doubt and indecisiveness about the direction and strength of story - it's horrible! You just have to keep putting those words down, once they are down you can always change things in edits but if you haven't the words down there can be no edits.

The other thing I hate is synopsis especially the multiple page ones. Every-time I'm called to write one I go through more than a pot of tea!

For me the hardest thing to write was a short about a young mother committing suicide in a debt fueled dystopian society after the death of her child as she couldn't afford to feed it… her method of going out was the method I’d decided I would use if I ever came down to it (was never serious more of a ‘what if’ decision FYI)

but with my sister just having a kid of her own and me struggling with debt it became a very powerful piece, I was writing a little too close to home and poured all of my fears and depression into it, and as hard as it was to write… it set me free from those negative emotions

The hardest thing I ever write is what I'm writing at the moment. I have trouble with:

* Blocking (she was there, he stood at the door, he was outside at the time etc etc)
* Transitions (no one wants to know about an uneventful car ride that takes us from scene X to scene Y)

The hardest was a software architecture proposal dealing with concurrency and ways to develop and test in an existing system. Did I mention I spent many years as a softwar engineer? Amazing how it's all just words, but far different than writing a novel.

And with that as a segue, the hardest thing I've written related to novels is the query. Let me tell you, the novel was the easy part.

I'm am writer and have written a lot of topics.
But never did I write about medical topics cause I'm not familiar with the terms.
I can't figure out this and that.

That first sentence is a killer. I'll spend the same time on it than I do a whole separate chapter....and then in the end I'll just end up re-writing what I originally wrote.

The hardest things for me to write in general were essays and assignments for school. I don't know if that counts, though. I always thought English would be my favorite subject, but as time went on and the writing we did went from creative writing to serious essay writing, I had trouble putting as much effort into it. I think school-assigned writing was the hardest because it sucked a lot of the creativity and enjoyment I'd always found with creative writing.