The self-sabotage monster

SianaBlackwood · Nov 18, 2013

Does anyone else find it really hard to write a forum post explaining why you're struggling to write fiction?

Anyway, on another forum I half-jokingly wrote a list of my personal 'rules' for self-sabotage. They go something like this:

1) Don't start any new drafts because that's just procrastination from serious projects
2) Don't work on existing projects because they're so broken that I'm better off marking them down as 'experience' and starting something new
3) No random scenes. That's just a sneaky way of trying to break rule 1
4) Plan everything, because without planning I'll get stuck three days from now
5) Plan nothing, because if I try to plan I'll still be circling around the same problem a month from now

In short, I've managed to convince myself that it's impossible to work on anything at all. How do I destroy this self-sabotage monster? Is such a thing even possible or is this where my writing journey ends?

I feel like this post just labels me as someone who gives up and starts crying when things get a little bit hard, but I don't really know how to give a proper explanation. Sometimes it feels like I've been in a downward spiral for the last year and a bit, with all writing-related stuff just getting harder and harder. I've tried a lot of things to break out of it and I really hope I haven't tried everything because that would mean the end of my previous paragraph is true - this is where it ends. This is the last full stop in a story of abandoned first drafts and broken rewrites.

dondomat · Nov 19, 2013

PM'd you

Once! · Nov 19, 2013

I don't know if this helps, but a few months ago I stumbled on something that worked for me. I'll offer it for what it's worth. Make of it what you will.

I was working through a non-writing issue with a coach and we were talking about how perfectionism and procrastination can be evil twins. Or maybe that perfectionism, procrastination and self-doubt can be evil triplets. Or maybe this image is getting too tortuous and I ought to end it there?

Anyhoo...

Sometimes we put so much pressure on ourselves to perform to an exceptional level that we make it impossible to do anything. We start something, realise that it isn't exceptional, so we stop it and start something else. Then we feel self-doubt that we shouldn't have flipped from one project to another. And the second project isn't turning out as well as the first. Which then means that we are faced with the problem of persisting with project #2, returning to project #1 or starting project #3...

Repeat until thoroughly miserable.

The answer is very easy to say, but much harder to do. We shouldn't put such impossible goals on ourselves to be exceptional straight away. No-one can do that. Not even the child prodigy geniuses that make us feel uber-jealous. Of course, we never get to see their failures, the hours of practice, the tantrums...

Instead, we should focus on one thing and one thing only. We should do our best. That's it. Nothing else. Just do your best. That's what we should tell our kids when we pack them off to school. That should be our mantra for each and every day. We should simply do our best.

And give ourselves permission for our best to be good enough.

Of course, as we get better at something, "our best" will get better over time. But it has to stay within the bounds of what is possible.

I am a firm believer in Malcolm Gladwell's "10,000 hours of practice" theory from his book "Outliers". Most people who get to be world class at something put in 10,000 hours of practice. But to get to 10,000 hours we need to put in 9,999 hours where we are not world class. Not to mention the first 1,000 hours where we are all probably pretty awful.

All of us. Without exception.

Gladwell didn't come up with the idea of "do your best". I got that from a book called the Chimp Paradox by Dr Steve Peters. Put the Chimp Paradox and Outliers in a darkened room, put some Barry White on the record player, and the resulting love child goes something like this: do your best for the first 10,000 hours because the vast majority of your competitors will give up before they get to 1,000 hours. If you can stick at it when all around you are losing faith, that's how you get to the magic 10,000 when you find that your best is pretty damn good.

Or in the language of AW, try BIC (butt in chair) and just write. It doesn't matter if it's not very good to start with. Just write. Some folks swear by NaNa WriMo. Because in a way it is just another way of saying do your best. Put in the hard miles up to the 10,000.

I dunno. I'm rambling now. Does any of that help?

Parametric · Nov 19, 2013

Once! said:
I am a firm believer in Malcolm Gladwell's "10,000 hours of practice" theory from his book "Outliers". Most people who get to be world class at something put in 10,000 hours of practice.

Alas, much like Stephen King's theory that the first million words are just practice, the ten thousand hours theory becomes significantly less comforting once you've put in way more than ten thousand hours of practice and still write the same illiterate garbage that you did at the beginning.

But maybe that's just me.

Once! · Nov 19, 2013

To be fair, Gladwell does say that it should be 10,000 hours of focussed practice. The point is to learn from your mistakes and improve, as well as to make use of mentors, supporters, feedback, etc.

It's not a guarantee of excellence - few things in life can guarantee success - but it's a heck of a lot better than expecting to be excellent without the practice.

And we are trying to build Siana's confidence, aren't we?

Parametric · Nov 19, 2013

Once! said:
To be fair, Gladwell does say that it should be 10,000 hours of focussed practice. The point is to learn from your mistakes and improve, as well as to make use of mentors, supporters, feedback, etc.

It's not a guarantee of excellence - few things in life can guarantee success - but it's a heck of a lot better than expecting to be excellent without the practice.

And we are trying to build Siana's confidence, aren't we?

I'm not trying to be discouraging, but my experience is that these theories only build confidence in the short term. When you're just starting out, it's nice to think that it's as simple as putting the hours in and eventually you'll become a good writer. But it sets you up for long-term disappointment once you've done your ten thousand hours of focused practice. I wish I'd never heard of Outliers.

wanzulfikri · Nov 19, 2013

Once! said:
I don't know if this helps, but a few months ago I stumbled on something that worked for me. I'll offer it for what it's worth. Make of it what you will.

I was working through a non-writing issue with a coach and we were talking about how perfectionism and procrastination can be evil twins. Or maybe that perfectionism, procrastination and self-doubt can be evil triplets. Or maybe this image is getting too tortuous and I ought to end it there?

Anyhoo...

Sometimes we put so much pressure on ourselves to perform to an exceptional level that we make it impossible to do anything. We start something, realise that it isn't exceptional, so we stop it and start something else. Then we feel self-doubt that we shouldn't have flipped from one project to another. And the second project isn't turning out as well as the first. Which then means that we are faced with the problem of persisting with project #2, returning to project #1 or starting project #3...

Repeat until thoroughly miserable.

The answer is very easy to say, but much harder to do. We shouldn't put such impossible goals on ourselves to be exceptional straight away. No-one can do that. Not even the child prodigy geniuses that make us feel uber-jealous. Of course, we never get to see their failures, the hours of practice, the tantrums...

Instead, we should focus on one thing and one thing only. We should do our best. That's it. Nothing else. Just do your best. That's what we should tell our kids when we pack them off to school. That should be our mantra for each and every day. We should simply do our best.

And give ourselves permission for our best to be good enough.

Of course, as we get better at something, "our best" will get better over time. But it has to stay within the bounds of what is possible.

I am a firm believer in Malcolm Gladwell's "10,000 hours of practice" theory from his book "Outliers". Most people who get to be world class at something put in 10,000 hours of practice. But to get to 10,000 hours we need to put in 9,999 hours where we are not world class. Not to mention the first 1,000 hours where we are all probably pretty awful.

All of us. Without exception.

Gladwell didn't come up with the idea of "do your best". I got that from a book called the Chimp Paradox by Dr Steve Peters. Put the Chimp Paradox and Outliers in a darkened room, put some Barry White on the record player, and the resulting love child goes something like this: do your best for the first 10,000 hours because the vast majority of your competitors will give up before they get to 1,000 hours. If you can stick at it when all around you are losing faith, that's how you get to the magic 10,000 when you find that your best is pretty damn good.

Or in the language of AW, try BIC (butt in chair) and just write. It doesn't matter if it's not very good to start with. Just write. Some folks swear by NaNa WriMo. Because in a way it is just another way of saying do your best. Put in the hard miles up to the 10,000.

I dunno. I'm rambling now. Does any of that help?

Thanks for the reminders. I also have the problem of constantly wanting things to be perfect.

Whenever I read a book, I will reread passages to make sure that I can 'perfectly' read it. It is bugging me and this issue of perfectionism is too subtle.

I think that most great writers or whatever great person there is do their stuff because they like it and they just accept whatever end product. Maybe they think that no matter how bad your end product, you will always have time to improve it.

Man...I really need to accept imperfection in my life.

Once! · Nov 19, 2013

Parametric said:
I'm not trying to be discouraging, but my experience is that these theories only build confidence in the short term. When you're just starting out, it's nice to think that it's as simple as putting the hours in and eventually you'll become a good writer. But it sets you up for long-term disappointment once you've done your ten thousand hours of focused practice. I wish I'd never heard of Outliers.

If we want to be better writers we first need to be better readers. We need to read what Gladwell actually said, not what we think he said or what we would like him to have said.

Outliers doesn't say that if someone puts in 10,000 hours of practice they will be world class. It says that most people who have achieved greatness have put in 10,000 hours of focused practice. That's not the same thing. It's like saying that most world class basketball players are over six feet tall so anyone over six feet tall should be a world class basketball player.

Socrates is an animal.
A fish is an animal.
Therefore Socrates is a fish.

Focused practice means seeking feedback and learning from it. It means becoming a better reader of your own work and therefore recognising where you need to improve. Anyone who genuinely does that will get better. But the improvement has to come from you. It's not a heaven-sent reward for simply putting the hours in.

Might I humbly suggest that your wish should not be that you had never heard of Outliers, but that you should have read what it was actually saying?

SianaBlackwood · Nov 19, 2013

Once! said:
Sometimes we put so much pressure on ourselves to perform to an exceptional level that we make it impossible to do anything. We start something, realise that it isn't exceptional, so we stop it and start something else. Then we feel self-doubt that we shouldn't have flipped from one project to another. And the second project isn't turning out as well as the first. Which then means that we are faced with the problem of persisting with project #2, returning to project #1 or starting project #3...

Repeat until thoroughly miserable.

Yeah, that sounds about right.*

It's the one thing that can kill 'just write' - sitting down to the computer and realising I can't make the decision. To borrow a really bad cliche, I guess it's 'once bitten, twice shy'. To use the examples from the quote, projects #1, #2 have both contributed enough misery that it's hard to imagine anything else from them. Project #3 would just be me hiding from #1 and #2, so probably sooner than later I'd kill the spark that made me want to start it in the first place.

(* Recalling a conversation with my brother a few days ago, "that sounds about right" is Australian for something like "OMG YOU READ MY MIND HOW DID YOU DO THAT?")

Leedwashere · Nov 19, 2013

I have a pretty strong tendency to sabotage myself, too. The way I get myself through it is to tell myself that i'd be less disappointed to write something bad than to not write anything at all. Something bad can at least be worked at until it gets better. The first draft of my WIP made almost no sense, and characters all acted cross-ways to their supposed motivations. But at least I'd vomited something out, and the second draft made (a bit) more sense. My sabotage tends to come from treating it as a sprint instead of a marathon and thinking I'll never get there.

Once! · Nov 20, 2013

Siana, have you ever heard of a bit of business theory about conscious competence? It's about how we learn a new skill. Some info here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_stages_of_competence

If I've remembered it right, it goes something like this:

Stage 1 is unconscious incompetence. We are trying out the new skill, so we are not very good at it yet. But because we don't really know what we are doing we don't know what we are doing wrong. Everything looks fine because we don't know any different.

Stage 2 is conscious incompetence. We are still learning the new skill, but we are becoming more aware that we haven't cracked it yet. We can spot some of the deficiencies in what we do, even if we don't know how to fix them.

Stage 3 is conscious competence. This is when we are good at the skill, but we need to focus on it. It's still hard work.

Stage 4 is unconscious competence. We are good at the skill and don't really need to think about it. This usually means that we have been doing it for something approaching the fabled 10,000 hours. It has become second nature.

Stage 1 is dangerous because it is when we might make mistakes. It is often feedback (or making mistakes) that gets us from stage 1 to stage 2.

Stage 2 is when we might become disheartened. We start to know that we are not as good as we want to be or need to be.

It sounds to me that you are stuck somewhere between stage 2 and stage 3. If so, I've got some good news for you ...

1. Everyone goes through this. The path to the promised land of stage 4 unconscious competence is via stages 1, 2 and 3. There are no shortcuts, although some people do skip through the stages faster than others. You are not unusual in what you are going through.

2. You can give yourself a pat on the back because it means that you have got past stage 1. A huge number of people never get out of that stage.

3. The route from stage 2 to stage 3 is through practice and feedback, practice and feedback. If there is a magic recipe for success I haven't found it yet. Yoda was wrong - pain and suffering doesn't automatically lead to the dark side. It can also be how we learn and grow.

We need to get you writing again. Anything. A short story, a poem, a haiku. You could write about the sabotage monster. Or write about something easy. But however we do it, we've got to get BIC (butt in chair). There's just one rule - whatever you start you must finish with no doubts along the way. So make it something short, eh?

Ketzel · Nov 20, 2013

Babara Sher, a very wise woman who has done extensive research and counseling on the human phenomenon of resisting doing the things we really want to do, believes resistance is biologically based. She has some useful tools for dealing with it, depending on which form you are struggling with. What I found most refreshing about her approach is her total disdain for "positive thinking." (One of her books is called "How To Get What You Really Want, Even If You Have No Goals, No Character, and You're Often In A Lousy Mood.") I recently took a telephone workshop from her that genuinely turbocharged some of the visual art I've been working on and obsessing over and avoiding. She's offering the same workshop on December 6, 2013 for $45 with most of the money going to her charity which supports women weavers in the Himalayas.

Dec 14 - Resistance Workshop by Phone
10 am - noon Pacific, 1 pm - 3 pm Eastern (times elsewhere)
More Info / Registration: http://barbarasclub.com/courses/
Benefits: Hi-Cap UK's work in the Himalayan regions of Nepal
$45
(This is a repeat of the August 31 workshop, but each one is different, thanks to your questions)
*****************************************************

I have no (financial) connection to her work, no connection other than having been a fan and learned a lot from her over many years.

Fruitbat · Nov 20, 2013

If writing a novel is repeatedly causing you to become discouraged and you're not getting anywhere anyway, why not try something more manageable for the time being- short stories, flash fiction, poems, articles? They have some skills in common with novels and some that differ, but at least it's still writing. Maybe with some smaller successes, a more positive attitude about being able to finish a novel will return.

benthomas97 · Dec 5, 2013

Ugh, I have #4.

StephanieZie · Dec 5, 2013

SianaBlackwood said:
Does anyone else find it really hard to write a forum post explaining why you're struggling to write fiction?

Anyway, on another forum I half-jokingly wrote a list of my personal 'rules' for self-sabotage. They go something like this:

1) Don't start any new drafts because that's just procrastination from serious projects
2) Don't work on existing projects because they're so broken that I'm better off marking them down as 'experience' and starting something new
3) No random scenes. That's just a sneaky way of trying to break rule 1
4) Plan everything, because without planning I'll get stuck three days from now
5) Plan nothing, because if I try to plan I'll still be circling around the same problem a month from now

In short, I've managed to convince myself that it's impossible to work on anything at all. How do I destroy this self-sabotage monster? Is such a thing even possible or is this where my writing journey ends?

I feel like this post just labels me as someone who gives up and starts crying when things get a little bit hard, but I don't really know how to give a proper explanation. Sometimes it feels like I've been in a downward spiral for the last year and a bit, with all writing-related stuff just getting harder and harder. I've tried a lot of things to break out of it and I really hope I haven't tried everything because that would mean the end of my previous paragraph is true - this is where it ends. This is the last full stop in a story of abandoned first drafts and broken rewrites.

I know how you feel. Maybe it would help to remind yourself of your goals, whatever they are. My two main goals are to write the story I've had in my head for the past five years, and to write something good enough that somebody might want to publish it. Mainly, I need to see my story finished, and I want it to live up to the vision I had for it. It deserves that much at the very least. I keep this in mind when I'm feeling discouraged. If it takes me a year, okay. If it takes me ten years, okay. I will get there one day.

My main means of self-sabotage is that I have such a perfect vision of the story in my head, that anything I write that fails to live up to that vision feels like I'm sullying it, ruining it. Some days, my aversion to writing it almost feels like a protective measure. I'm protecting it from my own incompetence. But I feel like my story needs to be told and nobody else is going to do it for me, so what choice do I have but to keep on writing?

I also like the notion that the first draft can be utter dreck. I've come to almost think of my first draft as more of brain-storming. Maybe the second draft will be just brainstorming too. Maybe it will take me 100 drafts of "brainstorming" before I get to the place where I actually feel competent enough to WRITE it "for real". That's okay.

Give yourself permission to take a break if you need to. But once your ready to continue, just write. I know everybody says that, but it's really the only way.

Something I've been doing lately that's helped me get into the "just write" mindset: I have a lot of disjointed scenes that I need to connect, so I start off my writing sessions by rewriting something I've already written (i.e. I have an old document opened right alongside a new one and I just retype, word-for-word, what I already have on the page). Once I reach a gap that I need to fill in, I just keep on going with new material.

Serene09 · Dec 6, 2013

Fruitbat said:
If writing a novel is repeatedly causing you to become discouraged and you're not getting anywhere anyway, why not try something more manageable for the time being- short stories, flash fiction, poems, articles? They have some skills in common with novels and some that differ, but at least it's still writing. Maybe with some smaller successes, a more positive attitude about being able to finish a novel will return.

This is exactly what I'm doing now.

SianaBlackwood · Dec 6, 2013

Me too... and it would be working great if I could only figure out how to write a short story

. At the moment it basically amounts to having small failures more often.

ZachJPayne · Dec 6, 2013

I call Conscious Incompetence as the title of my memoirs.

But seriously. This is something that I've been struggling with for a long, long time. And now that I've finally started putting words on the page, It's been one long struggle for me.

I can't tell you how many drafts of this one project I've started -- ranging anywhere from 5k-35k words. I've written nearly 100k words of it in the past two years. And each time, somewhere along the line, something's told me to stop, admit that this isn't very good, and restart.

This thread's actually a big help. I've got a scene-by-scene outline, and I'm committing to finishing it. And then I get to go through the garbage heap. Yay.

But thank you.

Elorenalory · Dec 7, 2013

I know exactly how you feel! I have been self-sabotaging myself for years. As a result I have about 6-7 projects that I had started, but abandoned after a few months, because I either got stuck, or got bored, or thought I was writing absolute tripe.

You know what helped me get over that particular bump? NaNoWriMo. When you have to write 50k words in 30 days, you don't have time to think that you are writing garbage. You don't have time to go back and re-read and edit, etc. You have to go on. And that's a very liberating feeling actually.

You just have to understand that you are writing the first draft. It will be far from perfect. It will be full of plot holes, inconsistencies, bad dialogue and grammatical mistakes. But at least it the story would be there, on the page instead of inside your head, from start to finish.

And you can spend the months after that to polish it to your liking. But if you don't resign yourself to writing bad prose in the beginning, you will never finish it. You can edit a bad page, but you can't edit a blank page, after all.

End rant. Lol.

L. Y. · Dec 7, 2013

SianaBlackwood said:
Me too... and it would be working great if I could only figure out how to write a short story . At the moment it basically amounts to having small failures more often.

I know another member mentioned it earlier, but I agree that reading might be a great way to help you with your writing. And I don't mean reading for pleasure.

Study every aspect of the story (I should say stories; more is better). How did the writers structure their stories? Study pacing: How did they pace their stories? Study descriptions of scenes: How did the writers ground you in their world? How did they describe scenes that allowed you--the reader--to vision it in your mind?

Delving through SYW also helped me develop my writing. Before I ever gave my first critique, I studied stories and the critiques they received, and it was an eye-opening experience. I think there is a lot to be taken away from reading (and giving) critiques: It allowed me to consider aspects of my own writing that I didn't think of before.

As to this:

SianaBlackwood said:
Sometimes it feels like I've been in a downward spiral for the last year and a bit, with all writing-related stuff just getting harder and harder.

I'll share a little of my experience here (writing-wise): It was a hard lesson on how much hard work it takes to become proficient in our craft.

Yes, I did learn a lot after arriving at AW (and I am still learning). But I think one of the hardest aspects was implementing what I learned into my writing, and still keeping my style (or maybe voice might be a better way of explaining it?). At times--many times over the last year--my writing felt flat.

Just not "me."

The only cure, at least in my opinion? Patience, persistence, and hard work. The one thing I learned from reading through the threads is that our craft is something we develop over long hours, days, and years of practice.

And that is what we have to do. Keep pushing forward and getting better. Keep writing.

As a fellow writer, I truly hope you do. ~~Good luck~~ Keep up the hard work.

Old Hack · Dec 8, 2013

StephanieZie said:
I know how you feel. Maybe it would help to remind yourself of your goals, whatever they are. My two main goals are to write the story I've had in my head for the past five years, and to write something good enough that somebody might want to publish it.

It's important to have goals you can reasonably achieve. We can't guarantee that our works will be published, and for most of us, having publication as our ultimate goal guarantees we'll end up not achieving that goal. We can aim to write something which is as good as it can be, however, and know that we're able to achieve that goal.

My main means of self-sabotage is that I have such a perfect vision of the story in my head, that anything I write that fails to live up to that vision feels like I'm sullying it, ruining it.

There are all sorts of versions of the things we write.

There's the one we imagine it is going to be; there's the version we actually write; and there's the version our readers experience, which is going to be unique to each and every one of them.

Writing never matches our initial vision of it. But that doesn't mean it's not good enough. It's just part of the process, that's all.

L. Y. said:
I think there is a lot to be taken away from reading (and giving) critiques: It allowed me to consider aspects of my own writing that I didn't think of before.

This is so important. We learn so much, as writers, from helping others with their work: it's so much safer, emotionally, to spot the flaws in work we're not emotionally invested in; and by critiquing the work of others we advance our own ability to revise and improve our own work. If you struggle with the revision process, go and give half a dozen detailed critiques. It's amazing how helpful it can be.

The self-sabotage monster

SianaBlackwood

dondomat

Once!

Still confused by shoelaces

Parametric

Once!

Still confused by shoelaces

Parametric

wanzulfikri

Once!

Still confused by shoelaces

SianaBlackwood

Leedwashere

AZ Diamondbacks fan

Once!

Still confused by shoelaces

Ketzel

Leaving on the 2:19

Fruitbat

.

benthomas97

StephanieZie

Trust me, I'm a doctor

Serene09

SianaBlackwood

ZachJPayne

Beware: #amQuerying

Elorenalory

Dreamer

L. Y.

Thread surfer and virtual bartender

Old Hack

Such a nasty woman