Motivate Me!!

Well, I'm guessing you know the standard reply to your situation if you've been lurking for almost a year.

A question: Have you ever finished any (short) story in the past few years?

Have you read The War of Art? I'm thinking that might help you somewhat (you can ignore some of the more mystic parts).

This is going to sound silly willy and you're gonna say oooo that doesn't sound like I can do that....no no no no boo hoo dooo new no, hey go, leave stay, wait, can I ask you something? not while im writing what if i typo wrongo? well, ya only get yerself to blame and the game is easy, I win every time on a dime, and I don't even get paid and hoorayyeed for this....buziness, necessarily less less, more, less is more, more or less....

just write baby! let the hot mess out. who cares if it's not good or sloppy as all hell. You're an English teacher. I love you already, so you'll need to write eventually or it will just keep burning you inside, until you say, "God, I never did it. I just could never do it."

NO. You know as well as I do, that your gut is telling you, don't listen to that voice. If you hate that voice, scream and shout and write it out, right wrong in a sing song, you do what you gotta do to get that puppy on paper...hey if it stays a puppy so what. At least you wrote it down. Now you can work on the fun part and pick away all day, and say, waiiiiiiiit a minute, I know a better word to replace that in case that, seal it with a newer, nicer word cuz I heard from a bird, I can fly away....on paper.

I like to plot all day too. But eventually it should come out on paper. Get the skeleton, the bones of it. Just write.

Hope this helps...I'm going to NOT reread this and just press send to show you this is the org. typing. To proove it can be messy at first. It will be it always is (for me at least) Who ever wrote a novel in one perfect shot?

No. I don't know. But I know you should give it your best shot!!!!

How you explained your story building - right there...how it builds in your mind, but fizzles on paper. Yeah. That's me. Every time. It's fun to see that story in your head. You can live it, feel it, touch it, smell it. It's real. It's yours. The minute you get it on paper, new ideas scratch it. It changes. It can't help but change. That's scary..especially when you want to read it on the paper just as you saw it in your mind for all that time.

See, I thought all of that until I started writing my current wip. Like you, I never finished a novel length first draft. Short stories, novellas, poetry...sure. Novels? Pffft. And then I took a shot with NaNo. I bought Scrivener to help keep me focused and organized. I learned how to use the program and latched on to some great writer buddies here. And ya know what? I'm almost finished with my first draft...my first full novel-length draft.

You might not feel like going that route. There are other options. Various programs exist to help get those words from your head to the page. Research some speech to type options if need be. Perhaps you need to TALK your story onto the page. If nothing else, get a micro recorder (not even sure those are on the market anymore) or use your smartphone - if you have one - and record your voice telling your story. Then write it out.

Planning your story is a great start. Get that skeleton drawn. Do you know the ending of your story? Knowing that really helped me. Sure, it's changed, but at least I had a goal. The rest is just filler. Have fun filling it.

And when you get stuck, which you will, come back to AW and someone will give you a push.

Even if you are a planner, which is okay, take one of your scenes and just write it. It can be the first, last, or something from the middle. Or perhaps a dialogue section, or a description. You've got a skeleton of an idea, right? All planned out? But you need to put some meat on those bones.

I have encountered writers who are planners who - well, that's all they do is plan. They've got intricate diagrams and graphs and whatnots, but their ideas are stuck in planning. It's like the architect who enjoys drawing blueprints - but no one ever builds a house from them.

Write at least one scene, begin. to end. For many of us, once we get going on a story, it's very hard to stop.

You probably know what motivates you in other situations. It could be deadlines, or self-bribery, or having an audience present, or one coming (that's the only thing that gets me to clean the house - good thing I have crit group that comes over once a week!). It could be strict accountability to another person or group. It could be getting out of the house. Whatever. The trick is to get out of your own head, and to get yourself into a situation where you want to/need to/have to produce regardless of the quality (NaNoWriMo may be right for you).

PamelaC said:

Hi, all. I'm a daily lurker, seldom poster here, and have been for awhile. I've been trying to write a novel for years, but have yet to finish even a first draft of anything! I lose steam or focus or whatever, and I quit writing altogether for several months. Then I'll start getting the itch to write again, I'll start brainstorming, I'll start plotting and world building and really get into all of the pre-writing. I'll spend weeks scribbling notes and ideas in a notebook, and just visualizing characters and scenes that I get do excited about. I become quite obsessed with my story, and delight in the time I get to spend planning and creating. I have all the time I want, I'm a teacher by day, an unmarried, childless person who lives alone by night. I have no excuses.

But! I'm afraid to start actually writing this latest story because I'm worried I'll just quit again. I can spend hours researching and imagining, but when I sit down in front of the blank screen it's torture to get a few hundred words out on a scene I can see so vividly in my head.

I think I'm a bit OCD, which is why I enjoy the planning process so much. What I want is to be able to just write in such a way that I pour it all out, good, bad, or whatever. I'm trying to convince myself that finishing the story is my only goal. It's hard to turn off my inner editor and critic though. (Did I mention that I'm an English teacher? Yeah. It's an asset and a curse).

Someone please inspire me to just WRITE! Tell me it's okay for it to all be a ridiculous hot mess for this first draft. And if you've got any tips or hints, I'd love to hear them!

Thanks!

Click to expand...

Forgive yourself for the imperfections in your writing, then open a vein onto the page. And, when you are done, please forgive the rest of us our imperfections, too. I suspect I have committed many offenses against the English language over the years and doubt I am done with my mischief.

At this moment, I am outside your house, looking at you through a window. I won't tell you which one. I have a really good, accurately sighted sniper rifle.

Now, show me you can sit down at your computer, or with a physical notebook, and write. I'll be watching.

Motivation enough?

caw

PamelaC said:

Hi, all. I'm a daily lurker, seldom poster here, and have been for awhile. I've been trying to write a novel for years, but have yet to finish even a first draft of anything! I lose steam or focus or whatever, and I quit writing altogether for several months. Then I'll start getting the itch to write again, I'll start brainstorming, I'll start plotting and world building and really get into all of the pre-writing. I'll spend weeks scribbling notes and ideas in a notebook, and just visualizing characters and scenes that I get do excited about. I become quite obsessed with my story, and delight in the time I get to spend planning and creating. I have all the time I want, I'm a teacher by day, an unmarried, childless person who lives alone by night. I have no excuses.

But! I'm afraid to start actually writing this latest story because I'm worried I'll just quit again. I can spend hours researching and imagining, but when I sit down in front of the blank screen it's torture to get a few hundred words out on a scene I can see so vividly in my head.

I think I'm a bit OCD, which is why I enjoy the planning process so much. What I want is to be able to just write in such a way that I pour it all out, good, bad, or whatever. I'm trying to convince myself that finishing the story is my only goal. It's hard to turn off my inner editor and critic though. (Did I mention that I'm an English teacher? Yeah. It's an asset and a curse).

Someone please inspire me to just WRITE! Tell me it's okay for it to all be a ridiculous hot mess for this first draft. And if you've got any tips or hints, I'd love to hear them!

Thanks!

Click to expand...

If you don't finish anything then you'll never finish ANYTHING.

A writing instructor once told me that you can fix anything once you've got it down on paper, but you can't fix a book that's not written.

Sometimes I remind myself that when I'm starting to worry that my first draft is terrible.

I've found when I'm going through writers block it helps to write a short narrative about your main character/characters. That may sound strange, but it works for me. Write about your characters doing anything. They could be drinking their morning coffee, riding a bus to work, jogging, etc.. I found when I do this, it helps me get into the mindset of my characters. I believe this trick is worth a shot.

I like to bribe myself to write when it's just not wanting to happen. For short stories, the bribe may be something like, "If I finish the first draft of this story today, I'll go to the store and get a bottle of wine to celebrate, take a nice hot bath, and enjoy a book."

That tends to sound so nice to me that I get really enthusiastic about the writing, in a good mood about the prospect of a lovely and relaxing evening, (I may tell myself that if I really like the story, I'll get a BUBBLE BATH!) and the words just fly out.

That's not always the reward with which I bribe myself, but it's in the single digits temperature-wise here right now, so that is one heck of a motivator!

My first drafts are absolutely incredible. Good writing should flow from the brain and straight onto the page. You are absolutely screwed my friend.

No, seriously - in some ways the first draft is the easy bit precisely because you can allow yourself to write *anything* even if it's rubbish because you know that you're going to go back and edit it. The hard part is when you go back and edit it and you think "what in God's name am I gonna do with this...?" I don't fear blank pages, I fear the ones that I've already filled up.