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Daffy and Speedy: My other metaphor

NateSean

Vulcan/Time Lord Hybrid
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One of my favorite cartoons is the one about Daffy and Speedy stuck on a desert island. Daffy finds a box full of canned food but he refuses to share any of it with Speedy, who has the can opener.

Eventually Daffy gets the can opener but he loses the food. This cartoon is rare for being one of the few in my memory that has Daffy truly lamenting his consequences.

I will go without a computer and tons of ideas in my head. Then I'll have a computer and go blank.

Outlining doesn't help. Writing notes on my phone never helps. I just have this swirling, shifting mass of doubt and over thinking clogging up the works.

Daffy is my adult self trying to survive on a desert island with a box full of good ideas that I know I can make work. Speedy is holding on to the confidence I had when I was a bright eyed teenager who tirelessly threw himself into every writing project.

I just wish I knew the magical fix. The thing I need to trade await to get that tool back before I lose everything again.
 

neandermagnon

Nolite timere, consilium callidum habeo!
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Sorry you're going through this.

What follows is just a suggestion, feel free to ignore it if I've got totally the wrong end of the stick.

Are you being too harsh on yourself e.g. believing that what you write has to be good enough so you're paralysed by the fear that it won't be good enough? Everyone's first drafts suck and first drafts exist to get your ideas down. Editing/reviewing is the process whereby you beat them into shape. Have you tried letting yourself just write *anything* - not caring if it's good, bad, dreadful, unrelated to anything that's going to be in the finished product, just to get you past that whole blank screen thing? And when it comes to putting your ideas into words, give yourself permission to get it wrong and write stuff that's far from perfect, then go back and beat it into shape. Most writers will make several drafts and do a ton of rewriting and editing before they get anything that's any good. There's a Neil Gaiman quote, I forgot the exact words, but it's that the process of editing is where you go back and make it look like you knew what you were doing all along. Note that this usually takes a lot of work, but it's a normal part of the process. Writers who appear to have perfect first drafts are nearly always doing what I do - revising and editing on a scene by scene basis (i.e. each scene gets multiple revisions before writing the next one) rather than working draft by draft. So it's still the same - focus first on getting it down any old how then going back and beating it into shape. If your lack of confidence comes from believing you have to get everything Right First Time then the way to fix it is to give yourself permission to write garbage. Then go back and make it look like you knew what you were doing all along.

At a more metaphorical level, the moral of the cartoon is that if Daffy was willing to share his food, Speedy would be willing to share the tin opener and they'd both get to eat. Are you willing to share your ideas with your teenage self? If so, your teenage self might be willing to share the confidence. Are you in a mindset that what you wrote as a teenager was just play but now you've got to be serious and get to business and get it right? If so, that could be what's freezing your creative process. Play is where the creativity happens. Let yourself play. Be your teenage self. Give yourself permission to write random garbage and write anything without caring if it's any good or potentially marketable or any of these other things more "serious" "adult" writers trouble themselves with and just have fun and play. Then go back and make it look like you knew what you were doing all along.

Hope that helps. If not, disregard it all and I hope you do find something that helps.