Troubles with writing-- need help DX

Writers' Corner
1

For the longest time, my biggest problem is sitting down and taking my time to write a story. Which is weird because I’m an English major and I do have hopes of publishing a book one day. There were times in my life where writing stories was a huge hobby for me. I remember getting A’s for whatever short story assignments and essay I would write in my English classes. But now it’s really hard to finish a story, mainly cuz I give up so easily. I always get these ideas in my head and I wish I could just express it through writing.

I was wondering if anyone else had a problem similar to mine and also if you guys can share some advice on writing a story and not giving up. I would mean a lot to get some help with this.

Thanks in advance :slight_smile:

2

I feel like my inspiration comes in short bursts. I usually have no trouble plotting a story from beginning to end, but when it comes to finding all the sentences and minor details to get from point A to point B, suddenly I struggle.

One thing I’ve discovered, and it may be true for you as well, is that you should write whatever comes to mind, no matter how unoriginal you think it is or how many times it’s been done before. Does that make sense? Like there are thousands of popular vampire stories out there today, but that shouldn’t stop you from writing one if that’s what you have the inspiration for. You can put your own spin on the story and make it your own as you write it, but don’t toss out an idea just because you think it’s overused.

As for general writing tips, I guess that coming to terms with the fact not everything you write has to be a masterpiece is a good lesson to learn. If you write short stories or blurbs that you don’t mind never seeing the light of day, that’s fine. Writing becomes easier when you’re not trying to create the next best seller.

Another thing that helps me is going through pictures on Pinterest or other photo sharing websites. Looking at the clothes, and the pictures of people and places gives me all sorts of story ideas. I really do love creating character profiles, so maybe you could try creating a few characters and then developing a story around them.

Lastly, my final piece of advice is to read A LOT. [name_m]Reading[/name_m] other people’s writing helps me to get ideas.

[name_f]Hope[/name_f] this helps, and best of luck!

3

What you shared really helps a lot, it makes me feel that I’m not alone :slight_smile: [name_m]Even[/name_m] it would great to write something that ends up being on the [name_m]New[/name_m] [name_m]York[/name_m] Times Bestsellers lists, I shouldn’t expect to happen. And I actually do write a lot of character profiles, I love doing them :smiley: I’ll just try my best to write short stories for those characters. Thank you so much for the advice! :smiley:

4

This is my personal advice and what really works for me:
Write unoriginal junk- stream-of-consciousness, whatever. [name_m]Just[/name_m] get it on the page. You said that you don’t have a problem with plotting, just the finer details (sentence structure, etc.). That is fine. As I said before, just get it on the page, even if it is super cliché and makes you cringe and want to throw it out the window / burn it when you read it. You’ll find that once you give yourself the freedom to just get it done and not worry about how pretty or fantastic the overall story / dialogue / description is, you’ll get stuff written, and a lot of it probably won’t be half bad.

If you focus too much on trying to make your first draft neat and beautiful, you are going to procrastinate and be having a stare-down with a blank page rather than actually using your time well. There is a reason people don’t publish first drafts. They are rubbish. The degree of rubbish-ness may subjectively vary, but they are all rubbish. That honestly doesn’t matter- you can always fix it later. What you cannot do is fix it, if you literally have no material in front of you to fix.

You’ll probably have a lot of internal conflict, especially if you are a perfectionist, much like yours truly. You know: ‘this is rubbish, this is no good, nobody will ever want to read this.’ And no, they probably won’t want to read it, and it probably is rubbish. For now. But keep it in perspective- it is a first draft, and in order to make something beautiful, you often have to make something very ugly, which you can then change and refine and make lovely. I like to think of my stories as a house- if you just poured the foundation and called it a day, then of course nobody would want it. It’s not finished. The foundation is ugly and quite useless, if you wanted a house. Stop treating it like a house. It’s not. It’s a foundation. Likewise (sorry for the terrible analogy), a draft is not a finished story, so stop treating it like one.

I often find that until I get the Hollywood B-movie cliché’s out of my head and onto the page, I can’t come up with anything worthy and of note. I consider it wiping the slate clean- prepare for another awful analogy… [name_m]Dun[/name_m] dun dun. I think of it like spring cleaning a house- you have to bring out and get rid of all the junk and stuff that has accumulated over the year before you can strip everything back and give it a good scrubbing.

I think that I get some pretty neat story ideas, if I say so myself. However, the first draft is a bit of an anchor: I get the idea down. It’ll be hideous on the first try, but I think you’ll find that it takes a lot of the pressure off once you’ve actually got the foundation down to work with. [name_m]Don[/name_m]'t set standards on your first draft, just get it written.

And certainly [name_f]DO[/name_f] NOT wait for the inspiration fairy to come along and sprinkle pixie dust over your work. [name_f]Inspiration[/name_f] is a reward for all the practice and hard yards you’ve put in, not the foundation of which your work is built. Think how ridiculous it would be if an professional athlete said: ‘I would train today, but, you know, I’m just not feeling inspired. I think I’ll wait until I do.’ Or for that matter, anyone: builder, doctor, housewife, lawyer, etc. If any of these people didn’t do their jobs everyday, they would fall out of practice- the athlete would lose muscle and agility, the lawyer would lose touch with the latest legal guidelinesWriting is a job, and if it is something that you want to do for a living (I have the same aspirations), then you need to treat it as such. Make yourself a promise to write for an allotted period of time each day, even if it is just 5 minutes. And in that time, you will write. You won’t think about writing, you won’t look up articles on how to increase your writing productivity (which you know, could be done if you actually wrote something :)), you won’t make character profiles or make lists of possible names for characters. You will write a story for that allotted time and you won’t stop until you’ve used up that time / made the word count / both.

I hope this helps somewhat.Good luck!