#WRITING IS HARD

[nondelphic]

the first draft is you telling yourself the story. everything else is just cleanup.

[artsy-writy]

Humans are so different to each other. Like imagine aliens actually being very similar to the others of their species and the humans show up and they just are so....unpredictable.

Alien: *is eating with a human and gives the human olives*

Human: *surprised* Oh. Do you not like olives?

Alien: I like olives. But you love them, right? So you can have it.

Human: Oh I don't remember mentioning something like that but...I don't like olives. I hate them actually.

Alien: *shocked and is questioning their life decisions* I was playing with your daughter when babysitting her and she said she loved olives.

Human: Yeah, guess she just likes them. I don't though.

Alien: But she's human.

Human: yeah. And?

Alien: Don't all humans like olives?

Human: Just because my daughter like olives doesn't mean I like them too.

Alien: *blinks slowly thinking and then gasps in relief* So you DON'T like murdering unlike the human on TV??

Human: WHAT- No- wait what. Have you been eating with me the whole time thinking I was a murderer???

Alien: I-I just wanted to respect your preferences and show support-

Human: If I was a murderer, I could have killed YOU!!! *so confused by alien's thought process*

Alien: ...still wanted to show support....

[tswwwit]

Just an update that I am indeed working on some prompts sent in! I've got a Bill Telling Truth thing underway and another, slightly saucy thing started.

[veronicaleighauthor]

Edit Note: I'm really amazed by how much love this post got. Guess it just shows we're all in the same boat. I do have other humorous writing memes on this tumblr under the same tag, if you're interested. Never give up writing! ❤️

Edit Note 2: I can't believe this has reached 25,000+ notes. Been on tumblr for ten years (different account) and nothing like this has ever happened before. Thank you! 😊

[lena-kieran-zor-el]

…welp now ive got a thing cooking in the brain

The Aftermath

(More blood under the cut for @venomwrites specifically)

[quinnjgraham]

I know this is the website where we talk about artists and writers doing anything other than making art or writing, but man, we REALLY undersell how good it feels to actually work on your stuff.

Like you hit your word count for the first time in a week and its like

[artemisdesari-blog]

To my readers:

If your comment is long and rambling and full of quotes you enjoyed, I will love it.

If your comment is full of story related questions, I will love it.

If your comment is a single sentence, I will love it.

If your comment is a single emoji, or a string of them, I will love it.

If you comment, I will love it. It's that simple.

[uwudonoodle]

[dragonner0]

Because I am currently writing: absolutely fuck with the first one, second one goes equally hard but is a lot easier to write without getting too long.

best trope and you can fight me over it (i abuse this so hard with my ocs)

[thedeepbluedark]

sitting down to write isn't really about creating a story, it's about getting the story onto the page before it destroys me

[byoldervine]

Types Of Writer’s Block (And How To Fix Them)

1. High inspiration, low motivation. You have so many ideas to write, but you just don’t have the motivation to actually get them down, and even if you can make yourself start writing it you’ll often find yourself getting distracted or disengaged in favour of imagining everything playing out

Try just bullet pointing the ideas you have instead of writing them properly, especially if you won’t remember it afterwards if you don’t. At least you’ll have the ideas ready to use when you have the motivation later on

2. Low inspiration, high motivation. You’re all prepared, you’re so pumped to write, you open your document aaaaand… three hours later, that cursor is still blinking at the top of a blank page

RIP pantsers but this is where plotting wins out; refer back to your plans and figure out where to go from here. You can also use your bullet points from the last point if this is applicable

3. No inspiration, no motivation. You don’t have any ideas, you don’t feel like writing, all in all everything is just sucky when you think about it

Make a deal with yourself; usually when I’m feeling this way I can tell myself “Okay, just write anyway for ten minutes and after that, if you really want to stop, you can stop” and then once my ten minutes is up I’ve often found my flow. Just remember that, if you still don’t want to keep writing after your ten minutes is up, don’t keep writing anyway and break your deal - it’ll be harder to make deals with yourself in future if your brain knows you don’t honour them

4. Can’t bridge the gap. When you’re stuck on this one sentence/paragraph that you just don’t know how to progress through. Until you figure it out, productivity has slowed to a halt

Mark it up, bullet point what you want to happen here, then move on. A lot of people don’t know how to keep writing after skipping a part because they don’t know exactly what happened to lead up to this moment - but you have a general idea just like you do for everything else you’re writing, and that’s enough. Just keep it generic and know you can go back to edit later, at the same time as when you’re filling in the blank. It’ll give editing you a clear purpose, if nothing else

5. Perfectionism and self-doubt. You don’t think your writing is perfect first time, so you struggle to accept that it’s anything better than a total failure. Whether or not you’re aware of the fact that this is an unrealistic standard makes no difference

Perfection is stagnant. If you write the perfect story, which would require you to turn a good story into something objective rather than subjective, then after that you’d never write again, because nothing will ever meet that standard again. That or you would only ever write the same kind of stories over and over, never growing or developing as a writer. If you’re looking back on your writing and saying “This is so bad, I hate it”, that’s generally a good thing; it means you’ve grown and improved. Maybe your current writing isn’t bad, if just matched your skill level at the time, and since then you’re able to maintain a higher standard since you’ve learned more about your craft as time went on

[zombie-eats-world]

Hi umm im a fic writer and i gotta say some of the biggest reasons I haven’t simply shut up shop and stopped posting has been commenters.

I look forward to the regulars, the people that regularly check out my fics and leave me a comment. Sometimes I write scenes in just because I think it’ll be enjoyed by a particularly interested commenter than always tells me all their thoughts and opinions.

We need to really begin emphasizing that fandom, and fic writing in this particular conversation, is a cumminity art. I’ve made friend through commenting on fics I love, I’ve made friends engaging with commenters in my works. Some of those friends now help me plan and edit new chapters! We make up fun au’s together now and always make sure to read and comment on each other works.

I don’t want to seem entitled to feedback but I don’t know if what I’m writing is even wanted or seen unless you all tell me!

A writer friend told me something that broke my heart a little bit today; they're going to quit publishing their fanfic.

My instant thought was that they had been trolled or attacked or that something terrible had happened in their life because this person is so passionate about their writing. It wasn't any of that. Engagement with their works has been going down, as it has for many of us. Comments are like gold dust a lot of the time, and just looking through the historical comment counts on old fics on ao3 demonstrates this trend very clearly. It was not simply the comments dropping off which caused them to decide to stop posting, however.

My friend came across a discord server for their fandom (I should point out here that their fandom interest and mine diverged a couple of years ago, we stay in touch but don't currently read each other's posts because I'm not into their fandom and they would rather gouge their eyes out with a wooden spoon than read anything Star Wars) and specifically to share fic in that fandom. They joined, because we all love a good fic rec, only to discover that their latest multichapter fic, which has almost no comments and very few kudos, is being hotly discussed in this server as one of the best stories ever. Not one of these people has bothered to say this to them on the fic. When they asked, none of participants could see the point in telling the author of the fic they apparently loved so much that they love it.

This discovery has absolutely destroyed my friend's love of sharing fic. They share because they love seeing other people's enjoyment, and fic writers do that through comments and kudos/reblogs/likes because we don't get paid. There is no literary critic writing a blog post/article about how amazing the story is for us to copy and keep/frame. There is no money from royalties. All we have are the words of the people reading our works.

Those people on that server could have taken five minutes of the time they spent gushing about how amazing my friend's story was to other people and used it to tell the one person guaranteed to want to hear that praise how much they loved it. They could have taken a moment to express their opinion to the person who spent hours upon hours plotting, writing, editing, and posting those chapters. Instead, they deprived my friend of thing that keeps them sharing their writing, and in the process have killed their love of it. My friend now feels used and unmotivated.

I won't be sharing a link to their fic, they said I could share their experience but not their identity. I know they plan to post one final chapter. I know they intend to express their hurt at being excluded from the praise for the thing they created, and I know they intend to announce that as a consequence they will not be posting for a long while, if at all.

So please, I beg you, don't hide your love of a story from the writer. It's just about the only thing we have.

[feelingthedisaster]

it was 9 chapters and aside from horrified (which i was), i was also embarrased i read those chapters outloud to friends

[entity56]

[nondelphic]

writers: “i’ll just jot down some notes.” also writers: accidentally writes 5k of emotional monologue.

[saladscream]

And that's the best case case scenario.

There's the relapse, the "no-resuscitation", the quiet quitting...

The eight stages of writing :

- this is awesome

- this is slightly less awesome

- this is shit

- I’m shit

-oh god oh fuck what the hell am I doing

-wait this might not be that bad actually

- How the fuck is this working

-This is awesome