#ked is a terrifyingly competent individual

[greenbergwrites]

How do you get motivation to write 😭 you’ve have so many amazing bodies of work while I struggle to finish one idea 💀

oh, babe. I have random ideas that I do not develop AT ALL and just write some choice emotional/porn bits for, that's not the same thing as having numerous bodies of work.

And I'm cool with that, because that is literally 100% of the reason I started this blog. I needed to try and teach myself how to write without editing it to death, which was downright fucking terrifying when I first started doing it and only mildly frightens me now.

That's what everything on this blog is, literally unfiltered stream of consciousness, but it's what I needed to learn how to do because I have a well-documented and pathological tendency to just rewrite the same thing over and over again because it's never good enough in my eyes

When it comes to actual finished works, I have very few. FAC is the first big project I took on since I was a teenager and look at it now, absolutely fucking unfinished. The project that will haunt me to the end of time.

But I'm trying to get better. At the beginning of January, I told Ked I wanted to have a writing schedule and because she is an unstoppable force of nature and also a goddamn angel, she agreed to take up the task of herding me.

Most nights at 6:30, I get a message from her that simply says "it's time," and that's my cue to stop whatever I'm doing and try to write something. It was really fucking hard at first, but here we are 7 months in and it's finally getting easier.

The goal we somehow came to is 400 words, which was apparently Terry Pratchett's daily goal. Sometimes it's hard to get there and sometimes it's really easy, but it's doable and that's the important bit.

But sometimes, even though it's doable, I don't get there. Sometimes I've had the shittiest day and even though I want to, my brain just isn't in it. Sometimes I'm so goddamn tired because my anxiety meds fuck with my ability to sleep and sleep aids only help so much.

I hate myself for not being able to commit in those times, because dumbly, I feel like I'm letting Ked down. But Ked never makes me feel like I'm letting her down. She'll just commiserate with me, or if she feels I've gone too long without writing, she'll say, "Just think about the story for 15 minutes and then you've done what you need to for the day."

I think the BIGGEST thing--the thing that honestly has fucking helped more than anything--is through this whole process, Ked has taught me to be kind to myself.

It's not the end of the world if I don't write every day, as long as I don't make it a habit of not writing, and whatever the fuck I manage to do, whether it's a hundred words or a thousand, it's something to celebrate because it's better than continually writing nothing at all

So, like. Just be kind to yourself. If you're not writing, it's for a reason. And if that reason is simply only "I'm out of practice," well then find you a friend like Ked and let them herd you.

That only really works if you're willing to submit to someone else's authority, though, and luckily for everyone involved in my life, I might be a brat, but I'm a people-pleasing brat so I allow myself to be herded most days.

I just, you know. Complain about it loudly, too.