i hate how you get desensitized to the cool stuff in your WIP if you've been writing it for a long time so when you read back over it you're like "this isn't as cool as i thought :(" but it still is! you just read it too many times
Gotta recirculate this post periodically just cuz
Just don't read the post too many times.
Oh god oh fuck
I hate I when I get an idea for a novel. Like oh no here starts the slow sad slip n’ slide to dissapointment again.
You ever been 30,000 words and hundreds of research hours into a project when you realize hey wait a minute. I don’t like this. This is bad.
Ok adding to this though that even though it is extremely relatable, this is a KNOWN thing with professional writing. 10k is often referred to as "having a pot boiling" or "having a stew" - it's the point where you often see an idea coming together and it's exciting! But THEN... 30k-50k is the point where that fun has to start coming together. In theatre, it's usually week 3 of a 5 week rehearsal period where you have to stop talking about the play and really get it all up on its feet and cohesive. In art, it's committing to what are going to be the final visible layers of colour and texture, in sculpture the moment where you're truly at the point of no return with carving out the shape.
It usually feels really bad. Because this is the point it becomes real craft. It's so, so difficult to really be able to identify if it's truly not going to be anything or you're just in the hardest part of the process, and really the only way to know is to... write through it. Write it badly. Or, if you really can't, put it in a drawer and come back to it after a few months of breathing space. Remember, you can fix so much in the edit, but you can't fix nothing!
(I say, fully looking at my latest draft of my book and considering throwing it in the bin. But my editor said exactly this to me, so I'm passing it along.)
this is 100% true. I've written 6 complete novels at this point and every single time around the 40k mark I feel lost in the woods. Nothing seems to be working. I feel awful; I can't sleep. I keep going even though I'm convinced I'm going to fail. And then... It's like leaving a tunnel and getting back out in the sunshine. Stuff starts coalescing. Things that weren't working have obvious fixes. I "can write" again, except I was writing the whole time. It just felt hopeless in the moment. It's not. You just gotta get out of the woods.
Ah yes the Slough of Desponds. Professional author with 13 books, and this is normal for me as well. (Checking for tension issues usually helps!)
Lmao I literally wrote a whole blog post abt it once.
feeling droopy !! :)
date of origin: 1st of april, 2016.
this unironically slaps if someone posted this exact gif in 2020 with that exact description as a shitpost it would have 30k notes
no h8 but thats an absurdly high number for this type of question. there's not an album on earth that I wouldn't listen to in one sitting for 20k. and if you need my qualifications on this I have adhd and Im kind of an art snob
Well put. (Source: Writing About Writing Facebook page)
as a lawyer who’s been practicing for six years now I can say with certainty that this 100% applies to lawyers
Me: My writing is so bad. :(
Meanwhile at Disney: Somehow, Palpatine has returned.
Scotts
I’ve seen a number of people laughing that Scottish people “write in their accents”. They’re not writing in their accent, they’re writing in their language: Scots. The Scots Leid is a separate language to English. It’s related to English - both are west Germanic, and are often mutually intelligible - but they’re not the same
Misspunnypennie on Tiktok and Twitter is a Scots speaker who’s known for her Scots Word of the Day, and for her Scots poyums (poems). Would really recommend her poem Am No Havin Children (I’m not having children), which is about the Scots language and the misconception that Scots is just “bad English”
The poet Robert Burns wrote a lot of his poems in Scots. You may know poems like Auld Lang Syne (I’d translate that as “for old times’ sake), To a Mouse, My Love is Like a Red Red Rose, and my personal favourite, Ca’ the Yowes (Call the Ewes)
Fun fact: Scotland actually has four official languages. English, Scots, Scottish Gaelic and BSL
ok, because i just saw a terrible take, i feel compelled to say that there is no "fic market" to "oversaturate" in fandom. good gravy.
i need everyone reading this post to remember that writing is not "content." writing is art. you don't look at a painting of an ocean and say "eh, it's overdone." you look at it and think its beautiful, because it is, and y'all better start treating writing the same fucking way before you lose your favorite authors for good.
Art is not something to be capitalized on. Stop treating it like it is.
ILU @impishtubist for these tags
“Be curious about what you’re writing about” is not stock Common Writing Advice but it really, really should be. There are a lot of written works that fail due to the authors just being obviously incurious about what they are writing about.
Yeah we've all seen the opposite though. I do NOT need 10 pages of information on the Paris sewage system mid-story
Maybe YOU don't. Coward
Victor Hugo isn't going to fuck you!!
he would if he was alive. man was famously A Slut
no writing workshop can help you improve your writing as much as this screenshot can
