Writing is zipping along through six pages in under an hour and then getting stuck on a single transition sentence for three weeks.
when the fuck did this get notes
While you were pondering over the transition sentence
Ernest Hemingway would have died rather than have syntax. Or semicolons. I use a whole lot of half-assed semicolons; there was one of them just now; that was a semicolon after “semicolons,” and another one after “now.”
And another thing. Ernest Hemingway would have died rather than get old. And he did. He shot himself. A short sentence. Anything rather than a long sentence, a life sentence. Death sentences are short and very, very manly. Life sentences aren’t. They go on and on, all full of syntax and qualifying clauses and confusing references and getting old. And that brings up the real proof of what a mess I have made of being a man.
Ursula K. Le Guinon being a man – the finest, sharpest thing I’ve read in ages
Now this is straight from experience. If you haven’t written anything in a little while it is hard to get back in the swing of things. Everything you write feels a bit contrived, a bit desperate, but you know what, that’s okay. I had to take a few weeks off while traveling and when you go from writing every day to not writing at all, trying to get back into it just does not happen easily. But here’s how I got back into it in the quickest and least painful way I possibly could:
Don’t work on anything you’ve been working on before at first. Likely you’ll have a standard for your writing that goes into your ongoing projects and if you have taken a long enough break from writing, you won’t return right away at that standard. You’ll just get more frustrated. So instead, pick a prompt and write something new. It can be a short story, a few scenes, something to go alongside of another project – anything like that.
If your first sentence sucks, don’t delete it. The second one might be better. This goes for scenes too. The first scene was just meh… the next one might be eh – okay. And it will improve from there. If your writing is just sounding horrible to you, just keep writing. Going back and editing and fixing it will not help you here. Just keep writing. Write 100 words. If it’s still eh… then write 200. I wrote 2,000 words just the other day before it started looking alright again. But, you know, it worked.
Anything that sounds terrible just needs to be edited six months from now. Use that as your golden rule in times like these. Just until you get your mojo back. Just keep saying, yeah, I know it’s bad, but I can fix it later. Believe it or not, that helps a lot. Just get to the story and keep telling the story.
Work in sprints.Don’t let yourself stare at a blank screen for hours. Write for 15 or 30 minutes and then take a break. I do 15 minutes on, 15 minutes off and I get a lot more writing done that way than a solid 30 minute session and can keep that pace up for hours. Maybe read a book in the 15 or 30 minute break. It helps to see good writing and to let yourself be just a little bit influenced by another writer. I don’t recommend this as a permanent solution, but a temporary aid.
Any novel is hopeful in that it presupposes a reader. It is, actually, a hopeful act just to write anything, really, because you’re assuming that someone will be around to [read] it.
how i always think writing will go: okay i’ve plotted out everything, i just need to write the actions that fit together. which is hard, but i’ve planned well enough that i can get through this chapter if i just keep at it
how writing actually ends up going: i have a plot hole because of soup
shealwaysreads 