Young Writers Society

Every first draft you write will be bad. Period. Even second and third and fourth drafts will be bad. That is what editing exists for.

My personal opinion is everything can be written and written well. But it takes a long time to produce that level of quality.

Don't expect characters to come to life right away, or for people to be riveted when it's fresh from your keyboard. It's normal for quality to take time.

Hi, Paradox! It sounds like you might need a dose of Ribbit (he's the frog) on this one. Most writers who stick with writing for any stretch of time and have ambitions for it encounter this problem several times. I know, because I've encountered it myself, sometimes mildly. Sometimes it lasts a week, sometimes several months. In fact, you could say that I'm just now getting out of a spell that's lasted for several years.

Which is unfortunate for me, because it means I didn't write much the last few years. But it's fortunate for you, or at least so I hope, because it means I've learned a lot about this writing anxiety and how it works, and I have a range of tactics against it. I think they'll work for you.

First, I want to address Rosey said. Rosey's brilliant, and right about what she said. But I know from personal experience that there's nothing logical about writing anxiety. Telling yourself that it's okay if you suck, you can edit later, doesn't make sucking any more fun.

So first I want you to watch this video. It has some important points:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PbC4gqZGPSY

If I'm right--and I think I'm right, but correct me if I'm wrong--this is your problem. You used to be able to write without a care about being good, and that's what got you hooked on writing. But somewhere along the line, you started to realize that you wanted to be good, and you realized that you weren't as good as you want to be. And now you want to be good so badly--and you ache to write, because you have a memory of how much you used to enjoy it--but no matter what you seem to put on the page, it all seems to suck. As you said, the beginning is dull, or flat, or boring, and the characters are like that, and so you start to think that you'll never be able to be good because it all just SUCKS.

Realizing this is helpful, I've found. Allowing yourself to suck is also helpful. In fact, in some ways, it's good if you suck--because just think, that means it can get better! It'd be a shame if your writing skill maxed out and could never get better, after all.

Another helpful thing to realize is that your writing ability right now is better than you know. It's your anxiety about writing that's bringing it down, that frantic desire to get it all perfect and remember all those rules and things you're supposed to do. You know how they say dogs and horses and animals can sense fear? Well. it's true--and readers and words are the same way. Let yourself have fun, if you can. Don't stress about having fun, because that won't help either, but the more relaxed you are, the better the words will flow, the better the results you'll get.

But I know it's one thing to tell yourself, "Just relax and have fun! The YWS people said I need to relax and have fun and not worry about being bad. Okay, we're going to have fun starting...three...two..."

Some things to do here, now what you're at this stage of understanding your problem, are to find ways to help you relax. Maybe do a one-page freewrite before every writing session where you type madly, without backspacing. Maybe try handwriting--this is lower stress for me, I've found. Maybe take a walk, or listen to some music.

The most helpful thing I've found for me, though, is to set very specific goals--and perhaps more importantly, to examine my own writing specifically. What I mean by this latter point is that instead of looking at my writing and going, "ARGH, IT SUCKS! ALL OF IT!", I'll look at it and think, "I don't think I'm presenting the characters as clearly as I could." And I'll take that observation, and try to go find practical solutions. I turn it into a goal: "I want my characters to be presented clearly," and I define it by saying, "I want the character's personality to be apparent without any 'cheating', just through authentic dialogue and action."

Then, as I'm writing the first draft, I can try out techniques I've observed other authors using, and apply my own knowledge. Use this word instead of that, try to find a more capturing way of describing that character's smile. And like one practices at piano or violin or drawing or anything else--because writing does take practice, especially after you realize your own potential for suckage--I practice, and practice. Then you refine your goals, set new ones, and you look back and think, "I didn't know I could write like that."

But you did.

And you can.

And you will.

Give yourself time, and patience, and practice, and if you can't believe in yourself just yet, believe in the stories you want to tell, and write the ones that keep you up at night and make you doodle in the margins while you ought to be focusing on something mundane and elsewise.

Rach

On starting too late-a list of people's ages when they had their first novels published.
Harriet Doerr – 74
Mary Wesley - 71
Laura Wilder - 65
Robert Waller – 53
Richard Adams – 52
Raymond Chandler - 51
Sidney Sheldon – 50
Alexander McCall Smith – 50
Stieg Larsson – 50
Charles Bukowski - 49
Mary Higgins Clark – 47
Robert M Pirsig - 46
Tolkien - 45
Ian Fleming - 45
Erle Stanley Gardner - 44
Irving Wallace – 43
Lee Child – 43
Henry Miller - 42
Robert Ludlum – 40
Anthony Burgess – 39
William S. Burroughs - 39
Arthur Hailey – 38
James Clavell - 38
Edgar Rice Burroughs – 37
Joseph Conrad - 37
Margaret Mitchell - 36

On anxiety: writing is like many other professions and hobbies - you have to enter a 'zone' for sh*t to flow. That's why so many great authors had drug and alcohol issues - they used these things to shut out the inner dialogues and enter the writing zone. Learn to enter the zone without booze and you'll be fine. Skim a favorite author for 5 min and start writing as fast as you can. Editing is for later.

On crappy opening scenes: these serve to start the job. In the end you will re-write them anyway, to best fit all the stuff that will later turn out to happen next. The idea is not to sit down and write a great book. The idea is to force yourself to finish a crap draft, and then tinker with it until it becomes a great book. Alchemy. Not so difficult.