Young Writers Society

After all my writing struggles, I've realized the importance of letting go and starting over. It's kind of funny how I'm posting advice for other writers even though I'm barely a writer. I'm very inexperienced, so you'll have to strap in and bare with me for a little bit as I describe my conclusion.

Every writer eventually reached a point where their story angers them and they just feel lost. This can cause you to give up on the story. However, I believe the solution to this is to start over. I don't mean to discard everything you've written, but to discard all the emotions you have for your story. This may vary well mean forgetting everything you've written prior to this moment, but it doesn't have to.

Allow me to give you a personal example. I decided to write a series of short stories about one month ago, and since then I've made very little progress. The first story was pure drivel, which took a huge blow at my self-esteem and passion for the story. Since then, I've written down ideas but have never been able to write the actual story. I spent days, weeks dwelling on this and struggling to write.

Last night, though, I thought of a solution. Most of my negative feelings came from my first terrible story and my current lack of talent. People on this website told me to move on and write other stories for the series before I revisted the first story. Though I had a few story ideas in mind, I couldn't shake of the fact that I rushed through the initial story and barely even tried.

So, I decided to forget about my terrible first story and start over, only holding onto the knowledge of how not to write the story. Thjs is my only way to excape the loop I'm in. I'm doing my best to discard all negative feelings about my story and start from the beginning. This is only a notes draft, so I'm see this as exploring ideas for how the series should start.

Writing should be fun for the most part. I understand there are many moments when your story will enrage you so much you want to throw it out the window and that writing is a lot of hard work and not always fun. However, in order to write a worthy story, you must enjoy what you are doing. So, hopefully this epiphany of sorts helps other writers our as it helped me. I'll do my best not to fall into another loop of perfectionism and procrastination. Thanks for reading!

Hi, I would love to share a story with you Archon. The same thing happened to me. I am currently working on my novel, which I have paused a little bit. I am also an unexperienced writers who posts advice on the forums

About starting over, I was writing this novel idea, and I had it open on Word on my computer, but I was dumb and I didn't save it. When my computer automatically accidentally restarted, I lost all of my novel(it wasn't a lot but I had worked hard on it) so I was panicking and freaking out. I had just lost my novel. But then an awesome writer on YWS (@Rosendorn) told me to relax and she told me something that totally calmed me down: "Maybe this is the time to restart and rewrite your novel.(she said this in the context of that my novel is lost,please remember this)"So this[losing my novel] was a blessing in disguise and I am so thankful that I have rewritten my novel! I ended up rewriting most of it with the help of (@steampowered) and it has come out better than the previous draft (even though it still needs a lot of work) I have progressed a lot with it.Rewriting my novel has personally worked for me!

I was discouraged and I had taken a break and slipped into a writer's block, but then while writing a SB post I thought to myself: I LOVE my writing! And I really do, I enjoy it and I love it and I will resume writing my novel The Perfect Baby Doll and never stop because writing is just so much fun!

Good luck to you too TheArchon!

Writing should be fun for the most part. [...] However, in order to write a worthy story, you must enjoy what you are doing.

Sure, if you never want to get published. Or, at least, never want to make writing your primary job. I will expand on this after addressing:

But then an awesome writer on YWS (@Rosendorn) told me to relax and she told me something that totally calmed me down: "Maybe this is the time to restart and rewrite your novel."

@pretzelsing, please tell me what the context for this was, because I almost never say this. Ever. I stand by the opinion that rewriting is the worst thing you can ever do, and I'm pretty sure I've told you directly "you can't expect to get better at writing by constantly rewriting" right here.

Basically, you've taken my advice and done the exact opposite of what I actually said. In the future, please make sure you understand what people are saying before quoting them. I told you to stop rewriting and finish the work before rewriting. The only thing I said to rewrite is here:

Once you've figured out your issue, apply the remedy, write, finish, rewrite.

You'll notice the word "finish" is before the word "rewrite". That list was steps in order, not thrown together haphazardly. The rest of the post was simply about how to continue forward after writer's block bit you.

Back to the original post and the first quote I made.

If you want to write for fun, yes, writing should be fun. Writing will be a roller coaster of emotions that lets you have all the time in the world, because, yeah, you're just writing for fun. You have no deadlines, no quotas, no publishers, no editors, nobody to be responsible for. It's a side thing. You work 40+ hours a week on something else that gives you a steady paycheque, and your income isn't directly tied to how much writing you produce.

Writing for fun means you have a day job or someone/something (a partner, parents, a generations-old healthy bank account) to pay your bills. It means you don't write to support yourself, nor do you want to. You likely only write in your spare time, and that spare time goes away when you're too tired, or other things come up, or you just don't want to write. You just enjoy writing and have a drive to write, but not enough to constantly write something.

If that sounds like you, then yes, by all means, do whatever you want. If you just write for the sheer joy of it, then writing should indeed be fun.

But if you want to write as a job? Want to maybe make a living on writing?

Writing will not be fun the majority of the time.

One of my friends said writers are those who have an intense desire to write and tell a story, and that's what makes a true writer. The thing about this drive to write is, it has to be strong enough to sustain you through periods where writing will be pain. First drafts will be pulling teeth. I cannot seem to find the quote location because it's tumblr, but an author I follow there said something akin to "The most painful part of first drafts is trudging along writing things that will not show up in the novel because it's so bad". Said author also describes the pain of not having the chemistry right, of knowing there's another few drafts ahead of this before the story looks good, and deep down forcing herself to write because the book comes out in fall of this year.

Do you think she can afford to stop the draft midway through and rewrite because she doesn't find writing it fun? No. She can't. She has to finish the draft as quickly as possible, so it can go through her editor (who has set a deadline for her), who can rip it up (on deadline, again), so it can be rewritten (on deadline!) and edited again, and rewritten again, and copyedited, and typeset, and eventually put on shelves some time in the fall season (a deadline).

Book deadlines don't get shifted around because you "don't find it fun and want to rewrite."

Rent due dates don't get postponed because "I wasn't inspired so I didn't write anything for publication."

Banks won't wave your fees because "I am an artist who only writes for fun."

If you set writing as a job, then it will be work. It might be enjoyable work because you have an all-consuming desire to tell this story, but there will be deadlines. There will be marketing yourself. There will be sitting down and forcing something bad out because your editors need something for next month and if you don't, then your book could be delayed and the next part of your advance won't make it to you in time for your taxes. There will be querying and rejection and going through round after round of edits where it feels worse before it gets better.

It will be a job.

If you want to take this job, then you have to put in the work. You have to finish. You have to treat it as a job, where you do things you don't feel like doing because if you don't, then you don't eat this week. Neil Gaiman might face writer's block, but he never stops writing (scroll down for the discussion on writer's block), because that's how he makes his living. His paycheque depends on him finishing a project, getting it accepted, and selling. Other authors simply force themselves through writer's block because they simply can't afford to stop writing.

If you want to write and get published, ask yourself two things:

1- Will I have somebody else to support me through writing?
2- Do I want to make my living writing, or do I only want to do it on the side?

If you are lucky enough to have somebody else support you while you're writing and make it your sole source of income, then you can write for fun because somebody else is taking care of your bills. But if you answer #1 with "no" and you plan on supporting yourself while writing without parents or a partner, you will approach writing different ways.

If you want to make your living writing, then you will have to accept this is your day job and your income is completely dependant on you actually finishing work and getting accepted for a publication that pays. You will have to be relatively prolific and sell well. You might need multiple formats and genres to support yourself. You will probably have to keep a day job for years as you become an established author and actually have enough of an income from your writing to pay your bills. This means you will write on evenings and weekends, effectively holding two jobs at once, for a long time, because if you're working with editors they still have all their deadlines you need to meet.

If you want writing to be a side thing, then your life will be much different. You can take time off writing, you can stop and rewrite to your hearts' content, you can not produce work for years, you can take all the time in the world outside of contracts (because contracts have deadlines that you must honour). You won't be particularly concerned if you sell well or make large advances because your paycheque comes from other sources and writing is supplementary. You will probably only write on vacation and during slow periods at work, because that will be the only time you have energy to write.

Even if you go on contract in the second lifestyle, you honestly do have to honour the deadlines set up in your contract. This means you will have periods where you can't take time off. Editors will need things from you at certain dates.

If this sounds like an ice cold shower, that's because it is. This is the reality of writing as a business where you support yourself. It is a much different world from having a partner to support you, or writing for yourself (without a publishing goal).

Pick the lifestyle you want and discipline yourself accordingly. If you only want to write for fun, then avoid any lifestyles where you'll have to meet hard deadlines/support yourself writing.

If you want to write for a living?

Sit down and write no matter what.

@Rosendorn

I don't think Archon is talking about rewriting stories from scratch. Rather, Archon is talking about letting go of negative feelings about the beginning and moving on by renewing the feelings that fueled the writing originally, which is a good thing to do since it involves moving on with the story as a whole.

Also, the context for pretzel's rewrite was that she lost all of her novel due to computer issues, so in that sense, restarting and rewriting is pretty good advice compared to giving up on the story completely. Getting discouraged and giving up doesn't result in a finished first draft, after all. ;P

@TheArchon

I've never quit writing a story because I got angry at it or felt lost. The reason I usually put a story aside is because I get bored with it to the point that I stop feeling anything about it. If I'm angry at a story? I still love it and want to write it, and I'm angry because I can't, for whatever reason. If I feel lost? It's a sign that I've lost sight of the characters or the story itself, and I'm due for a reread of what I've written so far to get me back on track.

The only other reason I'll drop a story is if another story comes along that absolutely demands my attention. Even then, I keep the previous stories I've worked on safely stored until I finish them in the future. Since I'm a really, really slow writer, this sometimes (more like often) takes years, but I am slowly chipping down on those stories I have on the back-burners.

Then again, I'm hardly the most conventional of writers. I don't write stories in order, and I do pretty much no planning before I start writing longer works. I basically discover things about the story, setting, and characters as I write, which helps keep the stories interesting to me. Every story I've ever planned has wound up abandoned due to boredom, so I stopped planning years ago.

It's worked out pretty well so far. :3

Especially since I find editing and rewriting much easier and faster than writing the first draft. But you can't edit or rewrite something that doesn't exist... and so, even I will set myself deadlines to meet so I don't slack off on the sometimes very painful process known as "writing the first draft of SUCK".

It gets better. Later.