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Wed Jul 27, 2016 6:22 pm
zamy says...



I feel like I'm forcing myself to write. I get an idea but a day after I delete it. I hate the 'planning of a book' phase. I grew up having a sister that wanted to write a book. I never took interest in it...till I started loving to read.

I'm thirteen years old. I know that when I grow up my writing is going to be better but I don't want to wait. I really want to have a bigger vocabulary and improve my grammar. I know I will never be as good as J. K. Rowling.

I find it hard to make my writing flow. I am terrible in descriptions. My writing is much better than some of the kids in my school but I give up too easily. So how am I supposed to accomplish this without giving up at this age?
  





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Wed Jul 27, 2016 6:33 pm
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Desdemona says...



Shhhhhhhhhhh. Shush up yo' mouth.

You don't know anything. Did J.K Rowling know she would become THE J. K Rowling? No! So you don't know if you'll be better than her either.

You're not terrible at anything, but I understand how you feel. I get the thoughts.

Because, you know, I think them too.

How many days have I spend staring at my MS Word page, thinking no no no no no this is not right, I couldn't write it properly? I don't know but definitely more than the sum of fingers I have on my body.

The thing is, when you're writing, you have to refrain from judgement until the very end. Your work is like your baby. Just like you can't expect a baby to go out and earn a living, you can't expect what you're writing to be perfect.

Also, that "planning of a book" phase you're talking about is crucial if you don't want to sit after writing 10 or so pages, having exhausted your brilliant idea, not knowing what to do. Planning and brainstorming is crucial to writing a good book because it is, well, a firm starting point. You know what you're going to write and now you have the time to think about how you'll bring that about rather than fumbling about to find the next word you'll type.

I know how boring it gets, but it took me a few failed book attempts to understand that it was well worth it. Now I'm in the middle of a novel and I daresay I'll be able to finish it this time.

Besides, you're 13. You've a lot of room to work and improve if you keep at it relentlessly. Open up some music, close your eyes and let your thoughts flow. Write about your characters, write about your plot. Thinking about a book brings about a domino effect; once you start, it'll keep coming down to you. Write endlessly, but in a planned manner. Don't stop to judge yourself. Stop only at the end.

And you'll likely be as good as J. K Rowling. (who by the way was rejected by a dozen publishers before getting published)

Possibly even better :)
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April 21, 2016 -- Desdemona
  





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Wed Jul 27, 2016 6:38 pm
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Jagged says...



I struggle a lot with writing consistently or sticking with projects or not hating every single thing I write too, which probably doesn't make me a great reference but for what it's worth: consider expanding what writing means to you.

There's a lot of different forms and styles and approaching it from an 'I'm going to mess around with this and see if it's fun' angle might be easier than 'I want to do X and it's very important that it is good'.

Try stuff like switching up tenses, or which POV you're writing from, write in second person, kick grammar in the face, do awful things to punctuation that would have your English teachers disown you on the spot. See if maybe you may enjoy writing small emotional pieces more than narrative-driven stories. Ignore writing for three weeks and play video games and then come back and see what sticks.

If you like reading, absolutely read. Grammar and vocabulary will 100% come out of it. Flow might, if you read the right stuff — and if you don't then it might come anyway, just because you know what things sound like without it.

Give yourself a break. Writing can be super rough. It's gonna take a while and that sucks but everything you do helps.
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Wed Jul 27, 2016 7:12 pm
zamy says...



Wow, you probably took a lot of time to write those replies. Thank you!
Last edited by zamy on Tue Aug 09, 2016 9:59 am, edited 1 time in total.
  





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Wed Jul 27, 2016 8:05 pm
JuliasSneezer says...



Alright, I'm gonna' try my hardest for this.

As for the writing ideas: Everyone gets stinky ideas. Ones that seem like genius at the time, but after you begin writing them, you're mentally kicking yourself and cursing yourself for thinking of such a stupid idea. But ignore your inner critic! Lock him in a closet for a while! I had something that seemed like a stupid idea at the time. Every time I got back to the first draft, I hoped that my computer would just delete everything I had. But a couple people told me to struggle through the first draft, and I did. I'm working on the second, and I've come to love it. Just struggle through the first draft, give it a while, then start on the second. I know you can do it!

The planning of a book is boring. It's long-winded. At first. But once you get kicking, it's a whole lot better. Something that helps me, is that I have a bulletin board in my room. I think through the plot, write the events down on a piece of paper, cut it out, then stick it on. I then tie pieces of string connecting them. Seeing them physically helps, trust me.

And hey, I'm thirteen too! *Waves* Every writer thinks that their grammar stinks. Every. Single. Writer. Our grammar is never good enough from our perspective. But you know what? It's a good thing that there are so many words to learn! The only way to expand our vocabulary is to read. and judging by what you said earlier, you love to read!

J.K. Rowling is good at many things. Grammar and vocabulary in particular. But you can be as good as J.K. Rowling in your own way. Be as good as J.K. Rowling, but in character development! Be as good as J.K. Rowling in building suspense! Be better than J.K. Rowling. She was the best because she used what she excelled at. And that's what you can do too!

Making writing flow comes with practice. Practice doesn't make perfect, but it makes progress. If you're better than some kids at writing now, than awesome! But keep improving. Just remember: Like Shakespeare had to learn his ABC's, you need to improve in what you're doing. He became famous, and you could too if you keep trying.

If you need any help, feel free to PM me!
-Cups
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Thu Jul 28, 2016 1:29 am
Carlito says...



I love all of these responses so far.

No one is good at anything when they first start out. Everything takes work, and everything takes practice, and writing is no different. What you articulated in your first post is common. So many writers struggle with those feelings. (Even established, best-selling authors).

At the end of the day, writing, like any hobby, should be fun. If it's not fun, then what's the point. You may not enjoy every single second you spend writing, plotting, or revising, but at the end of the day you should find some enjoyment.

Don't stress about writing the next great thing. Focus on figuring out what you like to write and what's fun for you. Experiment. Try stuff on for size. If it doesn't work and if you end up hating it, you're not out anything. Learning what you don't like and what doesn't work for you is just as valuable as finding what you do like and what does work for you.

If you want to continue to improve your writing, keep writing. Keep finding enjoyment through writing. Read as much as you possibly can, and get feedback on your writing. Feedback can be hard because it can feel like a personal attack or that you're never going to get better. But I promise (at least on this website) no one is setting out to make you feel bad. We're all here to help one another. But also don't be afraid to hold off on getting feedback until you're ready. I've loved to write for as long as I can remember but I was too shy to tell anyone until college because I couldn't handle the thought of someone telling me I was a bad writer. I started sharing my work on YWS when I was in high school and that helped until I had the confidence to share with people close to me. I'm glad I waited, because I easily could have given up on writing if became too discouraged.

I guess what it all boils down to is try not to put so much pressure on yourself. It's not a race to be a great writer and it's okay if people are better than you (because you can learn from them). Your worth and your value is not defined by how well you can write, and the great thing about writing is that it's something you can do for your entire life and you will continuously get better the more you do it. I know patience is so hard sometimes, but if it's something you enjoy, then stick with it even when it gets hard. I bet you'll be thankful you did ;)
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Thu Jul 28, 2016 11:34 pm
Kale says...



One thing I think that needs to be said is that you should never, ever deliberately delete your writing. Even if it's the worst thing ever written.

There's a few reasons for this:

You're just starting out on your writing journey. Pretty much everything you write is guaranteed to be bad, and this is more than okay because it is part of the learning process.

If you delete all the bad writing you do, at the end of the day, you won't have much, if any, writing left. This is incredibly demoralizing because, for all that effort you just put in, you're getting nothing tangible out of it.

Even if the writing sucks, keeping it around means you get to say "I have this many words of X written today" versus "I have no words written". You'd be surprised how big a difference having something tangible makes on boosting your confidence.

Additionally, first drafts always suck. Always. It doesn't matter how good of a writer you are: your first draft will be full of suck. Fortunately, the writing process doesn't end with the first draft. There's the entire process of revision and rewriting that transforms a sucky first draft into something worth reading, and I can guarantee you that every single work considered good has gone through that process.

The first draft gives you something to improve upon because making something that already exists better is a lot easier than making something great completely from scratch.

So don't delete anything. Instead, use it to build off of and make better.

Also, planning is both overrated and underrated. Simultaneously. It really depends on what kind of writer you are.

If you're more of a spontaneous writer, then planning is a great way to kill your interest and motivation to write.

If you're more of a planner though, planning is necessary to help you write.

With how new you are to the writing thing, one of the things you'll want to figure out is where you fall on the spontaneous-planned spectrum because it will help you figure out which pieces of (otherwise contradictory) advice will best apply to you, especially when it comes to maintaining your motivation and finding new techniques that may work for you.

When it comes to fiction, I'm a very spontaneous writer, so I don't do much planning. I'll typically have a general idea or a scene that I want to write, and then I'll just start writing and see what develops from there. I also tend to write things out of order and then stitch them together afterwards, making notes of things that need changing as I go along.

I DO plan out the revisions though, just because I find it easier and more effective to have a plan for those. I also plan out my non-fiction pretty extensively before writing the first draft, mainly because facts and logic are a lot easier to keep straight in outline form.

My point being, my writing method is very different from what is often recommended because what is often recommended applies to different kinds of writers/writing. If you're frustrated with how a lot of advice doesn't seem to work for you, then go out and try something else.

So long as you keep at writing, you'll eventually figure out something that works for you.
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