I love this idea for a thread. Thank you :) I have a lot of replies for those who have sat down on the bench thus far. Many of those people have since stood up and gone on their merry way, but this post is me running after them and going, "Hey! Wait!" :mrgreen:
To that end: l-o-o-o-o-o-ong post coming up...
@CathyTea On creative slowdowns:
I call my creative slowdown times "refilling the well". When we experience creative bursts like you had during your first year of blogging, we can draw from our creative well so fast that it doesn't have enough time to replenish itself. Thus we find ourselves drawing up less and less water until we're down to the last few drops. We used buckets that were too big and we pulled them up too fast!
Refilling the well takes time and it involves experiences. Just going out and observing things, making notes here and there - not necessarily even writing very much; just making notes - and allowing the water to fill back up to its previous level.
My last creative slowdown (the one that
The Madness of Mr Goth finally pulled me out of) lasted for four years. That's a long time for someone who has always said they were born to write to be refilling their well, but that's clearly how long it took for me.
As to how I've profited from it, mainly I've rediscovered the joy of finding the words again. I've hovered on the cusp of sleep, with ideas for new (and future) chapters rolling around in my mind and forcing me to sit up and jot them down, or else I'll never nod off!
Take time. Take notes. Take photographs. Refill your well in these next few months. And remember to pace yourself and use smaller buckets when you start drawing from it again :)
@Rainydayz179 No, you're not alone! In many creative arenas that I've taken part in, the things I've worked hardest on and been the most excited about seem to get bewilderingly muted feedback, yet the stuff that I've knocked out quickly and offhand is raved over. I've never been able to explain it, and it
is frustrating and dispiriting.
The thing that I try to remind myself is this: On more occasions than I can count, I've absolutely loved a book, a movie, an album, a live concert. And then, within a few days, I've seen a review of the same thing that absolutely slates it. The reviewer thought the book's characters were weak, the movie ending was atrocious, the album was poorly engineered, and the live concert was marred by technical issues. I find myself wondering if I and the reviewer were even watching/reading the same thing!
(The same goes, of course, the other way around. Something gets rave reviews and I thought it was a pile of utter tosh!)
The old adage says "You can't please all of the people all of the time". To that we might add "or even some of the people some of the time". The thing to remember is that
you are proud of what you did. You worked hard on that thing, and you know you did a darn good job, regardless of whether other people liked it.
We're in an era now when writers can publish instantly online and readers can give (or not give) feedback. Like it or not, this
is the insta-feedback era, and many of us (especially the younger generation, who have grown up in this era) pin far too much of our own happiness on what others say about our creative endeavours.
Try to recall, each time this happens to you, that you're writing this story because
you want to write it. I have a note pinned to the wall behind my computer that says
'When you get discouraged and think about stopping, remember why you started'. You're not writing it in order to get feedback; you're writing it because it's stuck in your head and you're so excited about it that you need to get it out and onto paper (or the internet). It's your baby, not theirs. You love it unconditionally, regardless of whether anyone else coos over it and wants to cuddle it ;)
@BabyDollAnne Have you tried writing short stories? Or even sets of interconnected scenes that don't really have a plot but that still intertwine with each other? Tumblr might be a good place for you to write, since it's possible to create a set of characters/Sims that you love, and just post little scenes and slices of life for them there.
Not every story needs to be long and detailed, and the fact that you have lots of ideas and what you feel as "no commitment" to any of them makes me think you'd revel in creating shorter works. Maybe give that a try for a while and see how you feel about it?
I can't help you with your most recent post, but I wish you all the best in resolving that situation as soon as you can <3
@DreamsInPixels Why not try a little experiment to help you let go of that need for approval? Each time you post a chapter, ignore your blog's stats page. Make a promise to yourself that you won't even click the link. While you will (obviously) be aware if nobody comments, you'll be freeing yourself from that (often obsessive!) stat-checking that we all do from time to time.
Something that stood out for me from your post was this (bolding mine) -
I think of (what I think is) a good story idea, plan it out, think no one is going to read it, set it up anyway, think it's going to be great, post it with excitement...and then get little to no views after one or two weeks. Then I get depressed and don't want to write anymore.
Those bolded words are crucial, because - before you even start - you're setting yourself up for disappointment. And then, if/when nobody does read it, it's
validating that feeling, thereby perpetuating the loop you're stuck in. If that is the only validation you feel you're getting from your writing, then - since you say you
need validation - it will continue to happen, because you're seeking it, whether you're aware of it or not.
Have you considered joining one of the
reading circles (another wonderful idea from @CathyTea!) that are being set up on the forums? I think these are a great idea for SimLit writers who have few (or no) readers, so perhaps join one of those so that you can build up a regular readership and exchange of feedback.
@AdamsEve1231 Oh lord, I look ahead to those dreaded big and overwhelming chapters and I quake in my boots! :mrgreen: The huge, dramatic, emotional end of my story is still quite a way off but I have it planned out in infinitesimal detail... and I'm still panicking that I won't be able to do it justice! I'm now at the point where I've decided I'm going to write it out before I need to, so it's out of the way (and so I can edit it and get it as near to what I hope it can be, given the time I'll have available to refine it). I also won't have its Sword of Damocles hanging over the chapters between now and then!
That's sort of my
Eat That Frog way of dealing with it, anyway...
@InfraGreen -
Point 1: There's never a perfect moment to write. I once thought it would be wonderful to go on a writing vacation. Just me, a gorgeous location somewhere out-of-the-way, and lots of paper and pens. Then I shook myself and said, "Yeah, that'll never happen. You'll spend all that time just lounging on the beach and watching the waves." And I would! I know myself, and that's exactly what I'd do.
You sound like me: a hummingbird person. I recommend watching Liz Gilbert's talk about that. (I found a clip of the most important part,
here.) You don't focus on one consuming passion; instead you flit from flower to flower, taking a little bit from here, giving a little bit to there. And that's just how hummingbird people are. While some people will say "Follow your passion!" others can't do that, either because they don't have a passion or because they can't focus on just one thing.
But, as Liz Gilbert said so beautifully, the hummingbirds are the ones who cross-pollinate the world. While you have other things going on in your life, your writing becomes an important flower to pollinate, but when you have all the time in the world there are so many other flowers out there, you busy yourself with those ones.
Point 2: This is one of the downsides to publishing-as-you-go online. Most long stories are published once complete, so the author can catch all of those things and set them right before the story makes its way into the world, but serialised stories run the risk of retconning, especially if they're not plotted out in great detail in advance.
Is there any way that you could write the changes INTO the story, as opposed to changing them completely? Maybe the narrator thought her legal father WAS her grandfather, or perhaps she missed her real grandfather so much that she always referred to her father as "Gramps". Perhaps she's an unreliable narrator in some ways (those can be very forgiving to a serialising author, since you can excuse any "errors" as part of their unreliability).
For myself, I don't need to sit on the bench right now, but I'm going to leave some cookies for the next person who does :)
Edited: Typo. (I do my best proofreading
after I've hit 'send'!)
