I have gotten so frustrated lately and cant figure out how to get what I want to write done the way I like it I went and deleted about 150,000 words of book 1 in a series I have been working on for the last 7 years, leaving about 49,000 words.
I cant figure out how I want it to sound, if that makes any since. Book 1 was the most complete of the 7 book series, and I cant locate any of my old notes from the last 7 years.
Better still I cant figure out how I am going to start book 3 from the time period it takes place in. I have started book 3 over 15 times and it doesn’t sound right to me.
I cant even bring myself to write anymore in any work I am doing, I just open the word doc and look at the screen for hours. I cant even twist songs for people who have asked for twisted song lyrics from me.
It has been 2 months since I have done any writing in any of my works. What is this, writers block that has become permanent?
I have lost my touch for writing, and I need some serious mental help with it.
posted
Sounds like it's time to take a deep breath and start thinking about a new project, sometimes you need time to distance yourself from something, to be more objective.
As a rule I never make mass deletes like that, rather I suggest you save your old writing as another name before cleaning the slate and continuing. In time, with a bit more perspective, you might go back and think your old work wasn't as bad as you thought. Maybe not, but better safe than sorry.
And yeah, I recommend getting some distance from that project for now.
posted
You should save your work, even the part that doesn't work. I once carved eighteen chapters off the beginning of a novel...but then changed some characters and shoehorned about seven of them in at a later point.
I'm usually picking at something, even in periods where I think I'm blocked. Right now, my writing's been shut down, but only for eight days. Took a break after finishing my latest. Not unprecedented, either. I'll probably resume revising an older work shortly---I stopped doing that when I started this new one---and, just the other day, I thought of a terrific scene (without a story attached) involving some of the technobabble of that last-finished story. I may write that one down, too, story or not.
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Breathe, dear wolf. It makes perfect sense. Been there, doing that.
Don't worry about Book 3, yet. If you really are going to start at the old Book 1, Book 3 is going to need serious revision to make it consistent with the new Book 1.
You need to figure out what works for you. Try to do a time line or plot summary. Ex. Book 1 starts HERE, The main issue the MC must resolve is THIS, he gets there by doing THAT, the antagonist doesn't want the MC to resolve THIS because of WHY; WHAT does the antagonist do to try to stop the MC; IS the antagonist sucessful in thwarting the MC from doing THIS; HOW does it all end.
If the 49K is the heart of book 1, ask yourself, what happens NEXT? Keep doing that until you get to the ending.
If Book 3, is the one that wants you to write it, ignore books 1 and 2 and start book 3 in the time period that sounds/feels right. Free yourself from the words that you've already written and start again.
I have a 4 book series. Book 1 was recently professionally edited. The person editing it asked a question about a character that's referenced but never seen. He's seen now. AND it means I'm throwing out about 1/3 of Book 1 and most of book 2. Books 3 and 4 will need major reworks but the story will be much better now. So . . . breathe.
Let go of your ideas about what the story was and work with what the story has become.
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This too shall pass. You obviously have a great deal of discipline, commitment, and "stick-to-it-ness." From your previous post, I think your life and possibly routine have changed a lot lately--that can throw a person off, even if the changes are positive in other ways. A few things that have worked for me and people in my coffee-shop writing group:
1. When I felt totally stuck with my fiction, I started a blog on an unrelated topic--I did short, short essays, nonfiction, about baking bread. Accomplishing small, manageable goals seemed to help me get going again. 2. Chill, relax and mediate--then see if you can pin point a specific place where this work seems to jump off the track. Does that place have any special significance to you? Our writing often asks us to go places, emotionally, that are not so nice, not so fun. Sometimes writer's block is avoidance. 3. Take a writing class or formal workshop. Some personalities need this structure.
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I don’t know what has come over me, all I know is I have lost most interest in things I use to love doing. All I do now is sit and stair at the computer screen. I live off roman noodles, cigarettes, and alcohol.
It is like my brain has turned into mush and I just don’t have any real direction after we redeployed from Afghanistan. I don’t even know how to be the “Hard Core Sapper” I once was. I don’t know if it was he deployment that did this or coming home.
I have lost my path in my religion as well. I don’t know what to believe anymore. It is like I am sleeping and all this is a dream. But I cant wake up from it.
I have located about 400 hand written pages of notes regarding the books but they are all encoded and to decipher them will take a long time. Decoding 1 paragraph will take about a weeks time. It is as if my fail safes are failing.
The 49 some odd thousand words I have left (that I haven’t deleted) in book 1 is barely the first quarter of the book. I haven’t figured out how I even got the other 150 some odd thousand I did delete. They didn’t sound like the story I am trying to write, heck on that note music I use to listen to all the time doesn’t sound right anymore to me.
I think I may have gone and went insane or something. Maybe I need to commit myself to an mental clinic to get back to my old happy, easy going, high energized, lets go and do some thing kind of guy I once was.
The digital recorder thing sounds like a good idea, where can I find one at? They don’t have them at the PX.
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I got my digital recorder at Target, and I believe that places like Circuit City have them as well.
I'm saving my coins for the recorder / software combo that translates my spoken words from the record directly into a word processor. This would be a great thing for me, 'cuz transcribing my own verbal notes is annoying and time-consuming.
What you've described are fairly classic symptoms of major depression and PTSD. Deployment and homecoming are hard events. Please Please Please go talk to someone at the VA. Having someone to talk to will probably help a lot.
posted
Agreed. It sounds like you are beyond writer's block. You've been through a heck of a lot. Living on edge for all that time, and now your life is so very different--anyone might need help adjusting. You are worth it.
Posts: 785 | Registered: Mar 2007
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I suffered from that before, dose that make it more easy for me to become depressed again?
I wonder if I should find a non army shrink. I have dealt with army shrinks before and didn’t like them. Civilian shrinks are more my thing, at least they can’t refer to have me chaptered out, like the army shrink tried before. I told her to go screw herself. I never heard from the army mental clinic again after that.
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Yes, having a major depressive episode or chronic depression in the past makes another episode more likely. Depression changes your brain chemistry.
Get the referral to a civilian doctor if that is more comfortable for you. I can't believe the army doctor didn't have a sense of humor. After all, someone else had to have told her that before. Profanity is an occupational hazard in that feild.
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Go see a psychologist or a counsellor and talk about whatever you're feeling. Everyone's right about that. If that's really how you're feeling, you need to talk to someone, even if it's just a friend you can trust.
Talking to us is already a first step, you know. Even people I barely know talk to me about their problems, so I feel like a counsellor sometimes. The first step is always to share your burden with someone.
With the writing thing - I can't remember the last time I had writer's block. I have so many stories on the go that if I get stuck somewhere, I just switch to another. Or go play video games. Or draw. The point being that I don't just stare at the screen, being stuck. So when you get stuck, go do something else for a while and see how that goes.
One thing that really gets your imagination running is table-top role playing games, believe it or not. Get a few friends together and play Dungeons & Dragons - you'd be surprised how quickly you start to imagine the world you're in. The bigger challenge is running a game - part of my ability to make up a story out of nothing in no time at all comes from having to do it constantly while running RPGs, especially when the players completely deviate from the plot and wander off on their own little tangent. Anyone who plays RPGs will know what I mean.
Also, stop eating so badly! We are what we eat after all. More fresh fruit and vegetables, more water, and cut down on the processed crap if you can. Cut the drink and the cigs as well if you're feeling brave, or just cut them down a bit.
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I have talked to friends in my PLT who know me better than any army shrink thinks they might, the most I got from any of them was from Doc, who is not really a friend (NCO) he said that it is normal to feel some of what I have described to him, most is because we have become Instatoshanlized (I cant begin to know how to spell that word) to being deployed and doing what we have done (My PLT is the best Route Clearance PLT that AFG has seen ever we literally had to rewrite how to clear a route for the whole theater of operations not just American RCP’s but also the British and the Canadian RCP PLT’s in south AFG. I miss the organization and the always doing something and going somewhere, things we did. I miss a lot of what happened over there, including the fire fights the ringing of the ears the .50CAL gives you hours after you shot it, the shear rush of rocking the .50CAL in the hatch, firing a SAW out of the window of a moving truck, among many other things.
All we do now is PT for an hour every morning 0630 to 0730, breakfast 0900 at S&A and go back to the Barracks and stay by your phone until dismissal. I just sleep now, 0930 to 1300 and do what ever I need to do, then go to bed at 2130. There is nothing real to be done and it has driven me insane
I haven’t played D&D in many, many years. I would need to find my D&D book to remember how to play. But then I would need to find people to play with.
Quitting smoking is going too hard for me. I have been smoking since I was 10 years old, which is 11 years of my life. I have tried to quit in AFG but found that it was not worth the effort I was putting forward to do so. As for drinking, it helps calm my shaking hand(s) and makes the dull day seem worth it. I don’t quite understand the “feeling brave” part.
posted
The word you're looking for there is "institutionalised". It means you're so used to being deployed that being not deployed is messing you up.
...I have no idea what most of those army terms are. I'm not sure I understand a lot of what you said there. But it's fairly straightforward if you've gone from having loads of stuff to do to having nothing to do, it's a fairly big system shock and adjusting is gonna take time.
It sounds like you're still on a military base. How about the guys around you? Are they also bored? You could organise activities like who can make the best paper airplane. Or get Skippy's List (google it) and see how much of it you can do before your superiors catch you. If you have consistent Internet access, see if you can get into online games like World of Warcraft or Everquest or whatnot.
I was at this job once where I was so bored I started making little paper cranes out of Post it notes. Then I learned origami properly and now if I'm out somewhere and I have nothing to do, I'll grab a napkin or any handy bit of paper and make flowers and ducks and more cranes.
I say 'if you're brave' because it's an Irish expression. Means 'if you're ready to do something pretty difficult and possibly painful'. And I say try to cut down on the drink and cigs because if you're feeling depressed, using alcohol or nicotine to help you feel normal is a bad idea. And seriously, talk to a counsellor about this. Can't hurt and they might be able to help a lot more than you think.
posted
Wow there is a lot on that list I have acutely done with out knowing that the list existed.
Like buying souls, or mounting a Bayonet on a crew served weapon, Vodka, green food coloring, and a “Cool Mint” Listerine® bottle is not a good combination, . I may not trade my rifle for any of the following: Cigarettes, booze, sexual favors, Kalishnikovs, Soviet Armored vehicles, small children, or bootleg CD’s, I cannot trade my CO to the Russians, 124 to 126 Shouting “Let’s do the village! Let’s do the whole f@#$%^& village!” while out on a mission is bad, No part of the military uniform is edible, Not allowed to “defect” to OPFOR during training missions, We do not “charge into battle, naked, like the Celts (done that twice), refer to a formation as “the boxy rectangle thingie”, I am not allowed to sing “Henry the VIII I am” until verse 68 ever again (nor This is the song that Ever Ends for 3 hours in a gunners hatch). Among other things that are not on this list. Now I got to see if I can do the rest. LOL RFW2nd
Talk Talking things out with people who care lets you find your own balance. Sometimes a chaplain can be a better ear than a shrink, but what you really need is someone who listens more than they talk, someone who will be a good sounding board without “evaluating” you.
Food Food is fuel. If you want your body to function properly (including brain chemistry) you have to give it good fuel. Treat your body like a valued piece of equipment. You’d never fail to keep your rifle in good working order, would you? (Okay, sorry for the mixed analogies, but I think you get the point.)
Cigs Don’t quit smoking, not right now. Cut back as much as it is easy to do. Leave the hard part for later, you have enough hard parts to deal with right now.
Drinking Drinking is a crutch. When you first bust your leg you need a crutch, it’s not a bad thing. But you have to slowly stop using it or the muscles atrophy, and then everything is worse.
Finding Yourself Again The hard truth is that you can’t be who you used to be. Neither do you have to remain as you are. The good news is that you can blend the two into someone better than either. You are your own MC. You can choose who you will become. Look at the old you candidly and choose what you like most about him, then do the same with your present self. Let this set of qualities be who you will strive to be. This may seem awkward at first, and that’s where RPGs can help.
RPGs One of the greatest things about RPGs is that you can be any character you choose to be. In striving to become the person that you want to be you are bound to stumble a bit. Think of the RPG as a dry run. You can play with extremes, and change your persona as often as you like. The point is practice. (and fun, and blowing off steam, etc.)
Writing Your stories are never really gone, because they live inside of you. As you change and grow, so must they. So they’ll never be the same, but just maybe they’ll be better, richer, and truer. Every struggle that you face is a struggle that your characters can face, and overcome, and in doing so teach others.
God I almost don’t want to say anything here for fear of you taking it the wrong way, but here goes. You’re good to go. In God’s book you’re alright. It’s more than natural to doubt in times of hardship. But He believes in you. He’ll be there with you right in the middle of everything. He never promised easy, he just promised that we’d never be alone. When it comes to religion, never put your faith in people, they’ll always let you down. But God, now him you just can’t seem to shake even if you sometimes feel like you might want to.
Warriors (i.e. YOU) We need you to come home strong. We need our warriors to be the bulwark of society, to build up that which they defended. We need strong warriors to teach the next generation what it’s all about. And you especially, as a writer, we need your stories.
Talking to kings_falcon via e-mail has helped some. Although I need to find someone of flesh and blood here that I can speak with as well.
There is nothing better than a cup of roman noodles, 1 Hershey’s milk chocolate king sized bar, 3 cigarettes, and a few shots of Crown Royal, or some blood, to make me full. It is more of I am not all that hungry (for regular food that is) anymore. I only eat 1.5 meals a day and still I don’t feel hungry. I have to force myself to eat when I do.
I don’t ever plain to stop smoking. I want to be 90 something years old with a hole in my throat and laying on my death bed in a hospital somewhere and smoke through the hole and get yelled at by the Docs. I will say this “Let me die with Nicotine in my system and happy to go on to my next life.
It only takes 2 shots to end the shaking for a day or so. I don’t drink heavily until the weekend. Even then I can barely take 5 shots of Jose Cuervo.
I went to find myself, I got back before I returned but no one kept me here.
I cant find anyone to play D&D with nor can my computer handle online gameing. My computer cant even play games offline but the games that came with it.
It is not like it is gone I cant figure out how to get it sounding right. I did a mass delete and cant recover the deleted part of it.
I am the last of my kind, the Last Christian Werewolf, I did not convert back to the old religion of old. It is like the Sun God and Moon Goddess are calling me back. I don’t know what I want to do. I don’t want to betray the one true God but then again I don’t want to be the last of a once proud race of Christian Werewolves.
I use to be the hardest working sapper in my PLT and the Company. But then we got back and I stopped having anything to do. They are sending me to armor school to “learn” how to fix our weapons. I already know how but don’t have the “certificate” from the Army saying I can. I just cant wait to get out of the Army, for I am moving to middle of nowhere Canada, build a cabin, get a dog, and live by myself for the rest of my life.
I don’t know if this topic belongs here or in Grits for the Mill. Or both.
Canada sounds cool, and cold. I know my company is always looking to hire good armorers, and we’re here in sunny FL. It seems like half the company is prior service, I like it.
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I lived in beautiful Jacksonville Fl for 3.5 years, loved every moment of it, but it dose not get cold enough for me, I love cold and snow, and solitude.
posted
My daughter suffered from PTSD for years after being caught up in fighting when she was 11. It's tough, and I can't be certain that's what you have, but whatever it is, keep going, and try and find some help that actually helps (if you see what I mean!) Don't isolate yourself, it's too easy to lapse into depression. Hours staring blankly at a computer screen probably aren't a good idea.
Posts: 185 | Registered: Oct 2007
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posted
You work for Knight Armament! WOW Um I am honored for the job offer but I don’t think I can go another winter with out having to fend for myself.
Drop me a line in say 2014
I might reconsider.
I see that KA has made the LMG, I am a SAW gunner and a damn good one too. I had the only SAW in my PLT that didn’t jam during a Firefight, for I spent 3 hours after every mission cleaning and oiling it. I found a loop hole in the system, I have 4 barrels for it, 2 short barrels and 2 regular barrels. I did not turn in the 2 regular barrels when I was issued the 2 short barrels, so I carried extra ammo, 1400 rounds of ammo, pluse the barrels an extra butt stock, lots of CLP and my issued GPS. I fitted my SAW with a Grip Pod System that I bought with my own money, by far that was the best converted SAW in my Bn. Muuuummmmmm 800 rounds a min. happiness is truly belt fed.
Yea now it is hours of sleeping in my bed, the only real work I do is PT in the morning at 0630 to 0730 then go eat breakfast (cigarettes and coffee) go to the S&A at 0900 and get sent back to the B’s at 0930 and told to stand by my phone, so I craw back in bed and sleep and extra 4-5 hours a day, I am averaging 13 to 14 hours of sleep a day.
I am actually getting to the point where to have something to do I am going behind my chain of command and taking flying lesions during the weekends and after “work.” I love being up there and just taking it all in, and flying, I am for about 10 flight hours a alright pilot. I have been taking some of my buddies up to go along for the ride. They like it, but they don’t like when I practice the stalls, especially the Power Up stall, they don’t like the 0G when the plane stalls, lol.
posted
PS: the only thing I don’t like about the SAW is the magazine well, every time I tried to fire from a mag it jammed after 3 rounds.
Posts: 856 | Registered: Nov 2006
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posted
I've read that the SAW is really inaccurate (it has a 100 round mag right?) and I've heard the reason for that is because it's meant for suppressive fire, or something. Right?
Posts: 2195 | Registered: Aug 2006
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There's instructions for both how to recover deleted files and how to delete files permanently, so make sure you're using the right instructions to help recover your deleted material.
posted
The M249 SAW is primarily a belt fed light machinegun. Its main use back when it came out was a surprising weapon. Today it is one of the most useful weapons a PLT can have, it can be mounted in a gunners hatch for a light crew served weapon, it can be modified to be shorter to be used as a urban room clearing weapon, it is easily used as a dismount machinegun. It has 2 main ways of feed, a 100 round assault drum that is refillable and a 200 round plastic (POS) drum that brakes all the time, it can fire with a 10, 20 or 30 round mag but the mag always jams after 3 rounds. It can shoot accurately out to 1000m with out the scope and even further (I can’t say) with a scope.
I tried the web site got an error message, “Sorry, the page you were trying to access could not be found.” Is what it displayed.
Spray and Pray, Happiness is Belt feed. That is my motto. I named my M249 after my German Shepherd Dog, Roxanne Marie. My squad leader told me every time I shoot her I “have” to sing the song “Roxanne” by the Police, and I do.
RFW2nd
[This message has been edited by Rommel Fenrir Wolf II (edited August 18, 2008).]
posted
Weird, I got an error, too, and that's the URL I used to download it for work. But just type in "Restoration" in the search box and you'll find it.
Posts: 151 | Registered: Sep 2004
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posted
Ok I found it but, my hard drive is too full to download it according to the popup thing with Vista, I don’t know how to remove programs that Vista downloaded that I don’t need and will never use, so until I get that fixed I am stuck.
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Even people I barely know talk to me about their problems, so I feel like a counsellor sometimes. The first step is always to share your burden with someone.
