I don't write to write, I write to read. Above I want the stories I write to be readable, perhaps occasionally enjoyable and maybe even, once in a great while, memorable.

This is how I keep my spirits up when I worry about the quality of my writing. Have I written anything I would want to read? If the answer is yes then okay. If not, I need to fiddle with the story some more.

1) When I realize how far I've got to go, when I had been thinking that I'm on the verge of being "there".

2) When I'm really stuck getting back into the plot from a sidetrack that I've explored -- and I can't bear to cut it, but I know that the story would be better off without it.

3) When I realize that I love the authors that break/bend the rules, and am sick of sticking to them. It gets me even more depressed to know that I have to become a common-name bestseller to be able to write how I want.

There are no simple cures, but what gets me out of those moods is the simple fact that that my mind won't stop imagining things. It's a curse. I accepted a long time ago that I wouldn't be an overnight success. It's like anything else that you get good at, you've got to work at it -- especially when you don't want to. That is when, I believe, you show your true colors, and whether or not you are worthy of the payoff at the end. (I'm not talking about monetary payoffs, although they'd be nice, too )

So, I guess the relevant question is now, and always will be: How bad do you want it?

If you need to cut something, stick it into a separate file. You might pull it back in later, or use it in something else.

What I used to do was to save the file under a name, possibly with the date in it, and then open it fresh under the original name and make my changes. I could always go back if I did not like the changes, and start fresh. Also, being an "original" I could restart with that and use just parts of the changes to get what I really needed.

imaginative saving can be used to enhance the art.

I think most of the time it means you've written yourself into a corner, and through reluctance or inability to recognize the problem, you've got stuck.

Just keep going and take what encouragement you can from the fact that you're suffering from a normal part of the process we all do.

I picked up my novel yesterday after a couple months writing and rewriting other things, and I've had about six ideas for stories in the past month alone. (I'll try to get to at least one of them.)

We write because we write.

I've published 250 plus issues of a monthly magazine, Comics Revue. I've written more than 100 twice a month columns for sfsite.

I was feeling really bad about my WiP for a couple weeks. First, I had to give it time. Sometimes, I just need to step away from the WiP. That can mean getting in a different boat and writing something different--even VERY different. (Every try writing romance? Maybe I should try to rewrite the end to Ender's Game and see what I come up with. Then, after some time had passed I sat down with Chapter 1--the chapter I was hating the most--and I got brutal with it. I turned off the Track Changes feature in my Word Processor, which still gives me nightmares, and I got mean with the chapter.

It turned out the first chapter was too much exposition where it needed dialogue. Today, I love the first chapter and I'm about to have a long talk with Chapter 2 and ask it why it can't be more like Chapters 3 and 4.

Then, I should probably right chapter 5.

quote:

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Writing often seems especially challenging just before the writer makes a breakthrough.

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I have to wonder if that's what I'm going through right now. In the past three weeks, I've attempted two short stories and a screenplay beat sheet, and can't pull my ideas into a story. It's 90% there, but I can't seem to get my hands on that missing 10%.