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The Hardest Thing About Writing To You?

Omegagoldfish

My will be done
You too?
Heck, my story consists of offline notes after over a year of work.
 

Crystal

The Pokemon Observer
Getting myself into the mood of writing. That is the most difficult thing of mine.

I don't feel specifically difficult for anything related to writing techniques, such as grammars, style, descriptions, length, viewpoint, story structure, planning, conversations and dialogues, actions and battles, and many other. No, it is not difficult at all to me, because all of these I can learn and improve gradually by time. But, just not about motivation and mood, as this is just one thing that will never get improved by time. Oppositely, if I drag on for too long, it oppositely make my situation worse.

So, despite I had great ideas and plans, even all the plot flow had already being done, but when I actually sit down and wanted to type in the specific contents of each chapter, somehow my mind will suddenly go blank and white, nothing is flowing in my head. I then had to spend at least half hour reading my previously finished chapter in order to get myself into the creative mood of wanting to write.
 

Starlight Aurate

Just a fallen star
Imma second on saying that grammar and punctuation are two biggies for me. I could never get the hang of them; even though people are kind enough to post links in their reviews that are to help me, nothing ever seems to stick.

Motivation is also a big thing (as a lot of people from the Fanfic Mafia may know...).There were just too many times when my motivation to write or sometimes do much anything at all was completely dead. I've gone months at a time without writing anything, but there are also times when I can get 10-20 pages of writing in a day (like I did yesterday ^_^;).

Planning is also a big weakness of mine; another reason I may stop writing for months at a time is that I start thinking, "Shoot, where was this supposed to lead to?" or "How was I supposed to resolve this, again?" I found that writing an outline for my fic certainly helps with that, but even then, there are certain loose ends that are difficult to tie up and niches that can be hard to fill.
 

0bss1d1ankn1ght

Lost in the Internet
Imma second on saying that grammar and punctuation are two biggies for me. I could never get the hang of them; even though people are kind enough to post links in their reviews that are to help me, nothing ever seems to stick.

Motivation is also a big thing (as a lot of people from the Fanfic Mafia may know...).There were just too many times when my motivation to write or sometimes do much anything at all was completely dead. I've gone months at a time without writing anything, but there are also times when I can get 10-20 pages of writing in a day (like I did yesterday ^_^;).

Planning is also a big weakness of mine; another reason I may stop writing for months at a time is that I start thinking, "Shoot, where was this supposed to lead to?" or "How was I supposed to resolve this, again?" I found that writing an outline for my fic certainly helps with that, but even then, there are certain loose ends that are difficult to tie up and niches that can be hard to fill.

Yeah, I'm a native English speaker, and I gotta admit it gets pretty confusing.
 

Yagami Kyo

Active Member
I'd have to point several factors:

-Motivation: I usually have a lot of it in the beginning, but it sort of fades away when I have everything done in my mind. The writing process starts making less sense as I, as myself, have already enjoyed my very interesting story. I'd need people to actually comment on it and liking it to keep writing after a certain point.

-Overcreationism: Another great difficulty for me is writing stuff...Because I always end up creating a lot, A LOT, more than I originally wanted. For example, the first fic I tried to do was a KH fanfic that began with one protagonist and a couple of supportong characters, but in my mind everything went horribly and suddenly you get four different protagonists and an actual villain as main characters, with dozens and dozens of minor characters doing stuff. And the same is happening in my current fic. In fact, the originally planned protagonist hasn't even appeared as of Chapter 1, and in fact I used already existing characters for the prologue and one OC for the first chapter. I think one of the main reasons this happened is both ASOIAF from George R.R. Martin and some other great series as The Stormlight Archive by Sanderson or the Malazan Book of the Fallen by Steven Erikson. They have a realy deep world with tons of likable characters (even if sometimes the prose is really dense).

-Language: Because of my status as non English native, and this one being my first piece of narrative written in Shakesperean language, I find it hard to assimilate some of the technicalities of it. Formalism in my native language and English is vastly different, and so I have to stop myself from time to time to correct small things.

-Procastination:....OK, I think 90% of us suffer from that. No comments.
 

0bss1d1ankn1ght

Lost in the Internet
I'd need people to actually comment on it and liking it to keep writing after a certain point.

That actually bothers me to a degree, personally. Some times I upload a chapter that I feel I worked extremely hard on, and then won't find any comments for it for a long time. It almost makes me feel like my hard work is unappreciated.
 
That actually bothers me to a degree, personally. Some times I upload a chapter that I feel I worked extremely hard on, and then won't find any comments for it for a long time. It almost makes me feel like my hard work is unappreciated.

Heh. I'm 17 chapters into mine, and the ratio of chapters to other comments is currently 18:13, but most of the 13 is banter. Get used to it, not everyone wants to leave comments, and as long as you keep your enjoyment on what you write, rather than what others feel about it, (And honestly, make sure it's good :p) you'll do fine.

Never feel unappreciated, just feel that you're glad you finally built something. After all, I burn a good ~3-4 hours of solid writing per chapter, oftentimes more, and it feels good moving along the story, so I can get down towards the more... interesting parts.
 

ChloboShoka

Writer
I just can't write a chapter over 5000 words unless I merge two or three short chapters together.
 

tm27crobat

Cave Dweller
I adore writing, but my biggest barrier is my anxiety disorder.

I spend tons of time daydreaming and fleshing out my ideas, characters, plots, settings, themes, etc. For instance, the story I just began writing has been cooking in my mind for literally eight years. The hard part is putting it down into words. My brain tells me that it has to be perfect, and that if I write it down and it's not exactly as I pictured it in my mind, or I don't get across exactly what I had intended, or it's not entertaining, then I'm a failure and I've wasted all the painstaking effort I've put into the story every step of the way so far. I've spent hours drawing maps, characters, and Pokémon. I've bulleted stories for every town, event, and some routes. I've planned every gym leader in my region as well as the Elite Four, and many random trainers as well. And I spent about a week straight choosing 400 Pokémon to make up my region's Pokédex, 64 of which are Fakemon I've created myself.

Of course, none of this effort guarantees that I've done a good job, which is what I'm constantly reminding myself. I fear that putting my story out there will shatter my illusion that all this work and planning has been worthwhile, or that it's the product of any innovation or talent at all. So, I've finally started, but I had to work hard to fight my fears and put my work out there, and will have to continue fighting like that. In a way, it feels good; I'm hoping that the good feeling grows and grows, and my anxiety lessens, as time goes on.
 
I've spent a bit more time thinking about what writing really feels like, and I've come up with another addendum to what I've said before.

Editing.

It's really hard to make the story flow properly the first time you write it. I've found I'm only ever really confident that it's worthy of being left alone after I've completely rewritten it.
I keep finding little errors, or paradoxes, or sometimes even the occasional plot hole, all nestled in my writing in a way that makes it nearly impossible for me to realize when I've just written it.

And even worse, stemming from this is the niggling feeling that I've missed something, or left out a detail, or improperly foreshadowed the twists and turns that I like to weave into my writing. Is the detail I'm adding going to look like a Dues Ex Machina? Or is it a logical progression from what I've already said? (Did I screw up, and skip an entire section of my plot?)

How far back do I need to put details to make what's going to happen make sense? Am I alienating readers by adding more description further back, just to make it seem more natural later?

I can only assume that everyone else feels a similar way about editing. It truly does constitute 90% of the time spent writing.
 

Cometstarlight

What do I do now?
I adore writing, but my biggest barrier is my anxiety disorder.

I spend tons of time daydreaming and fleshing out my ideas, characters, plots, settings, themes, etc. For instance, the story I just began writing has been cooking in my mind for literally eight years. The hard part is putting it down into words. My brain tells me that it has to be perfect, and that if I write it down and it's not exactly as I pictured it in my mind, or I don't get across exactly what I had intended, or it's not entertaining, then I'm a failure and I've wasted all the painstaking effort I've put into the story every step of the way so far. I've spent hours drawing maps, characters, and Pokémon. I've bulleted stories for every town, event, and some routes. I've planned every gym leader in my region as well as the Elite Four, and many random trainers as well. And I spent about a week straight choosing 400 Pokémon to make up my region's Pokédex, 64 of which are Fakemon I've created myself.

Of course, none of this effort guarantees that I've done a good job, which is what I'm constantly reminding myself. I fear that putting my story out there will shatter my illusion that all this work and planning has been worthwhile, or that it's the product of any innovation or talent at all. So, I've finally started, but I had to work hard to fight my fears and put my work out there, and will have to continue fighting like that. In a way, it feels good; I'm hoping that the good feeling grows and grows, and my anxiety lessens, as time goes on.

I know the feeling. I constantly have ideas cooking and changing in my head and I write them down in notebooks as to keep them straight. I don't want to write any of it on a computer until it's perfect, but as I've found, they don't improve unless I type them out and see what works and doesn't work. It's a vicious cycle of writing XD But the best advice I can give is to not be afraid of mistakes. You've put a lot more thought and effort into writing your work than most people I've seen. Don't be afraid to get a little messy with the process and don't be upset with yourself. If and when it comes out, I'd love to read it!
 

Avenger Angel

Warrior of Heaven
I keep changing my mind on certain outcomes and details and I often rename a lot of things. Truthfully, they're just minor cases of being indecisive, which I think are worth it to make sure the story gets on and stays on the right track. It does, however, make it a slower process when I'm always deleting and adding over and over and only after a long while do I finally commit to having a certain outcome take place in a way that I'll be comfortable sticking with it for the remainder of the story. It's also harder when I'm not sure if the reader would appreciate the outcome or if they would just find it to be stupid. And there's times when one outcome seems fine with me one day and then seems like a dumb idea on another day.
 

Mizz Nikki

Operations Director
The hardest thing about writing to me is tenses. Ever since I first started out, tenses have always given me problems. I just always seem to mix up my tenses.

Besides that, time management is another. I just now hardly have the tome to write, especially after my computer crashed.
 

Satoshi & Touko

Peanuts aren't just a nut.
I think my biggest thing in my case is time investment. Unless I'm writing a shippy drabble, which I can and have done in just a few hours (blank page with no ideas to Drabble thread literally), I'll be hesitant to work on a chapter. Just by temperament, I'm someone who needs his free time to just be a vegetable and although writing is a hobby of mine, it is work to me as well.

Another thing is...er well I actually think is going to be hard for me as a writer is writing real romantic moments...as opposed to doing little Pokemon-anime friendly romance tidbits like blushing. I've never actually been in a relationship before so I don't know how well I'm going to do in writing the somewhat more romantic chapters of my shipfics.
 

0bss1d1ankn1ght

Lost in the Internet
I think my biggest thing in my case is time investment. Unless I'm writing a shippy drabble, which I can and have done in just a few hours (blank page with no ideas to Drabble thread literally), I'll be hesitant to work on a chapter. Just by temperament, I'm someone who needs his free time to just be a vegetable and although writing is a hobby of mine, it is work to me as well.

I find myself having a lot of time. When you're unemployed like me, time comes naturally. So naturally, I use that time to write.
 

xEryChan

Demon Child
The biggest thing in my case is finding the time and motivation to actually write. I work two jobs and I'm going to school as well so it's really tough for me to get the chance to actually sit and write. That's usually why I can never seem to finish a story that I've started, besides writers block of course.

Besides, I procrastinate a lot. I keep telling myself that I'm going to write something and I never seem to do so. I do tend to get distracted by the TV a lot when my sister is home because she's always watching something, doesn't matter what channel. When she's home, something is always on the TV and that tends to be a distraction for me and writing.
 

Cometstarlight

What do I do now?
I think my biggest thing in my case is time investment. Unless I'm writing a shippy drabble, which I can and have done in just a few hours (blank page with no ideas to Drabble thread literally), I'll be hesitant to work on a chapter. Just by temperament, I'm someone who needs his free time to just be a vegetable and although writing is a hobby of mine, it is work to me as well.

Another thing is...er well I actually think is going to be hard for me as a writer is writing real romantic moments...as opposed to doing little Pokemon-anime friendly romance tidbits like blushing. I've never actually been in a relationship before so I don't know how well I'm going to do in writing the somewhat more romantic chapters of my shipfics.

Time is another HUGE one for me as well. I'll long for something to do, to sit down and just write, but I almost always have homework to do. It's especially bad when I know I have a paper due in college, and I just want to write about everything but that paper, but I know that will just burn me out for writing in general. So it's become the habit to not write anything until all the school work is done.

...

You wanna guess how many times I've not had homework these past six semesters? Never.
 
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