Cerberus87

Not so much super-busy as very distracty, so thanks for the poke!

It's okay to just add in a piece to your story, it's only a rough draft, after all! Instead of editing, sometimes I just add brackets to say "[oh by the way there was a giant monster back in chapter two who killed Bob so um pretend he's been dead all along]" so I can continue with pausing to stop and edit all the way back through! You can come back and polish it when you do the next draft, so it's okay. Also, about having trouble editing, I think it's a lot easier to rewrite! That creates more of a mess than just plain editing does, but I think it also helps you figure out the story a lot better since you have to go through it all over again, so they're both good! I'm probably going to rewrite my stories again and again until they get really close to the true story, because I make lots of mistakes, but you can do whatever you like depending on how close you think yours already is!

That's valid if you like to be relaxed! It's really nice to be relaxed while writing and then it's just enjoyable! Sometimes that can make you feel like it's impossible to write when stressed at all, though, so if you ever have trouble relaxing it could be good to practice writing a different way, too!

I think a thing that can help with keeping a schedule is to actually track it somewhere! I always write down how much I've written every day, and if I skip a day when I was supposed to write, I have to write down a zero, and then I'm sad because my calendar is ruined! I'm a bit OCD about it, so that helps, but there's probably something like that that you could do! Keeping a real calendar and putting stickers on it for completed days would probably be good, too! If it didn't work well enough maybe you could sticker missed days with a sticker that you didn't like, or write "MISS :(" on that day. That's kind of sad, but maybe you could change it for if you really honestly couldn't write that day like if there's an emergency. Also, it's nice if you have a deadline that's a little bit flexible! Not so much that you can avoid writing entirely, but for instance NaNoWriMo is neat because you can write extra some days and then get ahead of your goal and get times where you can take a break! So you could try doing something like that if that worked out better for you! Although you should still write at least a tiny bit every day - one hundred words at minimum (more is good but that's minimum), or else you kind of lose touch with your story!

About creativity, you have to remember that it isn't the plot that's important! Even if someone says they read for plot, that's probably not strictly accurate, and even if they really do, they're reading for all the intricacies and twists in this specific version of that plot! They wouldn't feel the same reading something else with the same basic plot! You can love a novel with the same basic plot as a novel that you hate. The story is important for how it's told, not for its basic plot, or people would only read a few books and then they'd be happy for the rest of their lives! Twilight is the same basic plot as Beauty and the Beast, but people obviously don't feel the same way about both of those, because they're really really different.

I also like writing in a notebook, or otherwise switching mediums (E-mail, a journal, a different program, a writing application), because a different medium could seem way less scary! I've always been the most scared of blank Word documents, and then anything else is a step up from that. With a notebook, you'd have to type it later, which is frustrating, but with anything else that's text you can copy and paste it into your regular medium when you're finished! I've been using a thing called yarny.me for my NaNoWriMo this year, and it's really friendly and simple and nice and it makes me feel less spooked by writing! And then you can have everything collected together in a nice-to-look-at way and it's easier to skip around if that's something you like to do. Also, if another medium doesn't work for you or if you just still like writing in a Word document the best, another thing you could try is pasting some text into the word document and maybe giving it headings (like a chapter title) so that it doesn't look quite so scary! Generating random text could help so you don't feel like it's messing up your story, too. Then you can just start a new paragraph and write under the pasted text until you've written enough real text that it's not scary anymore if you delete the paste! Also if you already do have Word files with things in them, maybe you should try leaving them open as often as possible so that it's always an option to click on it in the taskbar and start writing without going through folders and going to the trouble of actually opening it (which is hard when you're scared of writing!), or maybe have a note somewhere that tells you to write so that you'll think of it a little more often.

Something else that can be really helpful is some kind of deadline or a specific timeframe where you can write. If you have all day every day (or close to that) where you could write, then it's easy to tell yourself you could do it later and then not start writing until as late as possible. Timeframes or certain locations where you can write can also help you get into the mood to write without much prep work or without fighting yourself for nearly as long. I tend to write best at night with all the lights off, when distractions are at a minimum, so I decide a time and do something else for a while until that time and then go sit down and write when it's time! A recreational activity for a while before writing could help you to feel less like it's interrupting other things that you want to do, if you ever have that problem. You can decide whatever time works best for you and then make sure to start writing as close to that time as you can, and then either not leave until you're done writing, or take a break after a certain amount of words. Deadlines can help even if you don't have any timeframe because then you really have to write - it might be late at night and you might be half-asleep and just writing as quickly as possible so you can go to bed, but there will be something written when you wake up, and then you can keep going from there (and edit it later! it's okay if it's bad for now!) instead of still being stuck! Lots of people will tell you to never force yourself to write and to instead only write when you're "inspired", but you'll notice that those people tend to be non-writers or amateur writers - and it's those people who are recommending that for a reason! Writing only when you're inspired can make it so you never write, because you just feel more and more like your idea has to be good enough, so you write nothing at all for long periods of time, and then even if you do have inspiration hit you then you're just scared to mess up whatever neat idea you just had - none of that is helpful when you're trying to write a novel! There are people who who just write when they feel like it and end up writing lots and are happy the way it is, but chances are you would know if you were that sort of writer.

Writing is hard work, just as hard as lots of things people consider to be "real work", even if it's a creative pursuit, and sometimes there are just problems with it! You just need to keep going - and it looks like you really are persevering and doing the best you can right now! Thirty-six thousand is a lot, and you're doing really, really well to have gotten that far without giving up! Keep going and someday you'll be able to finish the story and then work on editing it and perfecting and polishing until you have a novel you're really proud of! You can do it!

(sorry for two VMs but it was too long for one, also, if you're ever worried maybe I forgot about answering you can poke me, I wouldn't mind! I didn't forget this time but it could happen!)

Hi, and thank you! Sorry for taking so long to respond to this - I've been very under the weather lately and I didn't want to just end up sounding grumpy or rushed!

About more detail, I tend to think that the most important thing in your first draft is to get the story onto paper. Writing is hard enough as it is, it's intimidating and scary! There's no reason to make it worse by trying to force yourself to do a good job the first time around, and chances are, it'll end up worse if you try doing that, anyway. It's really easy to write dry and boring sentences if you're more worried about having quality or pretty words than anything else. Like you said, you already put off writing as long as possible, and there's really no reason to make yourself feel even more like you need to put it off! Quality is important, sure, it's good to make a book the best it can be and make sure it's readable and easily understandable and nice - but it's not particularly important in a rough draft. As long as you understand alright what's going on, you can always polish things up later, and it's perfectly okay to do so! You can edit words that don't turn out as well as you'd hoped, but you can't edit a page with no words at all on it. It's best to get the story out of your head, and lots of times that's the only way to find out when there are problems with the story (which are kind of more important than problems with the writing!).

Maybe what you could do is copy your writing into a new space so that you'll have two versions - I wouldn't recommend tossing the original, you might realize you broke something you didn't mean to or maybe you'd want to see how it looked at first for comparison! - and add more details there the times when you want to edit or the times when you're too scared to write new words! That could maybe get you into a bit of the spirit of writing and then you could write more and sooner, and then you might be happy with the edited writing and it could help you a little to realize that your writing is okay! What I'd definitely say though is for the most part, don't edit a thing before it's done. Only edit finished chapters, for instance - if you have an idea for some small edits that you could make right now, you can do that, but don't do anything more than small edits to an unfinished thing! You can decide on your own what "finished" means, but I think a good rule of thumb is don't edit more than a few paragraphs backward in what you're currently writing, and then don't make sort of important edits unless a chapter is finished, and don't make really major edits unless a book is finished. If you allow yourself to edit unfinished things, then it's really, really easy to get caught up in making it perfect instead of just writing the story as it comes to you, and then you fall into the trap of being too scared to write! That's why you're not supposed to edit in NaNoWriMo at all - the whole point is to try and get your story out while letting go of the feeling of not being good enough! Too, you probably shouldn't edit a piece immediately after finishing it. After a bit of distance from something, you can start to see which parts you legitimately think are good or bad, because it's really easy to either think it's better than you'll think later from the euphoria of finishing and forget to edit some parts or be afraid to mess it up, or to be too frustrated with it and just think everything about it is bad! Neither of those is the best way to feel for editing.

As for insecurity, there are lots of things you can do to try and make that go away! For one thing, as I already mentioned, it's important to let yourself believe that it's okay to mess up, especially on a first draft, because it really is okay! Maybe you could try writing lots for a while without editing at all and without looking back to read over what you've written. Refraining from reading back for a while gives you some time to get over the feeling of "oh no it's turning out horribly help help help!!!!" and then maybe later you can see that it wasn't so bad after all! Writeordie is a neat app that tries to make you write quickly by doing things like turning the page red as a warning and making loud sounds and eating words (only if you choose for it to eat words to make sounds, though!!), and you can fiddle with some settings to try and come up with a speed that's good for you! That might make you feel too rushed, but it's neat to try at least once and see if it helps you at all! You can also try making a collection of all your writing (for instance making a private web page), maybe divided into chapters or scenes, so that you can see how much you're doing and how far you've come!

Thanks, though I can't claim any credit. It's from a trading card.

Ah, you're welcome, I suppose! I just like to greet people.

Hello, Mr. Dogheaded Three.