If you need encouragement :)

[relia]

For the thousandth time, I thought about my writing, and moaned.

We’ve all been there – where we don’t even want to look at our writing, it’s just so horribly awful.

… About a month ago, I put my writing on pause. There were jobs, commitments, family issues, and to top it all off, vacation. ‘I’ll get right back into it when I get back! I’ll fire through and finish the first draft in no time,’ I told myself. And so, I enjoyed a guilt-free summer, never worrying that I would have trouble when the time came to pick up my pen once again.

Alas, when I returned to the land of typos, plot holes, and cringe, I despaired.

Having had the stupidity to re-read my favorite classic books over the summer, I felt so discouraged when I read my own writing, for I saw how inferior it is, how inconsistent it is, how stupid it is. I returned to see how it really wasn’t much good at all. And as a result, I had no motivation to write again, because I felt the situation was hopeless.

But here’s something I never thought about before. If we can see errors, we can correct them. If we recognize where our plot holes are, we can fill them in. If we understand that our stories are lacking something, we can, by the grace of God, change that. In other words, having the ability to see that your work is not perfect, means that we can also realize how to make it so. For if we never saw faults, how could we right them?

Perhaps your work really does suck, as mine does. Understand that, and then use the brain and passion God gave you to make right what is wrong in your writing, and your writing journey.

God allows us to recognize how we err so we may see how we can make right. He allows us to feel hopeless so we can rise from that dark place with more hope than we ever could have known before.

I am going to pick up my writing again with hope, and tackle it knowing that if I persevere, it will in time become better. (After a few hundred drafts, at least.)

I’ve shared these “shower thoughts” in hopes that they might resonate with someone. Your writing is not hopeless. Jesus saves… your writing 😁, if you let him comfort you and assure you that your creations are worth it. Keep writing, my fellow KeePers. 🙂

 

 

Also apologies if this makes no sense I’m kinda jetlagged :/

I can't think of anything witty at the moment.

[Kathleen]

@relia

I can totally relate. Especially since I have siblings who are incredible at writing it can sometimes be really discouraging.

I loved reading all your thoughts. Writing can be really tough haha.

What has helped me the most is to not have writing well my number one goal, but instead have it be to write stories that I really care about and want to tell.

Again, thank you sharing your struggles and encouragement. I’ll be praying that God helps and guides you with your writing!

[Anatra]

@relia

This is good for me to read, and especially good for me to read when writers block hits. Lol I’ve been there. Priorities get me so stressed.

Recently, I looked back at my writing from a year ago and basically said to myself, “aww that’s cute. She tried.” I took me quite a while to fix some mistakes xD

[Alexa Autorski]

@relia

Thank you so much for this encouragement, girl! It’s always so helpful and comforting to hear things like that from other writers, especially when I’m going through a dry spot with my writing and feel like giving up. But this is exactly the kind of thing I needed to hear, and you worded all of that so well! Thank you! 😀 😀 😀

[Kads]

My two cents for this topic… actually, more like twenty bucks. This is a long post, so warning XD

Writer’s block happens to everyone. Literally everyone. If you don’t get writer’s block, in my opinion, then you’re not a writer. Either that or you’re a freaking living legend. I read an interview with Christopher Paul Curtis once (he wrote Bud, Not Buddy, The Watsons Go To Birmingham and some other novels) and he said that he doesn’t get writer’s block at all and that he thought, if an idea was good enough, you’d never feel blocked on it.

Well, after I read that, I got kinda angry. Nothing personal against you, Curtis, but I simply do NOT agree with that. I’ve had writer’s block a million times, and does that mean that my ideas aren’t good? No! Besides, remember that old saying… “there are no bad ideas” or something along those lines… I just don’t agree with what he said. Maybe you, whoever’s reading this, do – and that’s perfectly fine – but I know from firsthand experience that a writer is gonna have ups and downs and that to me says writer’s block.

Another thing I’d like to touch on… once you hit a certain point into your draft, the idea loses its shiny-new-this-is-awesome feeling and it kinda just feels… lame. And the more you draft it, things kinda become more bland and annoying, ngl. You know, I know, we all know how it feels. You want to stray and work on other WIPs, you’re like “ughhhh anything but working on x project. the writing process is too slow for how many things i wanna put in the book.”

BUT.

If I may now completely rear this post on its head and take it in a different direction.

Hate to break it to ya, but if ya don’t SIT YO BEHIND DOWN and WRITE THE DANG BOOK, you NEVER WILL, and nobody else is gonna do it for you. (Even though we all wish that someone else could.) But these are our ideas, and we have to sit down and get them out of us in only a way that each individual writer can do. For example, if Tolkien was given the idea of the Twilight books and told “write this series”, it’d probably look way different than how it actually does. And would likely be better *cough*

Also, there’s a line between having writer’s block and dragging things out indefinitely, if you ask me. Writers, as aforementioned, are gonna have writer’s block. We’re gonna be stuck and gonna want to bang our heads on our keyboards and are gonna want to step away for a long time. But eventually, things get better. We somehow, like the powerhouses we are, get through it and are soon back in the swing of things.

But when we have writer’s block, we should at least try to begin writing again. Because what if you stepped away from a certain WIP for a very long time and never got anything done on it? We should at least make an attempt to fire things back up, because what if we were ready to write again and just didn’t know it? And oh, whoops, you’ve not written on your project for four months… and you were ready all along. It’s okay if you don’t feel ready, but then again, what if you are? We should try to keep our writing process consistent! We’re gonna be blocked from time to time, but if we make attempts to get things moving again, then we might actually tackle the block faster than just dragging it out and procrastinating our eyes out. (Okay, weird term there. Forgive me.)

Also, our characters miss us. And if you’re a loving type, and not one to kill them all (ahem @devastate-lasting ahem XD), you likely miss them too. <3 So it’s good to hang out with them! Chill with the charries! The fictional friends!

So… we’re gonna have our ups and downs. But we should at least try to get things moving when we’re low.

After all, how else are we gonna get our books finished, published, made into movies, and befriend the incredibly handsome actors that will surely portray our cute guys?

• This reply was modified 2 years, 8 months ago by Kads.

staring at the fields
if nothing's really real
i'll make the winter now my home

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