You’ve heard of “making writing a habit,” and you’ve tried, but the pressure to write fills you with horrible pain and dread. You spend all your time wishingyou could write but somehow never writing. The “make it a habit” approach doesn’t work for you. But you still wantto write, maybe even regularly. Is there nothing you can do?
Here is an alternative approach to try. A rehab program, as it were, for writers with a psychological “writing injury” that has destroyed their desire to write and replaced it with shame, anxiety and dread.
If you have a writing injury, you probably acquired it by being cruel to yourself, by internalizing some intensely critical voice or set of rules that crushes your will to write under the boot-heel of “you should.” “You should be writing better after all the years of experience you’ve had.” “You should be writing more hours a day, you’ll never get published at this rate.” “You should write more like [Hilton Als/Jeffrey Eugenides/Octavia Butler/Terry Pratchett/etc.].” “You should write faster/more/better/etc./etc.”
You know what, though? Fuck all that. Self-abuse may have featured heavily in the cool twentieth-century writer’s lifestyle, but we are going to treat ourselves differently. Because 1) it’s nicer, and 2) frankly, it gets better results. My plan here is to help you take the radical step of caring for yourself.
1) First of all: ask yourself why you aren’t writing.
Not with the goal of fixing the problem, but…just to understand. For a moment, dial down all of the “goddammit, why can’t I just write?”blaringin your head and be curious about yourself. Clearly, you havea reason for not writing. Humans don’t do anything for no reason. Try to discover what it is. And be compassionate; don’t reject anything you discover as “not a good enough excuse.” Your reasons are your reasons.
For me, writing was painful because I wanted it to solve all my problems. I wanted it to make me happy and whole. I hated myself and hoped writing would transform me into a totally different person. When it failed to do that, as it always did, I felt like shit.
Maybe writing hurts because you’ve loaded it with similarly unfair expectations. Or maybe you’re a victim of low expectations. Maybe people have told you you’re stupid or untalented or not fluent enough in the language you write in. Maybe writing has become associated with painful events in your life. Maybe you’ve just been forcedto write so many times that you can no longer write without feeling like someone’s making you do it. Writing-related pain and anxiety can come from so many different places.
2) Once you have some idea of why you’re not writing…just sit with that.
Don’t go into problem-solving mode. Just nod to yourself and say, “yes, that’s a good reason. If I were me, I wouldn’t want to write either.” Have some sympathy for yourself and the pain you’re in.
3) Now…keep sitting with it. That’s it, for the moment. No clever solutions. Just sympathize. And, most importantly, grant yourself permission to notwrite, for a while.
It’s okay. You are good and valuable and worthy of love, even when you aren’t writing. There are still beautiful, true things inside of you.
Here’s the thing: it’s very hard for humans to do things if they don’t have permission notto do them. It’s especially hard if those things are also painful. We hate feeling trapped or compelled, and we hate having our feelings disregarded. It shuts us down in every possible way. You will feel more desire to write, therefore, if you believe you are free not to write, and if you believe it’s okaynot to do what causes you pain.
(By the way: not having permission isn’t the same as knowing there will be negative consequences. “If I don’t write, I won’t make my deadline” is different from “I’m not allowed not to write, even if it hurts.” One is just awareness of cause and effect; the other is a kind of slavery.)
4) For at least a week, take an enforced vacation from writing, and from any demands that you write. During this time, you are not permitted to write or give yourself grief for not writing.
This may or may not be reverse psychology. But it’s more than that.
Think of it as a period of convalescence. You’re keeping your weight off an injury so it can heal, and what’s broken is your desire to write. Pitilessly forcingyourself to write when it’s painful, plus the shame you feel when you don’t write, is what broke that desire. So, for a week (or a month, or a year, or however long you need) tell yourself you are taking a doctor-prescribed break from writing.
This will feel scary for some folks. You might feel like you’re giving up. You might worry that this break from writing feels too good, that your desire to write might never return. All I can say is, I’ve been there. I’ve had all those fears and feelings. And the desire to write did return. But you gotta treat it like a tiny crocus shoot and not stomp on it the second it pokes its little head up. Like so:
5) Once you feel an itch to write again—once you start to chafe against the doctor’s orders—you can write a tiny bit. Only five or ten minutes a day.
That’s it. I’m serious: set a timer, and stop writing when the time’s up. No cheating. (Well…maybe you can take an extra minute to finish your thought, if necessary.)
Remember: these rules are not like the old rules, the ones that said, “you must write or you suck.” These rules are a form of self-care. You are not imposing a cruel, arbitrary law, you are being gentle with yourself. Not “easy” or “soft”—any Olympic athlete will tell you that hard exercise when you’ve got an injury is stupid and pointless, not tough or virtuous. If you need an excuse to take care of yourself, that’s it: if you’re injured, you can’t perform well, and aggravating the injury could take you out of the competition permanently.
For the first few days, all of the writing you do should be freewriting. Later, you can do some tiny writing exercises. Don’t jump into an old project you stalled out on. Think small and exploratory, not big and goal-oriented. And whatever you do, don’t judge the output. If you have to, don’t even read what you write. This is exercise, not performance; this is you stretching your atrophied writing muscles, not you trying to write something good. At this stage, it literally doesn’t matter what you write, as long as you generate words. (Frankly, it would be kind of weird and unfair if your writing at this point was good.)
6) After a week, you can increase your time limit if you want. But only a little!
Spend a week limiting yourself to, say, twenty minutes a day instead of ten. When in doubt, set your limit for less than you think you’ll need. You want to end each writing session feeling like you couldkeep going, not like you’re crawling across the finish line.
Should you write every day? That’s up to you. Some people will find it helpful to put writing on their calendar at the same time each day. Others will be horribly stifled by that. You get to decide when and how often you write, but two things: 1) think about what you, personally, need when you make that decision, and 2) allow that decision to be flexible.
Remember, the only rule is, don’t go over your daily limit. You always have permission to write less.
And keep checking in with yourself. Remember how this program began? If something hurts, if your brain is sending you “I don’t wanna” signals, respect them. Investigate them, find out what their deal is. You might decide to (gently) encourage yourself to write in spite of them, but don’t ignore your pain. You are an athlete, and athletes listen to their bodies, especially when they’re recovering from an injury. If writing feels shitty one day, give yourself a reward for doing it. If working on a particular project ties your brain in knots, do a little freewriting to loosen up. And always be willing to take a break. You always have permission not to write.
7) Slowly increase your limit over time, but always have a limit.
And when you’re not writing, you’re not writing. You don’t get to berate yourself for not writing. If you find yourself regularly blazing past your limit, then increase your limit, but don’t set large aspirational limits in an effort to make yourself write more. In fact, be ready to adjust your limit lower.
When it comes to mental labor, after all, more is not always better. Apparently, the average human brain can only concentrate for about 45 minutes at a time, and it only has about four or so high-quality 45-minute sessions a day in it. That’s three hours. So if you set your daily limit for more than three hours, you may be working at reduced efficiency, when you’d be better off saving up your ideas and motivation for the next day. (Plus, health and other factors may in fact give you less than 3 good hours a day. That’s okay!)
Of course, if you’re a professional writer or a student, external pressures may force you to write when your brain is tired, but my point is more about attitude: constant work is not necessarily better work. So don’t make it into a moral ideal. We tend to think that working lessis morally weak or wrong, and that’s bullshit. Taking care of yourself is practical. Pushing yourself too hard will just hurt you and your writing. Also, your feelings are real and they matter. If you ignore or abuse them, you’ll be like a runner trying to run on a broken ankle.
I know I’m going to get someone who says, “if you’re a pro, sometimes you gotta ignore your feelings and just get the work done!”
NO.
You can, of course, choose to work in spite of any pain you’re feeling. But ignore that pain at your peril. Instead, acknowledge the pain and be compassionate. Forgive yourself if pain slows you down. You are human, so don’t hold your feet to the fire for having human limitations. Maybe a deadline is forcing you to work anyway. But make yourself a cup of hot chocolate to get you through it, literally or metaphorically. Help yourself, don’t force yourself. If you’ve had a serious writing injury, that shift in attitude will make all the difference.
In short: treat yourself as someone whose feelings matter.
Still Theron had been convinced and Lana was now inconvenienced. Yet any reason to visit a tropical isle with lush beaches instead of a filthy pub, or months on a old musty ship was a plus in Lana’s books.
“It is a shame they not only let slaves train as Sith but half breeds as well. Your apprentice is accomplished Gravus no doubt but how can she truly understand what it is be Sith when she was raised in bondage and her parentage unknown.”
Dinner is not going well for Lak in way, shape, or form.
Oohh, thanks. I’m feeling generous, so have two sentences:
It seemed like everyone who survived deployment to Hoth came away with a ghost story of some kind – odd cries in the night, bizarre electromagnetic interference, vague humanoid figures in the peripheries of one’s vision. Those stories most definitely did not play a role in Quinn’s maneuverings to stay off of Hoth; every sighting was easily explained in mundane, scientific terms.
Quinn is absolutely NOT sitting in the dark and freaking himself out. Nope.
Lord I feel like so many folks have been tagged already so feel free to ignore but…. @wrathetc , @cinlat , @salaciouscrumpet , and anyone else who feels like it.
I’ve actually like written things lately(It’s been so nice)so here we go!…I am also feeling generous because YAY I’VE MANAGED TO WRITE! So have some dialogue and the sentence after it!
”The spells aren’t too high level. I’ve been casting these spells since my first year! Why…why can’t I cast?”Her voice seemed to break during that last sentence, as she drew into herself, wrapping her arms tightly around herself.
Who am I writing about? Who knows!(It’s Illyasviel…..I was smacked on the head with one of the pillars of eternity prompts and it’s gonna be a wild ride my darlings.)
Well, friend, our new world building gave me an Idea, so now I’m writing a fic. Here, have that and two other sentences from my 3 currently-active WIPs
He can remember, after all, even if Fives’ wording was kind of strange.
Fives nods.
4322 knew from a young age that he was different, but it takes Ahsoka years to realize quite how different she is (and she still only knew half the truth).
Ani5 has taken over my life. The reincarnation AU, the Trans Fives AU, AND the fairy tale AU.
(Later that night, only Tally was awake when Kenobi crept aboard the Nest to be with Maul; instead of speaking, he just helped the Kenobi resituate the zabrak in one of the unused cargo areas of the courier and then slipped back out again when Kenobi laid down beside him.)
Epsilon quakes at being the focus of such an immense consciousness, but it examines their code with what a human would describe as a critical eye before extending a single line of code—and their projection flickers as they recognize a handshake protocol in its foreign, Forerunner elegance.
I wonder what JRR Tolkien would think if he was alive today and found out people were salivating over and sexually craving the Orcs he created.
Tolkien: Lewis, are you seeing this shit? These people want to fornicate with the animalistic allegories of evil I have created! Is there no morality left on this earth?
C.S Lewis, also revived and remembering that furries based on Aslan exist: No, none.
The master of lore that is Tolkien would do that.
Tolkien regretted not being able to humanize and redeem the orcs right up until he died so I seriously think you all should reconsider his imagined reaction to this.
Huh, I never knew…though I personally doubt that Tolkien would entirely jive with the vast majority of the fandom’s dirty headcanons.
Huh. *tilts head, and goes to write more of Dazbol and Razul*
When you are writing a story and refer to a character by a physical trait, occupation, age, or any other attribute, rather than that character’s name, you are bringing the reader’s attention to that particular attribute. That can be used quite effectively to help your reader to focus on key details with just a few words. However, if the fact that the character is “the blond,” “the magician,” “the older woman,” etc. is not relevant to that moment in the story, this will only distract the reader from the purpose of the scene.
If your only reason for referring to a character this way is to avoid using his or her name or a pronoun too much, don’t do it. You’re fixing a problem that actually isn’t one. Just go ahead and use the name or pronoun again. It’ll be good.
Someone finally spelled out the REASON for using epithets, and the reasons NOT to.
In addition to that:
If the character you are referring to in such a way is THE VIEWPOINT CHARACTER, likewise, don’t do it. I.e. if you’re writing in third person but the narration is through their eyes, or what is also called “third person deep POV”. If the narration is filtered through the character’s perception, then a very external, impersonal description will be jarring. It’s the same, and just as bad, as writing “My bright blue eyes returned his gaze” in first person.
Furthermore,
if the story is actually told through the eyes of one particular viewpoint character even though it’s in the third person, and in their voice, as is very often the case, then you shouldn’t refer to the characters in ways that character wouldn’t.
In other words, if the third-person narrator is Harry Potter, when Dumbledore appears, it says “Dumbledore appears”, not “Albus appears”. Bucky Barnes would think of Steve Rogers as “Steve”, where another character might think of him as “Cap”. Chekov might think of Kirk as “the captain”, but Bones thinks of him as “Jim”.
Now, there are real situations where you, I, or anybody might think of another person as “the other man”, “the taller man”, or “the doctor”: usually when you don’t know their names, like when there are two tap-dancers and a ballerina in a routine and one of the men lifts the ballerina and then she reaches out and grabs the other man’s hand; or when there was a group of people talking at the hospital and they all worked there, but the doctor was the one who told them what to do. These are all perfectly natural and normal. Similarly, sometimes I think of my GP as “the doctor” even though I know her name, or one of my coworkers as “the taller man” even though I know his. But I definitely never think of my long-term life partner as “the green-eyed woman” or one of my best friends as “the taller person” or anything like that. It’s not a sensible adjective for your brain to choose in that situation – it’s too impersonal for someone you’re so intimately acquainted with. Also, even if someone was having a one night stand or a drunken hookup with a stranger, they probably wouldn’t think of that person as “the other man”: you only think of ‘other’ when you’re distinguishing two things and you don’t have to go to any special effort to distinguish your partner from yourself to yourself.
This is something that I pretty consistently have to advise for those I beta edit for. (It doesn’t help that I relied on epithets a lot in the earlier sections of my main fic because I was getting into the swing of things.) I am reblogging this so fanfic writers can use this as a reference.
A good rule of thumb: a character’s familiarity with another character decreases the need for an epithet (and most times you really don’t need one at all).
I’ve been around for a really long time in various fandoms, and no one ever writes this stuff down. I’ll start. Please add to the list. We can’t expect people to follow “rules” they don’t know exist.
if you like something, reblog it. Help the artist get their work out there in front of more people. Share the joy that it brought you.
if you want more of it, support it. This can be via commissions, reblogs, recommending the artist to other people, shouting in the tags, or sending the artist asks/messages.
if you hate it, keep scrolling. Keep the hate in a message window with a friend, not in the artist’s notes.
if you want to use it, ask permission. Artwork is beautiful and you want to show it off. But please ask the artist before you throw it into your header or your icon.
if you use it, give credit. And not just a post where you say “Do you like my new icon? X made it!”. Put it in your blog description, that way when someone rolls around your blog three months from now, they also know where your icon/header came from.
Fanfic
if you like something, reblog it. Help the author get their work out there in front of more people. Share the joy that it brought you.
if you want more of it, support it. Kudos are fine, but if you want more of the thing you like, you should comment. Subscribe to the story or the author. Send them a message about how much you like what they wrote.
if you read it, kudos it. Or give it a thumbs up. And this is just if you managed to get all the way to the end. If you finished the story and you actually liked it? Comment and reblog.
don’t demand content. Be patient. Stories take time. You can encourage without being demanding. Show your love for what’s there without telling them to post more often.
be gentle with criticism. Some people want it and some people run away from it. If you don’t know what type of person the author is, it’s best not to go there. “If you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything.”
Fandom
ship and let ship. You love your ship and other people love theirs. No one needs to “win” when we’re all going to end up in tears anyway.
if you hate it, stay out of the tag. This has two meanings: 1) don’t deliberately put hateful commentary in a tag and 2) if you hate a tag, don’t go and read through that tag just to make yourself angry
if someone makes you something, appreciate it. Read and comment the fic. Like and reblog the artwork. Pimp it out and tell them how much you loved it. It’s a gift, treat it like one.
if it’s a gift, put some effort into it. You signed up for that exchange three months ago and now it’s a week before you have to send the gift and you don’t have the time or the inclination to do the thing. Well too bad. Someone out there has been working hard in your gift, so you should do the same for them.
none of us are “better” than anyone else. We’re all trash for our particular show/film/book/ship/artist/what-have-you. My fave is no better than yours and yours is no better than mine.
actors are not their characters. They are people. Treat them like people.
*gently slams the reblog button*
Not on my own account, but writers I know have been on the receiving end of more unwarranted and plain rude crap than usual lately…
I just wanna let y’all know that you do fanfic tropes all of the time, we just don’t describe them like beginning writers do. You:
Push your shoes off with your toes or with the tip of your shoe, most likely. Props for drama if you yank your converse or your vans or your boots off like a soldier in a scyfi drama, but otherwise, you’re “toeing your shoes off”
Humans are much better at dissecting scents than we give ourselves credit for. If you sit there long enough, you could dissect how your friend smells. I smell like “old, beat up cars, the sour citrus he isn’t supposed to have, and something musty and natural and unique to him that clings to all of his clothes.” In order that’s old flannel, three day old hair mousse, and fish tank water. Smells like cigarettes and oils cling to your clothes, stuff like fishtanks and the food in your kitchen seeps into your belongings. Don’t feel bad about describing scents, people carry our houses with us everywhere.
Have you ever pet someone else’s hair? That’s “carding your fingers through.” That’s it. It’s the same thing.
Ever walked around barefoot? Its three am and you’re trying to make Dark Lunch? You’ve padded around. You signal to other people nonverbally whether its coughing or sighing that you’re there so that you don’t scare them.
Smirking is a thing most of us do with our face. Grinning, looking cheeky, and raising our eyebrows are also all things your face does. Sorry
You might not get this if you’re a straight girl whose never had sex, but sometimes that little strip of skin between ya shirt and ya hips? The mouth can go there. That’s an intimate place to touch and its a vulnerable place to be exposed. Overused maybe, but a valid way to show a shift in the situation.
We all sigh!! Are some of y’all really saying that sighing isn’t a thing you do ten thousand times a week?? You don’t sigh when someone says something stupid as shit?? You don’t sigh when you gotta get up??
SAID IS A VALID WORD
Everything on your face casts shadows, I’m sorry you have weak eyelashes, or that somehow your brows are flat with your eyeballs
People laugh silently! I’m sorry you’ve never laughed that hard!! People giggle! People snort! People double over and move and flail! Have you ever fucking laughed?
For that matter how do y’all not blush and can you teach me
I’d also like to say sorry if: your heart has never skipped a beat reading something terrible, or when you saw someone you liked even platonically, or if you’ve never been so surprised all you could do was blink, that you never looked at someone like you loved them, and that you somehow never fucking show any emotion in your voice or your posture at all
Tl;Dr: Some of y’all are dragging people for shit you don’t know how to describe and damn if you ain’t still reading things and then telling beginning writers that they’re describing impossible things and writing weirdly when y’all don’t even write shit, its obnoxious as hell. To y’all that do write and are aggressively against this post, I bet you sure as hell use EPITHETS INAPPROPRIATELY ANYWAY, DON’T YA?
You look up through your lashes when you half-lid your eyes to obscure your expression, sneak eye contact, or be coy.
People’s eyes darken and lighten because of pupils contracting and expanding. They brighten or sparkle because of same, or b/c of moisture building in eyes from laughing or being emotional.
Eyes shift colors in different lights and based on the colors around them.
Also (many) people are just really fucking good at reading microexpressions from the muscles around the eyes, we’re a uniquely social animal, yes your emotions show in your eyes.
Everyone writes Sam as the replacement Bucky but guys, Bucky is trying to go into hiding because there are now TWO Steves on the loose.
TWO of them.
The only thing that makes him seem relatively sane is the lack of super abilities but anyone who thinks it’s a reasonable idea to attach a LIVE JET ENGINE ten inches from his asshole is nOT SANE.
Bucky went into cryogenic sleep because there were two Steves on the loose. He spent an hour or two with Sam, saw where this was going, and was just like “I’m out.”
Those two are probably giving Clint an ulcer right now. And being a terrible influence on Scott and Wanda.
I wonder if anyone ever told Clint who T’Challa is. T’Challa seems like he actually would be a Responsible One, but he’s got his own country to deal with so he doesn’t usually get involved unless it’s potentially world ending.
They fix up Bucky within months of putting him under because Sam and Steve haven’t sat still for even like, ten??? minutes?
T’Challa raises him from the artic like uhm, you gonna need to go collect ya mans.
Bucky is like “Oh gOD what did Steve do????”
“No not that one, he’s been too Sad and Lost™ without you but the cute one has decided to try his hand at decentralizing the corrupt governance of Klaegia like, four hours plane ride south. Come on the jet’s already packed”
The Dora Milaje have to keep Bucky from smashing the refrost button to go back under he’s Done.
Sam Wilson met Steve THREE TIMES and was like, “oh you want to overthrow the American government great LET’S DO THIS.” Sam Wilson’s first act in that effort was to suggest that they steal his backpack jet, right from where he KNEW IT WAS GOING TO BE, almost as if he’d kept his eye on it the whole time and was maybe, y’know, planning to nab it himself at some point. Sam Wilson never met a superassassin or a king or a government agent that he didn’t want to sass and antagonize.
Sam Wilson is not the Sane One. You have been lied to.
it sounds obvious to 99% of writers, but i’ve seen a couple of instances now where it’s not made completely clear to people that yes you can make fanart! all the fanart! and post it! so here’s a psa: go for it
There's a Mirror on the Wall 