BLEAH.

No worse feeling in the world than looking at 3K words written over the weekend, and coming to the distinct realization that you’re not at all happy with any of it. Worse yet: It bores you.

ARGH.

I know the goal is to overcome one’s “inner critic” and plow through until completion, but ferchrissakes, how are you supposed to generate any bloody enthusiasm to put words on page if you don’t like what you’ve done?

On the other hand, “starting something new” is a life-long failing of mine. I’m great at starting. Not so much with the follow-through.

6 Replies to “BLEAH.”

  1. You don’t have the perspective, now, to judge your work properly. when you have written 50,000 words you will . Or at least will be closer. Use what you have written to guide your further exploits. If it is boring, what new plot revelation would make it exciting?

  2. See, going back and looking at it was your first mistake. :)

    Seriously, maybe you are bored with those first 3k, but that’s okay. Because you can cut them–and whatever else you don’t like–later. Maybe you needed to work out some details about the characters before you could really get into the swing of things, and since you didn’t do it before you started writing you did it now. That’s fine, though. Just keep going. Push on through, amigo. Later you can go back and cull and revise until only the pieces that work remain.

  3. That sounds a lot like my experience when I completed NaNoWriMo a couple of years ago.

    I finally had to apply the same mindset I used when studying for finals or running a race: It sucks while you’re doing it. In fact, it can suck pretty bad. But it feels good when you’re done.

    Other than that – I think gryphonrose is giving the best possible advice in his comment.

  4. Now that I’m having some success, I find that even though I know I’ve written stuff that sucks and I will edit out, doing it’s helped me get a feel for my characters and setting. Consider it more of a freewrite and just soldier through, you can always delete it later.

  5. For every story I have ever written there are a thousand that I started and said, “No . . . not what I thought it would be.” Better you say it to yourself, than have some editor say it and then realize that they are correct.

  6. Bingo. The phrase that keeps coming to me is that I’m having a hard time translating “cool in my head” to “cool on the page.”

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