Do you get filled with ideas, inspiration, effort, but something happens to dry up the well? Is there anything that can keep you off of writing for a few days? Something that interrupts a good flow? Distractions?
For me, if I stop in the middle of writing to save the file, I lose all motivation to continue, and I don't know why. It gets increasingly more difficult to come back to it each day. Saving something on the laptop has a finality for me that I can't really explain.
I also like to write outside, but I like much more to just be outside. It's lovely to write out there, but I'm missing the actual... outdoors-iness of it. It's all so pretty.
What about you?
Hah.
Anything and everything. I like to write in sessions where I know I'm not going to be disturbed. Anything can throw me off track. If a friend comes over unexpected, or I end up on the phone, things like that can kill my flow stone dead.
Also - sunlight. Hate natural light when I'm writing and the curtains must be closed even if it's mid-afternoon. Have no logical explaination as to why this is the case.
Stuff like this is why it takes me so long to write. I am easliy distracted. Used to be exactly the same with essays for university. I get there in the end, I just need to be allowed to work on my terms.
Daft, eh?
Exhaustion. Life catches up to you quickly.
Anxiety and exhaustion brought on by schoolwork, in the broad sense. More recently, it's that I've got four or five different stories I'm dying to write, but can't decide which one to focus on first. And on top of that, I'm trying to decide which stories/characters I want to develop into a novel.
I need to just commit and get running, but I'm thinking I'll probably get all my current ideas down in short-story form so that the novel decision will be easier.
I work nights and feel like shit during the day and sleep. Also I'm a class A procrastinater.
The internet. I'll realize that I'm convincing myself that "funny cat videos" is research, so I'll leave my house and go write somewhere that has no internet access. Once I do that I can get down to business... until a part in the story comes up where I need to do actual research and I go back home, only to repeat the process.
I find that I work well under pressure. If I know I have a real dead-line (because self-imposed ones can be easily delayed) then I will get it done, regardless.
life
i have a fear of failure that, due to the way my thirty years have unravelled is more likely now also a fear of success.
@Charles - That reminds me of a TV special on gambling addiction. Supposedly when they actually win, they get frustrated because it interrupts their playing.
wow, then i guess i didnt have a gambling problem after all, because i only touch cards when i want money.
That's called money addiction. I believe everyone has that.
I could be writing now but instead distracting myself and posting this.
Distractions - porn, netflix, books, music videos, alcohol.
@Jack we should go bowling sometime
Stress is a big turn off but not as much as my cherished badluck. I'll be working normally (it only happens when im actually doing work) than my badluck clocks in and I'm severly sidetracked in some way shape or form and it's not for a quick second or five minutes it's goes to six hours to coming home at 11pm at night so i completely forgot what i was writing about earlier and lose absoulutely all motivation to work on anything.
@1 3 3 While we drink white russians?
@Jack I wouldn't have it any other way.
I usually stop writing after I find I can no longer read my own work objectively. Once I've over familiarized myself with what's already been put down, reread, overthought again and again... I almost literally can't read what I've written any more. I can barely skim sentences because I know the words that are coming next, I know what happens next, and I can no longer see what it actually is. My imagination is literally reading in between the lines, filling in gaps that I haven't put on paper... Then I just assume I've done it all wrong but can't see why, and chalk it up to just another crap unfinished novel.
Exhaustion. Life catches up to you quickly.
This.
Also I have trouble moving past the beginning if I don't like it, even if it's the first draft. I have to rewrite it until I get something solid enough to feel comfortable moving on. I don't tend to care if later chapters are terrible and need major reworking, just the beginning...
The thought of writing. People keep going on about how "real writers" do it because they love writing, but fuck, there is nothing more painstaking and miserable to me than sitting still and plucking away at a keyboard. And then I got to sit there and listen to myself go on, and I can't fucking stand that guy.
