1. High inspiration, low motivation. You have so many ideas to write, but you just don’t have the motivation to actually get them down, and even if you can make yourself start writing it you’ll often find yourself getting distracted or disengaged in favour of imagining everything playing out
Try just bullet pointing the ideas you have instead of writing them properly, especially if you won’t remember it afterwards if you don’t. At least you’ll have the ideas ready to use when you have the motivation later on
2. Low inspiration, high motivation. You’re all prepared, you’re so pumped to write, you open your document aaaaand… three hours later, that cursor is still blinking at the top of a blank page
RIP pantsers but this is where plotting wins out; refer back to your plans and figure out where to go from here. You can also use your bullet points from the last point if this is applicable
3. No inspiration, no motivation. You don’t have any ideas, you don’t feel like writing, all in all everything is just sucky when you think about it
Make a deal with yourself; usually when I’m feeling this way I can tell myself “Okay, just write anyway for ten minutes and after that, if you really want to stop, you can stop” and then once my ten minutes is up I’ve often found my flow. Just remember that, if you still don’t want to keep writing after your ten minutes is up, don’t keep writing anyway and break your deal - it’ll be harder to make deals with yourself in future if your brain knows you don’t honour them
4. Can’t bridge the gap. When you’re stuck on this one sentence/paragraph that you just don’t know how to progress through. Until you figure it out, productivity has slowed to a halt
Mark it up, bullet point what you want to happen here, then move on. A lot of people don’t know how to keep writing after skipping a part because they don’t know exactly what happened to lead up to this moment - but you have a general idea just like you do for everything else you’re writing, and that’s enough. Just keep it generic and know you can go back to edit later, at the same time as when you’re filling in the blank. It’ll give editing you a clear purpose, if nothing else
5. Perfectionism and self-doubt. You don’t think your writing is perfect first time, so you struggle to accept that it’s anything better than a total failure. Whether or not you’re aware of the fact that this is an unrealistic standard makes no difference
Perfection is stagnant. If you write the perfect story, which would require you to turn a good story into something objective rather than subjective, then after that you’d never write again, because nothing will ever meet that standard again. That or you would only ever write the same kind of stories over and over, never growing or developing as a writer. If you’re looking back on your writing and saying “This is so bad, I hate it”, that’s generally a good thing; it means you’ve grown and improved. Maybe your current writing isn’t bad, if just matched your skill level at the time, and since then you’re able to maintain a higher standard since you’ve learned more about your craft as time went on
“What is it that the child has to teach?
The child naively believes that everything should be fair and everyone should be honest, that only good should prevail, that everybody should have what they want and there should be no pain or sadness. The child believes the world should be perfect and is outraged to discover it is not.
And the child is right.”
— Rabbi Tzvi Freeman
repeat after me
I WILL FINISH MY WIP
I WILL FINISH MY WIP
I WILL FINISH MY WIP
i’m proud of you for getting out of bed everyday, i’m proud of you for getting back up even though you’ve been knocked down countless times, i’m proud of you for getting through those tough days and waking up the next day only to do it all over again. your effort and resilience isn’t going unnoticed, i’m sending you infinite love ♡
Before you start any writing project, it’s important to consider why you want to write it. Your reasons for writing can drastically change the way your project develops.
Writing for fun allows you absolute freedom, but writing to publish will come with extra considerations like genre, audience, and reader expectations.
Both are valid choices, but being aware of the freedoms and limitations of both approaches before diving in will set you up for a better writing experience.
my peace is my priority
i am financially abundant
i love myself, flaws and all
great things are coming my way
everything always works out for me
if it’s out of my control then i’ll make peace with it
Young Odysseus introduces his son to the goddess Athena
(Alternative title: Telemachus meets his fairy Godmother)
Creator’s note:
Does this picture look blurry to you? Like even if you click on the image to enlarge it? I don’t know why but I can’t seem to get tumblr to show the full resolution image. I worked hard to make faces that actually look like faces for once but now they’re just blurry blobs 😭. Anybody know how to fix? EDIT: thank you all for the feedback! I’m glad it is not blurry for you!
Straightway, great Phoebus, the goddesses washed you purely and cleanly with sweet water, and swathed you in a white garment of fine texture, new-woven, and fastened a golden band about you. - Homeric Hymn to Delian Apollo