Describe your writing process

>find comfortable place
>start writing
>try and come to terms with personal embarrassment
>continue until bored or done

1. Find myself struck by an idea
2. Begin fleshing out said idea in my head
3. Begin outlining, writing down anything that comes to mind in a freeform way
4. Establish themes, characters, style and atmosphere in my own mind
5. Prepare to write
6. Begin writing
7. Write as much as possible before I am overwhelmed by anxiety.
8. Stop writing
9. Find myself unable to continue
10. Stare at paper/document in frustration as anxiety continues to build
11. Give up/convince myself to take a break and that I'll get to it later
12. Masturbate
13. Never get back to it

Please god someone end my suffering. Writer's block is torture. All I want to do is write but as of late I just can't do it.

Always know what you want to accomplish before you start writing, and keep in mind that it's more important to finish something that is shit, than it is to never finish anything.

Just write short stories and post them on here or even forums or Reddit. Get feedback. Just a little encouragement or commentary on your material will encourage you.

Good, except keep doing it. See how bad it is. Think, "Why is this bad?" Then do it again. Do it over and fucking over. Read how bad and cringeworthy it is. Be brave and face how bad it is. Then do it again. Then write something else and finish it with the same process.

Oh, I always know what I want to accomplish before I start writing. That's the problem. I become extremely self-conscious and fearful that my abilities aren't good enough to fulfill my ambitions.

I know I just need to write even if it's shit (because you're absolutely right, its better to write something even if it's shit than to not write anything) and I've been slowly getting better, but writer's block is still incredibly brutal.

I've slowly been making progress on an experimental novella. By fucking around with structure and finding new ways to convey ideas I can liberate myself from the pressure I usually put on myself. It'll probably be terrible and a pretentious mess, but just doing things differently while also working towards a central theme feels good.

write a half baked plot then masturbate, forgetting i ever wrote the plot until i discover it a few weeks later, deem it shit and delete it

holy shit you and i must be part of the same literary movement

i just make shit up off the top of my head and hope it sticks together.

I'm unable to write a complete story. I can't come up with a plot.
It's bad because I'm human garbage with nothing to say. I'm too stupid to critical analyze anything, and too cowardly to read my own shit.

What should we call this avant-garde new literary movement where nothing is accomplished and the only thing that is produced is sorrowful man milk?

>too stupid to critical analyze anything
Dude, that is not true. That's a self-defeating attitude and it's what's keeping you convinced that you're too stupid to think critically. The truth is, I believe anyone has the capacity to think about things critically and analyze them - your mind just needs refinement. You need to put in the effort to do it.

You're not human garbage and you do have something to say. Take your own self-defeatism and convert that into writing. Use your own self-doubt as the central theme for something and explore it through writing.

>I become extremely self-conscious and fearful that my abilities aren't good enough to fulfill my ambitions.

Everyone is afraid of failure, it's impossible to not be, especially if you are ambitious. Just don't aim too high with your first works. Instead of trying to get it hailed as a masterpiece and make lots of money, try to detach yourself from all desire and instead, hope to get as much criticism as possible. The more criticism you actually read from people, the more you'll learn from your mistakes.

Just make it your goal to actually have it read. If at least 10 people read your entire novella and give you an honest opinion -- that is extremely valuable on its own, even if they all tell you they hated it.

Thanks, man. That is some really solid advice and I feel a bit better now.

I really do just want to make something that I can be proud of, but I'm also fearful that people will hate it. But I'm going to try to get my work out there. It's hard not to have anxiety over something I'm this passionate about, which is unfortunate since that very anxiety inhibits me from doing something I genuinely love.

I appreciate your encouragement.

Today was a damn good day for writing... I feel so good about myself. If not for fear of plagiarism, I would share it with the world, right now.

I pretend to find satisfaction in all the daily responsibilities necessary for adult life until a crescendo of self-deprecation finally overtakes me, requiring an urgent transfer of thoughts from head to paper.

>Get idea and write it down
>Decide to add that idea to several other ideas in my black book of ideas
>think about a setting and characters that could bring those ideas to life
>flesh out characters that could be a part of the situations necessary to tell the story to impart these ideas
>write rough outline of important events in the book and how the characters interact within them
>write the book on typewriter
>Go through all the paper pages and edit (red marker for strikethrough, yellow for large issues needing to be addressed, green for minor issues or inconsistencies)
>Make second draft in Focus Writer, but make sure to write it even with the strike through sections but save these as a separate piece
>End up with 3 or 4 second drafts each with variations based on what was taken out or possibly added in (after noticing that a part may have been lacking or that some event needed to come prior to an event already present)
>Choose the best of these second drafts
>Edit the second draft in a similar manner to the first
>Write out third and usually final draft (sans small grammar errors fixed post-sale) in microsoft word

> An idea/theme
> Think of a setting
> Think of a fitting world for that setting and build a skeleton of it
> Think of characters, motives, locations
> Write for a few days
> Paste an excerpt to a critique thread
> Into the trash it goes
> Wait a couple weeks for another idea

I just have my journal out in front of me pretty much 24/7 and I've been working on this """novel""" type of thing for a couple years now, it's evolved a lot but it's still something to always come back to, and that's exactly what I need in order to write anything at all. I can't start anything from scratch, I need it to come naturally. I don't even remember what it was like not having this story to come back to.
I don't have an outline or a goal, I'm still just figuring stuff out as I go. Maybe ten years from now I'll turn this into an actual, well-structured novel, I kinda hope so, but I doubt it.
I don't get writer's block at all, but I'm a slow writer, so these cancel each other out in terms of productivity and I still can't manage to churn out more than, say, three to five A5 pages a day. After every five lines or so I'll put the pen down and watch 30 minutes of Netflix or something. That makes for a more or less steady flow of creativity, so I can't really complain, and even during those rare phases where I really can't seem to write I'll still do something else that's creative, like drawing or bookbinding or collaging, so it's not like I'm ever really idle. It all kinda plays into the story I'm working on, it pretty much consumes me (in a positive way.)
I can't sit down and commit to a task for a set amount of time, I just do what feels natural at that moment. I use my journal like other people are on their cell phones, so it's not a chore at all.
It helps that I have zero interest in publishing. If you give me a deadline I'll just straight-up not do it, I'd literally sell a kidney before I'd work a creative job. So, yeah, my process is doing whatever I feel like, thank God I usually happen to feel like writing.

>All this tortured poet mindset im an age of record-breaking peace and quality of life

You niggers gotta chill a bit, and I say this with empathy, not condescension.

Open word, story comes into my head, type. Edit later.

Honestly I think people on Veeky Forums overthink this shit, use your imagination you autistic spergs.

think but never do

I copy classic works of literature in their entirety into journals.

are you me

I know this feel. Keep going!

I get an idea and play with it until I really like it.
Then I spend a long time forging a skeleton like synopsis.
Then I spend 2 hours every morning writing it up while listening to jazz.

I think the synopsis step is vital. You know where your going and you know where you're coming from. Plus you get excited when you get close to the peaks of the story.

Same guy as here,

>skeleton
Funny, I always referred to the condensed summarization of my plotline, which I would use as a guide for fleshing out the actual stuff the reader would read, as this.

Thank you, Anonymous. I will.

I hit a bump of coke, turn on Survivor by Destiny's Child and start writing out whatever is in my head onto the walls of my bedroom with a sharpie.

...

>Start with a loose idea or concept (Barbarian wants to fight a dragon. Bored demons manipulate humans into conflict and gamble on the outcome)
>Figure out the surrounding elements and find ways to make those elements interesting (Who accompanies the barbarian? How do the demons manipulate people?)
>Draft the main plot thread in broad strokes
>Decide on themes and core ideas of the story
>Draft subplots that reinforce those themes and core concepts
>Revise central plot thread to allow for the subplots in a way that supports the narrative rather than detracting from it (Love interest? They better be relevant to the story, and in a way that moves things forwards)
>Block story out into sections, chapters or arcs
>Subdivide into scenes
>Subdivide into actions or key dialogue lines
>Print and stash in a drawer for a week
>Edit mercilessly and complete the next draft of the outline
>Flesh things out, just write, turn the broad strokes into more concrete phrasing or actions
>Repeat until rough draft is finished
>Print and stash in a drawer for a week
>Edit mercilessly and complete the next draft of the story
>Repeat
>Pass off to editor for review

wew

>Describe your writing process.

I only ever write when I feel emotionally compelled to. It's been that way for years. Incidentally, for me, writing is a sort of catharsis. Most of my fiction is about women or social interactions. It's worth mentioning I've been working on a short story for the past three months. Writing it has taken longer that I anticipated partly because I'm a wagecuck and distracted by life. However, this piece is undoubtedly the best stuff I've ever written. I've even edited many a time. Once I am finished, I will be sure to share it with Veeky Forums, despite the Reddit invasion and its recently quality. Yet, I am in no rush to complete it. I'm currently taking a break from writing so I can replenish my mind. The idea came to me when I read On Writing by Stephen King. Pretty much, he says whenever he's mind bogged, it helps him take brakes upward to a few months long and then come back to it. I'm not sure when I'll be ready to finish editing it because I spend too much time hanging out and DUDE. Those are things I need to cut out in order to start again. I suppose I'm not yet ready.

I die in the process.

You die in the process.

yup

YES

Write 20-30 pages, delete everything. Consider suicide. Go to sleep, wake up and repeat. Have done this over a thousand times in the last 10 years. Cant stand a single word I write. Spend days counting the uses of the word "the" in my work thinking I was using fucking "the wrong. Crippled emotionally by a childhood of emotional and sexual abuse by moth men and women. Will probably rewrite a story I have written 20 times and then delete it again tomorrow. Today I wrote a story about a magic talking dildo that saves a convent of French nuns from the Nazis. I have lost all hope.

>I have lost all hope.
Sounds like you're ready to start getting that ww2 dildo lit published baby

I read gravity's pinecone when I was 14 and it sublimated into my Magic ww2 dildo opus. I am like a xerox of of Pynchon's ass, re-photocopied 87 times with different settings each time.

>sit down for half an hour
>muses come whisper in my ear
>walk away with 1.5k words written

I'm sorry to hear that, user. It's terrible you had to suffer like that. Honestly though, you could probably make a story about a magic talking dildo that saves French nuns into a "Naked Lunch"-esque masterpiece. I'm not kidding. I think any story can be great, it's all a matter of how it's told.

Keep an eye on that bookshelf at your local store where they keep the stories about magic dildos. "It just might pop out and kill several dozen Nazis" tag line idea.

1. thing
2. thing
3. thing

...

1. thing
1a. thing fleshed out a bit more

...

1. thing
1a. thing in more detail
1a-1 THING in more and more detail

etc

wRITING YOUR dREAMS

>Take pen and paper
>Walking up and down the hallway
>Loses interest as no inspiration ritenow
>Starts pleasuring his asshole with the pen
>Whoops a little bit of poop
>Starts cleaning
>Inspiration all of a sudden
>Starts quickly searching for paper
>There is none
>Quickly smears shit over the wall in otder to write with it
>To sticky, wont spread
>Finds paper
> Forgets what he wanted to write

>pick a letter, usually in the top 5 most common letters
>exclude it from my writing
>pick a word, usually a noun
>write about all my experiences with that word, anecdotes, stories, etc.

It's challenging, yet fun.

I write songs. Typically it all comes to me when I wake up. Harmony, melody, lyrics all together. It mostly ends up as notes of fragments but I have no desire to "make it" anyway. It's just something I do because I feel that I have to.

fpwp

I usually start with a single vivid image of a landscape or object. Like a field of golden corn swaying in the wind or the ground fracturing during an earthquake. And then write about the for a while then put some random weird character there and see how they react to that environment. Or sometimes I will open my dictionary to a couple random pages, pick out an interesting noun and verb, then start writing a sentence with those and see what happens.

Usually it comes when I read something else, and sometimes when listening to music, like bricolage -- I don't care about being original, just bringing things to a resolution.

>Wake up
>Kill myself
>Write until my hands bleed
>Repeat

>take a bunch of ideas from other people
>change each one of them in a direction that I find more interesting/usable
>mix them all together
>?????
>Profit

>reading
>mind starts to wander off of the book and what I just read
>start reworking it in my head
>fairly original idea

Published 0 times

>Think of the 19th iteration of an idea I had years ago while working out
>Brainstorm for a few days
>Maybe jot down some note in my document of developing ideas
>Start writing
>Have a "new" idea a few days later
>Lose interest in first project
>rise and repeat

You've all taught me that persistence is key. You idiots give up before you've made anything worthwhile.

I will outlast you all and write the greatest novel ever.

Or you'll troll Veeky Forums for the rest of your life... same thing.