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2 weeks? ... I wrote Innocence Lost in 2 weeks? What the hell?

Just had a really creepy realization going over my motivational thread for writing Innocence Lost. Right now I consider it an achievement if I get a paragraph done in a day... Back then I was setting myself goals of completing about 3 chapters a day... And occasionally I even achieved those goals.

So I asked myself what the problem is... Well my new job and boyfriend take up a large part of my time, but even with those aside, I think there's something more to it... Basically, when I first started writing POF... It was supposed to be crap.

Sure, I still wanted it to be good and I still wanted to win the Spring Thing competition, but ultimately, the reason I started writing the game was because I couldn't get the game I actually wanted to submit finished on time... So I quickly threw together something quick that was supposed to tug on people's emotional heart-strings to distract them from the fact that it wasn't very long or particularly well written.

Right now, I'm having the problem I always have when I try to write something REALLY good... It's like I'm trying to make the game my Magnum Opus and every single aspect of it needs to be perfect or I'm not happy with it. I keep thinking of more scenes to add and trying to improve the characters and staring at a sentence for ten minutes because there's a word in it that doesn't quite look right... And that's probably why I'm not getting anything done.

So... I've decided to go back to writing crap! I'm going to very quickly throw a paragraph together, leave it as it is no matter how bad it looks and quickly move on to the next one... Then when I'm done with each chapter, I'll briefly go over them to fix all the parts I really don't like. Hopefully this'll stop me from dreading every word I type and help me to get the game done a lot quicker.

With all that said, I'm setting myself the goal of getting the chapter I'm working on finished before I go to bed tonight, no matter how late I need to stay up. ^_^

I'm glad you abandoned your quality standards!

You go, girl! Write shit!

Perfection is overrated.

Cool beans.

Lol. Thanks Malk! ^_^

I wish I had finished my storygames in two weeks, now I just lost motivation to work on them, despite having cool ideas and all that about how to write it...

Congratulations on going back to writing as much as possible!

Could you please tell me how did you manage to convince yourself to write a chapter a day?

One word at a time.

But barring that, just lock yourself in a room like Andrew Oldham did to Mick Jagger and Keith Richards in the '60s. He told them they couldn't come out until they wrote an original song, so they didn't have much other choice.

That's hard and it takes too much time, I'm not a very patient person, Delta can agree with that.

Yeah, I don't have the time to do that since I have nobody to lock me in... plus I have to learn for my college entrance exam which will be at the ending of May, I believe.

Yeah, that's pretty much it. I'd just spend 100% of my free time writing and if I didn't finish my goal, I'd stay up till 4 in the morning until I got it done. 

I've read that many novelists won't even hit the delete button a single time on the first draft. They just force out a raw turd and go back and polish it in the next round.

What kind of analogy is that?
 

A very weird one! :P

Have you not seen the MythBusters episode where they did that? It totally works. ;)

The point is, many authors write rubbish in the first round, knowing it isn't any good. Because they believe it's important to get the general story out before worrying over how pretty it is.

I have probably seen it since I have watched every episode of MythBusters, but I forgot it...

That's a tip I got into getting rid of Writers Block(the thing that got me to write Demonic Awakening in the first place!)

That's exactly how I write. Well, without so much of the polishing part...

If it makes you feel any better, JJJ wrote Order of the Midnight Sun over a single weekend.

You just need some real motivation. These threads don't do much besides stroke your ego slightly. You need a prize at the end, or the threat of a severe punishment, to push you to work. You also should make a firm deadline for things.

So with that in mind, make a deadline, and if you don't make it, we'll ban you!

And if you do make it, Kiel will bake you a cake.

Kiel knows how to bake cakes?!

I want some!!!

A weekend... As in 2 days? ... No! That's got to be physically impossible! >.<

... Mmm, cake ^_^

Great!

Now make a schedule and we'll alert Kiel of his new responsibility.

... Well it's 3 in the morning and the chapter's not finished, but I did manage to break through the part of the story I was having the most trouble with, so I'm happy and I'm going to sleep. ^_^

Briar Rose, you can rest assured you're not along. Many, many "writers," or perhaps more accurately "wanna be writers," don't actually complete things because they're not "perfect."

For many, it is quite difficult to put yourself out there -- often writers have a personal investment in their writings, and they will take any criticisms are personal attacks on them -- so they don't want to release anything that's not perfect. I imagine most writers here (with the possible exception of some of the recent WC stories) really want to be sure something is as good as it can be before they publish it.

But personally, I think that's a good idea -- write it all out, proofread it, then out the door it goes! Good luck!

Well it's better to write something decent and finish it than write something perfect and never make it past the first paragraph. 

Thanks Ogre! ^_^

Perfectionism is great, so long as it stays the fuck out of your way until you're done writing the story. Then your angry little inner perfectionist can prance about as it pleases, proofreading and grammarizing the shit out of everything, and everyone's a winner.

Best advise ever! ^_^

This is interesting, I’m pretty much the opposite. I do a rough plan and then just write and write and write until I’ve reached the end of the plan. I’m usually writing a dozen different things so if I get bored with one I just leave it and switch to another; some of my abandoned stuff get deleted but most gets returned to when I can approach it with a fresh mind (sometimes it takes years). Because I work in bursts most of my stories are short stories and I’ve never yet written anything longer than about 200 pages.

Your approach reminds me of a friend I had who was a perfectionist and watching him write was like watching someone suffer. He’d consider it a good morning if he wrote a sentence then sometimes he’d delete it in the afternoon. In the end he came round to my way of thinking which is to write like hell when you’ve got the enthusiasm, put the project on hold if it’s too much and when you’ve finished only go back over it to spell-check and make sure it all makes sense to a reader. As soon as I’ve finished something I forget all about it and move onto the next thing.

We’ve all got different styles of writing and as your stories are better than mine I think the perfectionist approach produces better writing (I wonder how Kiel writes…). I think working to a deadline or something light-hearted like Tower of Riddles is good for you. If you’re trying to make the game too good you can take that too far and stop writing altogether until you produce something you consider the literary equivalent of heroin… or you’ll snap suddenly and spend three days writing a story three hundred pages long :D

One problem with this site is that I find the Forums are a big distraction so I avoid them, wikipedia, you tube etc when I’m in writing mode. At the moment I’m not really working on anything important so I need something to keep my mind from hibernating and this thread should help J

Oh wow! ... Yeah, I never have that problem because it's so rare that I ever come up with an idea that I think is good enough to make a story out of. I do have another story I started awhile back and haven't finished, but I plan on coming back to it as soo as this game's finished. ^_^

I am similar to you though in that I have huge, great big bursts of motivation where I'll do nothing but write for about a week... But then my motivation runs out, I get bored and I want to do something else... Then I really have to struggle to force myself to write anything... Also I get very easily distracted. 

Haha my writing output can be insane, in the last few years I have written 655 pages in 28 finished stories, though some of them are crap beyond belief :P The joys of having a job where I don't really have to work :D I think your perfectionism extends to your ideas, you'd be surprised if you just try writing a page or two with an idea it can take on a life of it's own. It's good to take a rest from writing for a bit if you need it and return to it when you feel better. I'm really looking forward to seeing the sequel to Price of Freedom, I think the way your decisions affect your relationships with the other characters is very clever :)

I get distracted too, I just spent thirty minutes trying to understand about how nuclear energy actually works and reading through the wikipedia list of unusual deaths :)

Awhh! Like the 3 men who tried to save a chicken from a flood and all ended up drowning? I like that story because ironically, the chicken survived. ^_^

That goes to my proof that chickens are spies!

I love that story! 

You're in a better boat than me. :)

I end giving up and deleting everything usually because I think my writing is complete crap. It amazes me that I haven't deleted my attempts at storygames yet.

Dropping standards is one of the ways many published writers end up writing their first drafts. It allows them to be creavity without stopping to fix something and losing their train of thought. Plus it cuts down on worrying about what you're writing, so that you actually end up writing.

Awh, that's sad. I never delete stuff I write, if only so I can look back at it years later and see how much I've improved 

I read that chicken story in the Darwin Awards, I'm sure somewhere there was a story about the Greek philosopher who was staring up at the stars contemplating the endlessness of the galaxy, the wonder of life and the miracle of new worlds and missed the open sewer hole in front of him... :D Haha if we keep aiming higher we'll never get there, all finished books are a compromise where the author says "fuck it, it's about as good as I can be bothered to make it so lets set you free into a cruel world of critics" :) Writing should be just about doing something you enjoy, who cares if other people don't like it as long as you like your own stuff? It might turn out to be better than you think :)

Very true. Sad truth is, there's going to be people that hate your writing no matter how good it is, so might as well stop worrying about it. ^_^

(... Unless you write Warrior Cats fanfiction, then perhaps you should worry about it just a teensy bit.) 

I end up writing pages in rapid burst, only to come back to it the next day and dislike it all :P

The problem is, I absolutely can not start on a new idea or write a new page until I've run over and made the page absolutely perfect. Sometimes I read it again and find even more crap in the page I dislike until finally, I've deleted about 75% of the content I've previously written.

I am the same way. I, however, will plan for at least three days before jumping in. I....can't stand half of my things about an hour later.

Easy solution: Don't go back and re-read it!

No, seriously, especially in an environment like this. Once you've written a page, leave it the heck alone! That page is done, now move on.

It works for me.

It could, I just always seem to read back over it. Then I start to doubt my sanity when I do.

I have the same problem, but perfectionism and shitty writing doesn't really mix well.

I am sure that your writing is not that bad. Of course, all of this is a mental state.