This is more of a motivational post to help other people who might have gone through something similar. It's pretty long. You probably don't know me, and I definitely don't know most of you either. But I felt it was worthwhile sharing my thoughts about dealing with writer's block.
As some context: I hadn't been able to write anything like stories or music for the past 4ish years or so. Any time I tried to do so, I may have had a seemingly interesting idea but it would fade into obscurity and ultimately lead to little or nothing getting done. I registered for this site a few years ago to see if I could dig up some inspiration, but nothing really came of it back then.
In an attempt to break my writer's block, I decided to try something I knew was incredibly stupid, but I felt like trying anyways: complete a somewhat competent story game in 4 days for the school contest. The school setting isn't my favorite, I haven't being able to write much of anything in 4+ years and I have never created a choose your own story game before. No pressure right?
The result was School of the Star Scavengers, which I finished with about 10 minutes to spare before the end deadline. I cut that way too close for my liking, it feels too linear (with only a few alternate endings and mild branching), pacing is a bit odd, it's wordy in spots, (I could keep going on), but it's still the first story I've been able to write for a very long time. So from that standpoint I accomplished my goal. Without that urgency from a strict deadline and theme, I don't believe I would have been able to ever finish the rough vision I had for it, or better figure out some of the things that were holding back my ability to write anything.
Here's what I learned from that experience, which helped me (for the time being) get past my writer's block.
1. Pressure isn't always bad. It can help you put realistic expectations on yourself and in turn plan out something based on that time available. I had 4 days and a theme to work with. While I wasn't sure if I would finish by the deadline due to my writer's block, I knew what I clearly couldn't finish, crossed out any unreasonable or overambitious ideas, and planned out something that was within reach.
2. Procrastinating can be bad. This is why a healthy amount of pressure can be good in certain situations, for some (though not all) people. If you have an indefinite amount of time to complete a project, it's hard to stay inspired for it and work it through to completion. Especially if it's a big project. Or if you have a deadline, but it's plenty generous, you may keep telling your self "oh there's plenty of time" every day until you reach a point where you no longer have time to finish. A story you don't write is never read.
3. World building is good, whether it's a school, a kingdom or a star system. This is something I better realized after finishing School of the Star Scavengers. The world I made is by no means perfect. But creating a somewhat believable world is important to any story. I'm sure most already know that. However the key here is: sometimes it's worthwhile to just sit down for a day and simply write about the world your characters live in rather than the characters themselves. Even little touches, like glancingly mentioning the mating habits of the local bear skunks, can add a unique layer to your world design to help set it apart from other stories.
Adding to the world building point, once you have created a world it becomes easier to write in it. You can make rules for society, ideals of different groups of people, different locations to visit. From there plugging in your characters to those situations becomes simpler because you already know how certain aspects of the world function. You'll know how a race might act in which circumstances or what a certain city is like when you visit it.
4. Taking criticism. I've noticed there's two main kinds of criticism: self-criticism and criticism from others. Both can be difficult for different reasons. A big part of my writer's block came from a chronic case of extreme self-criticism. Still working on that one. I used to say too-often that I was my own biggest critic. That wasn't always meant in a good way. When I actually finished something in real life or otherwise, it usually came out solidly but I likely obsessed too much over the details to reach that point. Unfortunately this eventually lead to the 4ish years of not being able to write anything, because I couldn't stop staring at everything I disliked about my work. It happened to such a degree I stopped seeing what was even good about it and lost inspiration. Even if the idea was mildly interesting and the writing wasn't as bad as I was judging it as, I got too caught up in things like:
-The formatting looks poor or is too hard to read
-The characters all sound the same or are too cliche
-Trying too hard to word things perfectly, causing the opposite
-The story is too serious
-The story is too funny
-How many skunk bears would it take to change a rung on a ladder made of wire reinforced glass, both of which don't even exist in this world I'm writing?
-Maybe I should go grab a drink so I can stay up way too late so I can continue to think about all of the above
I'd think too hard on things like that, commonly all at the same time on a single page even, and in turn make no progress on the story.
With criticism, the best solution is: don't worry so much about it. Nobody is perfect. Things will be flawed and that's totally ok. That's how you get better at writing; by learning in areas you know you can improve in. Does it really matter if my story is just average? Nope. This isn't a job. Or if it is, you'd likely already have an editor who'd obsess over these little things so you don't have to anyways.
5. The learning process. When in doubt, you can always publish, take in feedback, and then use that to later unpublish and improve the story more in areas you got feedback on. I plan to do that with School of the Star Scavengers at some point since I already know spots I would like to flesh out more branches with. Just make sure your story is start-to-finish playable and presentable before making it public. Nobody wants a published game with dead links and no effort put in before asking for feedback. Having someone story test without publishing can work too, though a published game will get more playthroughs and potential feedback. Some people also make motivation posts in the Writer's Workshop and that can be done before you even start brainstorming. Some may even do all of the above. You can best judge which method works better for you.
6. Stay focused and be realistic. Sometimes writer's block can come from not a lack of creativity, but too much creativity. There's so many ideas you have it's hard to tackle all of them. Jotting down short notes of all your ideas can help if you feel you'll need most of them. The other option is to pick and choose, focusing in on your best ideas and making it a story you can realistically do. You know yourself best. If you feel you need to spend a year to finish a game and know you can pull it off, go for it. But if you know you might lose inspiration, sometimes a more focused version of the same vision is better than simply not completing the story at all. This happened too many times to me, which was why I made a clear end goal with the intent of publishing something for the contest with all the restrictions.
7. Have fun! If you don't really enjoy what you're writing, then odds are other people wont enjoy it as much either. If you're having a fun time usually the words flow out more easily and naturally compared to over-thinking it. You're probably writing here as a hobby after all, so just have a good time with it. Having fun was the only way I could finish my story. I spent less time worrying about how good or bad story elements were from a critical standpoint, or even how well everything was worded in every single spot, and instead just messed around with quite a few spots in the story to see where it'd lead to.
That covers most of the stuff I wanted to get out there for now. To anyone who reads through this, I hope it helps (even a little) if you feel you're stumbling to complete a story, like has happened personally too many times over the years.
