The varied emotional stages of writing a book

[Siana Blackwood]

Chuck Wendig's Terribleminds is a weird, sometimes scary place full of amazing writing advice. It's also full of profanity and metaphors involving bodily functions, so if those things aren't your cup of tea (or you're at work, at school or around kids) you might want to steer clear.

Anyway, Mr Wendig's most recent blog post is this: The varied emotional stages of writing a book.

At least one of these items will describe how you feel about your writing today. I can almost guarantee it.

Me right now: 2, 6, 9-12 inclusive and possibly 17.

The solution is (supposedly) simple: just keep writing.

So, thoughts? List of numbers applying to you? Anyone bouncing around in 1, 24 or even 25 today? Hints and tips on how to make 'just keep writing' actually happen?

[Agent Double Oh Zero]

22, 15, 12, 11, 6, 5, 3, 2

Long way off from 1, 24, and 25. Those are almost alien concepts to me.

'Just keep writing' is...exactly as hard and easy as it looks. Easy because that's it. No tricks. Hard because that's it. No tricks.

That said, some find Write or Die helps conquer the blank page. Daily habit checkers (my friend just told me about habitRPG today!) can help one start/maintain a daily habit. 750words is one specifically for writing. Personally, my goal is to do a Fifty Headed Hydra Challenge every day. At my speeds, that is 250 words in 5 minutes.

That said, finding something good to write ABOUT, standalone or current bit of WIP, is another thing entirely. There, outlining helps me. In my terms, that translates to pantsing properly, so that I can always see the next step.

Absolutely none of which is really helpful, likely.

[Siana Blackwood]

I don't really know much about gaming, but HabitRPG looks terrifying and sort of appealing at the same time. Some kind of reward other than 'you now have more crappy words' sounds like a good thing.

Is my maths right for saying 250 words in 5 minutes is 50 words per minute? I can't type that fast - at the moment I'm only somewhere between 45 and 50 words per minute on a test of random words.

[Agent Double Oh Zero]

I know nothing about gaming either, but I like the ability to keep track of my own rewards. That said, 'keep up with habitRPG' should be a task in and of itself, because I'm liable to get impatient with figuring out how it works! (It may SEEM simple, but I'm talking about myself, a person who took weeks to figure out how to use Twitter. I should say, for a given meaning of 'use,' since I never log in anyway. Maybe it's obvious to people who are actually gamers. )

Actually, on a test of random words, my speed is 60-90 words per minute. Yes, 250 words in 5 minutes is my breakneck writing speed, but that's because my brain gets in the way when I have to think about what to write next. I probably need to stop doing that. I'm even slower when it comes to regular writing, because I can't stand typos. Bad grammar and run-ons annoy me too, but I can at least fix those later, unless the fix comes to mind immediately.

[teamquavers]

1,2,3,6,7,9 (to a degree),12,13,16,19,20,21,22,23 (though not as extreme as the examples),24, and 25 are all familiar to me. I think "9" has to be least favorite of these, because I realized I didn't have to put my MC through so much turmoil if they, or some other character had acted more logically. In my zeal to get a really cool story off the ground, I risk having a character's brain turn off for a minute or two just so I can get ti going. Back when I first did NaNo in 2004, "10" was a huge problem.