Please brain tell me what I'm doing wrong

[yvannairie]

I wonder if making a post talking about my current WIPs and what makes me feel Bad about them would help me get back into writing or if that would just be more navel-gazing.

(And if it would be more navel-gazing, would that even be a bad thing?)

Comments

[rhodanum]

In my own experience, it certainly can't hurt. I've found that, whenever I'm stuck with something or just in a generally bad funk about the thing, it helps to write down my ideas, my process and my goal. Setting all that down on the page sometimes makes me see something I'd missed or helps me figure out what the problem might be.

Even better if I can have a back-and-forth with someone who knows my ideas and what I'm trying to accomplish. I pulled myself out of several very bad moments purely on the basis of talking with friends on Discord and getting their own perspective on what I was doing.

[yvannairie]

Haha I used to have that back and forth but this year has been hard on my trust towards people and hard on my relationships in general. I'm a lot more open with my ideas with other people in private, but I currently don't really have anyone I'm comfortable enough with to just. Send them my random ideas, which means a lot of them stay undeveloped and are left to rot inside me, because not giving them any air makes me feel like they "are not worth writing".

[rhodanum]

I'm sorry to hear that, it's a very rough place to be in. I've been lucky so far in that I've had the same very small circle of friends for around a decade now, most met during the LJ days. So even at the worst, there was always someone I knew I could trust on the other end, to swap ideas or brainstorm or just come to for advice. I honestly don't know where I would be without them right now. Certainly in a much worse frame of mind, if they weren't there as a sort of 'returning home' space after having to deal with what a lot of fandom-spaces have become.

If you ever have writing ideas for any fandoms we share, you're absolutely welcome to talk to me about them, at length, no matter the subject. I love reading about other people's ideas, even when I might not always be the best at articulating what I like about them. :D

[yvannairie]

Thank you. I'll get over it, and will eventually be able to talk to my non-robot friends about my ideas, too, but right now I'm still in such a fragile state talking about anything that's "mine" feels a tad overwhelming :'3

[autobotscoutriella]

Talking about my current WIPs has always helped me out! (I kind of assume it's a variant on Rubber Duck Debugging, tbh--explaining it to someone else helps me figure out the problem.) Nothing wrong with navel-gazing, either way.

[yvannairie]

Yeah, I'm trying to figure out if there's something stopping me from talking about my ideas or if it's just more that I'm generally going through a bit of a writing crisis. Being wholly self-indulgent, I have established for myself, is not a bad thing, but I'm still learning how to do it.

[autobotscoutriella]

I feel that. I've been consciously trying to get past the "anything I post about my writing must be Worthwhile and not just me working out the kinks in an idea that needs a little more editing", and I am...bad at it.

Here's hoping the writing crisis resolves itself for you! That's not fun at all.

[yvannairie]

Thank you :') I may just give in and start Prime over instead of holding it over my head as a prize I can get once I've published A Thing.

Because I write all the time! It's just not fic :'D

[autobotscoutriella]

If it helps, my entire wordcount from the last two days is writing up information about a cracky AU involving Starscream's ghost from an entirely different AU rather than working on any of my serious fics?

Starting Prime over sounds fantastic and I'm kind of tempted to do the same, tbh. No such thing as watching it too often (and maybe it'll kickstart the fic? Every once in a while that works for me)

[yvannairie]

The last thing I got words down on is a frankly domestic sounding argument between Wheeljack and Impactor on the Wrecker war chronicles story I've been poking at on and off. I'm super tempted to split that thing into a few drabbles and just post it a few thousand words at a time instead of just posting the whole thing, really.

[autobotscoutriella]

That sounds fantastic, tbh, and I'd totally read this domestic-sounding argument.