My Writing Journey: From Doubt to Discovery
I may or may not have been obsessed with reading and writing since literally the fifth grade. I wish I could remember the teacher’s name that I had. That woman, is who encouraged my love and passion for writing. I think of her every time I think about writing. As many writers (both published and non published like myself) will be able to relate to this: I have started and tossed hundreds of story ideas.
Until recently, I was in an “avoid writing” stage. I quit writing for years because of several things: self doubt, writers block from anxiety of writing itself, thinking nothing I wrote was good enough, thinking no one would ever even want to read anything I wrote.
As I began to get back into writing a few weeks ago, I noticed/learned something. Every writer goes through this. Some come back to writing, and some don’t. But everyone experiences struggles with writing in some way. No one is a perfect writer, no one is a perfect author, and there will always be readers who either love your book, or hate your book. There are always two sides to a story, right?
How My Sources of Inspiration Have Changed
Ever since I got back into writing, I’ve discovered my personal sources of inspiration have slightly changed over time. While I find that some things do still give me inspiration, sometimes the inspiration I get from them feels muted, so to say. Let me explain. I still get inspiration from things like being outside, listening to nature, and observing it. But, I’ve noticed that now, instead of things in nature inspiring whole worlds at once, things in nature now inspire only specific spots or scenes.
That was a frustrating experience. I thought I just had writers block for a hot minute, till I realized this. Suddenly music was inspiriting me more than it use to. Where before, music was more focused on the quiet, non-mentally-visual aspects such as emotions of the scenes, now music plays through entire videos in my head, showing me world overviews or never ending forests, or entire fight scenes.
Writing prompts have also changed for me in a major way. It use to be I would sit and follow a writing prompt and just discovery write. Now I’ve found that sitting down and planning the world out makes it way easier to keep going. This is not to say that somehow magically I don’t get stuck on planning out the plot, because I am currently fighting my plot in general. However, I have noticed that having an outline helps me stay focused and has made my writing actually better. I feel like I write with a purpose now instead of waiting for it to come to me. Even if said outline is not in a ‘traditional’ outline format, because I just type, hit enter, and keep typing. Some parts are in brackets. Some parts are highlighted so I can easily scroll through and see the sections I had ideas for, but couldn’t sit and write them at the time because I didn’t have the whole picture yet. So I moved on, wrote what I could think of in several sections, moving through my document like a fish battling the waves during a hurricane. I’m just sitting there scrolling through writing in the weirdest order I have ever written in. And you know what? I have never felt more free and connected with my writing. I’m not fighting my internal systems anymore. I’m flowing with them, letting them help me discover the story and world that’s somehow magically being told to me from some magical seventeenth weird dimension space. I say that because it feels like the story is truly alive, and I haven’t loved a story I’ve worked on for many, many years.
My biggest struggle was myself. I was my own writer’s block, and I didn’t even know it for my entire life until now. Talk about a mind blowing moment.
Facing Writer’s Block
With all these changes to my writing style/method of the years, you’d think I never deal with blocks anymore. Nope. 210% not the case. I still do get writers block. Sometimes even my favorite ways to get inspiration don’t do it for me. These are the moments were I just take a day and say, “You know what? You’ve been stressing yourself out. Take a day.” I find when I don’t write, my brain suddenly starts to process through everything. Sometimes it takes a few hours for that processing to finish before it gives me the results. Usually, it’s at the worst time. Typical, right? Still annoying no matter how many times it happens. On these days, I jot these notes down (if there are any) and just move on. When I take the pressure of myself, invest in the author in me, it comes back with startling force. Suddenly once those ideas are back it’s like a flood.
Now, to clarify, I am using the most literal terms I can. When I say I take A day, I mean A day. I don’t let myself get out of the habit of writing. Literally treat it like a job. Because it is, even if you’re not getting paid for it in the beginning, it is your job as an author to tell these stories. These stories come from somewhere. People can debate the source of them all day everyday but in the end, who cares where they come from? Point is they are here for a reason. Everything has a reason. The entire purpose of a story is to be told. So if you’re keeping it to yourself, do you really even love it?
How I Overcome Creative Blocks
All writers start as readers. Well…. Hopefully, but that’s not a topic for right now. Anyway. What if you’re on a deadline (personal or official)? What if you’re having writers block and you don’t have time to step outside and touch grass like it’ll magically ‘make your brain work’ again? The solution to that is not an answer you’re going to like. Put something there to fill the space. Make it a bullet point, a bit of text in brackets with however many words you come up with to jog your memory. I don’t really care what you put. Put something, and move on. Ignore that part now. Get what else you can down, down. I promise you, once you get into the flow of a scene you’re more aligned with, so to say, at that moment, you will be able to go back and fill in the blanks. The solution to this whole problem is editing.
How Reading and Media Fuel My Writing
Again: All writers start as readers. Well…. Hopefully, but that’s not a topic for right now. Anyway.
As a reader, I find reading can either work against me, or work with me. Sometimes, I have to read something in the same genre as what I’m writing. Sometimes I have to read something entirely different to get my brain to process it behind closed doors. My brain will do it’s job. It will work through it. That’s it’s whole purpose. Think of it like a computer. Software has to be downloaded and installed in order to work, yes? (Tech people don’t come for me, this is not a tech blog and I am only sorta techy as if that’s not obvious by now.) Same thing with your story. Your brain has to download it and install it before it can open it. Sometimes updates have to be installed, and then it takes a minute to re-learn how to use it. This is normal. Let yourself escape to other worlds, ignore your book for at least an hour or something, I don’t know. If timers are your jam, set timers. Let your brain do the work it needs. No human on earth is a robot.
Besides, maybe you’ll read a single sentence in another book and suddenly your brain will start blaring alarms and flashing lights because it all of a sudden just said “WAIT A MINUTE THATS IT.” And why did it do that? Because you allowed it to process behind closed doors and just existed and waited.
What I’ve Learned About Writing & Struggles
No one has the same inspiration methods. While some are more common, common does not mean all encompassing it just means “the most often.” While all writers will share in some struggles, not all struggles are the same. The most important thing about being a writer, is getting over those struggles. It’s you, clearing your own new path. It’s building your empires, and worlds, and characters who become friends. As a reader, you are more aware than anyone of this: Some books literally have the ability to change you. If those writer’s had just given up, you never would have had the book that changed you.