Write Every Day, June Day #26

[auroracloud]

Thought I should link to this, via marthawells who also has an essay in it. The Writer's Book of Doubt. It's coming out next month. I think I'm going to need it. Here's the blurb:

Impostor syndrome. Thinking that your writing sucks. Feeling targeted by the rejection cannon. Despairing that no one is ever going to read your stories. Lost in Submissionland. Overwhelmed by radioactive brain weasels.

The Writer’s Book of Doubt contains practical advice and inspiration for dealing with the problems of the writing life.


I'm sure I'm not the only one who feels that description resonates. And the collection of writers sounds like people whose words I actually do want to hear (well, read).

Still have mostly spent the day in bad brain chemistry land, but there have been better moments, and at least I've been taking care of myself and taking things off my schedule for the next days.

Today's Writing

At one point I managed to read fairly much novel research and make notes about it. As for things that actually add to my word count, I added a bit to a supporting character sheet, and I now continued one of my many unfinished fanfics. This one's more just stream-of-thought about characters rather than a story, but who knows, maybe I can make it into something at some point. Nothing else was inspiring me.

Tally

Day 1: alexcat, alexseanchai, auroracloud, carenejeans, cassini, china_shop, cornerofmadness, falkner, luzclarita, ofmonstrouswords, shopfront, silveradept, sylvanwitch, used_songs, ysilme

Day 2: alexcat, alexseanchai, auroracloud, carenejeans, china_shop, cornerofmadness, falkner, ofmonstrouswords, sierranovembr, silveradept, sylvanwitch, ysilme

Day 3: alexseanchai, auroracloud, carenejeans, cassini, china_shop, cornerofmadness, falkner, ofmonstrouswords, shopfront, silveradept, sylvanwitch, talkingtothesky, used_songs, ysilme

Day 4: alexcat, alexseanchai, auroracloud, carenejeans, cassini, china_shop, cornerofmadness, falkner, ofmonstrouswords, shopfront, sylvanwitch, tinx_r, ysilme

Day 5: alexseanchai, alexcat, auroracloud, carenejeans, cassini, china_shop, cornerofmadness, falkner, ofmonstrouswords, sierranovembr, silveradept, st_aurafina, sylvanwitch, yantantether, ysilme

Day 6: alexcat, alexseanchai, auroracloud, carenejeans, cassini, china_shop, cornerofmadness, ellieet, ofmonstrouswords, silveradept, sylvanwitch, talkingtothesky, yantantether, ysilme

Day 7: alexcat, alexseanchai, auroracloud, carenejeans, cassini, china_shop, cornerofmadness, ellieet, ofmonstrouswords, sierranovembr, silveradept, st_aurafina, sylvanwitch, ysilme, yantantether (15 so far)

Day 8: alexcat, alexseanchai, auroracloud, carenejeans, cassini, china_shop, cornerofmadness, ellieet, sierranovembr, silveradept, sylvanwitch, talkingtothesky, yantantether, ysilme (14 so far)

Day 9: alexcat, alexseanchai, auroracloud, carenejeans, cassini, china_shop, cornerofmadness, shopfront, sierranovembr, silveradept, st_aurafina, sylvanwitch, talkingtothesky, yantantether, ysilme (15 so far)

Day 10: alexcat, alexseanchai, auroracloud, carenejeans, cassini, china_shop, cornerofmadness, navaan, ofmonstrouswords, silveradept, st_aurafina, sylvanwitch, talkingtothesky, tinx_r, yantantether, ysilme (16 so far)

Day 11: alexcat, alexseanchai, auroracloud, carenejeans, cassini, china_shop, cornerofmadness, navaan, ofmonstrouswords, sierranovembr, silveradept, st_aurafina, sylvanwitch, talkingtothesky, tinx_r, yantantether, ysilme (17 so far)

Day 12: alexcat, alexseanchai, auroracloud, carenejeans, cassini, china_shop, cornerofmadness, ofmonstrouswords, sierranovembr, silveradept, sylvanwitch, talkingtothesky, tinx_r, yantantether, ysilme (15 so far)

Day 13: alexcat, alexseanchai, auroracloud, carenejeans, cassini, china_shop, cornerofmadness, ofmonstrouswords, sierranovembr, silveradept, sylvanwitch, talkingtothesky, tinx_r, yantantether, ysilme (15 so far)

Day 14: alexseanchai, auroracloud, carenejeans, cassini, china_shop, cornerofmadness, silveradept, sylvanwitch, talkingtothesky, used_songs, ysilme (11 so far)

Day 15: alexcat, alexseanchai, auroracloud, carenejean, cassini, china_shop, cornerofmadness, silveradept, sylvanwitch, talkingtothesky, ysilme (11 so far)

Day 16: alexcat, alexseanchai, auroracloud, carenejeans, cassini, china_shop, cornerofmadness, sierranovembr, silveradept, sylvanwitch, ysilme (11 so far)

Day 17: alexcat, alexseanchai, auroracloud, carenejeans, cassini, china_shop, cornerofmadness, silveradept, sylvanwitch, talkingtothesky, ysilme (11 so far)

Day 18: alexcat, alexseanchai, auroracloud, carenejeans, cassini, china_shop, cornerofmadness, shopfront, sierranovembr, silveradept, st_aurafina, sylvanwitch, ysilme (12 so far)

Day 19: alexcat, alexseanchai, auroracloud, carenejeans, cassini, china_shop, cornerofmadness, shopfront, sierranovembr, silveradept, sylvan_witch, ysilme (12 so far)

Day 20: alexcat, alexseanchai, auroracloud, carenejeans, cassini, china_shop, cornerofmadness, shopfront, sierranovembr, silveradept, sylvanwitch, ysilme (12 so far)

Day 21: alexseanchai, auroracloud, carenejeans, china_shop, cornerofmadness, shopfront, sierranovembr, silveradept, sylvanwitch, talkingtothesky, ysilme (11 so far)

Day 22: alexcat, alexseanchai, auroracloud, carenejeans, cassini, china_shop, cornerofmadness, sierranovembr, silveradept, st_aurafina, sylvanwitch, talkingtothesky, ysilme (13 so far)

Day 23: alexseanchai, auroracloud, carenejeans, china_shop, cornerofmadness, shopfront, sierranovembr, silveradept, sylvanwitch, ysilme (10 so far)

Day 24: alexseanchai, auroracloud, carenejeans, china_shop, cornerofmadness, silveradept, st_aurafina, sylvanwitch, yantantether, ysilme (10 so far)

Day 25: alexcat, alexseanchai, auroracloud, carenejeans, china_shop, cornerofmadness, shopfront, sierranovembr, silveradept, st_aurafina, sylvanwitch, yantantether (12 so far)

Day 26: china_shop, sierranovembr

Let me know if I missed you, or if you wrote but didn't check in yet. You can join in or drop out any time!

Comments

[alexseanchai]

—SHIT WHAT'S MY MIDPOINT

I think the 1/4 mark is a good 1600 words later than I originally thought the 1/2 mark would be (so I guess I'm aiming for the 28–30K vicinity altogether), and I am moderately confident of what the 3/4 mark is and what the 90% mark is, but what is the 1/2 mark???

this fucker is 8.3K in. please note I am not counting the 1.5K I mentioned yesterday, or its 300-word follow-up or the 300-word bit from the other day, because those are all outliney.

10K+ in is a little too long to keep winging it and hope for the best!

...I mean I apparently have good instincts for pacing now? like. the fic I posted the 24th is 7.2K. if I chop the file into pieces at the 1/4, 1/2, and 3/4 plot points, I get 1.6K, 1.7K, 2.5K, and 1.4K, and honestly I'm not sure of exactly where that third break should go, plot-wise? like I got those numbers from I split the scene at the point where the tension snaps, but if I move some words so that split is instead at the point where he figures out where she's going with this, the story ends up breaking into 1.6K, 1.7K, 2.1K, and 1.8K. not perfect pacing but pretty good, right?

...but I don't want to write fallout from the first fourth of the story for another 5K and then try to figure out what plot turning point happens then...

ETA: and then I wrote a different fic altogether. it is complete and posted at 3.3K and it is not at all what I wanted to write today! I wanted to work on the fic I said above!

[auroracloud]

Sounds like you continue being super productive, congratulations even if it wasn't what you wanted to work on. Good luck figuring out the structure/pacing of the story! For me, structure tends to be a thing that happens to the story once I'm editing it, unless a good structure happens to grow organically while I'm first-drafting, but obviously different writers do things really differently.

[alexseanchai]

...I mean it cleared 100 kudos in under two hours, 200 in under six, and 300 in under fifteen, so I am so no longer complaining

also wtf when did I get an audience

[auroracloud]

Wow, very well done! Seems like it was a good thing to be writing after all. :-)

also wtf when did I get an audience

You've clearly got one now!

[alexseanchai]

*BOGGLE*

[sylvanwitch]

I'm sorry you're still struggling, and I hope that you find your equilibrium soon. *hugs*

I wrote a 180-word dialogue free-write because I spent most of the day cleaning all of the things, and I'm not done yet. *sighs*

[auroracloud]

Thank you. *hugs back* It is getting better.

Good luck with your cleaning project! You've been very productive recently, so you're certainly entitled to a less productive writing day every now and then. But yay for getting something written, anyway. :-)

[cornerofmadness]

I can relate to that blurb, I did nothing but sit around and spew nonsense to the tune of 1995 words of fanfic and 380 of original fiction ALL comment_fic that I'm not meant to be writing in the first place.

[auroracloud]

Strange how alluring the writing we're not supposed to be doing is, isn't it?

[cornerofmadness]

Truth

[silveradept]

The description definitely resonates.

The good thing for today is that I managed to rubber-duck past the most vexing point of an assignment and follow that line all the way to completing the draft.

[auroracloud]

What's rubber-ducking? I don't think I've heard that expression before, at least in this context. But in any case, very well done for managing to get through the difficult part and finish the draft!

[silveradept]

I'm borrowing it from programmers and tech people. Essentially, it's the idea that talking about your problems aloud, even if it's only to a rubber duck, sometimes makes things clearer than trying to keep them in their head. In this case, I had live humans, but there have been enough cases where a stuffie or a rubber duck did fine for getting me unstuck.

[auroracloud]

Ah, right! I had the vague idea that I've possibly heard it used in relation to programming, but couldn't remember at all what it was about. But that makes sense! Sometimes I freewrite my way through a difficult bit, and sometimes I just talk to myself. But I should try to see if a stuffed toy animal or something would work even better, since I don't have a rubber duck. :-)

[china_shop]

27th: Accepted (after a bit of a struggle) that my missing-scene fic isn't canon compliant, and spent some time in a doctor's waiting room trying to salvage it, with commercial radio blaring in my ear. Success: 20%ish? Alibi levels of editing.

I had a really strange day.

[auroracloud]

Ack, that's too bad! And commercial radio blaring probably doesn't help with trying to work that out. Good luck with the story!

[ysilme]

Thanks for the book rec, that sounds interesting!
(What are radioactive brain weasels?)
I'm glad to hear writing was happening for you, even if perhaps not what you intended. But sorry for not feeling quite the thing. I hope this'll be improve soon! *hugs*
I'm forcing myself currently to go over an older drawer fic with edits as I promised to show it to a friend - forcing because I'm badly suffering from the horrible heat (yesterday was the hottest day in June since they started measuring, and sadly one of my mom's chickens died of a heat stroke. No wonder at 40°C. Fourty fucking degrees.) and am also preoccupied partly with reinstalling my desktop computer and migrating lots of data, and partly with possible serious data loss as one of my backup drives has been damaged. I haven't been as diligent as I should with making more than one backup of all of my files - due to my photography addiction and our collection of our music library as mp3s, and lots of recorded movies, there are a LOT of Gigabytes to store. I have a well-working backup system with my recent photos and other files, but the older ones aren't all stored in more than one backup place. Due to negligence on my part (not unplugging said backup drive before reinstalling the system) I got some software damage on it (Windows tried to install itself there without any reason nor giving any indication that it was about to), so the drive was no longer visible under windows, but we resolved that with the help of some Ubuntu tools. But when I was in the process of saving the data from the drive to another, due to negligence on Siljan's part the drive fell over when active and now there is also hardware damage. We haven't given up hope yet that the data might be salvageable, but it'll be expensive, I fear...
Anyway, despite all this I managed to keep up with my writing rather well, adding about 800 new words to my usual amount of editing on the 25th, and about 500 words of the newly-started editing project (yes, I'm now editing two at the same time) in addition to the editing.
I'm also quite happy that on the 14th, I reached 100k, which had been my first tentative word goal for the year, with 150k being a tentative second goal. I suppose I can now definitely aim for 200k, as I'm planning to do NaNo again as well.

[auroracloud]

*hugs* Thank you.

Brain weasels are, to quote Urban Dictionary, "Intrusive thoughts of self-doubt and despair, often associated with depression or anxiety, that crawl into your brain and make it hard to focus on other things."

Here's one example of someone talking a bit more about the concept: https://ideatrash.net/2015/11/identifying-common-brain-wease.html

ETA: I assume radioactive brain weasels are a worse form of the same. I look forward to finding the explanation. I suspect I occasionally have them.

Ugh, that heat sounds horrible! I would be liquid, I think. So sorry about your mum's chicken, too. :-( And sorry about the computer as well! Oh dear, that reminds me that I probably need to make sure I have my back-ups in order...

Well done for managing to keep up with your writing even so! And congratulations for hitting your goal before the midpoint of the year!

[st_aurafina]

I wrote today! A thousand-ish words on my pinch hit.

[auroracloud]

Great, well done! Sounds like it's progressing well. :-)

[alexcat]

Wrote an angsty littie short thing for 536 words.

[auroracloud]

Yay for that! Sometimes angsty little things are needed.

[carenejeans]

I worked on one of the spinoffs projects to the main nonfiction thing, which felt like playing hooky. Since it involves a lot of quotations from things in the main project, it was inspirational, at least!

I will buy that book. 8-) I've always like the concept of "Radio KFKD" from Anne Lamott's Bird by Bird -- an inner radio station that broadcasts all the things in that book description. You have to find your inner dial to turn it off! 8-)

[auroracloud]

Well, you were sort of working with the main thing as well, so yay for inspirational! And spin-offs are nice. :-)

I've heard a lot about Anne Lamott's book, but I've never actually read it. I definitely have a weird inner radio station. I've been working on how to turn the wrong things off, but it's a learning process!