2. There is no problem with a story so great that it cannot be fixed in revision. Keep going.
3. If your story is as uncreative as you think it is, you wouldn’t want to write it so badly. You want to write it because there’s a unique spin on it you have never seen, and want to express. Many people may write similar stories, but it’s the details that make it personal. You may not know it now, but there is someone who is looking for exactly what you’re writing. If you don’t finish it, they’ll never see it.
4. You can write something amazing and still be met with silence. There are myriad reasons for this that have nothing to do with the quality of what you produce.
4.1 It’s okay to repeat post your work if no one has seen it.
4.2 It’s okay to post your work in multiple places.
5. You don’t have to agree with every criticism (but take it gracefully anyway).
6. Most writers are scared of the same things you are.
7. Don’t judge your works in progress against the archives of finished, polished stories other writers have put together. Archives are Internet portfolios and generally don’t show all the multitude of failures, incomplete, and draft-form works those writers are also struggling with. They aren’t perfect and you don’t have to be, either. Keep working and you will have a portfolio of your own.
8. Don’t be afraid to share your ideas with other writers. It’s not annoying as long as you’re not self-important about it. Be humble and gracious, and others will reciprocate.
8.1 You can’t write as well in a vacuum; the more people know that you are working on something, and what, the more support you will get for that work. Starting a dialogue before you post something will make it more likely people will read it when you do post it.
9. It’s okay to take breaks. If the ideas just aren’t coming, go do something else for a while.
10. Be kind to yourself. Don’t call yourself names. You are not stupid, or uncreative, or boring. You wouldn’t call other people those things, so don’t do it to yourself.
I don’t know if these are helpful to other people, but they are helpful to me, so just in case, here they are!
And here I thought I’d seen every possible setup to a pie in the face.
I remember the turning point moment. I was watching an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer with my roommates, and it went into a backstory flashback set in high medieval Germany. ”Why are you sighing?” one asked, noticing that I’d laid back and deflated rather gloomily. I answered: ”She’s not of sufficiently high social status to have domesticated rabbits in Northern Europe in that century. But I guess it’s not fair to press a point since the research on that hasn’t been published yet.” It made me laugh, also made me think about how much I don’t know, since I hadn’t known that a week before. For all the visible mistakes in these shows, there are even more invisible mistakes that I make myself because of infinite details historians haven’t figured out yet, and possibly never will. There are thousands of artifacts in museums whose purposes we don’t know. There are bits of period clothing whose functions are utter mysteries. There are entire professions that used to exist that we now barely understand. No history is accurate, not even the very best we have.
smug thinkpiece writer: “the internet is about the sound bite, the tweet, tiny fragments of information that only take two or three seconds to consume”
me, thinking back to the 5000-word tumblr post i scrolled past yesterday where two classicists, three high schoolers, and a witch all got in a very pointless argument about hades and persephone or shakespeare or something: uh,
a tumblr user: you know when you uh…. astral project… to walgreens…. to pick up some excedrin for your headache but get sidetracked in the “intimate care” aisle because your… soul projection just noticed that they actually stock tiny vibrators in-store at walgreens and it really catches you by surprise then you notice an employee staring at your shadowy, indistinct form which is awkwardly hunched over in front of the condom shelf and you have to struggle to explain what you’re doing there hahaha
someone with a junkrat icon and a 3 page long blocklist linked in their about: hey OP just wondering why did you kill wolfgang amadeus mozart with poison
some shit on tumblr: love isn’t always SOFT some times it’s HARSH and SHARP and ROUGH and will BEAT YOU TO DEATH WITH BRASS KNUCKLES IN A DARK ALLEYWAY BEHIND THE LOCAL CHILI’S
me, surrounding myself with only the Softest Most Tender Loving Content: no thanks
just moving along like everyone else 