heywriters:
joanhello2:
bettsfic:
dark-magical-ships:
l1atena1:
Don’t you sometimes get an absolutely extrodinary, mind blowing, such an awesome idea for a story, but you just don’t have enough skill level to pull it off?
Write it anyway.
Write it anyway, write it anyway, write it anyway.
There are so, so, so many reasons:
- You gain that skill level only through practice. So practice.
- No matter what you’re writing, no matter how badly you think you’ve written it, there is ALWAYS some audience that will love it and cherish it.
- You can use what you write the first time around as a first draft and just rewrite it again later when you feel like tackling the story again!
- Rewriting the same story over and over is a valid writing process. It’s literally just creating new drafts. Each iteration will be better than the last, because each is building on your growing skill and experience.
- If you love the story, it will always be worth telling simply for your own enjoyment. If no one else ever sees it, that’s okay! Your art should be for you first, anyway.
Write it anyway.
“One of the things I know about writing is this: spend it all, shoot it, play it, lose it, all, right away, every time. Do not hoard what seems good for a later place in the book or for another book; give it, give it all, give it now. The impulse to save something good for a better place later is the signal to spend it now. Something more will arise for later, something better. These things fill from behind, from beneath, like well water. Similarly, the impulse to keep to yourself what you have learned is not only shameful, it is destructive. Anything you do not give freely and abundantly becomes lost to you. You open your safe and find ashes.”
― Annie Dillard, The Writing Life
Among professional writers there’s a category called trunk stories. A trunk story is one that you feel inspired to write but you know isn’t ready for prime time. Before the computer age, when it was all hardcopy, the writer put trunk stories away, in a drawer or box early in their career, then in an actual trunk or a filing cabinet as the number of trunk stories grew. When writers find themselves stuck for ideas, they often read some of the trunk stories, hoping to be inspired to rewrite one into something they’d actually be willing to let their fandom see. Some stories stay in the trunk for decades before finally seeing the light of day. Some are still there when the writer dies. The Silmarilion was basically pieced together from trunk stories after JRRT’s death. If you have an inspiring idea but don’t think you can do it justice now, write as much as you have and put it in the trunk.
you really do learn so much by doing an amateur job of a compelling idea. it’s better than writing something you don’t care about, or sitting around with no ideas at all
(via dissociatingdumbass)