Mired in bitter cycle of creation and self-destruction

Celia Cyanide said:

Maybe not to you, but it absolutely does to some people.

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Yes, because they CHOOSE to let it stop them. Period. There is no literate person who can't finish any novel they start, unless they find some reason that's an excuse to stop.

I'm not a special case, and I have no super powers that other lack. I'm just an ordinary person, and an ordinary writer. I finish novels purely and simply because I choose to keep writing until I reach the end.

I follow Heinlein's Rules. This, too, is nothing but a choice. But they work, and sooner or later, if you sell something, yu will do so by following these rules, at least in that one instance.

If you follow them all the time, some level of success is almost guaranteed. This breakdown of the rules by Hugo and Nebula Awad winning writer Robert J. Sawyer is the best I've ever read, and absolutely true: http://www.sfwriter.com/ow05.htm

Jamesaritchie said:

Yes, because they CHOOSE to let it stop them. Period. There is no literate person who can't finish any novel they start, unless they find some reason that's an excuse to stop.

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Your comments make perfect sense for the majority of people and authors, but not for this one. When you have trouble convincing yourself to get up in the morning instead of killing yourself, finishing a novel is less about excuses and more about brain chemistry.

I'm not trying to be mean, but it really sounds like you don't understand depression and mental illnesses. Telling a depressed individual to "man-up" and "just do it, you pansy" is usually going to do more harm than good.

I can kind of understand what Jamesaritchie is saying. It is hard to write a novel, but knowing that I'm making it hard on myself does two things: 1) It makes me accountable for the work I do and do not produce and 2) It gives me power to change my circumstances. As to how one changes varies from person to person, but change is possible. It doesn't come easy and will probably take more time than I like, but as long as I know that I have some control over my writing and give myself permission not to care too much about the anxieties and fears that stop me from writing, then it can be done.

Jamesaritchie said:

What difference does hate it make? This is not complicated. You start writing a novel because you choose to start writing it. You stop writing a novel because you choose to stop writing it.

Twenty years later, well, I have no idea what to say. Surely at some point twenty years ago it much have occurred to you that yu CHOSE to stop, and yu could have CHOSEN to continue.

Nothing has changed. Love it, like it, of having overwhelming hate for a project has nothing whatsoever to do with finishing or not finishing. If you want to finish, then keep writing until you finish.

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Why would you go and do something you hate? Unless you're a masochist... Or you're forced to do so.

If you hate something, the end result will come out bad. And you'll be miserable in the meantime. Why not put that effort into doing something that you actually enjoy, even if you're bad at it?

James - you know how you feel. You know what makes you tick, what motivates you. You have a sample size of one.

You don't know what is going on inside other people's heads. So what you consider to be an "excuse" to stop might be a very real block to someone else.

When we give advice on this board, we can very rarely say "this is the only way to do X". All we can usually say is "this is how I did it." If our experience chimes with the person we are trying to help, then they may be able to get something from it.

But if we have never experienced their situation, we can't really say that it isn't a problem or that they should stop making excuses, or if they want it badly enough they will do it. Those sentiments might work for some people. They don't work for everyone.

It's like a golfer with the yips. It's very hard to understand if it's never happened to you. And it almost never works if you tell them to stop making excuses or something similar.

When we boil it down, our advice on these boards often comes down to "this worked for me".

Not: "This is the only way to do it."

Not: "You aren't a real writer unless you do it my way."

This worked for me.

It sounds to me like you have a good working rapport with your wife. If she's willing, why not take that one step further and become critique partners? A CP is someone to bounce ideas with, to get inspiration from and to help unstick when you're stuck. What could be happening when you get frustrated and stop writing is getting stuck in a "transition scene." If your wife is also a writer, she'll probably know just what this means. Not just for the story, but mentally in the writer. A transition scene is where you jump from one scene to the next. Where it becomes a problem is when you can't figure out how to make the jump. You can have a brilliant scene that you love---the character just escapes death at an airport, for example, and in your mind you have another wonderful scene where the character saves all the people on a speeding bus about to crash into the bus station. But how the heck do you get your exhausted character from the airport to the bus station? What happens in between? You can't just have it be the airport bus to the hotel. That's too much. Something . . . something interesting needs to happen in between, but not so interesting that it takes away from the airport or bus scene. But . . . what? <thumps fingers, twirls pen, wanders around and, and finally gives up and starts something new.>

Been there. Done that.

That's where a CP can jump in and toss ideas. Or, if you want to go one step further, you can make her a co-author and let her actually play with the text. That's a big step though. It would require you to consider the "kids" to be important enough to set aside your ego and accept that someone else can have as good an idea as you. Since you already acknowledge her skill, though, you might have to tamp down any latent jealousy you might harbor and take a deep breath. (And before you say, "But I don't have any!" really think how you would feel if you handed her one of your unfinished books and she easily finished it. Would you feel elated and relieved, or would it bug the heck out of you?) Trust me, I've had to swallow that bitter pill. It can stick halfway down. But I decided the book was more important than my own hang-ups and allowed someone to fully re-work the text. Imagine my surprise when my CP fixed the problem! That's when my CP became my co-author for more than a decade. While we've now gone our separate ways, it was a terrific learning tool and I don't regret my decision at all. I know several husband/wife CPs and co-authors who write under a pen name, so it can happen.

Think about whether you can set aside the negative emotions that make a writer want to be the ONLY ONE to play with an idea. It might be you can't. Not everyone is suited to co-authoring. But if you can, it's well worth the experiment.

I'm a perfectionist too, textbook Virgo with OCD besides, so I can totally sympathize. Getting so excited about some new project, characters to fall in love with and some big struggle to help them through--and then the doubt comes in. It is hard.

I've always been like that, but in college it got even worse, with depression and anxiety kicking in as well, so my mantra became 'It doesn't have to be good, it just has to be done.' Giving myself permission to let it be whatever it is, good or bad, until I can get it done and consider the work as a whole. I had to use that line for papers, but since college I've used it for regular writing projects too--and, hell, for just about any creative project. When I'm working on it I only see the flaws.

A lot of the time, other people don't even see those flaws (glaring as they are to me) unless I point them out. And after a while, with a little distance between me and my project, I can look at it more objectively, and you know? It's always much better than I remember. Doing that enough times has helped me look a little more gently on my works in progress (but I still see the flaws, and probably always will).

I had a similar problem. I would start, get discouraged, find reasons to hate it, and then give up.

To cure this I wrote a novel just for me. In it, the protagonist was my inner critical self. I unleashed the most inane problems and conflicts on the poor #@%& until I had plot structure down and finished it.

I then lovingly resurrected my inner critic in the real world to carefully massage the work into an actual MS. And after I painstakingly polished the thing, I did the sensible thing.

I ceremonially burned it.

After that I wrote whatever I wanted to, and gave myself permission to screw up.

Jamesaritchie said:

Yes, because they CHOOSE to let it stop them. Period. There is no literate person who can't finish any novel they start, unless they find some reason that's an excuse to stop.

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You really can't understand that sometimes people night CHOOSE not to finish something because they don't like it?

I certainly don't think you're a special case.

My husband is having trouble finding the motivation to finish his work because it isn't fun. He wants help finding his passion and finding his motivation.

If you have advice to help him, let's hear it.

If not, there is no reason for you to comment.

Celia Cyanide said:

My husband is having trouble finding the motivation to finish his work because it isn't fun. He wants help finding his passion and finding his motivation.

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A good thing to remember is that passion comes from the Latin verb patere, which means "to suffer."

I heard a very riveting sermon from a woman who talked about the true meanings of passion. I'm not Christian but I was deeply moved by what she told me, which is that at a certain point you have to do some suffering in order to get the work done. Suffering may come in lack of sleep on some nights. It may come from not having fun. But, you keep doing it because this is what you were meant to do. Some people don't realize how passionate they are about something until they've suffered through the toil and completed the work.

And I don't know... sure, the planning and thinking of a novel is fun. But the writing itself? Not so much fun to me. This week so far I've been able to get in only maybe under 4k words, which is still awesome but not my personal best. It was not fun, so now it's just a matter of finishing it. I'm sure I'll have better days.

Maybe your husband should find something fun to do, forget about the novel for a bit (but have a notebook on him in case he gets some ideas) then return to the book when he's ready. He might find that although he's having fun away from the project, his mind can't stop thinking about it, and will feel compelled to return to his work.

I've personally had to self-administer behavioral therapy on myself to view the whole thing in a different light.

Still haven't finished anything, though...

And I need to get back on it. First, I was sick & stopped writing, then the apartment managers had the roof retiled (& we're on the top floor) and now my friend is trying to gear up for her last GED test & needs someone to watch her kids almost every single day. I don't think I've written anything new in about two or three weeks...