Are any of your projects 'bigger' than you are?

I feel that way at times, so then I cast away the bigger picture, and look at the story itself. If you love it, you can write it. Allow yourself to write a crappy first draft. Tell yourself it will be okay if it doesn't turn out perfect, then get going on it. All authors were beginners and unpublished at the beginning. You have to let it roll off your shoulder and trudge on.

Also even if you completely botch it, you can always come back at a later day and fix it when you're skills are up to it.

Yeah, I can empathize. Your signature line is something I read a long time ago and it encouraged me way back in those days, (you know those days). Another one I read was, "Start and you are half way there" I sure hope that's true.
I'm a bit further a long now, I've had some writing success, not huge (yet) but enough to encourage me and let me know I'm on the right path.
and yeah, it has been a slog, learning the craft, and how to edit, and how to write rubbish and not despair and swing at it again, or maybe reread it and realise it wasn't as bad as you thought it was. Still, the point is, slowly but surely I am learning the craft and I can see the results. My writing is definitely improving. Apparently there's a million words of rubbish in everybody so if you want to get at your writing gold, then you have to write and write in order to excavate it. Stephen King said, writing and reading are what you need to do if you want to be a good writer. You can be good enough for your book, just make sure you remain focused on it, even if you're reading a book on editing, or critting someone else's work, tell yourself, this is all for me, and the giant work I am going to undertake.

And the idea, it came to you. It wants you to write it. Don't worry about someone else getting it. They won't. I recently read a book that was spookily similar to the first short story I sold. If I had read the book first, there would have been no way I could have written the story cos I would have thought the book had influenced me. So many components of his story were in mine. But we handled it completely differently. It's like the idea was floating around and we both grabbed it in different ways. Neither of us would ever accuse the other of copying. Actually I bought the book cos the blurb reminded me of my story. Then I started reading it and left it, cos it wasn't at all like my story. Then I picked it up again later and realised, how many similarities there actually was.

Oh and procrastination. Yeah, I'm familiar. A really great book that will help you through that is called "The War Of Art" Read it. You might cry. You will write.

Yes. And no. This idea of mine has been an idea for like, 8 years now. It just keeps building and building, and finally, I decided to stop procrastinating and put it down on paper. I"m also a beginer. I started in June, and wow have my writing skills improved (thanks to my beta's and my AWESOME crit partner. YOu know who you are! *hugs*)

It doesn't matter what you think. Whether or not you can write it the way you 'feel' it should be written. What matters is that it be told. I agree with the above people. Get it written, and then go from there. 8 years ago I started the story. I wasn't the greatest writer than (and am not saying I am now but I'm a lot better). I got discouraged because of rejection in contests, etc. So I stopped. But the story didn't. It finally came back full blast and now I have no choice but to tell it.

I’m a middle age married father of four. I have a normal day job, a mortgage and loans. I make mistakes, spell horribly and goof up.

Yet an idea flooded my average mind with such power that it stole who I am. I call this thing, this power, this inspiration my muse. The story it DEMANDS I write is very large. It will cover three hundred years, from the years just before the Salem Witch Trials to the present day. It’s beyond me . . . but I know I have to be the one who writes it. Not Rowling or any other author. Me.

So two years ago I jumped in with both feet and opened the dark cellar where my muse waited. I sat my but in the chair, ignored all else and let her fly.

After two years, I got a rough draft with enough good to grab people and keep them. Turned out the muse inside me was so strong that it started sucking in the other people who I tested it with. Did I have to change anything? YOU BET! More description, a different ending, lots of grammar changes and so on, but the desire still drove me. I finished the changes and this desire, this muse, never satisfied, pushed out a query letter, then the synopsis. Then she demanded I send the query out and now I’m still waiting.

My point? Only YOU have that fire inside for your project. DON’T ignore it or fall back into self-doubt. Just shut up those normal fears, slam your butt in your chair and feed that muse. After the months of writing, and the dust settling, THEN you’ll address your shortcomings for the betterment of your project.

You can do it. If you couldn’t, then “it” would not have chosen you. Just do it and deal later after you have it out to look at.

If the project is too big for you, don't write it. Move onto something more your size. Or, you can take up the challenge. In other words, the decision is yours--climb the little hill or climb the mountain. I can guess where the view will be better.

How do you know you can't write it? When you quit, then you can't write it.

Assuming you are writing then I guess you can write it...until you quit...then you can't...but if you quit how do you know you can't, since you quit.

So, I guess if you don't quit then you can write it.

The roleplaying game I was designing turned out to be much bigger than I could do myself or with volunteers - it really needed several thousand dollars or even several hundred thousand dollars of budget to be developed properly. So I wrote down all my thoughts about it then set it aside to find something more managable to work on, like a novel or a graphic novel.

I dunno, I write so I can be bigger than me. I can completely understand being overwhelmed by something, and if you can't write it, you can't- but there has to be some risk involved, or else you're not growing as a writer.

JKRowling's first published work was Harry Potter.

Anyone even a beginner can write something larger than life. Put the pen to paper and get cracking. We'll all be cheering you on from the sidelines.

10000

Spirit,
Believe in yourself and your writing. All else will follow. Trust me! If you have that fire inside like you say you do, then no feat is too great. You have to believe before anyone else does.

Spirit_Fire said:

I mean, if I write this the way I imagine it, it will be my masterwork.

But I keep trying anyway. For the reason why, refer to my signature below.

Click to expand...

Write it, and it will be your masterwork. Right up until you write the next one, even better, and that one becomes your masterwork.

But it's nobody's masterwork unless you write it.

I have to keep telling myself that, too.

HN

The Lady said:

And the idea, it came to you. It wants you to write it. Don't worry about someone else getting it. They won't. I recently read a book that was spookily similar to the first short story I sold. If I had read the book first, there would have been no way I could have written the story cos I would have thought the book had influenced me.

Click to expand...

Been there.

About seven years ago I came up with a cool idea and started writing it. Average Joe wakes up from a nightmare about being killed in a car crash. Goes about his morning routine, and realizes that things look like his nightmare. He decides to take a different route to work, and learns later he misses a major pileup on the highway. He cheated death. But then his loved ones start getting hurt, people he knows start dying in strange ways. Cool idea, right?

About a year later "Final Destination" came out, and I haven't touched that story since.

for me, when i started to feel like my story idea was too big, it was because i basically did not want fully experience the raw emotion of the subject matter i want to write about. it's not like i would be allowing myself to be vulnerable "just a little," like it was an on/off switch as i write and piece together my first novel. i would be volunteering it, and was afraid that once i "let it out," i would not be able to stop. like getting dry heaves. i actually don't like to think of writing my story as letting something out, because it sounds to me like i would be expelling something instead of creating something. that's why procrastination can oftentimes be a tough beast; it can further make you feel like you have to unload something that's just been building and building. also, when i would talk myself into just letting it out on paper or on my comp, i was afraid of producing something that would be difficult to look back at once i started the editing. i know, because i experienced this with my non-fiction work.

it's easy to justify procrastination, though. i did not want to throw myself in developing my idea without feeling like i could handle the work and the responsibility. i wanted to be in control, and not lose myself in the characters i created, which is why it's human to try to avoid a big idea by putting it off. sometimes, you can feel like you've let yourself down if the big idea was not as big as originally thought once you've made it into something tangible. but that's why writing a full-length piece is real work. you won't really know how big your story is until you actually write it; right now, it's just being magnified under a microscope.

If your project is easy to write, costs you no anxiety, breaks no sweat, then you'll find yourself with a fluid but shallow stream of junk out of Dan Brown or William Buckley. Nothing that lasts.

If the challenge almost kills you, the stream of facile words becomes the implacable river of an idea. Maybe it looks calm on top, quietly wending its way to its destination, but underneath is power, volume, and enough energy to alter landscapes.

How embarrassing it must be to be Dan Brown or Stephen King, when a single glance at Malraux or Camus or Kafka shatters all your self-esteem.

If it isn't difficult, you aren't trying hard enough. I wouldn't tackle any mountain unless the summit was far out of sight and unimaginably difficult to climb.

seanie blue said:

If the challenge almost kills you ... Maybe it looks calm on top, quietly wending its way to its destination, but underneath is power, volume, and enough energy to alter landscapes.

Click to expand...

So... if the story looks calm on the surface but is churning below, and does Not almost kill to write... I'm not working hard enough?

All joking aside:

I prefer adhering to another adage: A journey of a 1000 miles starts with one step. (As does the journey to the top of Wang Shan.)

(^_^)

seanie blue said:

How embarrassing it must be to be Dan Brown or Stephen King, when a single glance at Malraux or Camus or Kafka shatters all your self-esteem.

Click to expand...

Somehow I doubt either one of them are embarrassed to be themselves. Otherwise King would have given up ages ago. They all have their places as writers, just worry about making yours.

seanie blue said:

If the challenge almost kills you, the stream of facile words becomes the implacable river of an idea. Maybe it looks calm on top, quietly wending its way to its destination, but underneath is power, volume, and enough energy to alter landscapes.

How embarrassing it must be to be Dan Brown or Stephen King, when a single glance at Malraux or Camus or Kafka shatters all your self-esteem.

Click to expand...

I don't get this - why would SK or DB think their own work is facile and not good enough? Or am I misunderstanding you?

Are you saying that genre fiction is not challenging to write?

Both Dan Brown and Stephen King are on the record for being embarrassed (and humbled) by their success. They're good sports about it, and do not try to pretend their stuff is anything but lowbrow. I've personally seen King squirm when "literature" gets mentioned, and I've heard through the New York literary grapevine that the various attacks on Brown's shoddy research and sloppy style hurt him a great deal.

On the other hand, Camus, Kafka and Malraux were tormented by their own feelings of inadequacy. I've read every word written by Camus and Kafka -- letters, unpublished MSs, etc. -- and nowhere do they lament not reaching any standard but their own. King and Brown, to their credit, have denigrated their own efforts compared to other writers, even contemporary ones. I won't say who said it, but King confided in a friend that he would trade every piece of "junk" he's written for one "Stranger."

Jermoe K. Jerome and Sherwood Anderson were massive bestsellers in their day, but nobody reads a word from them because time has made them irrelevant. Twenty years after they're dead, Brown and King will be off the shelves and they know it. If that's all they were aiming for, cool. But if anyone is aiming for that sort of trashy success, they're bound to be disappointed.

And I wonder how many defenders of King and Brown have even bothered with the amazing layers of story-telling plumbed by Malraux or Camus or Kafka? Even Lawrence Durrell, whose quartet is admired by King, is unknown to most bad readers of Children of the Corn and other childish junk. There's a reason people who read Camus sniff at King in derision, and it has everything to do with talent, vision, imagination and, most important of all, compassion. Camus writes for a people, wounded, and King writes for a buck, and morons.

my advice would be to write the story to the best of your current ability, then write it again. and again. and again. rewrite it, edit it, write it over from the beginning. print it out, and type it all in again correcting sentences as you go. Write it now, and the person you are that rewrites it, edits it, rewrites it, etc will be a better writer than the you that wrote it originally. It will get better each time.
Write it, then rewrite it.
I hope this helps! Good luck! YOu can do it! Just get the story out and as your writing improves you can improve the story! Go for it!

As writers, and as people, we should always challenge ourselves. Believe that you can write that story and you will. It may be difficult, but all the best things are. Believe that you are up to the challenge and you will be.

Please stop putting Dan Brown and Stephen King in the same group. Dan Brown is a typist who got lucky with some decent research. Stephen King is actually a very good writer- he has his flaws, but he's honest, and he's an excellent story-teller. I've read The Stranger, I've read Gaddis and Pynchon and Joyce and Cervantes and Shakespeare and Marquez and many others, and I've loved all of them; but just because they exist doesn't mean they're the only writers that should exist.

Regardless, if you actually think The Da Vinci Code and, say, Misery or Pet Sematary or The Dead Zone are on the same level, maybe you're just as confused as those poor fools who didn't get a whole lot out of reading The Stranger.

Spit Fire:

That’s how I got started in this writing business. Fantastic idea--words just flowed. And it was dreck. Going back and learning a bit about writing took me years (and a couple of unrelated novels to shake out the kinks) Just my $0.02, but consider writing something light or even magazine stuff--so you get a feel for the craft before beginning on what is a vastly underpaid (and often painful) career.