Hi, I'm new. And having lurked here for a few days, I'm hoping that the clearly experienced and talented folk who post here will be able to help me before I go mad.

I've always written bits and pieces, on and off, since I was a little girl. My Nan used to call me 'the scribe' and writing came easily to me when I was very young.

But, as I've got older - and I'm now in my forties - it has got harder and harder. To the point that, I feel that whenever I try to write, someone is looking over my shoulder and I become almost embarrassed about setting anything down on paper.

A few years ago, after agonising over what to write - novel? humour? poetry? - I started writing . . . screenplays. And they weren't bad, either. I got an agent (big one, Chelsea, can't remember name?) almost interested - 'not this one, but send us anything else you write' - but the ultimate answer was always something along the lines of 'well written, but uncommercial'. My last (and best) one was based on the life of a half-famous woman who lived 200 years ago, the previous two totally original. Finally, I couldn't face writing another and stopped writing altogether for several years.

Now, I would really like to try writing a novel but when I sit in front of the computer screen or a fat, blank pad of paper, nothing happens. Sometimes, I get a 'good' idea and if I don't write it down, it begets other ideas and the thing seems to flesh out and get legs. But always, after about a fortnight, the whole idea seems like crap and dies on me. If I do write it down, the same process takes about a week.

I don't know if it's my lack of experience and lack of confidence getting in the way or whether I just lack the talent. I have been driving myself crazy over this, to the point of almost making myself ill.

I am not driven to express a certain pet idea or theme and I often hear professional writers talk as if one must be totally driven or forget it. I am driven by the desire to write, but the whole thing overwhelms me and the fear stops the thing happening.

Or am I just clinging to the fact that the only thing I excelled at at school was writing?

Please help this dazed and confused pretend writer! Thanks.

Hi scaredycat, and welcome to WW.

I do understand what you mean, and I suspect that your problem is an over-zealous inner critic. In the past few years I've tried my hand at, among other things, learning to paint and draw, and learning to play a musical instrument. I got little satisfaction from these because I wanted to be perfect from the word go. I hated the learning process because I couldn’t reconcile the cost with the gains.

Writing was the only art where I could allow myself mistakes and false starts. I think this was because it was only words typed on a computer – I wasn’t wasting expensive paint or the cost of music lessons – so I continued practising the art of writing.

And you do need to practice. You need to experiment, and find your own voice. Forget about lacking the talent. If you have the determination, you will find it. Switch off your inner censor. Play with words, with different ways to construct sentences and express concepts. ENJOY it! Then shove it all away in a doggy bag and save it. In a couple of year’s time you’ll be able to go back to it and see how much you’ve improved since then.

Good luck. If you need support with your writing, you’ve come to the right place.

Dee

writing came easily to me when I was very young

I've just noticed this. It’s so strange, because drawing came easily to me when I was young. At some point in my growing up, this ability was damaged, and I've never given it the commitment to repair it… not sure if that will help you or not!

Scaredycat, welcome to WW.

I think Dee's advice is spot on. It sounds as if your inner critic is sabotaging your ideas just at the point when you're beginning to feel they've got some mileage. Clearly, if you've got that far with screenwriting it's not talent or determination that you lack, however disheartened you're feeling at the moment. But a novel is a daunting thing: your critic may think s/he's protecting you from doing anything so dangerous, by telling you in all the ways s/he can think of that it's not worth bothering.

In which case you might want to explore some ways of bypassing him/her for a while. The simplest is free writing: pick an anchor phrase - a phrase that appeals to you, perhaps from a book - and write longhand non-stop (no corrections, no pauses, spelling/grammar/punctuation don't matter) for fifteen or twenty minutes. It really, really doesn't matter what you write, so your inner critic can switch off while you write. If you hit a wall (it's usually around the ten minute mark) either write about being stuck, or write the anchor phrase over and over again, and eventually something else will float into your mind. I repeat - it doesn't matter what you write. You may find some gems you want to develop in there. Or you may not. You may find you shed some rubbish from the day, or you may enter the Zone. But I guarantee sooner or later you'll revisit the springs of what got you writing in the first place. One of the wisest and best writer-teachers I know does this every morning before she settles down to her own work, and does it with almost all her classes too.

Have you come across Julia Cameron's The Artist's Way? I'm not a self-help book or a how-to-write book afficionado, but it's absolutely terrific at releasing the creativity that's being stifled for one reason or another. Even if you don't work your way through it methodically, it's incredibly helpful for exploring how creativity works.

Normally to newcomers to WW I say, 'join a group, get commenting, do post work if you want to,' but in your case I wonder if you actually need to stay away from others' opinions for a while, and have the freedom to mess around privately. Rather than honing your running track technique, perhaps you need to be able to run up and down a deserted beach and roll around in the sand, strip off your clothes if you want to, shriek or sing or dance, without worrying that anyone will disapprove, or comment, or think you mad or bad or dangerous to know. It's all right - no one's looking!

At some point, some time, an idea will refuse to leave you, and you'll want to take it further. For what it's worth, for myself, I try to incorporate some of that 'free-writing' feeling into how I write first drafts. Until recently I did them long-hand, full-blast, not looking back, not fiddling, just scribbling a note if something occurred to me (i.e. when my inner critic piped up) and keeping going. My MS was full of things that said, 'right idea, wrong words' and 'is her hair red or brown?' And even 'is this horribly boring?' or 'cliché!!'. I only went back and dealt with them all when the first draft was written. Then your inner critic is useful.

Another good book about this aspect of writing is the classic, Dorothea Brande's Becoming a Writer. She's very good in the divide in the writer's psyche between 'writer' and 'editor'.

Very good luck, and again, welcome to WW.

Emma

<Added>

Dee, your comment about drawing reminds me that Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain has a lot in common with Julia Cameron's work...

Thank you, Dee, your comments are much appreciated. The wisdom of people on this board amazes me!

I am terribly self-critical and I'm also not good at allowing myself to enjoy writing; there's a part of me that thinks it shouldn't be enjoyable. No pain, no gain?

When I was writing my screenplays, I read all manner of textbooks to help me learn the craft and I found them very helpful. Somehow, the couple of books I've read on novel writing have proved as inhibiting as they are useful. I think you're right, I have to learn to walk before I can run, but part of me thinks I should be able to run from the get-go. Rather arrogant, really.

I think if I could relax and just allow myself to write (put right, then wright, before getting that, er, right - tiredness plus third glass of inferior red) the flow would start and it might be better than I fear. Fear is the greatest inhibitant of all. The enormity of the task is, well, enormous.

However, I tiled the bathroom by just starting and it got finished. Same principle? I think it was Mark Twain who said any task is made easier by breaking it down into smaller tasks, then starting on the first one. Know all.

No coward's soul is mine! Oh crumbs.

Can you suggest an exercise for getting started? If someone could set me a task like, 'write three paragraphs around this idea', I could break through the barrier I'm facing and perhaps someone could even comment on the quality or otherwise of what I've written? If this is too much of an imposition, though, I quite understand. I feel I'm being horribly self-indulgent as it is.

Thanks again, Dee, and thanks in advance to anyone else who might like to comment.

Hello Emma,

I just noticed your post as I finished replying to Dee's. It may be me, but this board seems quite difficult to navigate at times.

Thanks so much, very useful comments and I will try the free writing thing and see if it releases my mind from it's current bondage. Not sure about running about without my vest on but shrieking holds a certain appeal. Will experiment.

I feel a bit like Alice trying to get into the garden. Perhaps, with your help and Dee's, I will find the little cake with 'WRITE ME' beautifully picked out in currants.

Currents?

Thank you both, again. By God, there's a writer in me somewhere.

this board seems quite difficult to navigate at times.

Like most things, it’s not so bad once you get used to it. Luckily, Emma and I have been around for a while, so can give you plenty of tips if you need them.

One good exercise which most people seem to enjoy is to write about their ideal writing space – what would it be like if all your dreams could be realised – it gets you into a positive frame of mind and can spark off some very positive trains of thought. If you feel up to receiving feedback afterwards, post it in the general archive, or join the Fiction Seminar group, which is a good place for experimenting with concepts and story ideas.

Dee

Scaredycat, I can't remember if as a part member you can see the group forums, but the Teachers' Group has several threads discussing exercises and things. Some may only be suitable for a class, but I know some are doable on your own.

Another getting-the-juices-going book lots of people recommend is Writing Down the Bones. Sorry, can't remember who it's by.

Emma

Writing Down the Bones is by Natalie Goldberg (I picked a copy up off eBay). It's full of very freeing suggestions, taking away rules rather than adding them, allowing yourself to be awkward. But the suggestions in the posts above are really helpful too.

That's the one!

Emma

Hi Scaredycat

I write for a living in journalism and PR, but like you I have also recently got to the point of 'hating' creative writing: I can't write, what I write is rubbish, no one else will like it, it doesn't work, I want to be different from other writers, I want to be commercial and on and on and on.

I must confess I haven't completely overcome these problems, but being part of WW is a boost and i have signed up for one of the courses offered by Write Words and that is helping.

But the main thing that I am re-discovering - and therefore realised what was misssing - the enjoyment of writing. I think you have to stop being so hard on yourself and try and get back to writing because you enjoy it, which is probably where you started.

Just write the stuff, don't analyse as you go along, and give it a while before going back and reading it. I often read stuff I have recently written and thought it was a load of old tutt - but then I have discovered things I discarded years ago and thought 'that's not bad'.

I think it is hard to step outside of the whole writing thing - who is a good writer, who is not. What works, what doesn't. But you have to, and only then can you write. And when you've written, and you're enjoying it again, that's when you step back in and get advice and support and opinion and all the rest of it.

For me writing is my world and in my world I'm the king, so why should I listen to anyone else putting me down - particularly if it is me! When I step outside of my world, then reality bites and that's a whole other kettle of cod in butter sauce, but you should start ruling your world first.

Hi scaredycat,

I am a notoriously slow writer, and when I took a deep breath and started novel-writing two years ago, I was known to sometimes spend up to six hours on one paragraph, bleeding out every word. This was, largely, because I didn't know what I was doing. There are so many things to wrestle with - characters, plot, structure, etc etc that it is very overwhelming.

Lots of people find freewriting useful. I don't because, like you, I am a perfectionist, and I can't bear to have one saggy word in a single sentence. In the end, the only way I managed to speed up my process (though I am still by no means hugely productive - a good day for me is 700 words) was by tackling an extended project - ie a novel - and letting it grow until one day - it literally was one day - I found myself with a full cast of characters moving in a decent direction. Once I knew where everything was going, I found that the story just got written and it was no longer quite so agonising.

I would never have done it on my own, though. I did an MA in Creative Writing, which cost lots of money and therefore I couldn't justify doing it unless I wrote. But in doing that, I did discover that there is nowhere in the world I would rather be than at my computer, which is a far cry from the days when I used to stay in bed because the idea of the blank page freaked me out so much. It's a cliche, but writing anything is like climbing a mountain - make sure you don't look up, just look at the bit you're tackling at the moment.

but writing anything is like climbing a mountain - make sure you don't look up

And don't look down, whatever you do.

Great advice from everyone there I think. I suppose the thing to ask yourself is - what exactly ARE you scared of? A pen, a computer a piece of paper? Its going to be something to do with status and achievement probably - so what does that have to do with writing?

As so many of us have discussed here, writing a novel takes so blinking long that in a way it is useless to be dreaming about outcomes and worrying about publishing contracts at this stage. And even if you are worrying about these things, it takes so long to write the thing you have to get something out of it while you do. This is not to say you wont be able to worry about all the other stuff in the future, but for the moment, you have plenty of time (believe me) to produce utter shite if you want and then some more utter shite and a bit more shite, and then, maybe something a bit better and a bit better and maybe even - good.

I think it is just a matter of making a decision. We go to work without going "am I good enough?" every day. Because we have to. For me, I made a decision to write a book and then, although like everyone I'm riddled with doubts, its a matter of "so what, I made a decision." I made a commitment, if you like, like Sappho talked about in another thread.

Another small thought though - if you are really like this at the moment, why don't you try some shorter fiction first. There has been much debate on short fiction on the site recently and I know in many ways it can be harder, however there are more competitions etc. You don't need to win them, but having an outside deadline could stifle the insecure voices for a while.

Best of luck with it all though. I think everyone here can empathise with what you're feeling.

Do you have any idea what you would like to write?

Why don't you try a short story, how about writing a Christmas short story? There, I've made a suggestion to get you started. It can be in any format, romantic, scary, thriller, tale with a twist, whatever you decide.

The good thing about writing is that you are the master. YOU control what happens, what each character says and does, which direction the story takes, whether it has a happy or sad ending. There is absolutely nothing to be scared of, and everything to be excited about.

So, off you go, and good luck

Katerina x

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Sorry, I know you would like to write a novel, but I meant as an exercise.