June 19th check-in

[roane]

Threatening to be a scorcher of a day here in the US Midwest, so I figured I'd better get this up early!

Poll #10886

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 7

View Respondents

How has the writing gone today?

View Answers

Great!
4 (57.1%)

Average
2 (28.6%)

Meh
0 (0.0%)

Other (in comments)
1 (14.3%)

What did you do today?

View Answers

Wrote
6 (85.7%)

Edited
2 (28.6%)

Sent to beta
0 (0.0%)

Posted
0 (0.0%)

Researched
0 (0.0%)

Other
1 (14.3%)

What is the most difficult thing for you about keeping a writing habit? Is it RL getting in the way? Is it running out of ideas? Motivation? What's your biggest obstacle?

Comments

[roane]

I am in writing HELL right now. That's partly why I've been so quiet. I'm wrestling with the climactic chapter of my long WIP, and I'm doubting my abilities like crazy and I keep taking the wrong approach to it. This is my biggest obstacle, when I start winding myself up in a ball like this. I think I'm blocking my own self here and I need to figure out how to break it.

[crowdog66]

Which sucks. :( Do you have a beta to give you feedback? Sometimes a second POV can help immensely (or at least I find it so).

[roane]

I do, thank god. Two amazing betas, and another person who's been helping me with the military/action portion of things. I think I might have FINALLY broken through today. I seriously could not have written as much of this whole story as I have without my betas. I'm gonna owe them cookies once I've finished. :)

[linaewen]

I'm just getting started on my scorching hot day, but I chose "wrote" in the poll because that's my plan for the later part of the day -- if I'm not too tired after what will probably be an extra busy RL kind of day.

The most difficult thing for me is definitely Real Life. It gets in the way, wears me out and generally uses up too much time that could be spent on writing. ;-) I hardly ever run out of ideas, and I have outlines for chapters that I haven't even got to yet, so I'm good to go, if I can just overcome the obstacle of Real Life. What usually happens is that, even if I end up having time during the day to write, I'm too tired or my brain can't concentrate on anything difficult, so I end up surfing or watching video or something lightweight like that.

[roane]

Oh, I so understand the brain drain. I hate when that happens. :(

[the_rck]

I have trouble getting myself to write when my daughter's around. I'm not sure why that is, but it's definitely true. I think it started when she started reading over my shoulder. She's not really interested in doing that any more, but I'm in the habit of hiding things from her now. Not that I often write anything that isn't G rated these days, and stories about characters she's never heard of aren't likely to interest her. Maybe if I wrote Harry Potter or Percy Jackson fic. Maybe.

[crowdog66]

I've actually written ~800 words today, which considering how hard I pushed myself yesterday on a paying freelance project (finishing twenty-six pages of comic color in a single day) is not bad at all.

Depression is my biggest enemy: it saps my creativity and my will to persevere. These last couple of years I've had good medication control of the condition so I usually don't have a problem fitting in my couple of hours of writing in the morning, but when the depression hits it knocks the legs right out from under me.

[roane]

God, depression is the worst thing ever. :/ I've been fortunate the past couple of years too, but it's always there as a shadow to watch for, you know?

[lullabymoon]

276 words today which is the most I've managed in about a fortnight!

RL tends to be the biggest thing. There are a lot of days at the moment where I'm focussing on everything else that writing just slips down my list so that by the time I finally remember, I'm too tired to write.

[elistaire]

Being tired. And not having enough contiguous time.

If I'm tired, I just can't start.