Check-In – Day 2

[samuraiter]

Starting is either the easiest or the hardest step of the story process. I feel like the gray space between starting and finishing is the hardest, myself. ... What have you been doing?

— Thinking. Maybe a little, maybe a lot.
— Writing.
— Planning and / or researching.
— Editing.
— Sending things to the beta.
— Posting!
— Relaxing, taking a break, etc.
— Other stuff-ing. Look at the comment.

Question: How do you feel when you run out of steam in the middle of writing a story?

Comments

[autobotscoutriella]

I sketched out a plot outline for my very first challenge-participation short fic! I'm really stretching myself out of my comfort zone here, so I'm waiting to get some feedback from a friend who does some beta-ing for me on whether or not the idea is close enough to the prompt I was given, but I'm super excited that something came to mind so quickly.

When I run out of steam, it usually means I just have too much going on--stress, overwhelmed at work, that kind of thing. It's sad. Means that I need to pull back on something, and I'm not good at that, so it's usually pretty frustrating.

[enemytosleep]

Today I used my lunch break to collect fanwork recs to leave as stocking stuffers for a bunch of fandom_stocking participants. I had 25 prompts that I had pulled to write for, but with my cold and everything this week I've accepted that I won't get something written for each of them.

I wrapped up a first draft on the 15th prompt I’ve taken and sent that to beta. I have a final prompt I plan to fill, and I have a beefy outline already put together with a bunch of nerdery researched and ready. All that's left is to write! I also added my new chapter fic to this group’s AO3 collection so that I will be sure to focus on it more this month. I would love to be done with all the holiday exchange fics by the 18th or earlier so that I can get Chapter Two finished and posted.

[lady_katana4544]

After a day of no writing yesterday and some planning of things; I did so more outlining ideas and working on a sign up for the chocolatebox exchange while doing a bit of fic posting today.

When I run out of steam while in the middle of writing a story, I take a break from the story itself and work on rethinking the plot of the story and either work on another project at the same time or think about rewriting the story entirely.

[peachpai]

I've just been working on some planning and organizing my files, getting ready to work on the chapter I want to finish this month. Hopefully tomorrow I'll actually be able to put some new words down!

I actually tend not to notice much when I run out in the middle of story. It sort of gradually gets put on hold until I suddenly feel like writing again, or it gets abandoned if I feel like it's not worth continuing. I don't generally feel upset about it, or much of anything really. Creative writing is an entirely personal hobby for me (ie. I don't write with an audience in mind), so I don't see a point in thinking about it too hard one way or another.

[frogfarm]

Still making good progress on main WIP, having finished scene 5 of a planned 8.

Running out of steam in the middle? Usually when that happens, I just switch to a different WIP. The upside of having so many is that no matter what kind of mood I'm in, I can almost always find something I'm capable of working on. (This is also probably more of an issue when writing longer fics, which I haven't done much of the last few years.)

[dragoness_e]

When I "run out of steam", that's usually the story's way of telling me that I don't know where I'm going with it, or went in the wrong direction, or am missing something important and need to stop and re-think what I'm doing.

My other thumb rule is "If this stretch of writing/scene bores me to write it, it will bore the reader to read it, so it either needs skipping or re-writing"

[enemytosleep]

I like that thought process!

[justanorthernlight]

I wrote for about 10 minutes, which is better than nothing.

It's funny, I've really been struggling with the middles of stories lately, too. I've been getting about the first 1/3rd of it down, or the first 'act', and then stalling out, probably because I haven't finished anything in a while. Part of it is that I tend to write (or attempt to write) plotty gen stories, and there's behind the scenes things that I need to work out, like the villains' nefarious plans, things that I need to know but the characters/audience don't know at that point in the story. It's extremely frustrating.