like yeah this is EXACTLY why you're not supposed to get feedback from people you know
if i listened to my writing buddies and never sought feedback from random people on reddit, i'd never know my every word is an incomprehensible disaster that violates all known convention from pure incompetence
i think it's telling how the only people who have nice things to say about my writing are those with motive to be nice to me / think i need a pep talk
it's strangers who tell me i write 3rd person wrong and assume I don't read I'm butchering it so bad
Not hard to figure out who's right lmao
no, omg, my crit partner was SO gentle about it and phrased it even more like a joke than anything
and her "try first person" was also framed as a suggestion
she couldn't have said it nicer if she tried. like so nice that it almost didn't register as feedback
(also crit partners are, well, CRIT partners
she'd be useless to me if she was just a hype man who never said anything constructive
it's frankly a good thing that she was like, yeah, your third person does need to be fixed" (because it does)
she's also a great writer and i trust her
but yeah. she completely saw my point in that "if i bring it close, i get told to write in first person. if i back it up, i get told my narrator is too visible and. people even had problems with the middle ground"
i don't know what im doing.
no my crit partner is a delight and the only thing keeping my writing sanity hanging by a thread
i was walking through reddit person's critique with her (and your second opinion. and another person's opinion) and if nothing else she saw merit in my concern that "it's a problem i can't sort it out"
yeah. i think the worst part about my abysmal writing skills is that i'm trying. i'm writing, studying writing, reading craft books, advice from professional writers / editors, reading in general, editing, getting critique
and yet, i'm not capable of learning. and i don't know why. and it sucks
i'm slowly coming to terms with the fact that i'm never going to finish writing anything, never gonna produce anything good, definitely never going to share in any capacity let alone be published
it fucking sucks. because i don't know why i'm just incapable of learning
we've hit the part of "me being bad at writing despite trying literally everything" where even my critique partner is now saying i'm not good at writing third person pov (yknow, like reddit guy from friday said) and either switch to first or do poetry instead
guess ill go fuck myself
bc i WILL remind you all that i haven't written anything since thursday because i wrote that my pov character looked at something and i couldn't think of a way to remove the filtering
which meant my scene had to change
and meant i'm a bad writer for ever writing that in draft 2 in the first place
sigh yeah i'm pretty sure my writing's just... gone
antidepressants, therapy, breaks, switching projects, reading, studying writing, getting crit...
none of that improved the "i have a multi-day long breakdown if i realize ONE bad sentence" (theyre all bad. but *realizing* it makes me wanna hurl)
yknow i'm actually okay with the fact that i haven't written my main novel in over a year & it's taken me 1.5 years to write the 68k i have & it's been too long for me to go back
it's given me tons of time to think "none of this makes sense" to tbh i'm glad i didn't waste my time lmao
like the person who told me i wasn't in my characters heads is right
if you're writing from someone's pov you don't say they looked at someone you just write what they're looking at
im filtering where i shouldn't and its making my story so WEAK and im at a loss for what to do here
but at the same time i think it's valid to be frustrated with myself for writing "pov character looked at something" because nothings happening, the scene isn't dynamic, it's stale description, and being unable to figure out how to bring it closer and fucking do ANY action
repeatedly.
but am too stubborn to realize it
maybe i'm not panicking over writing because it's giving me anxiety. maybe i'm just having a terrible time because of COURSE forcing myself to do something i hate is going to make me feel like shit
this isn't fair at ALL
ah yep i'm crying over writing again
this isn't fair. this isn't fucking fair
i GOT help for my anxiety and depression. it's not fair that i'm still a mess
like at this point i'm starting to wonder if my writing struggles had NOTHING to do with my mental health and that i just don't like writing
stagnant description that necessitates the filtering is the problem
and yeah i probably should cut it out because your characters have to be doing things at all times, but this is (at least for now) a necessary things to include
but i'm stuck. and i don't know what to do or how to bring it close
looking IS the action. it's not like "birds flew overhead" or "snow fell" where there's an action i can describe anyway. and it's not him taking in a new surrounding. and i can't figure out how to get him to physically interact with it
and that's the problem. the filtering isn't the problem, the
also for what it's worth, the thing that set me off in my writing this time was having written "(character) looked at (thing)" and i used to be very good at avoiding that
but this time for the fucking life of me i CANNOT figure out how to remove the filter. and i know that's my fault, because the
but that's more or less what it is. low fantasy noir crimey something something while also not really being either of those
better described as "fantasy crime and punishment meets goodfellas" (novel) or "a terrible green mile / fantasy shawshank knockoff" (novella)
see and here's where the answer gets really stupid and more evidence that i've got no business doing this
i'm calling it a "low fantasy thriller" except it's too slow and character-forward to be a thriller, and two people have told me the setting shouldn't be fantasy
that's very noble, but ugh, i've never been a fan of the "participation trophy" philosophy of encouragement
i've always thrived off being pushed and challenged. telling me "keep up the good work" is a surefire way to get me to stagnate. not just in writing, but in everything. but yeah writing too
(it's draft 2 so don't give me any "shitty first draft" talk)
i miss the me who could write more than 200 words in a day over the course of 5 hours while experiencing crippling anxiety about it
signed: i opened scriv this morning and, 7 hours later, haven't written a WORD because i'm too overwhelmed and lost and can't think and it'll be bad anyway
oh that's adorable that you think i'm capable of an intriguing plot
i've told my crit partner time and time again that. "nothing happens" in my book and "there's no plot," she insists that there is, but when i ask her "what is it" she talks about the character's emotional baggage
that's not a plot
yeah i know the issue's skill
but i think if it's been 16 years since i started writing seriously, i majored in it, i read constantly, i was writing every day until i hit burnout and even now i'm still managing *something* most days, and i haven't had a scrap of improvement? there's something more
honestly, when i'm "not trying" it ends up so much worse. i didn't "try" my main novel and that's the reason i abandoned it, because it was an unsalvageable mess
like we can just admit that some people don't have "it" and can't even write something coherent after 6 attempts, its fine
i imagine that was an intentional style choice, rather than a matter of not knowing any better
than needed to make the point, then it's unacceptable to me
authors who are good writers don't have weak sentences. they might have simple "tell instead of show" sentences but they're still strong on a concept & structure level, and not poorly written
yeah? sorry i thought i answered that, given... the quality score i want to achieve on each one would be in the A column
if even one sentence is out of place, poorly written, has a to-be verb, starts and ends on a weak word, has a word that wasn't the best i could've chosen, goes on for more words
