You’re doing it. For the first time in weeks, you’re in the zone. It’s just you and your computer, and you are writing the quickest and most efficiently you ever have.
It’s a work of art, what you’ve written. Gorgeous prose is forming from the creative genius that is your brain, and you’re spitting out so many sexy sentences that Shakespeare himself would tremble before your sheer talent.
You would shed a tear of joy, but you have no time to cry. You are in the midst of creating a masterpiece, the Mona Lisa of the writing world, and you cannot, nay, will not be disturbed by anything.
And then you get a notification, and your concentration is broken. You’ve forgotten whatever you were just writing, but it doesn’t matter anyway— you’re too busy getting distracted by scrolling through Instagram posts or sliding into someone’s DMs.
Before you’ve realized it, three hours have passed and your word count is still only 75.
We’ve all been here. The reason? Writing is hard.
But we all knew that already. So let’s go over the top writing woes together.
Procrastination
Procrastination— the bane of any writers existence.
You really want to finish that WIP that’s been collecting dust in that Google Drive folder that you never touch, so you open it up and you start writing.
But it’s just so easy to open up another tab and open YouTube which inevitably leads you down the rabbit hole of videos, and you eventually end up watching a Donald Trump parody of Ariana Grande’s God is a Woman— for research purposes, of course.
Though that was only a minor distraction! It was practically a reward for all the hard work you put in of opening the doc!
And now you’ve fallen into a cycle of denial, but that’s another problem.
Researching Is Chaos
It started out so simple. And yet, all that is left is anarchy.
All you wanted was to research what people in the Qing dynasty ate and yet somehow you’ve ended up reading Wu Zetian’s biography. In your defense, it is really interesting and now you’re invested in her life story, but this is a trap.
By following a link, you were brought to another page and then another and another, and now you are so far away from what your original topic was that there’s no hope for you to reach your prior levels of productivity.
You’ve fallen into Wikipedia Hell, and there is no escaping.
Looking Like A Psychopath
So you need to research something (again) for a really lit scene. For no particular reason, let’s use drowning. It’s Chapter Two and your MC is overdue for a murder attempt.
But you need to know the details! It’s all about realism, guys, realism. So you hop over to Google and search up what it feels like to drown.
And then you think: you know what would make this scene perfect? A knife. No— two knives.
So you search up different types of knives, find out you rather like kukri knives, and research how much blood someone has to lose before they bleed out and which spots are fatal or not. The works. Of course, this is all open next to your original tab about drowning so this scene of yours better be amazing or else you’ll seem like a serial killer for nothing.
Having Too Many WIPs
You’re in your Google Drive, and you’re overwhelmed. There are unfinished drafts everywhere, and you don’t know which one to focus on. Do you focus on your most recent idea you had in the shower? The one that is half-way done with the first draft? Or that WIP that’s been neglected since the dark days of 2012?
There is no right answer, and you want to scream. I can sympathize.
Falling in Love With Your Characters
Your characters are your children. Their personalities are full developed and likable, they’ve had top notch character development and they’re probably hot.
Inevitably, you get attached. You adore them, and these fictional creations are your favorite spawns in existence.
And then comes the time when you inevitably have to kill or cripple some of them irreparably.
It’s one thing to break your characters and build them up again, but to break them entirely? An emotional bond is about to be severed, and no one will really understand why you’ve called them to blubber on about some side character that you chose to off, nor will they understand what you mean when you cry it’s for the plot.
Just. Thinking.
You’re staring at your outline, and you don’t know how to get from Point A to Point B without doing a U-turn and a flip, and no magical solution is popping up to make sure your plot is logical.
So you do the right thing and go take an absurdly long shower and you just think. And think. And nothing’s making sense because your last three brain cells have decided to jump ship because the emptiness is getting to them.
Which means that no, you will not make substantial progress with your plot today, but at least you’re clean and smell like coconut.
Not Enough Ideas
The brain has been vacated. Only a tumbleweed is left.
Too Many Ideas
You’re watching a music video by k-pop star IU and try to pronounce her name as eye and yew. Then you start researching what a yew is and stumble across interesting lore, and behold! A new story idea to add to an increasing number of dusty files in your Drive!
Your artistic talent is just too much. You’re a poetic soul so even the delicate way a leaf falls in the autumn breeze is sure to touch you sentimentally, paving the way for new ideas, and its just your keen awareness for new story potential that keeps you piling on new ideas, which turn into WIPs that may never be finished.
Let’s all offer our condolences for those drafts.
Any other writing woes you’ve thought of? Comment below!