Hey all.
I’ve been writing a novel recently - I’m only 2200 words in. It feels like so little and so much at the same time.
Until I graduated college, I loved writing. Reading, too. Then, it feels like my ADHD got much worse and I lost all the passion I had for both. I had about a year of really intense depression while trying to find my first job during COVID. I had basically written nothing for almost three years up until recently. I started, and did not finish, a short story, and am working now on this “novel”. The problem is that I love writing in the abstract, I love putting words together in interesting ways and telling a story. But I can’t stop looking at the word count and feeling hopeless. I can’t stop feeling like there’s no point to any of it because my writing is shit. I feel like all of my passion has just left and I don’t know how to get it back, but I desperately want it back.
This isn’t a question, really, despite the title. I guess I needed to vent and know if I’m not alone in having experienced this.
I am currently writing a serial story where I am publishing three, 2K-ish word chapters every two weeks. This means I am writing more than that as I am building a backlog and I am also writing secondary material (Patreon-only stuff).
What keeps me writing is in part the style of story I am writing. I have a very character-driven story and have only a loose outline. To write the next thing, I just have to ask myself ‘what happens next’ and keep building.
And these characters and this world live inside my head. When I’m doing things like washing the dishes or other physically engaging but mentally low-effort activities, my head is playing through either the scenario I am on or possible future scenarios with these characters. coughs er, I may also have ADHD.
For additional motivation, I talk about the story with my wife (who is also my editor, though she is far behind what I have actually published for editing. Thankfully it’s a web publish on Royal Road, so I can go back and edit freely), and I get feedback, and she wants to read it, so I have encouragement there.
I get further encouragement from my readers (almost 900 followers), and gods the dopamine hits from ‘the numbers go up’ mixed with ‘they really like me’ is great.
But I also have a lot of spare time at the moment, and writing has become my primary ‘productive’ activity. I wouldn’t be able to keep up this schedule otherwise.
I don’t know if this will help you, but if you want to try, come on over to Royal Road, maybe even give my story a try, and definitely find a bunch of others you like. Get comfortable in the community, comment, and offer edit suggestions (most of the stories here have not been professionally edited yet, and the website is literally built to make offering edit suggestions easy: just highlight text and you get a button that pops up saying “suggest edit”).
When you think you are ready, pull the ideas you have together to give you a starting point with the characters you want to write about in the scenario you want to start them off in. And then just start writing.
Write the story that you want to read, but that no one else is writing. Don’t write what other people want to read, write what you want to read.
Get a few chapters ahead (try for 1,500 words at a minimum per chapter, I recommend a separate file for each chapter), then begin publishing at a rate you can keep up with based on your speed so far. And if you need help getting set up, well, there are forums there too who are willing to help.
Fair warning though: If it’s not fantasy, stories are not going to do well. My own suffers a bit from not being a LitRPG or Cultivation novel, two of the most popular types there, but it is at least fantasy.