Question Tons of ideas, grams of motivation.

Ok, I admit it. I'm an Idea girl. I can come up with all these concepts. All these ideas. Plot-lines and histories and just a ton of ideas swirl in my head. I have hundreds of them. From my Whateley characters, I have ideas on how to storyline them into a complex situation and turn of events. I have an idea about a story about the world's first successful brain transplant, a 20-something year old man whose body is injured in a car wreck. Because of an experimental new technology, the brain can be directly oxygenated during the entire procedure. He gets fast-tracked into the program at the Mayo Clinic, when a12-13 year old girl has a fatal brain aneurism. The legal fight about the ethics of it, the parents, who had agreed to donating her organs balking at someone walking around in their daughter's body. I had all sorts of ideas, plan, a fight for custody. a legal battle to establish his/her legal identity.

But... simple truth. While I love to come up with ideas... I HATE to write. Those of you that read my stories might have noticed I'm not a very good writer. I just might leave my Whateley kids out in the ether somewhere, not used. I would like to get my ideas out there, but bleh... the irony.

A writer that hates writing.

You're hardly unique. Dorothy Parker once said that she hated writing, but loved having written

Hmm... Do you have any thoughts on what you'd like the start to look like?

Do you start with a description of something, or someone saying something...

Or maybe an epigraph, instead of jumping right in?

not quite following Mal.

I have a plot tree and timeline in my head if that's what you mean. Enough info I could tell a ghostwriter where things would be going.

I was assuming that you were stuck on how to start a new story, given that you provided an example of a story we haven't seen anything of...

But, to be more helpful:

"What don't you like about writing"?

Have you tried altering your approach? For example, instead of thinking of it as writing a book, maybe think of it as though you're sitting around the campfire with your friends and regaling them with tales of your brain transplant guy. There are a lot of different styles of writing you could try. Play with tenses, POV, and tone. Try out different balances between outlining everything in advance and flying by the seat of your pants. Experiment with the roughness of your rough drafts. Figure out what works for you personally, because if writing is more fun, you'll do more of it.

One thing to watch out for is the distinction between low confidence and actual dislike for an activity. If a large factor in why you dislike writing is because you think you suck, then that's easily fixed by continuing to work at it until you don't suck.

If you really just hate writing prose and cannot find a way to fix that, then maybe try expressing your ideas through another medium. There are many. Comics, theater, sock puppetry, stop motion, poetry, radio shows, songs, video games, dioramas, etc.

Malady wrote:
"What don't you like about writing"?

Actually doing it.


I'm the sort that would much rather be like "here is an outline of the character, and all the plot-points of this chapter", and then hand all that off to someone else to fill it in. As you've probably seen my stories are usually short on detail, hitting the crux of the situation.

Hmmm in a way I suffer the opposite problem as you (I too have tons of ideas) but I can't seem to get complete stories from them so I eventually consider setting fire to the whole mess. I get a good (I think) scene going, like Kelly in his story and start writing where I see the person. I don't have a next point to get to, I just discover as much as 'Kelly' tells me about his life, then when I can't figure out how to break out of the practically minute by minute granularity that defines my original idea, I get frustrated and give up because I have not made a satisfactory conclusion, at least by the feedback I've received from those who have read the whole of what I have for Kelly's story so far...
Then there is the whole thing of leaving Kelly stuck in a form that has little ability to communicate much more than broad ideas to people around her! and what about Kelly, does he want to go back to being a boy? he hasn't said much because until I got him connected with Sally (s)he was so busy surviving and moving toward Whateley that (s)he hasn't really processed either the change or the violence in his life just prior to the change to her...
So what is next? Is anyone really interested in reading about Kelly dealing with his angst over now being a female coyote? Or have I just failed to wrap what was written because I used a bit of deus ex machina to get some attention on Kelly's situation wrt him leaving his home town...?
Anyway, in certain ways I always get enthusiastic about one of these visions when I have it... Kelly dragging himself toward home with a haunted house between where he was dumped and that home is still a compelling vision to me even if I haven't been able to create the art work that I think the first thousand words deserves.
Think pages that look like they might be light grey with pink or yellow tinges, with every time I use an ellipsis the word is isolated on a line and in a different position on the page...
When Kelly first hears the coyote, have the Awooooo from the coyote appear as a font that looks like it is dripping bloody icicles. And so on for the first page.
I can craft a scene (I think) but fail to complete the writing of a story...

Rose Bunny wrote:

Malady wrote:
"What don't you like about writing"?

Actually doing it.

I've noticed that sometimes you just have to force yourself to write, even when you know you'll be rewriting a lot of it.

Then, you'll hit a lucky streak or be struck by inspirations, and write effortlessly for hours.

Putting in the work isn't a lot of fun, but practicing, even when what you produce feels like it is garbage, helps you write better later. It's like drawing, but you just have to know how to use a keyboard or a pen.

I can attest to the fact that if I write regularly even the hard parts seem to get easier, though I still have not gotten very good at writing the ending for stories.
I honestly think that if I was better at creating at least sketchy outlines I'd probably do better over all at writing. But I don't practice what is hard for me... Just the easy parts.