Misc Writer Crew - Misc Writing Challenge!! Wordsmiths assemble!

[Azn00Superman]

1027 words tonight.

[NillaWafer]

wtf 5k a day? how do you have the time to do that.
Regarding the outline, I agree. People say letting the story develop organically and "just write", that shyt doesn't work for me. It leads to a huge manuscript filled with fluff and the revision will be a fuking nightmare. I wasted 130k words on a first draft that way. Good shyt brah.

I quit my job to try and make it as a writer. Time is all I have right now hehe.

But it's taken me awhile to get to 5k a day, and like I said, I'm really struggling with it. For the longest time I was around 2.5-3k a day, but it just never felt like enough. About a month ago, I decided if I was going to make this work, I really had to put everything I had into it so I've pushed it to 5k. I'm hoping to push it to 7.5k next year, but we'll see.

It's taken me the better part of the year to get the consistency I have today, and tbh, I'm still making adjustments to my schedule. Just writing every day is the most important part so stick with it brah.

But srsly though, the hardest part for me is maintaining good mental and emotional health from start to end. I don't know if you've ever felt this way, but I swear writing is the single most mentally exhausting, doubt filling, anxiety driven thing I've ever done. I can see why writers have that stereotype of suicidal depression because it's painful some days.

[Azn00Superman]

I quit my job to try and make it as a writer. Time is all I have right now hehe.

But it's taken me awhile to get to 5k a day, and like I said, I'm really struggling with it. For the longest time I was around 2.5-3k a day, but it just never felt like enough. About a month ago, I decided if I was going to make this work, I really had to put everything I had into it so I've pushed it to 5k. I'm hoping to push it to 7.5k next year, but we'll see.

It's taken me the better part of the year to get the consistency I have today, and tbh, I'm still making adjustments to my schedule. Just writing every day is the most important part so stick with it brah.

But srsly though, the hardest part for me is maintaining good mental and emotional health from start to end. I don't know if you've ever felt this way, but I swear writing is the single most mentally exhausting, doubt filling, anxiety driven thing I've ever done. I can see why writers have that stereotype of suicidal depression because it's painful some days.

Lol, bold, I like it. I work graveyard to pursue a writing career too, otherwise I don't have time for it. I'm lucky that my wife is very supportive. Before I got a family I did the same thing you did, it didn't work. I faced the same problems you have right now. I think the problem was that I placed such a huge emphasis on the pressure to write and make it as a writer, thus causing myself anxiety and self doubt.
I strongly recommend doing other things beside writing too, maybe work part time, hang out with friends or something. Writing 24/7 ur putting urself in a prison and eventually you'll get burnt out, which was what happened to me - I stopped writing for almost a year.
Also, you can't wholly devote yourself to writing alone, your stories come from personal experience, don't let your life be too bland to the point that the excitement of your fiction isn't believable.
Now I'm super busy, got kids, train muay Thai (I'm fighting in less than 2 months), and I write at work. I think it's a great balance cuz I'm always looking forward to writing.
Hope it helps.

[Azn00Superman]

wtf. only 800 words today. Had to stop and do some research. Got like one page left on the third draft of the short story.

[Azn00Superman]

Merry Christmas boyos. Didn't feel like writing today cuz it's the holiday but i managed to do 550 words, thus finishing the third draft to the samurai story. Tomorrow I will continue to the second draft of the other short.

[Azn00Superman]

Almost didn't write today cuz I brought the first draft of a short story to work to edit but my papaya salad got sloshed and spilled on the manuscript, I had to throw it away. But I opened up the manuscript on Google Drive (thank for cloud saving) and edit out of there. 1700 words on second draft of the short story. Good progress.

[Azn00Superman]

Keep forgetting to update thread.
Got a miserable 600 yesterday, today is better 1600, both on second draft of short story. Yesterday didn't feel the story at all, today added some drama to the draft and I can see where the story is heading.

[Azn00Superman]

Happy new years motherfukers!
2300 words tonight, thus concluding the 2nd draft of my scifi/drama short story. I've come up with a name for it - A New Start, I hope it's apt. A lot of significant plot changes in this draft, the third draft will be fixing plot and prose.
Tomorrow I'm working on the second draft of my third short story though.

[Hairy007Beast]

Thou Shall ACT

A young man is tired of his ordinary life. So, he decides to escape from mediocrity & become great. He says, “By the end of the year, I will have a six pack, a high paying job, a hot babe, and greatness. I will start by following the best diet and workout routine to become shredded.” So, he eats a bowl of ice cream and goes off to BodyBuilding.com to research the perfect diet.

“I will try Paleo because our ancestors thrived on it. Or maybe IFFYM is the best diet; it is easy to follow and will let me do a body recomposition. Perhaps, vegani--- Nah, screw that. Maybe, a week of PSMF will be best for me.”

Unfortunately, the year quickly comes to an end and he fails to achieve his goals. In anger, he smashes his head against the wall and cries, “Why can’t I achieve greatness? I have big goals, but I am never achieving them.” As he yelled, he lost his balance and there was a magical earthquake that rocks his room. A hairy beast springs up from under his bed. The man’s frightened, he looks up and sees a tattoo which reads “Hairy007Beast.” Hairy007Beast sees the poor weak man as his own son and decides to transform his life forever.

“Stop crying, young fellow. I will guide you to having beastlike greatness, but why have you ate the poison ice cream all year and not selected a diet?”

“Well, I want to have the aesthetics of a shredded d-bag that makes girlfriends cheat and all guys are jealous. However, I was afraid of picking a diet that won’t give me the body composition that I want.”

Hairy007Beast chuckles, “Oh, my naive young boy. You are afraid of implementing a diet because it may not give you desired results, but because of this fear you experience the worst type of failure. Failure due to INACTION. You can research many great theories on nutrition, yet all that information is useless, if you do not put it into action. You must ACT NOW! ”

“But, great Hairy007Beast, I need to pick the perfect diet to become great. Successful people look for perfection and a bad diet will lead me to mediocre results. My gym brah’s say aesthetic physique is 75% nutrition. So, I will continue to search.”

“No, NO, NOOOO! You fail to see the big picture. Being afraid of mediocre results leads to procrastinating, which is INACTION. INACTION is destined to FAILURE. There are two types of failures, one from action and one from inaction. Failure from action will leave you with experience, but failure from inaction is the reason why you smashed your head against the wall. Time is of the essence; you must either follow one of your existing researched diet right now with possible success or accept guaranteed failure by waiting years to implement a perfect diet. Forget about failure for now, all success is derived from ACTION. Do you know a successful baseball pitcher that threw a perfect pitch his first time?”

“Yes my cousin---.” Hairy007Beast cuts him off, “Arggh,I meant to ask, can you be a successful baseball pitcher without ever pitching? You certainly cannot. You got to start with ACTION to be great. Yes, there is a risk you may fail. However, risks are unavoidable. You can try to never take risks in life, but then you risk living a mediocre life. If you cross the street, you risk getting hit by a car. Are you going to stay home and never embrace risks? You can, but you will end up failing at life through inaction. A risk-free life is no life.”

Hairy007Beast suddenly vanished into thin air and the man now started following his macros and was on his journey to greatness.

[Avalanche3319]

^repped.

[Azn00Superman]

1400 tonight. Tried to read the draft aloud but my throat is fuked from being sick.

[Azn00Superman]

Got 2 hours of sleep tonight, but got 2100 words in two separate sessions (700 and 1400) on the second draft of the third short story. Despite it's original length of 11k, I'm adding more details hoping to give more depth to the characters.

[Azn00Superman]

Ran into a little trouble today in the first writing session. Could only manage 400 words, was hit with serious writer's block. I did some minor outlining and sort of figured my way out. Wrote again and got 1800 words total. So far second draft is going well.

[Acer12345Z]

This is an excellent idea. I just subscribed. Will post/constructively critique something soon. Meanwhile, I would very much appreciate any feedback on the mini series that I've been writing recently. The link is on my signature. Much love to all

[Azn00Superman]

^^ sorry brah but that piece was a mess. Not trying to be an *******, just being as constructive as I can be because I'd like the same thing done to me if I'm in your shoes. I posted the critique in that thread.

[Azn00Superman]

Started late, got 1200 words tonight in one session. Feels decent mane.

[Azn00Superman]

1300 words today. Written myself into a corner again! On a second draft, no less, where I'm expected to be fixing and tightening the plot, but instead it's about to inflate again. Pissed off mane. Might scrap this draft and go back to the drawing board to see wtf is wrong with it.

[Azn00Superman]

Didn't realize I've made the outline for it before, telling me which direction to head for the second draft. Working the outline how.

[Azn00Superman]

Worked some more on the outline. Hopefully that will make tonight's session go better.

[Azn00Superman]

Grueling writing sessions today boyos. Deleted a huge chunk off the many script and added something else in. Trying to follow the outline now and it's been rough. I had so much fun writing the first draft but editing it had been absolute hell.

[Azn00Superman]

This draft is fking unusable boyos. First draft already sitting at 12k with so much still left out, it would be impossible for me to condense it to under 10k. Gonna to leave it for now and return to my other two short stories as they're more polished and closer to submission quality.

[Nostromo8th]

I made an account to say that your persistence is inspiring

[Azn00Superman]

I made an account to say that your persistence is inspiring

Thanks breh, we all gonna make it.

[Azn00Superman]

700 words tonight. Why? I'm on the 4th draft of the samurai story and I took delicate care to craft the prose. It's starting to have a hint of professional quality to it. Maybe I'm just biased toward it but you never know. One thing for sure, though, I will definitely send it out regardless of how ****ty it turns out.

[Azn00Superman]

900 words today. I feel a need to fix more things in the last draft. It's bugging the hell out of me. I keep deleting and writing then deleting again. I know at 4th draft it has to be good, but I get a feeling it's not good enough.

[Azn00Superman]

Worked on foot last night, and too tired to write anything. Had to sneak off to a small room and laid on the floor to take a nap. Fml.
Tonight I skipped Muay Thai training and got some sleep, so now i'm more alert. Going to make the most of it.

First session down: 600 words.

[Azn00Superman]

1100 on second session. Two more to go.

[Azn00Superman]

400 words on third session.

[TheAnemois]

I write entries at times where I'm feeling some type of way- say I just massively screwed up with my [now ex] girl, or I crashed a car, or a family death, and kind of keep it to myself. I really support this thread, however, and will post one of them. Let it be known I'm not a writer by nature and for all I know this is absolute trash, but it's what I've written soo:

Who are you?

A mistake people make when they discuss ‘life’ is they simplify it to a point where it becomes some cliche nonsense; either a ‘journey’ or a ‘destination’. 'You were either born a leader or a follower'. People buy into this, categorize themselves based on their own perception and thus become static, confined to one label. “That’s not me, I could never do that”- you’d comment to your laptop screen as you watch someone else live out your wildest dreams or hidden aspirations. We tend to yearn for comfort, only to resent it when we achieve it. We feel emotions but neglect them because exploring yourself is a great source of stress. Also, our schedules are booked up and taking time to self-reflect would be ‘unprofessional’ or flat-out ‘irresponsible'.
But life is more fluid, more complicated than that.

We live in an era where the traditional structure of society is dissolving, which leaves us with decisions, freedoms, and options unavailable to generations prior. To those generations, the template was rock-solid and unavoidable. School, job, marriage, house, children, retire, dwindle. Done. They had this vision ingrained at an early age- as early as they could understand the language. Today, we [the younger generation] approach them [the older generation] and they, collectively, shake their heads in disapproval, wondering why we did not follow in their footsteps. The idea that we wanted that freedom is a myth. It was forced upon us by the ever-fluid cultural influences that dictate our present. I mean, maybe we did say we wanted that freedom. Maybe we asked for it and thought that the sky would be the limit— us directing our own futures. We might have even been foolish enough to think that we were prepared to pave the way for future generations with this hypothetical grandiose plan. Maybe. One thing is for certain, and it’s that we cannot go back to the way things were. We chose (ironically) this road and now we have to face the consequences. I’m telling you, we cannot blame our parents, grandparents, the media, government, race, or even the terrorist group of the month for this.

Who are you?
Most people could name every player on their favourite team, the cast of their favourite show, the top 10 songs from a favourite band...
Who are you?
But I don’t have time for this question. I’m stressed and need to grab a drink with the guys...
Who are you?
I’m going to travel. Thailand, Spain, Mexico, I don’t know. I just need to get away...
Who are you?
My life is on hold for now, the job market is rough. I just can't decide and my current job is helping me make ends meet…
Seriously, who are you?

Do you even want to know? I thought the whole point of human beings achieving consciousness was to think critically and discover concepts that animals cannot. Why is it, then, that we do tricks for food and shelter, eat, ****, and sleep (with the odd walk here and there, when the owner grants us the pleasure) like a domesticated canine? I’ve had enough of this. I’ve grown tired of the idea of living to die and have decided to focus on a search for myself. Saying it out loud terrifies me. Considering finding myself terrifies me.
What if I hate myself?
—end note—

[residesinAZ]

I had so much fun writing the first draft but editing it had been absolute hell.

Too much real life.
The first thing I wrote start to finish was a blast to write. I didn't character build, plot, outline, just wrote. Edited a couple times. A couple years later I'm still polishing that turd... I still like the story, I just think my execution is a problem.