A friend of mine asked me a question tonight in regard to writing and I thought I'd share my answer. Perhaps it will be useful to future or current authors.
"Hey, if you don't mind me asking, how do you deal with writer's block? Or with difficulty starting or finishing anything creative?"
My response:
I don't mind at all!
Its hard, not gonna lie. Sometimes I'll just re-read everything I wrote in hopes that I'll get inspired to write more. It's especially hard when the page is blank. (Or when the page is blank, and you have so many ideas that you don't know where to start so you just kind of sit there and stare at the screen and get nothing done. Kind of the opposite of writers' block but on the same level).
What helps me, however, is music and planning. Music is my inspiration and I thrive on it to get me in the mood and sometimes it inspires many chapters. But in the end, what got me though writing the first draft (aside from a huge musical influence) was what I called "plotting the plot". I sat down one day and drew out a time line of when things were to happen in SOUTH, from start to finish. I started with when the major stuff should happen, and then added less major scenes (kind of like fillers but they would still be necessary). After I got that written out, it became like a guideline; a map I could follow. When I would write, I could psychically see how far I was getting and in turn that was motivation. I'd be like, "damn, I'm halfway! That's so cool! If I kept going I'd really super far then!" It was an amazing motivator. So that, plus a good song in the background, was how I started, and finished my novel in such a short amount of time while also doing school assignments.
One more thing of advice, just keep writing, or even, just start. You may start with like a random super small sentence. But when you look at the page, you see progress, even if its small. Then the more you write, the more progress you see and the better you'll feel. Sometimes, a small ten-word sentence may end up being a 3000+ word a day writing streak. That's how it was for me, anyway.
Yet my friend still had some concerns:
"I keep starting, looking at what I have so far, hating it, and then restarting. I've written the first part of my novel twice. And it's not very good."
And so, I continued:
But that's the best part! Because it's like a blessing in disguise. I may have written my full novel from August to December, but do you know how long I've technically been working on this story? The idea alone came way back when Minami was first created, which was probably in the early 2000s.
In fact, SOUTH wasn't always called SOUTH. It used to be a super dark story (just about Minami), where everyone got murdered and there was so much death that Minami was even supposed to die in the end. (Could be why it was originally called SILENT TEARS). I've written so many chapters on SILENT TEARS, and even of SOUTH, both with multiple drafts, all which were pretty bad. You can read more about them in an earlier blog post, and click the links to read the stories themselves for a good laugh).
I'm not even saying what I have now is good, though this draft is certainly the best I've written and I haven't even finished editing it. Stories that change is you, the author, finding what truly works and what doesn't. It's probably not going to work the first try, even if you think it's amazing. I sure thought the very first chapter (script form) for SOUTH was the best thing I've ever done. But reading it now? I cringe. And that was only a few years ago. And even though my current round of edits for SOUTH is good now, I'm sure there is always something else that I'll notice later and improve upon.
But the good news is that it does get better and improve and you will produce something great. You have to work for it, but it will happen.
***
To all writers out there, never give up. Finish that story you started, no matter how long or short. Because the sense of accomplishment you'll get just by finishing something you've started writing is the best explainable feeling you can imagine. It doesn't have to be good. As long as you started and saw it through, you'll be heading on the path that will change your life.