You know how when you get stuck on drafting or editing, you might go to a video for inspiration on writing and they give examples from published works.
Then you might go back to your writing and realize, wait, I can’t write awesome sentences like that! Those are such good quotes. How do they even do it?
Then you get stressed out because your sentences are not as good as those books.
But I realized something that maybe you guys already knew: those books have been edited, so of course you are not going to sound like those books in your drafts.
You might be able to squeeze a diamond out but not always.
It is okay to use published diamonds as inspo, but you have to remember they have been edited countless times compared to your first draft or first edit.
So, basically, don’t think you can write the best gem the first go. Maybe you can, maybe you won’t. You just gotta trust yourself and your story. You do you.
Idk if I’m making a nice conclusion. Thinking this way helped me to not stress over trying to write like those inspo books because I’m comparing my edit and their polished work. Not a good comparison that only brings stress. So, I will aim for a polished work, but I will also be okay to feel slightly mediocre. It’s what the artists call “the messy stage” in which you trust the process.
Agree 100%. If you’re like me, you’ll likely edit your draft at least a dozen times before it’s finished, so right now it looks absolutely nothing like what it’ll look like once it’s finished. (*・_・)ノ⌒*
This is what I keep trying to tell people. The first draft will always be crap. I thought I was a good enough writer that I could write a first draft and be done with it and it would be perfect. Then I finished my first draft and read over it and it was awful. But it was wonderful too, because it was a starting point and it proved to me that I could do it. I just need a lot of polishing and editing with later drafts. Each draft hones the work until it’s ready to be published. Don’t ever expect your first draft to be perfect, but don’t let that stop you from writing it. It’s just the first step in a process.
Yeah, I think most people wish it worked that way. I know I do. But practice is necessary unfortunately. We can’t be perfect at everything we do first try.
Not just the first draft though. I was stressing about the third edit Like, third time’s the charm, certainly now I will sound like those polished works.
Nope.
And that’s okay.
It’s still part of the process.
It’s the messy stage, the ugly stage, as artists say.
Even if you’re not a perfectionist, you wish and hope and stress about perfection if you’re really passionate about the thing. Like, you see this dream version of whatever it is you’re writing or creating and immediately try to skip the ugly stage, but you end up going through the ugly stage anyway and getting frustrated.
This is so true and honestly the first thing we were taught in my degree about the art of writing stories. Your first draft will ALWAYS be shit and people will only ever see the final copy so, unless they are in the same/similar industry, they will never truly understand the stress, hardship, frustration and tears that go into trying to write a great story. But even when you do know this, it can be very hard to feel as good as the writers you look up to. Comparison can be useful but it also sucks. Even so, it certainly helps to know that the writers you look up to also went and still go through all this bs when it comes to writing a story.
Honestly, I think the biggest problem as an author is that we, the writers, will never think our stories are perfect enough no matter how hard we try. It’s just one of those things
This reminds me of something Tom Petty once said about how he hated hearing his own songs on the radio…other people just heard a song, but he heard all the mistakes. ¯\_(ﭢ)_/¯
I question if some released novels in this day and age even have extensive editing done to them. If your standard is as good as them, don’t fear anything.
Exactly. That’s why it’s very important for any writer, new and old, not to compare themselves to these published authors, these published books… because they have been looked at by dozens of people (some of whom are professionals), they’ve been edited countless times, and probably have gone through a rewrite or two (at least, for some authors). Some of these books have been in the works for 5+ years. I’ve heard of some working a book for 10-15 years before they decided to actually “finish” it. I mean, personally, I had my current story simmering in my head for four years before I started writing it. Then I didn’t finish it for another three years. And now I’ve been working on revisions for about a year. It’s been an eight year process all together and it’s still not finished. xD
But it’s also important to know and understand that these books are never finished anyway. They’re finished enough. There is always room to grow and for these stories to be improved even more, but there has to be a point where you can’t see any more growth at the moment or just push the keyboard away and say, “Stop.” Otherwise, you’ll always be in revision mode and you won’t ever find a way out.
