2026 Motivation Thread

[RedMage]

Objectivity when reviewing your own writing can be very difficult to do. I set my story aside not to forget what happens, but to separate my emotional connection so that I may have even a little objectivity. This usually takes me either A) time away from the story, and/or B) diving into a new story which I can connect to emotionally.

@STEKI, are you a student of the "finish what you start" school? I think that's a good maxim for life, but it shouldn't be applied in each and every thing we do. We need to judge whether our stories are worth the time and effort (physical, mental and emotional) to continue working on. Evaluate them and make a determination of this is good or bad, I should/want or should not/do not want. This evaluation and judgement process needs to be the same as any other task we undertake. Does my completed school homework meet the assignment criteria? Same for the project my boss assigned me at work. Or the new flower garden you've spent weeks digging and planting.

Don't lower your expectations. Maintain them. Raise them. However, be objective in considering your completed story draft. Ask yourself these questions about it:

1. Is this a good story in its essence (i.e. regardless of the text's faults)?
2. Do I have the tools, writing and storytelling knowledge and experience, and the technical writing tools, to make this story shine?
3. Do I care enough about this story to revise it?
4. Do I have the time and physical, mental and emotional energy to revise it?
5. Do I want to revise it?
6. Are there other stories that would be a better use of my time?
7. Do I still enjoy working on it? --OR-- Am I happy when I work on it, or simply think about it?

Lastly, it is okay to set down a project before it is completed to your standards. Something else I've come to learn about stories is that each one teaches us something different as writers. Technical skill with grammar and wordsmithing, how tell the story, how much planning we need to do ahead of time, how to use first person point of view. The lesson is often not one we consciously recognize in the moment; indeed, I've only recognized a few in hindsight, years later. But that understanding came because I was able to see myself growing and improving and increasing in my writing and storytelling skills from one story to the next unrelated story.

Don't be hesitant, let alone afraid, to put down a story. Ask yourself the questions and, if you've done all you can with the story and there's other things you need (or simply want) to do, well, then it's time to move on. This story will be here if you ever want to return to it. Keep your story files together. Back them all up together. They'll be there should you want to return.

 

[RolandsFarblood]

I know that feeling very well.

For me, the exhaustion after a large project does not come only from the number of hours spent on it. It comes from carrying the whole structure around mentally for such a long time. Characters, unresolved decisions, continuity questions and possible improvements remain active in the background even when you are not consciously working.

Finishing removes the immediate pressure, but the mind does not switch out of that state at the same speed. Sometimes there is relief; sometimes there is simply an unexpected empty space where the project used to be.

What helps me is a deliberate period in which I am allowed to collect thoughts but not begin another major commitment. I might write down what worked, what became unnecessarily difficult and what I would change next time, but I avoid turning those notes immediately into a new production plan.

And I agree that one person reading the entire work matters enormously. Statistics can be abstract, but knowing that another person remained with a story from beginning to end makes the work feel real in a completely different way.

Congratulations on completing it.

 

[RedMage]

Well said, @RolandsFarblood! That's exactly my experience of the post-finishing exhaustion and what the results of finishing actually are.

Welcome to SFFWorld, by the way!

 

[Jonas Stark]

Good to hear from you, Jonas! I'm glad to hear you're doing so well. Or were, all of a month ago. How have you been since? How's Operation Ten coming along?

Sorry I didn't see your post sooner. Like @N. E. White, I haven't been around much this year.

Yeah, I'm really in on the writing at this point. Signed up for a couple forums, concerned this place had reached entropy, but haven't really interacted.

Why?

151k words drafted since June 5. This pace and duration has been beyond anything I've ever done before. What's more, I have a beta reader essentially taking in the drafts almost as I write them and the feedback has been high quality...and motivating. I do feel like that has helped propel me. And yes, all 151k are for Lyetuna, and the book is trending toward 190-200k words, so it's likely going to be split, but I think I identified where the seam is, right around the 97k word mark.

I've set aside my MG novel Sasquatch Summer and am now working on two adult market stories. One is a scifi set almost a thousand years in the future after humans have colonized the solar system and have had a catastrophic war involving all the planets, moons, asteroid colonies and stations (aka. World War I). The other is a contemporary fantasy novella following a grandfather teaching magic to his teenage granddaughter and the magical hijinks they get up to. Like you Jonas, I've taken a hard look at my writing and the career I want to build. Writing MG is still interesting to me, but I think my career needs to be established elsewhere first.

I completely get this. How have you found the transition from working on Sasquatch Summer to a couple stories that are almost entirely different, not just from SS, but even from each other? Was it jarring?

I am apprehensive about how I'll be able to jump into editing a Cold War political sci-fi after this literary war thriller. I'm hoping some of my tendencies don't rub off too hard. Very curious to hear about your experience.

 

[RedMage]

Yeah, I'm really in on the writing at this point. Signed up for a couple forums, concerned this place had reached entropy, but haven't really interacted.

Why?

151k words drafted since June 5. This pace and duration has been beyond anything I've ever done before. What's more, I have a beta reader essentially taking in the drafts almost as I write them and the feedback has been high quality...and motivating. I do feel like that has helped propel me. And yes, all 151k are for Lyetuna, and the book is trending toward 190-200k words, so it's likely going to be split, but I think I identified where the seam is, right around the 97k word mark.

That's wonderful to hear on the feedback! Good crit partners are difficult to find, and utterly essential to have.

I've made some breakthroughs recently on several stories. For the family magic one I mentioned, I've had the first half of the novella written for a month (maybe longer?) and have simply struggled to figure out the How-s for the rest of it. The problem, of course, was that I didn't want to make decisions and then find myself in a bad position. So, don't make decisions at all! LOL. But that only results in stagnation and the story not getting written. I say all this, because I did the thing last weekend and made an outline for the second half of the story. And that led me to wanting to post the first half to Scribophile where I post for critique. I haven't yet, because I want to finish first and not have the thoughts of a half dozen people influence my plans for the rest of the story. Alas, it would be wonderful motivation!

Also, I hear you on the entropy. We're honestly there, even more than we have been the past few years.

I completely get this. How have you found the transition from working on Sasquatch Summer to a couple stories that are almost entirely different, not just from SS, but even from each other? Was it jarring?

I am apprehensive about how I'll be able to jump into editing a Cold War political sci-fi after this literary war thriller. I'm hoping some of my tendencies don't rub off too hard. Very curious to hear about your experience.

It was a struggle to look at my stories and what my career goals were--just to publish and have a writing career, tbh. I finished Sasquatch a year ago and had on Scribophile for crit until this past spring. During that time I played around with other story ideas, but nothing took as a new main project. Everything was just planning and for a variety of projects. It was time well spent.

That's the key for me. Getting psychological and emotional distance from the previous work. OR, forcing yourself to split time between different projects, getting yourself used to multitasking on different stories so that it's not so jarring to switch from one to another. Since I'm not a published author, I can only say that I've read about the day-to-day life requiring one to work on multiple projects at one time. Drafting the new novel in the morning and reviewing publisher edits to the last book in the afternoon. Or Monday you do one and Tuesday is spent on the other. Sometimes those books are in a series and sometimes they're unrelated. I tried to do that last summer with Sasquatch and a different scifi project. It worked well, except I don't feel I made as much progress on the scifi as I wanted, and I honestly stalled on it by the end of my two-month trial period. But, I think stalling out was more due to the story than to the process I was experimenting with.

If you're interested in the process, I actually blogged about it here in the Writing Forum. Check out Red's Blog: Two Story Summer.

What really works for me is having the stories be unrelated. Maybe they're the same genre, even set in the same time period, but I think that's the most similarities I'd want them to have. If possible, maybe it would help to focus on how the protagonists are different from each other, their personalities and desires, the opposition they face. How are those different from one another, and are the stories different enough for your brain to not see them as the same?

 

[STEKI]

@STEKI, are you a student of the "finish what you start" school? I think that's a good maxim for life, but it shouldn't be applied in each and every thing we do. We need to judge whether our stories are worth the time and effort (physical, mental and emotional) to continue working on.

Eh, not really. If there is any school of thought I assign myself to is that there isn't any school for me out there. I haven't started "completing" projects up until 8 something years ago. To me, by extension all maxims are one and the same based on whether something is true or not. And even that relative truthness can just boil down to how much work something requires to become complete. Nothing is either true or false, nothing is complete. We just write. To me, I could at any moment write my last word or project. Could be this one, could be 5-6 projects down the line, but I never know.

In this not knowing I try to keep things simple. No rules. Just writing. If there is anything I have a problem with it will either bother me to the point that requires my attention or it simply will never occur to me. So I don't worry with whether I will complete something or not.

I get the moving on part. Having a basic understanding of what story or event holds more weight is important and I could argue a lot on principles, tricks and the standards of work. It is just that my productive shift started only when I gave into this... formless(?) process.

But then again the questions do come, planning takes place if only in the brain.

 

[RedMage]

@STEKI how are your stories coming along? Has this discussion helped? Tbh, I'm not sure how to respond to your post. Seems pretty philosophical to this non-philosopher.

@Jonas Stark and @RolandsFarblood how are you doing? Is writing happening? Going well? Is life getting in the way?

I had a long scene to write in my Lake Proper contemporary fantasy novella this weekend. I wasn't able to finish in one sitting like I've been able to do for many of the story's scenes, so I ended up working on it on both Saturday and Sunday. On Saturday, I kept jumping between the story, forums and working on a new idea I had for an old epic fantasy that's just in planning phase. Then life got in the way yesterday as plans with friends got scrambled at the last minute. But I still finished the scene! No writing today though. I'm thinking about it just now, but I probably won't as the night is drawing on.

 

[STEKI]

@STEKI how are your stories coming along? Has this discussion helped? Tbh, I'm not sure how to respond to your post. Seems pretty philosophical to this non-philosopher.

Honestly makes me want to try for a story that has a page or three of do's and don'ts.

Gonna be a long while, maybe up to a year since I can start that, but it honestly seems like something I should try. And something you made me want to try.

Story-wise I am working on my third Theocratic Cyberpunk scifi book at the moment, which is all about thieves and burglary at a 50-70k size goal. But I've been working on an animation since November last year and I kind of want to be done there... and then restudy programming to find a job... and... yeah, need some priorities at the moment. Everything is crawling, slowly, but we are getting there.

 

[RedMage]

Honestly makes me want to try for a story that has a page or three of do's and don'ts.

Gonna be a long while, maybe up to a year since I can start that, but it honestly seems like something I should try. And something you made me want to try.

Story-wise I am working on my third Theocratic Cyberpunk scifi book at the moment, which is all about thieves and burglary at a 50-70k size goal. But I've been working on an animation since November last year and I kind of want to be done there... and then restudy programming to find a job... and... yeah, need some priorities at the moment. Everything is crawling, slowly, but we are getting there.

I'm glad I could inspire you toward a new project!

And restudying programming and finding a job? There's always more to do, isn't there?

 

[djv124]

Just joined SFF and so far, finding my way around all the posts. This place rules!
I just released my second fiction horror novel, POA, and have a goal of turning this book into a movie screenplay. I also want to get it translated into Japanese, since the story is set in Tokyo and probably would be way more scarier for Japanese readers?
Also, got started right away on my third horror story, but I'm having some difficulty working towards the end of the story. I don't have an interesting or captivating middle section, and I am trying to figure out how to fill the middle with something tense, or interesting, or even better, bloody and gory!

So yeah... goals for this year in terms of writing. I am hoping to knock this book out a lot quicker than POA, as that took me ten years to both research and write!

 

[RedMage]

Just joined SFF and so far, finding my way around all the posts. This place rules!
I just released my second fiction horror novel, POA, and have a goal of turning this book into a movie screenplay. I also want to get it translated into Japanese, since the story is set in Tokyo and probably would be way more scarier for Japanese readers?
Also, got started right away on my third horror story, but I'm having some difficulty working towards the end of the story. I don't have an interesting or captivating middle section, and I am trying to figure out how to fill the middle with something tense, or interesting, or even better, bloody and gory!

So yeah... goals for this year in terms of writing. I am hoping to knock this book out a lot quicker than POA, as that took me ten years to both research and write!

That's a great goal, Derek! Do you need help brainstorming ideas? We can definitely do that in this thread, or another. Feel free to create a new thread here in the Writing Forum dedicated to brainstorming your new story.

For all our new members Derek, @STEKI and @RolandsFarblood, I encourage you to turn on notifications of new threads on the Writing Forum page (or any of the other main forum pages). If you haven't done it yet...

How is everyone's writing going? Mine is continuing well, with two scenes written in Lake Proper this week. I'm nearing the end of the second act and my outlines for each of the remaining scenes are more pre-written scenes than the 1-2 short paragraph summaries I intended to write for them. Which means they should go quickly! Emphasis on should, of course. LOL

 

[Jonas Stark]

@Jonas Stark and @RolandsFarblood how are you doing? Is writing happening? Going well? Is life getting in the way?

Writing is happening at break neck speeds now. There will definitely need to be some tightening up in the edit pass, but I'm 186k words in...since June 5th. The book (now going to be two books obviously) is trending toward the 210k mark and I've got a September 1 deadline before I do have to put it down until November-ish, so here's hoping I can keep it going. I had a couple walls I had to bust through the last couple weeks, but it's working.

It's been some heavy material lately, which is also exhausting to write sometimes, but some payoffs are coming (one that's been building since two books ago), so I'm motivated!

 

[RolandsFarblood]

@RedMage
Thanks for asking! Sounds like you had one of those weekends where the writing kept getting interrupted, but somehow still got done. Finishing that long scene across two days must have felt pretty satisfying in the end.
Writing is happening on my side too, although at the moment I’m spending more time revisiting and developing existing material than producing lots of completely new pages. I tend to move between writing, structural work and visual ideas, so progress doesn’t always show up as word count, but things are definitely moving forward.
I know that temptation to jump over to another idea when a difficult scene slows down. Did working on the old epic fantasy actually help clear your head for Lake Proper, or did it make it harder to get back into the scene afterward?

 

[RedMage]

@Jonas Stark that's great news! Keep your head down and stay focused. There's not much time left, but I'm sure you can finish by the 1st! You'll have to stop in sometime in September to tell us more about why you can't write for two months. Until then, just. Keep. Writing!

@RedMage
Thanks for asking!

Writing is happening on my side too, although at the moment I’m spending more time revisiting and developing existing material than producing lots of completely new pages. I tend to move between writing, structural work and visual ideas, so progress doesn’t always show up as word count, but things are definitely moving forward.

Excellent, Roland! I don't have current projects that are more than outlining, drafting and making written notes, but I've had past projects where I drew maps. It's all part of the writing in my mind LOL. I'm glad to hear that you're making progress, regardless of what the exact progress is on.

I know that temptation to jump over to another idea when a difficult scene slows down. Did working on the old epic fantasy actually help clear your head for Lake Proper, or did it make it harder to get back into the scene afterward?

I'm honestly not sure. It was a distraction for sure, but it was a day of distractions. While writing, I found myself trying to hold down multiple chat conversations, reply to threads here at SFFWorld and the critique site Scribophile that I'm on, and then the two different stories... I think I did fairly well, maintaining quality on each activity. The only downside was that I didn't make the expected progress on Lake Proper.

Speaking of which! I've continued writing on Lake Proper the past few days. Yesterday, I stopped in the middle of the climactic battle scene, just before it kicks off. You know, the point where the protagonists and antagonists fling their last pre-battle taunts and insults at each other before they begin fighting. I thought it would be a good place to pick up at my next writing session, which is tonight

Tonight I am going to my second session of a Meetup in-person writers' group that's a write-in and hangout thing at a restaurant down the block from my apartment. Tomorrow is my regular write-in and hangout Meetup group specifically for SFF writers, which meets in a cafe quite a bit further away. Tonight's group is for writers of any genre and non-genre too. Everyone seemed pretty friendly last week, and while I was the only scifi and fantasy guy, there was one horror guy.

 

[RedMage]

@djv124 @RolandsFarblood @STEKI @EricJ @Alan L @Jonas Stark and anyone else.

I'm sure you've all noticed things are fairly quiet around here. Is there anything we can do to support you in your writing? Do you need an accountability partner? Regular motivation and/or inspiration? Critique partners? Somewhere just to hangout and chat about writing, be it story-specific issues or general ponderings?

Are there other things we can do to help you in your writing or provide you with a writing community and friends? Maybe regular, weekly writing sessions or writing contests or games?

Basically, what would you like to see from SFFWorld?

 

[Jonas Stark]

Somewhere just to hangout and chat about writing, be it story-specific issues or general ponderings?

This is probably what I seek out most at this point.

Between my bouts of mania, I'm usually doing some structural story work and wouldn't mind a nice contest here and there to keep fresh on the actual writing craft.

It definitely is far more quieter than it was in the past. My heydey was 2011-2014 and it was pretty awesome around these parts. Alas, I am not sure what the solution is, but nice to see there's a bit more life clinging on to this forum. June-July was looking really grim.

 

[RedMage]

That was my heyday too, @Jonas Stark! I have a year or so on you, joining at the end of 2009, but yeah, those were the days.

Contests are fun! I have a series of short stories that came out of our contests about a little girl, older than her years, who utterly dominates a murdering, mayhem-causing, soul-eating demon. Yeah, that came from an October, Halloween-themed contest. And it wasn't one I hosted, if you can believe it! LOL.

Would anyone be interested in a regular contest? I hosted the last few early in the year and decided to stop due to a lack of participation at the time. But we can always start them up again if there is interest!

 

[Jonas Stark]

I probably would be, but I'm too busy averaging 3-4k words a day (and more right now), and will probably be down for the count in Sept-Oct (travel for work, alas), but by November, I'll be back in the saddle!

Yes! There were some truly great stories back then! Great times. I know the forum format is somewhat in decline in general, but I would have thought if any forum could endure in a more long-form format, it'd be a writing forum lol

 

[Jonas Stark]

Done. Lyetuna, the first draft anyway, is complete at 213k words last night. I sprinted like a wild man at the end averaging over 5k words a day this last week. The best part is that my beta reader took it in immediately, getting back to me just a little while ago, suggesting the last four chapters were actually the most intense, the lowest bloat.

But I am completely spent creatively.

I'm going to let my mind lay fallow for a while, probably outline the next book, much like I did last year after sprinting to the finish on FS14. The next one is centered on a war and ends on a cataclysmic reveal for the series, so it will be a challenge to outline.

For everyone else working on your own books, see it through! It's so satisfying to be at this point, and looking forward to hearing how others are doing.

 

[RedMage]

CONGRATULATIONS @Jonas Stark! Great work! And way to go, sprinting down the home stretch!

That's quite the beta reader you have too. Did they stay up all night reading it? I can only hope my beta readers say similar things about my final chapters. Lol