2026 Motivation Thread

RedMage said:
And so stupid at the same time. I could have saved myself a lot of grief. LOL!
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I've had that. Especially procrastinating something dreaded only to find that it wasn't worth all that. Fixed in five minutes. What?? Who knew? Dang.

I'm much more familiar with the "simple 15 minute fix" that eats up three solid days, although I tend to not procrastinate those, just run headlong into the quicksand.
 
I've decided to do serial fiction rather than work on a book for the time being. I have been sending books to be translated into Spanish, and figured that was a break of sorts to not write. But I like the non stress and pressure of serial fiction as of late though. It's once a week I post, so it's not like I need to write a book all of the time and such, even if I do have a book that needs to be finished.
 
EricJ said:
I've decided to do serial fiction rather than work on a book for the time being. I have been sending books to be translated into Spanish, and figured that was a break of sorts to not write. But I like the non stress and pressure of serial fiction as of late though. It's once a week I post, so it's not like I need to write a book all of the time and such, even if I do have a book that needs to be finished.
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Serial fiction is fun! Where are you posting/publishing? What type of stories?
 
May noobs also post goals here? If so, then may I also say what my story names/etc are? (I do not want to violate any self-promotion rules, etc.)


I am brand new here, and did not locate an overall "rules" post or thread stickied anywhere. Sincere apologies if I missed it. (I did find the thread to ask about rules, and asked about them there.)
 
Amberwolf said:
May noobs also post goals here? If so, then may I also say what my story names/etc are? (I do not want to violate any self-promotion rules, etc.)
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As long as you're not trying to sell something, you should be okay. I think you'll find that if you steer clear of "my book rocks, buy it now" you'll be pretty safe.

Many titles of stories have been shared here, I think I've seen the occasional discussion about specific challenges an author is facing while trying to make progress, without issue.
 
Amberwolf said:
May noobs also post goals here? If so, then may I also say what my story names/etc are? (I do not want to violate any self-promotion rules, etc.)


I am brand new here, and did not locate an overall "rules" post or thread stickied anywhere. Sincere apologies if I missed it. (I did find the thread to ask about rules, and asked about them there.)
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Hi Amberwolf. Welcome to SFFWorld ! Nice to meet you

Yes, anyone can post here. We don't have thread-specific or forum-specific rules (i.e. Writing Forum vs Fantasy / Horror Forum), but one set of rules for the entire forum. Looks like you found them, and you would have had to review them when you created an account. As for your question in that other thread, I'm going to ask the other mods and admins to weigh in.

Feel free to post in this thread about your personal writing. However, any promotions or marketing of your work must be posted in our Promotion Zone.
 
Alan L said:
As long as you're not trying to sell something, you should be okay. I think you'll find that if you steer clear of "my book rocks, buy it now" you'll be pretty safe.

Many titles of stories have been shared here, I think I've seen the occasional discussion about specific challenges an author is facing while trying to make progress, without issue.
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Yep, discussion of that stuff is not a problem. Talking about how you handled XYZ writing-related issue in ABC book/short story/etc. you wrote is fine too. It's the "but my fantastic book now!" that we don't allow outside the Promotion Zone.
 
Thank you both.

I don't have anything to market yet, although i have a few thousand years (ish) of a universe I've built over the last 3/4 year or so. That process is ongoing as I write; I probably have at least three or four times as much history and notes as story (enough that I am in the slow and tedious process of organizing into a local wiki).

I would love to think that something I've written is publishable, but I'm sure none of it is that good yet.

While I have read thousands of SF stories and books (mostly before this century, and most of them from the 80s and before), writing them is new to me.

My present goal is to finish one of the many books I have begun. ;)

Most of the things I have completed are tiny vignettes within my Drywater, Mars universe. I have parts of three books in the DM era of the universe written in various stages of draft.

(edit: forgot to put in the TFD and NF portion)
The Faerie Drive portion of the universe a few thousand years later is still...under construction. :) I have parts of the beginning and end and some notes for pieces of the middle on TFD.

The earliest portions, close to "today", near-future, are also in progress. They are actually harder--keeping it "real" when it's just around the corner is more of a challenge....

I am not "normal" (am autistic) so the way I think and do things is different from most people (really, any that I have met so far). It is likely that the average reader will not follow my stories, or like them. But some are good, at their core, at least, even if I am still learning how to express them.

Unlike my technical things (and the worldbuilding behind the stories), the stories themselves are rather sparse in detail, because in my general experience with people, the kind of detail I would like to put in excessively slows down the reader and/or bores them. ;)

Because of the way I think and experience the world, I cannot write from beginning to end, but instead must write each piece as it comes to me (even though I know generally what happens within the larger story).

Hopefully that is not too long a post, I shortened it as much as I could.
 
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Amberwolf said:
Hopefully that is not too long a post, I shortened it as much as I could.
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One of the things we never normally complain about at SFFWorld is posts being too long! Welcome, Amberwolf - we hope you'll be happy here. Following your point made, I've revised and renewed the Forum Rules FAQ thread, HERE. Thanks again!
 
Thanks for the new Forum Rules FAQ thread @Hobbit!

@Amberwolf, yeah, posts are never too long LOL! You are definitely welcome here. We're always happy to have new people join us. Feel free to post in other threads, new threads, whatever you want--within the forum rules, of course ;).

I'm overdue for an update post of my own, so here goes:

I've been stuck on my scifi novel Relics for weeks. I hate getting stuck and, once again, I've finally realized the primary cause, as well as a secondary, chapter-specific cause. The latter is easier to explain, so here it is: I was starting the chapter too early and dealing with information management and organization issues. I've now found the proper place to start and I've made notes about where to insert this bit of information or that and left the actual task of adding the info to the next phase in the process. For now, it's enough to know where to begin and to have a bunch of versions of those different pieces of information which I can pick an choose from later on.

The primary reason is one that I kick myself for. It comes up with every. Single. Novel. OMG. Why don't I know this about myself yet?? I talk a lot about being a big time outliner, basically going through the novel a few times, adding more and more detail with each stage until I have a rough draft. Then my "draft" stage produces a polished "First Draft". However, I don't know that I share much about the reason for all this work.

Answer: it's a way to trick my brain into allowing the rough draft to be imperfect and full of problems. But that also means the polished First Draft is supposed to be perfect. At least, that's my expectations for the two stages.

So, when the First Draft is problematic, well, it's a big struggle. And that's where I've been with the current chapter.

I'm moving forward again, now. I put down almost 1,500 words this past Thursday, and just did 500 words this morning, barely an hour ago. There's more chapter to write, but I'll leave it for tomorrow so I can keep up the forward momentum. But, don't worry! This problem will come back with the next chapter. Or the one after that or at least 3 or 4 more times with this same novel. That's my pattern :rolleyes: Really, I should just tape a note to my laptop to remind myself of this constant problem with my process...

How's everyone else doing?
 
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