"Deadline" panic

[roselightfairy]

Does anyone want to help counsel me through some quiet WIP panic? I have these two WIPs that I've been working on for quite some time, both of which are very important to me, and both of which have just-- stopped talking to me. Just planted their feet firmly where they are and refused to go any further. One of them has been like this since the summer, and I recently thought I'd try to pick it up again and found that it's still refusing to cooperate; the other was started more recently, but it's been just as firm in its silence.

I'm not so much asking for advice on how to get through the block as I am asking for help... being okay with this. Like, I understand that work sometimes just needs to sit while mental processes work or life experience accumulates or emotional blocks resolve themselves or whatever. And maybe the problem is with the work itself, but I'm not yet ready to start doing deep revision on what I have until I've written a little more, so that's also something that needs time. And this is something I understand intellectually, but I also have this weird compulsion about time. (Maybe it's latent fear of mortality or whatever we say, or maybe it's just anxiety, but either way it exists.) I always need to get to places early, and freak out if I don't. Whenever I have to submit work for a class or something else, I submit way before the deadline and triple-check to make sure my submission went through. Last year for Fandom Trumps Hate (and this is a quick reminder that I'm offering fanfiction for it this year), I didn't realize the deadline was at the end of the year; I thought it was only a couple of months in. So I limited the amount I thought I could write, contacted my bidder immediately, and had my piece written within two weeks. I don't say this to brag about my speed or timeliness or anything, I say this to explain how extreme this compulsion is.

Now, I know these WIPs that I have aren't on a deadline. But I guess there's part of me that's terrified they have an expiration date: that if I don't finish them right now, I never will. Which would be a shame, because they're very important to me, and I want to see them finished. (Of course I'd like to post them and get validation, too, but that's not the main point.) It's like I'm on deadline to myself, beholden to a ticking clock that exists in no one's mind but my own-- trying to get them finished before whatever mystery date I have arbitrarily decided is "too late." Because for some reason it feels like if I don't get them finished before then, I'll never be able to finish them at all.

Again, I know logically that this isn't the case, but I can't help feeling it, and I'm wondering if anyone else has good advice for how to deal with these feelings? Suggestions for how to calm down and let it go, personal experience in coming back to an old WIP-- or maybe you're just in the same boat and we can commiserate together?

Comments

[katajainen]

Oh dear... that sounds a bit counterproductive.

I can't really say I relate, because I'm a keep-polishing-things-that-don't-need-polishing-until-the-very-last-possible-minute sort of person, and have serious difficulties finishing anything if I'm not on an external deadline.

But my solution to a stalled WIP is usually to move on to another WIP (or to start a new one... please don't ask how many WIPs I have), which means I have plenty of experience in coming back to an old WIP.

If it's a really old WIP, it's usually a mix of internal cringe and "wow, that bit is actually quite good - did I really write it?". And I'm not going to lie, sometimes the cringe factor overcomes the "wow-that's-great" factor, and the WIP becomes a case of rewrite or abandonment. It's perfectly all right to abandon a story halfway through (or any other point); if it won't work, who better to know it than yourself?

But most often, staying away from a work for a while only makes it feel fresh when I come back to it; at the very least it makes it easier to ditch the parts that don't work, because I'm somehow less involved with them if I haven't reworked them to death for the past two weeks. (I also have a "Random Shit File" that's literally called that, where I keep a copy of all the bits and pieces I'm not quite sure I want to delete just in case I want to put them back in. I usually don't, but knowing they will be available helps to make the cut when needed.)

Otherwise, just quietly commiserating here *looks at the 7 WIPs she's written stuff for since New Year; none of them is finished*

[roselightfairy]

I totally have that "deleted scenes and cut bits" document as well, and I too almost NEVER put the scenes back in... but even if I know I won't keep them, it still eases my mind to know I haven't thrown them away forever.

Who knows; I keep plugging away at these things bit by bit, so maybe one day they'll be finished. I just get terrible deadline anxiety, argh. (However, this does not always mean I don't procrastinate, either. *looks at taxes for two different countries' governments and crumples into tiny ball*)

But please let us commiserate together, because I'm not used to having things that I'm periodically working on and coming back to-- I too often abandon things forever, or psych myself into thinking I've abandoned them forever. It's also why I usually post regularly-- because if I've started posting a story, you can bet I've finished it already, or gotten close enough to finishing that I don't have doubt in my ability to do so. But now I have these WIPs that I really want to finish... but I admit, it's also kind of cool to have a project that's there for me to work on here and there. I think I just have to remind myself of the good parts of that, rather than fretting about how I'LL NEVER FINISH IT AHHHHH.

Thank you for the support and for sharing your experience. <3 Sorry this response was all over the place!

[katajainen]

*looks at taxes for two different countries' governments and crumples into tiny ball*

UGH don't remind me... I KNOW I'll leave it to the last minute, like I always do; I keep telling myself that it takes me 2 hours (or 3 maximum) to add up the numbers and fill out the form, but somehow I never take those 2 hours until I absolutely have to (also I have a history of filing my taxes a day or two late...)

But I actually remembered a few more tricks for stuck-up stories:

1) Backtrack. The usual advice is to go back 10 lines or so, but I usually look a few paragraphs, maybe a page or so backwards from the current last line and see if I can find the point where I started writing myself into a corner (or where the conversation started veering off topic, or whatever). If you can find the spot, cut off from there onwards and start over.

2) Write non-linearly. I prefer doing things from start to finish; that makes for less seams to tidy over, but sometimes writing THE Scene at the end/middle/middle of end that I've been dying to write since line one gets me back into the story. (The problem is that you still have to work out the parts in between, once you've written the fancy stuff, but it can actually be easier if you see where you're going.)

3) Outline. I write short stuff, so usually I don't bother with outlines. But for any longer (say 10k+) I need some notes at least. And it can work as sort of brainstorming; just the other day I had a scene that started out as outline notes that refused to be concise. (And it's a WIP I started posting back in 2016... I live in hope of finishing it sometime this decade XD)

[roselightfairy]

You know, I usually... well, I actually usually switch back and forth between writing linearly and not. All the stories with urbanspaceman were written very linearly, but that's easier to do when you have someone else you can tag in when you get stuck. Finding a Voice was written completely out of order, mostly because I wasn't actually intending to post it when I started writing it-- I was just writing a collection of scenes I wanted to see, and then it gradually started resembling a story (and also I got frustrated with the lack of content in the Legolas/Gimli tag). But I wrote chapter 22-- the confession chapter-- before I'd written either of them realizing their love for one another, and Erebor before Mirkwood, and the covert cuddling scene long before I'd even conceived of the characterizations that drove the story... This was all more detail than you needed, haha, I'm sorry.

For one of the stories, I know where I'm stuck, and that's because I've foolishly decided to write about the royal family of the Greenwood. My gosh, the history of that realm is tragic, even if you're only starting in the very late Second Age like I am, and how do you write about the kind of losses they faced during the Last Alliance? It's something for which I have absolutely no emotional context whatsoever, so every attempt feels paltry-- and yet I know I can't write anything later until I understand what kind of impact that had.

Actually, a lot of the places I'm stuck are because of that, I think. I'm trying to write about a magnitude and variety of grief in both stories that I've never experienced, and I just don't know... how to put myself into my characters' heads. I have all these ideas for how things should go, I have a planned plot, but the feeling-- the thing I have long prided myself in being good at-- just isn't there, and I don't know how to write it.

I'm trying to sort of... write around it right now, writing little snippets of plot here, character there, and kind of hoping that I'll eventually piece it all together-- or that sometime this grand "aha" moment will happen and I'll suddenly understand what the piece is that I'm missing. But as of yet it has NOT happened, and I'm impatient with it, heh. :)

Thanks for listening! I'm sorry to ramble; I just want to talk about my writing all the time and given the slightest hint of permission I will write paragraphs and paragraphs. I'm so grateful to you for letting me do that! <3

Also, re: taxes... UGH. *crumples into even tinier ball* I've only ever done them as a student before, and now I have to do them for one half year as a student in Canada and one half year working back in the US. I am not excited. :P I wish you best of luck with yours, also! *invites you into little stress huddle*