Tag Archives: fear

6 Ways Your Brain Kills Your Stories

How is it that your brain can think of wonderful stories, and then actively thwart your efforts to write them down? Let’s discuss some ways this happens, and what you can do about them.

In this post, I’m building on a previous (and inspiring) post by Courtney Seiter. Her article dealt with writing in general, but mine focuses on fiction writing.

When I think of an idea for a story, I jot down the idea in a file so I can write the story later. Over the years, the file has grown to over 160 ideas. However, I’ve written stories for only about 25 of these ideas, about 15%. Why not the other 85%? At one time, I was enthusiastic enough about all the ideas to write them down. What happened?

As I see it, one or more of the following six reasons explains my inaction. Many of these match the ones on Courtney Seiter’s list, but I’ve altered her list to conform to my experience. My methods of fixing the problems differ from hers to some extent.

Here are the ways my own brain works against me, and how I counter each of them:

  1. It tells me the idea is no good. Maybe it once seemed good, but it no longer excites, or it’s obsolete, or there’s too little there from which to build a story. Sometimes my brain is right about that. When it’s not, the cure is to think more deeply about the idea, to brainstorm and mind-map, and to flesh it out.
  2. It tells me the story is too hard to write. This most often occurs with stories worthy of being novels. It’s true that a novel is a bigger project than a short story. However, you don’t tackle big projects by worrying about how hard they are. You break them down into bite-sized tasks, and go after the tasks, one by one.
  3. It tells me I’m too busy with other work. There will always be other things to do, so this ever-present excuse can prevent you from writing anything. The cure is to decide how important the story is to you. Can you adjust your priorities? Can you exercise better time management?
  4. It gets distracted. Really, brain? This is your most pitiful excuse of all. My cure for this is to write a first draft with only a pad of paper, no computer. That helps eliminate many distractions. Setting a deadline—even an artificial one—can help me focus as well.  
  5. It tells me the story idea is outside my lane, and someone else should write it. My muse has come up with some crazy ideas, many of them far outside my usual genres. Sometimes I’ve given such ideas to other writer friends for whom the story would be a better fit. Often I’ve gone ahead, written the story, and hoped for the best.
  6. It’s afraid. As Courtney Seiter observed, this is the biggest reason of all. It’s the root cause of the previous five reasons. There’s no sure-fire cure for this. I have to ask myself why I’m afraid, and look for ways to counter that cause. Often this involves asking myself, “What if I weren’t afraid? How would I tackle this?” Then I mind-map ideas about how I’d go about it.

Next time your brain tries to kill one of your stories, try these techniques. They’ve worked for the brain of—

                                                Poseidon’s Scribe

February 17, 2019Permalink

The Worst Click

You’re a beginning writer and you’ve been writing and rewriting your manuscript.  For some reason, the actual product doesn’t match in grandeur the masterpiece you had in your head when you started.  The process of assembling the actual words, herding them together in some sort of order, made the whole resulting story seem more juvenile than you intended.  Not juvenile as in ‘written for juveniles to read,’ but ‘written by a juvenile who nearly failed English.’

You could go through and edit your creation one more time in hopes that greatness will finally emerge, but you’ve done that already repeatedly and it hasn’t worked.  It’s doubtful if one more edit will accomplish much.  Besides, you’re getting a little sick of the thing.  Your muse has flitted off, interested in different and ever newer pursuits.

Somewhere you’d heard that even the best writers let a manuscript sit for a time—a few weeks or even months—and then come back to it, able to look with a fresher eye.  In your case that’s not an option, since today’s the deadline for the anthology for which you’re aiming.  Or maybe you already did let the work sit for a while but it didn’t result in a better manuscript, just further loss of interest in the story.  In either case, this opus isn’t going to get any better than it is right now.

So you sit staring at the monitor, looking at an e-mail you’ve written to the editor.  The e-mail has your story attached—oh, you triple-checked that.  The file with the story is in the format preferred by the editor, again triple-checked.  The e-mail is short and upbeat.  Everything is ready.  All you have to do is click the ‘send’ button and your first-ever story will be on its way to an actual editor.

So what gives?  Why the delay?  It’s a single mouse click, for crying out loud.  What happened to that boldness you felt when you couldn’t wait to charge in and start writing the story?  Where’s that reckless abandon with which you stayed up until three in the morning last month to pound out the first draft of the final scene, typing “The End” in weary triumph?  What’s happened to reduce that bravely audacious writer to a quivering mass of doubt, consumed with fear at the sight of a Send button?

What if, you keep thinking, the editor doesn’t like it?  What if it’s the worst piece of tripe the editor has ever read?  It would be bad to receive a rejection, but devastating if the editor replied with something like, “It was enough for me to endure your opening paragraph, and how I wish I could have that precious time back.  I have many enemies, but none so vile that I would force them to read a single sentence of your work.  Not only am I rejecting your story, but I beg you, for the good of humanity, to take up another hobby—any other hobby.”

It’s that and a thousand similar scenarios that keep your finger poised above, but never quite clicking, the mouse button that would send your first story on its way.  I’ll write about dealing with rejections in a future blog post, but in this case you’re rejecting the story yourself before you even send it in.

Would it help if I told you that every writer goes through that the first time?  What if I said that no self-respecting editor ever sends a rejection full of personal put-downs like you imagined?  How about if I told you it’s only this first submission that causes such angst, that all the rest are far easier?

Since you face an irrational fear, one of your own making, there’s no works-every-time cure I can offer.  However, I suggest you dig deep inside yourself.  Remember when you started this quest?  You wanted to find out if you could be a writer, if you have what it takes.  This little moment of truth is part of the process, part of the writing game.

Chances are this submission will result in rejection, but that won’t deter the writer within you.  Oh, no, that inner writer will instead be spurred on, intent to do better next time.  That would-be (no, will-be!) author inside you laughs at rejections, even prints them out and saves them as badges of honor.  That confident scribbler within you knows that one day the act of submitting stories will be routine.  And on that day you’ll look back on this first moment of indecision and laugh.

So click ‘send,’ brave writer!  Hold your creation—your baby—aloft so the world can see.  You can do it.  I did, and survived.  As always, write to me here if you have some reaction to this post.  Now well past that first, worst click, I call myself—

Poseidon’s Scribe

March 20, 2011Permalink