#the house in the cerulean sea is on here but I enjoyed wolfsong too

[stormblessed95]

Hello! Not really a bts ask, but I wanted to ask you about your writing if that's okay? I was wondering how you manage to make time and force yourself to actually write? I'm an aspiring writer myself but I find that I just don't ever have time to write, my job takes up a lot of my time and then on the few days I get off I usually end up seeing friends or family which means that all my evenings I'm usually exhausted, either from work or from socialising and just find myself feeling so uninspired and unmotivated that the most I can do is collapse on the sofa and either watch tv or maybe read my book. How do you tackle this? What do you do when you want to write but you don't feel like writing?

(Also, just wanted to thank you for your book recommendations, I just finished the third wolfsong book by tj klune and am saving up for the last one, thoroughly enjoyed, the first one I think remains my favourite so far though!)

Hello! I just saw this, sorry! I love that you are loving TJ Klune, I highly recommend his other books as well if you want to continue reading books he has written. Especially The House by the Cerulean Sea.

This also feels a bit like a call out. I haven't worked on my books for like 2 months. I've been giving all my extra time to you here! Lol also, personally I don't force it. Writing fiction isn't my job. It's something I do for fun. Maybe one day I'll attempt to get published, but for now. It's just for fun. So if I don't want to, I just... don't. And other times, inspiration will hit and I'll write 10K words in a day or 2. Writing is hard. It takes a lot of mental and emotional energy. It's okay to give yourself some grace when it comes to sitting down to write.

The process for everyone is different. I have a friend who is an extreme outliner. She had spreadsheets upon spreadsheets of exactly what would happen when before she wrote her first draft. I... am not. Technically the first chapter I wrote in my mermaid WIP was chapter 3, because that was the scene I wanted to write when I first got the idea for the book. Then I worked backwards. I have a basic idea where I want things to go and I have specific scenes and things that I know will happen, but otherwise.... the book goes where the book wants to go. Sometimes when I don't feel like writing, I'll try to take a few minutes at least to sit and think about my characters and my book. Think about what they would do in xyz situations, try to get to know them better. Think of a scene I would really like to happen. Then write down brief notes about it for whenever I feel like sitting down to write again. And sometimes just thinking through them in my head makes me want to sit and write it right then too.

In the end, it's all about Trial and Error, finding out which process works best for you personally. Sometimes I find having active beta readers helps. I have a friend who reads what I write as I write it, chapter by chapter basically and I do the same for her. It encourages us to write what happens next when we have someone literally asking "omg, so what happens next???" Lol it's fun and uplifting too. Wish I could help more, good luck on your current WIP! I'm sure it's going to be amazing!

#aspiring writer #writing habits #i need to stop procrastinating and write my own stories too