: Re: Translating from mind to paper I've had a story developing inside my head for years (literally about 5 or 6 years now) but every time I try to put that story onto paper it never turns out

@BetL639

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Stop editing and reviewing your writing during the process! Self-review, especially in the early pages of a project, can strip away your momentum and keep you from ever reaching the finish line.

If you were running a foot race, you wouldn't stop every few yards to look back at your footprints and criticize their placement and symmetry. You would just charge on to the next step, ever improving your speed and stride.

If Nike made pens they would have "JUST WRITE IT" on their sides.

...and they would help a lot of stillborn stories get past their author's prenatal hesitancy.

What you are writing during this first feverish rush of words is called a "first draft". It is not meant to be perfect. It is meant to get you used to the discipline of writing every day. It is meant to be a gathering of the characters and scenes which will make up later version. The significance of those characters and the order (or inclusion) of those scenes may change in future telling, so don't waste any time getting any of them perfect. Just get them down on paper. Give them physical form today so that they can be a starting point for the real writing you will do tomorrow.

When I started writing, I believed that creativity and grammar were the only skills needed to successfully write. Now, neither of those fakers make it into the top three attributes of a productive author. That list now includes...

dedication to the current story, despite all distractions
the discipline to write every day, despite all distractions

and

an unnamed human characteristic involving the willingness to end a story, even while you are in love with its characters and full of ideas for where the action can go next.

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