Neocolours

Okay now this is a kind of a weird problem that I have...For the past, uh, 3 years I've been trying to write a story. A long story, involving many chapters in total. Now my problem is I'm a perfectionist when it comes to writing my stories, school or personal ones, and with my story I never get past the 3rd chapter without deciding to re write it all. (this is the part that makes my friends go LAURA!)

With all my other stories Here it doesnt seem to be a problem. With these I can just write, but my long term project, I can't get anywhere.

Does anyone have any tips on how to get over my need for perfection and stopping myself from continuously destroying my own work?

Try NaNoWriMo this year. It's an exercise in sheer wordcount and shutting your internal editor up, and it's very educational. It happens every November.

Maybe you should take a break from that story for a while and write something else, then come back to it? Sorry if i'm assuming that you haven't already been doing that >.<

Dead Webby wrote:Maybe you should take a break from that story for a while and write something else, then come back to it? Sorry if i'm assuming that you haven't already been doing that >.<

Pretty much been doing that for ages now...That's what all my other stories have come from...Maybe I should just give up... >.<

Wysteria where can I find a NaNoWriMo?

Right here.

http://www.nanowrimo.org/

I participated last year and had a blast, finishing my first complete short story ever. Up until then I'd do the same thing you do - I still do actually, but not during NaNo.

Just bite the bullet and don't let yourself touch a chapter once you've finished it. If you're the sort of person who tends to need to alter previous material to account for revelations that happen in later material, keep notes about that, but do anything to stop yourself from editing more than a couple of pages back. If you have to, once you've written a few kilowords, email them to a friend and, once you know the email has gotten through intact, delete every copy of those words in your possession. Then go back to writing.

The NaNo webpage is here.

Thanks for the links!
Sounds pretty neat, if I have time I think I'll take part in it!
*hugs*

Cleolinda wrote a couple of things on writers block a while ago - they aren't specifically dealing with your sort of situation, but they might have some relevant stuff in there.

Link the First
Link the Second

ladynight6 wrote:Okay now this is a kind of a weird problem that I have...For the past, uh, 3 years I've been trying to write a story. A long story, involving many chapters in total. Now my problem is I'm a perfectionist when it comes to writing my stories, school or personal ones, and with my story I never get past the 3rd chapter without deciding to re write it all. (this is the part that makes my friends go LAURA!)

With all my other stories Here it doesnt seem to be a problem. With these I can just write, but my long term project, I can't get anywhere.

Does anyone have any tips on how to get over my need for perfection and stopping myself from continuously destroying my own work?

Wow, it's nice to know I'm not alone. I'm on my 13th draft of the first chapter.

Silverevilchao wrote:

ladynight6 wrote:Okay now this is a kind of a weird problem that I have...For the past, uh, 3 years I've been trying to write a story. A long story, involving many chapters in total. Now my problem is I'm a perfectionist when it comes to writing my stories, school or personal ones, and with my story I never get past the 3rd chapter without deciding to re write it all. (this is the part that makes my friends go LAURA!)

With all my other stories Here it doesnt seem to be a problem. With these I can just write, but my long term project, I can't get anywhere.

Does anyone have any tips on how to get over my need for perfection and stopping myself from continuously destroying my own work?

Wow, it's nice to know I'm not alone. I'm on my 13th draft of the first chapter.

You win...
I'm only on my 5th or so! The only good thing is that my writing has improved! It went from the really scary teeny bopper to more mature, but still sucky!

Hwah, hwah, hwah. I wrote a story (Second draft - WOO!!! <3) and when I was writing it, every time I wanted to burn the first pages, I put them down and thought, "When I finish all of this, I can edit. With a red pen. And black pen. And maybe a blue pen if I'm feeling daring."

So, basically, I just don't look back. I don't know if that helps, but you could try..

When I get writer's block, I just drop it and do something else, usually for several days. Get sucked into a novel, tv show, video game, something that eats up time. Go you get yourself involved in something else, so your brain gets a break. Then you can come back and say, well, this isn't so hard.

If you listen to music when you write, why not get new tunes? I tend to listen to the same stuff over and over, and forget to use variety--you might be different...

Hope it goes well