I'm currently working on a long story and running into a problem that I seem to encounter way too often these days: even though I keep getting new ideas that I can't wait to explore when they occur to me, whenever I sit down to write I feel that the story will never get finished. And so what ensues is that I get stuck, I become impatient, every paragraph takes ages to complete, and of course as a result I lose confidence and it becomes even more difficult to write. What happens then is that I procrastinate instead of spending my time writing, which is very stupid since I'm on holiday for another month and have all the time I want for that.
So I thought I'd jump in and start a discussion to see whether other authors, 1) sometimes feel the same way, and 2) have some tricks to keep the motivation running constantly throughout the writing of long stories.
For example, how do you convince yourself to stick to one story and not butterfly around? Also, do you have a clear working schedule? Do you outline your scenes ahead and plan to write one each day? Do you force yourself to write at least for two hours every day, or a set number of pages? Or do you just sit at the computer and the writing flows out onto the page with a snap of your fingers (if so, what's your secret, and can I have it?
)?
Yours procrastinatingly,
Kaethel
