Authors' irrational fears

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ken_r
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Re: Authors' irrational fears

Post by ken_r »

I think I said before I always finish my stories before posting because I do not plan stories I just let them come as I write. This means that a lot of stories go to the folder of lost stories. Sometimes later I can come back this folder and make the story work.

At my age what I want to show in love scenes is the caring the two people have for each other. Too many times the love scenes become a technical manual for a porno fic. I am not necessarily against this but for my self if I can show this caring feeling I am satisfied. The gymnastics I have to leave for younger writers and then I enjoy them as I think of my aching joints and wonder if somehow I missed something in life.

I have started to wonder about love scenes between people who do not care about each other. Not abusive people but just people who have lost what love they had in their youth. I may work on this sometime in the future.

Right now I am working on a story where the couples split up because the principal characters do not love their mates. The mates are good people they just aren’t the right people. I am using Maria who married in haste because she found that Michael married someone else. Later Maria and Michael do get together and rekindle the love they believe they were intended to have. They are willing to leave their spouses and families to run away together. There is guilt and other feelings that is what I want to explore.

This is a interesting feeling because I have stayed with my wife for over 42 years. Yet it an idea I want to explore. I do not want to loose the love we have for Michael and Maria but to rather show them with real faults.

Ken r
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Re: Authors' irrational fears

Post by dreamer19 »

My irrational fear? That'll never be able to fully perfect the ideas in my head. My mind is too face-paced for me to keep up with. Stories will complete themselves in my mind usually within the first night I start writing it, but alas I'm usually sleeping by this point. I'm too tired to get up and write but I can't stop thinking about the ideas and images in my head. If I'm lucky my mind will replay them over and over but that's not always the case.

Another irrational fear is that I'm not a good enough writer to even invest in own ideas. If I write one part and thought it was well written. I get so tired from all that anxiousness over whether or not I can write another good part. So I put it off.

Then comes my next irrational fear. I disconnect. I disconnect from my life and from my stories. The fear here is that if I'm depressed, then I'll never be able to write, then I'll never update and everyone forget I ever existed. Though many don't know I exist to begin with because I keep such a low profile.

I guess my last irrational fear is that if someone reads what I wrote, they will see right through it all and see what I'm hiding. That they'll be able to figure me out as a person and then I'll become vulnerable.

Maybe not relevant to other authors on this site, but I'm a very irrational person to begin with and my paranoia is a constant companion. This all makes sense for me. My life= my writing. If I can't invest myself entirely, then I don't write up to my potential. I need this release from my depression. It's just become such a big thing in my life that I can't live without, but I'm afraid of spoiling whatever it is I've built with my writing.

Wow. I'm going to read this tomorrow and try to figure out what my original thought was. Hmm. But I am writer with irrational fears so I guess it will all make sense.
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Janetfl
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Re: Authors' irrational fears

Post by Janetfl »

As a new story writer I think my biggest fear is rejection!!!

When I posted the first chapters of my story I was completely shitting myself!! :lol:

The questions my partner got were .....

What if they don't like it? What if I make mistakes? What if nobody leaves feed back? What if everybody laughs at me? What if my story is pathetic?

Then I read my first few feed backs and was amazed at all the encouraging comments!! It took me a long time to even write the first two chapters let alone post them.
pijeechinadoll wrote:my author fears: :( :D lol i have quite a few

over writing a love scene

over writing a ending

dragging out a story

am i keeping the reader's attention?

am i doing the characters justice?

sometimes when i don't get enough feedback i end up posting another chapter: :? i get quite paranoid over it

when writing a love scene when do know what to write or language use without it seeming tacky.

sometimes my mind goes blank when i write

i have a awful habit of starting something but not finishing

i have a fear that my stories aren't as good as other people's

lol i could go on...
I couldn't say it better myself!!! I'm afraid of all of the above and more!!!!

JAN
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max and liz believer
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Re: Authors' irrational fears

Post by max and liz believer »

I recognize myself in so many of the previous posts (thank God, I'm not alone...), and we all sound horribly self-critical, don't we?

But the thing I really really fear about writing is sex scenes. I wouldn't go as far to say that I hate to write them, because I want to write them. I want my story to have those scenes because it makes the relationships more real to me. But each time I've written the whole dialogue/plot leading up to the actual sex scene... I freeze. Then I start procrastinating, because I guess I don't feel comfortable writing them. And I want them to be real while at the same time I don't want to gross anyone out or be overly explicit. Also, I don't want to be too non-descriptive either. It's just an annoying balance to tread and I always get stuck.

That's my biggest fear. Sex :lol:
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paper
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Re: Authors' irrational fears

Post by paper »

My biggest fear is that I'm writing a story full of chads.

My short story idea feels like it is about half way done at almost 90 chapters.

A lot of the time it seems like I am just writing the same part over and over. It all sounds so familiar, you know?

I have a habit of biting off more than I can chew.

I have all these ideas I want to include but no time to work on any of them.

My plot sucks and my outline is non-existent.

And some days I wake up laughing because I thought of some ridiculous situation to include. And it's all worthwhile again.

I still fear that in the end, my few readers are going to wonder why they bothered to read my piece in the first place.
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Janetfl
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Re: Authors' irrational fears

Post by Janetfl »

And some days I wake up laughing because I thought of some ridiculous situation to include. And it's all worthwhile again.

I still fear that in the end, my few readers are going to wonder why they bothered to read my piece in the first place.

Well Paper I can definately tell you that, that will not be the case with me!!!! I love the way you write Khivar and all of the terrible situations he gets himself into. I'll stick with you right to the end!!! I love the way you write.

JAN :mrgreen:
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Tears_of_Mercury
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Re: Authors' irrational fears

Post by Tears_of_Mercury »

I'm not sure if this counts as an irrational fear or not (probably not) - but even though it's only three hours into bidding, I'm convinced that because no one's bidded on me yet in the auction no one will. I... am not quite sure how I feel about this. :|
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Eva
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Re: Authors' irrational fears

Post by Eva »

lizandzackfan wrote:I don't know if my stories are any good, I know I get a little feedback but no where near how much other people get. I love writing and I think that how can you love something so much if your not good at it you know? But when I read a really good stories I can't help but think how much mine sucks compared to it. I also get where some of you are scared that you might not finish a story because sadly I have yet to finish one also. I keep starting other ones. :(
Oh yeah, I recognize this one! This is me 100%.

My other fear is my knowledge of the English language. English is like my 4th language after Dutch, French and German. Luckily somebody is beta-reading me at the moment. I hope she doesn't get bored doing it because without her I would be lost. I mean, I know my English isn't that bad but writing in another language isn't that easy. My vocabulary in Dutch is much wider and advanced. Sometimes I get stuck because I can't find the right translation. Idioms, expressions and proverbs can really haunt me down.

I hope I can finish my fic. At this moment I only wrote a short story (without a beta-reader). It was a try-out but it succeeded, I think.
My other fic is a WIP; I already wrote a big part of it in Dutch and now I'm translating it (= read: rewriting it in English because you can't translate literaly). We'll see how far I get but I hope to finish it.
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precariousem
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Re: Authors' irrational fears

Post by precariousem »

When I was 18 (in 2000) and first obsessed with Roswell, I wrote the beginnings of a fanfic and posted it to my yahoo group no problem. I think I spent a few hours on it at the most. And I did role-playing and would write them easily. I just didn't care what people thought.

In August of 2007 I got an idea for a story, and I have a list of things I want to include, and I know how I want the story to begin and end - and also a lot of the middle - but I'm not sure how to put it all together. And this is happening with another fic that I've started, too.
So, my main fears are:

a) Nobody will like the plot, and they'll think I'm stupid for coming up with it
b) Nobody will like the writing
c) Nobody will read it.
d) I'm writing what I would say or feel, not how the character would
e) I don't know enough about [insert subject here] (example: fixing cars, molecular biology, etc)

The fic I'm writing currently for BSG deals with a lot of things that I know nothing about (like how to fix a ship and what tools to use, or what a planet would have to be like to sustain human life) - the kind of stuff that I could easily skip over, but seem so incredibly important for me to understand before I can advance the plot. And I'm spending way too much time researching things that will probably amount to a paragraph, but I just feel like I have to.

I am such a perfectionist. :roll: that I spend way too much time on this stuff when I probably should just go to the next chapter and reevaluate later.
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killjoy
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Re: Authors' irrational fears

Post by killjoy »

Okay here's my fear.....I'm thirty five years old....almost thirty six :shock: and I've never been in love...nor has anyone ever been in love with me.So the whole concept of the emotion...what I mean is how powerful love is between two people,how it makes you feel or what it can make you do is lost to me.I have no experince with it.So it's hard for me to write the emotion or two people sharing it.

The only thing I know of it is from seeing couples in real life,movies/tv and in fanfiction.So I'm always nervous that I either have the couples like two cold fish or to over the top with the lovey dovey and making them look stupid.
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