>>57036108Gonna try to type in actual proper caps and punctuation for my serious advice. Friend of mine made picrel for gamedev. Applies very well to any longform project, and pretty well to the kind of short medium term project that was this contest. In one sense you could say a lot of writers have a hard time leaving that prototyping phase. Basically, you think of two possible branches for the issue you're having. If it's 1. genuine self doubt, you just have to overcome that psychological hurdle any way that you can. Typically from showing your work to others and gaining comfort with your own writing and learning to see your own virtues. But let's treat it like it's a real logistical issue.
2. My works are not coming together, and I'm not sure why. Am I just making bad ideas from the start? Am I just not seeing things through? Writing paralysis starts here. The fear that you're clinging to a sinking ship starts mixing and clashing with the fear that you're constantly killing your babies before they get a chance to walk. Here's the answer.
For any piece you make, there is some form of it that exists in the ether that is good. In fact, there are probably lots and lots of forms and versions of it that are good. You can be honest with yourself and say if you think or don't think you can reach any of them, but you do need to adopt an abundance mentality. Not only does a good version of a piece exist, but numerous numerous numerous good versions exist, with a whole range of artistic decisions that produce a good outcome. If each artistic decision you make for a piece (how lewd? happy end, bad end? glasses no glasses? self insert or cgdct?) is a door you walk through, there are hundreds of "final doors" that are worth going through at the very end, and millions and billions of intersecting routes you can go through to get to any of them. The question isn't whether a piece has something worth a damn in it. The real question is do you care enough to find it?
That isn't a rhetorical question. Maybe you don't. Not every story idea that runs past our brains, that we outline and that we start are actually interesting enough to deserve our full attention for the short time we're on this Earth. It's a genuine honest decision you have to make based on you.
If you like something, but feel like it's beyond your capabilities, then it's a reach, like a reach school for a highschool student looking at colleges. Figure out how much of a reach it is for you. Is it, if I put my mind to it for two days I think I can figure out what's wrong? Or is it, I need to study up for a month to understand fundamentally the artistic bs underlying this piece? Reaching is a good thing, even when you fail to grab it. Reaching and occasionally grasping is how we grow fastest as writers. Remember the time you spend figuring out what's wrong isn't the same as actually writing the thing. If it's something well within your capabilities, then guesstimate how long it'll take and you'll probably underestimate how long it'll take because like 100 writers on this planet are good at making personal timelines. I'm not one of them. You may never get good at it, but you have to always strive to get better at it than you are.
This post is getting long so I'll stop here, but these are the kinds of thought processes I think are helpful for any writer, but especially beginners trying to get past the initial hiccups. I hope you don't give up on your writing and keep trying anon.
