Okay, I know how this sounds. You’re probably thinking that I’m about to make a whole post about how I’ve been procrastinating on TikTok instead of doing the writing that I wanted to be doing. I thought I’d be making a similar post but, really that isn’t the case.
Lately, I’ve been watching a lot of authors on TikTok talking about different subjects but, mostly writer’s block. You know that shitty feeling where you want to write something but you’re too exhausted, or the words just don’t want to come to you? I feel like I talked about this a little bit in my last post “Writer’s Block or Burnout?” so, you should go check that out if you haven’t already.
A big thing I brought up in that post, at least for me, is not knowing how to deal with burnout or any of the emotions around it. So, when I saw that other people are going through the same thing, and actually talking about it on TikTok it made me feel better. It made me feel like I’m not alone. Because, I have so many people in my day-to-day life that tell me constantly that if I really wanted to write, and get this book, and this outline done, that I would do it. That I’m making up excuses when I feel like that couldn’t be further from the truth.
So, when I found someone doing silly writing prompts about how your characters would respond to doing silly, everyday mundane things, like what kind of coffee they’d order at Starbucks. What do they like on pizza? Things that make them feel like a more rounded, real person, it really seemed to help me get into their heads. It helped me get to know my characters better, and in doing so, it was able to really help me fill in a couple massive worldbuilding and lore plot holes that I couldn’t really get around.
Worldbuilding is usually fun for me- writing the lore, legends, things like that has always been something that I enjoyed doing. Especially when I was stuck in another part of my story but, it’s never actually been a problem for me. This time however, I needed to figure out why something happened, and the way that it happened to be able to continue on with my story. There was no getting around it this time. I couldn’t just step around it this time because it was the entire premise of the story, and how the characters would in fact start their journey.
Without it, there was no story. I can’t even begin to tell you how relieved I feel now that I’ve gotten around it because, I feel like it’s been plaguing me for months. While it wasn’t my only WIP, it was the only one that I wanted to work on, and not being able to do that felt almost debilitating to me. Because, I would open up the documents for my other projects and stare at them not knowing what to do because I had specific characters and scenes in my mind that had nothing to do with the open Word documents in front of me.
Which kind of leads me to something I’ve been thinking about for a little while- posting more on TikTok about my writing the way some of the authors that I follow do. I love their videos, and I find them inspiring, and fun, and they talk about a lot of the problems and everyday struggles of writing that I have too. Things that don’t get talked about in a lot of the Facebook writing groups I’m in, and it made me see that some of those groups have a very elitist and ableist mindset that I really don’t like, and kind of hurts me and tears me down as a writer. So, I’m seriously thinking about leaving those groups.
I also may or may not be thinking about participating in Camp NaNoWriMo this upcoming July… it all depends on what’s going on with this story now that I’ve gotten over this major hurdle.
-Sky
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