Do you have any advice for what to do when you feel like your writing is terrible and there's no point in continuing?
Asking for a friend and definitely not for me 🥲
Hope you are having a wonderful night, Synth. I'm about to head to bed myself.
Tell your "friend" that every single writer who has ever cared about their craft has stared down this exact same monster. When you pour your energy into building worlds, dissecting complex character dynamics, and maintaining massive, intricate narratives, a creative crash isn't just possible. It’s mathematically inevitable.
When the brain runs out of the specific fuel required to translate vivid internal visions into text, it defaults to a defense mechanism: convincing you that the work itself is the problem.
The Creative Gap
That crushing feeling that your writing is terrible? It is actually a symptom of growth. Ira Glass famously articulated the concept of the creative gap. Your taste remains impeccable, but your mechanical skill takes time to catch up.
When you read your recent pages and feel dissatisfied, it’s not because your writing has suddenly degraded. It’s because your analytical eye has leveled up, and you can now see nuances, pacing issues, or character beats that you weren't sensitive to a few months ago. Your fingers just need a moment to catch up to your brain.
Production to Exploration
When a massive project feels like a wall you can't climb, the pressure to produce polished, public-ready chapters can paralyze you. Lower the stakes entirely by shifting your goals.
Remind yourself of the absolute freedom of the private draft. Write something entirely self-indulgent that will never see an upload queue, a tag list, or an archive. I do this a lot. I have reams of Sephiroth and Bianca fics and ship development that has never seen my Tumblr.
If prose feels like pulling teeth, stop writing prose. Switch to bullet-pointed headcanons, dialogue-only scripts, or raw, unstructured world-building notes.
Take your characters completely out of their current heavy plotlines. Put them in a low-stakes, high-comfort domestic setting, or an entirely different universe, just to see how they react. Let them breathe without the weight of the main narrative hanging over them.
Protect Yourself From Creative Burnout
Creative burnout is often compounded by social or emotional burnout. If you are spending energy managing community expectations, keeping up with posting schedules, or navigating online spaces, your creative well is going to run dry.
It is completely valid to step back from the social side of fandom. You don't owe anyone a constant presence. Turn off the metrics, close the feedback loops, and reconnect with the quiet, solitary joy of just hanging out with your characters.
If writing sentences feels too heavy, consume instead. Revisit the specific media, music, or mythology that sparked the project in the first place. Let someone else's art or fic refill your tank while you rest.
The "Shitty First Draft"
The point of a first draft is not to be good; the point of a first draft is simply to exist. You cannot edit a blank page.
"Allow yourself to write poorly. Give yourself permission to put down clunky dialogue, repetitive verbs, and pacing that feels completely off. You are just dumping the raw clay onto the wheel. The shaping, the polishing, and the magic happen during revision."
If a scene isn't working, write a bracketed note like [insert brilliant, emotionally devastating conversation here] and keep moving forward. I like to color code my placeholders.
The point of continuing isn't to achieve flawless execution on the first try, nor is it to satisfy an algorithm or a deadline. The point is that these characters and stories belong to you, and they deserve to be told, even if the process is messy, slow, and occasionally frustrating.
Be kind to yourself, pass this along to your "friend," and take a deep breath. The words will come back when they're ready.
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The joy of editing can be discovered in finding new and better ways to say things you thought you had already said.
I always thought that I hated editing. That I hated second drafts. It turns out that I always moved from project to project so fast that I never really had the chance to sit down and work on a second draft. Well, I am now entrenched deeper in a second draft project than I have ever been before, and I have learned that, to my surprise . . . I actually really enjoy the editing phase! I am enjoying writing my second draft!
My disdain from editing as a younger writer always stemmed from pride and perfectionism. I didn’t like the idea of second drafts because I wanted to put the time and thought and care and creativity into saying it the right way from the very beginning. It turns out that even with such agony, a rough draft is never anything more than a rough draft.
In the years since, my opinions on “shitty first drafts” have reversed. My battles with writer’s block have convinced me that the only way to finish most drafts is to just put SOMETHING down until you reach the end, no matter how bad it is, and then suck it up and edit later. And let me tell you . . . I have had more fun editing my first draft and creating my second draft than I ever expected. And it’s because of this writing tip I am sharing today.
All that pride and perfectionism I used to agonize over in the rough draft, I am now discovering to greater effect in the second. I left almost an entire year between completing my shitty first draft and editing my second, and that distance allowed me to get my head out of the clouds and actually examine the writing critically. The result is that I have found so much unexpected joy in the process of reading old writing and then being struck with the thought, “You know what? A year ago, I wrote this because this is how I thought this scene was supposed to go, but now I see that it would be so much better if it went like THIS!” I have managed to find joy even in re-writing entire chapters because of the joy that I have found in discovering the better version of something you already wrote. I highly recommend it.
I found some old draft snippets in my email from Sleight of Hand, and I thought I'd share a first draft/final draft comparison of one. I like a first draft/final draft because a lot of times for me writing feels like trying to squeeze words through the cracks in a wall of toxic perfectionism. Seeing the progression from first to final helps remind me it doesn't have to be good the first try. And I like this one in particular because you can see the bones of the final in the first, but it's soooo clearly worse. (Snippets have some mentions of dicks.)
FIRST DRAFT
He wishes he could say he was just impressed. That what he was feeling was- Admiration. For Eddie's talent. But he's not a fucking idiot. He's horny for him. He wants to put his mouth on him. He wants to- He doesn't know what he wants. To touch his dick? He tries on the thought and thinks, maybe... He doesn't know exactly, but he definitely wants to kiss him. He wants to unpeel Eddie from his clothes and run his hands all over his skin. Find every tattoo, every scar. After that he doesn't know. He isn't sure. But that's enough to know that he- Definitely wants to be more than Eddie's friend.
FINAL DRAFT
Steve wishes he could say he was just impressed. That what he was feeling was admiration. For Eddie’s talent. But Eddie’s not just amazing. He’s hot. Like one of the hottest things Steve has ever seen. And not just objectively hot. He’s fucking hot in a way that’s making Steve’s dick hard. There’s something about getting hard for somebody that brings a stark clarity to the confusing things you’ve been feeling.
So yeah, no shit, you’ve been feeling nervous around him. But it’s the kind of nervous that you get when you have a crush on someone, you dumb fuck. And no, you haven’t been having random weird thoughts that come from nowhere and mean nothing. You’re horny for him, and you have been for a while. And the reason you keep thinking he’s going to kiss you is because you want him to fucking kiss you.
You total moron.
He does. Steve wants to kiss him. And he wants more than that. He wants those clever, talented fingers all over him. He wants to get Eddie out of his clothes and find every tattoo, every scar with his hands. He wants his dick in Eddie’s mouth. Fuck, he wants it bad. Does he want to suck Eddie off though? Get right up in another guy’s dick? He can feel the knee-jerk no, but he forces himself to really try the thought on and thinks- Maybe. He doesn’t know what all he wants exactly. He doesn’t know what all guys do together. He just wants to dive headfirst into Eddie’s everything, and figure out the rest later.
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Seriously, Do Not Take Your First Draft Seriously.
It’s only when we start lamenting our skills, and sometimes our places as human beings, based on the crap we initially wrote, that we get in trouble. Then, the words get stuck.
Oh, woo is me!
Get over it!
Park your ass in a seat, start typing and don’t give two shits about the quality of a first draft. Oh, and while you're creating, laugh at the mess you’d just made.
Very few writers really know what they are doing until they’ve done it. Nor do they go about their business feeling dewy and thrilled. They do not type a few stiff warm-up sentences and then find themselves bounding along like huskies across the snow... We all often feel like we are pulling teeth, even those writers whose prose ends up being the most natural and fluid. The right words and sentences just do not come pouring out like ticker tape most of the time. Now, Muriel Spark is said to have felt that she was taking dictation from God every morning-- sitting there, one supposes, plugged into a Dictaphone, typing away, humming. But this is a very hostile and aggressive position. One might hope for bad things to rain down on a person like this.
For me and most other writers I know, writing is not rapturous. In fact, the only way I can get anything written at all is to write really, really shitty first drafts.
