And hoo boy, have I ever been there. When I was writing prolifically, I just wouldn't read. I couldn't because I knew I'd go into that fic measuring mindset and declare myself the loser, have to step away from the keyboard and stare out the window a while. And if I had an exchange deadline? Absolute worst timing.

Not everyone goes through that of course, but it's more common than you think, even with so-called established writers. I've seen people delete wips or even their whole account over that burden of doubt. So here are some possible tips to crawl out from under that burden:

Table it. You're done for the day. You've been staring at that cursor for too long. You have no perspective on your work anymore. Go do something else: play with your dog/cat/fish, go for a walk, eat something, go to bed if it's late.

Re-engage with the source material. Watch an episode, read a chapter, listen to that podcast, whatever it is. Find that voice in your head that sings in harmony with the source.

Read positive comments left on your previous work. Trust what they've told you. Because the liar here is your doubt, not your readers.

Hit up that friend you trust and ask them to tell you your strengths. Even if you don't believe it right now, you have strengths as a writer. Maybe it's worldbuilding, maybe it's dialogue; your friend will give you concrete examples. You don't need a beta right now, that will come later.

I used to use Google docs, but the white mode only was really annoying me (tires my eyes), so I swapped to Ellipsus (which I genuinely love and recommend), but it was bothering me a bit that I need wifi in order to use it, so now I switched to LibreOffice Writer, which I do like.

It very much has a Microsoft Word feel, but is open source and you need no accounts to use it. It's local on your device, so no AI can scan it, and no wifi is needed.

“Is this some kind of promotion?” she asks weakly. “Buy one, get a rose free?”

“It’s for your Beautifly.” He gestures to a sign taped to the counter, which reads, Treats available for Pokémon of paying customers upon request! :)

Or, the one where May is a tattoo artist, and Drew works at the flower shop across the street.

fandom: pokemon (anime) rating: t relationship(s): may/drew word count: 10k written for: contestshipping week read it here

The first time May goes to the flower shop is on her parents’ twenty-fifth wedding anniversary. She’s in a bit of a hurry—totally not a consequence of her forgetting she and Max were planning to surprise them with a nice dinner to celebrate the occasion, which, thanks to her accepting a walk-in this evening, she has only twenty-five minutes to get to—so when she sees the sign outside that says Pokémon are permitted, she figures her best bet at finding the most suitable flowers in the quickest amount of time is by letting her Beautifly sniff them out for her.

It works like a charm, too. Beautifly guides her to a vibrant spring-coloured bouquet that looks to May like it could have been plucked straight out of a photoshoot gallery in one of her mother’s favourite home décor magazines. Even more perfectly, there’s no line at the counter at the back at all, and by the time May makes it there, she’s only down about four minutes from when she left the parlour.

Except, there’s no one there, and she wastes another minute or so craning her neck trying to spot an employee somewhere in this store. She’s never been here before, and the one time she asked Harley about it, thinking maybe they could spruce up the parlour with some flowers to balance out all the potted cacti, he waved her off completely. “I suppose it’s a nice enough place, if you like that sort of thing, but you know I have allergies, don’t you, my darling May?”

After that, she’d felt sort of bad for even entertaining the idea—she didn’t know Harley had a pollen allergy, but if he said that he’d told her so already, then he probably had and she had just unkindly not been paying attention to him—so she’d determined that even though she loved flowers herself, and wouldn’t mind spending her lunch breaks perusing the flower shop across the street and just taking it all in, she wouldn’t dare risk bringing pollen in on her clothes and causing problems for Harley.

But this time, she wouldn’t be going back to work until tomorrow anyway, so no harm, no foul. Or, that would be the case, if there were someone here to just let her pay and get going already.

Finally, after another two minutes spent impatiently tapping her foot and scripting out what excuse she’ll make to Max for being late, a voice behind her says, “If you want to pay for those, the till is actually at the front.”

She nearly jumps out of skin, whirling around to face the owner of the voice. The small smirk he’s wearing perfectly matches his amusedly aloof tone. But she doesn’t have time to be irritated about it, because he turns away from her before she can collect her thoughts well enough to be anything more than embarrassed that she was standing here wasting time at a counter that, now that she’s looking, does not even have a cash register.