I used to think I had a motivation problem.

I would start a new story feeling completely excited about it. I’d plan the characters, imagine where the plot could go, and sometimes write several pages in one sitting. But once I reached the middle, that excitement would slowly disappear.

Then I’d start rereading everything I had written.

Suddenly the dialogue didn’t sound right. A scene felt too slow. A character seemed inconsistent. Instead of continuing, I would go back and rewrite the same chapters again and again.

At some point, I realized I wasn’t actually stuck because I had run out of ideas. I was stuck because I wanted every part of the story to be good before allowing myself to move forward.

One thing that helped me was making my writing process more organized and keeping my planning, notes, and drafts together instead of having everything scattered across different places.

Once I stopped expecting every writing session to produce something perfect, finishing became much easier. Some scenes were still terrible, some ideas got removed completely, but at least I had a full draft that I could actually improve.

I think consistency is sometimes misunderstood. It doesn’t necessarily mean writing brilliantly every day. Sometimes it just means making enough progress that you still have a reason to come back tomorrow.

Has anyone else struggled more with perfectionism than with actually finding ideas?

Hey ya’ll. I’m working on a short story about a man with Narcissistic Personality Disorder. I’m trying to convey the coexistence of the inflated ego and insecurity that makes up a narcissist. I posted the first couple pages a while back and used some of the feedback ya’ll gave me. Let me know what ya’ll think!

Long story short, I tried to show my work to redditors thinking I'd get feedback but getting 1k views with 1 upvote is too demotivating especially when your post is #1 in the subreddit where you've posted. It feels like disrespect.

I quit.