Annoying author things

[Leyelle]

1.When you run out of words...and keep using the same word to describe something over and over again
2. When your chapter/script was better before you edited it.
3. being stuck on subscriber before a number that's a round ten (say, stuck at 29 subscribers) or super close to a milestone, (like being on 24 subs for three weeks) (I've been on 69 subs on my novel for way too long lol)

[skidiggy]

• When you have to go back and fix a character's eye color because it's been green for 50+ chapters before you realized that they were actually blue.
• Too many words for a single chapter, but not enough for two, and breaking them up into two bits is crushing your spirit.
• Settling down into "writing mode," making tea, getting too absorbed into writing, forgetting tea, microwaving tea, leaving tea in microwave, repeat.

[Leyelle]

i don't even have a microwave, i just end up drinking cold tea

[cherrystark]

• Their obsession with word count
• Schedule obsessions - "I need to have X number of chapters scheduled"
• Romanticizing their craft
• Obsession with subscribers

[MissPaige36]

Sitting down to finally finish your chapter, except you end up re-writing everything and deleting everything and basically wasting another day writing. I do this way too often nowadays.

Also, when readers ask about certain characters birthdays/hair color/eye color (any characteristic) and you have to manually go through your chapters to remember what they’re supposed to be T-T

[Leyelle]

lol, i didn't even remember if i'd mentioned certain character's full names yet. Like my male lead's father (spoiler, it's not the same as the male lead's last name.)

and i accidentally changed one character's hair color, but i excuse that as her hair being so dark a shade of brown, people sometimes call it black

[midnightsun]

-When real life responsibilities like school and work get in the way of writing (story of my life right now and why I haven’t posted a new chapter since January)
-When you realize you accidentally ripped off a book/movie/show you’ve never seen before in your writing
-Struggling to find the motivation to get through a necessary but not very exciting scene

[Leyelle]

lol, i read my partner's (artist of my comic) story the other day for the first time and realized it had a lot in common with my novel

[Glofernwolfe]

1. Writing a chapter that's boring but I have to because it spirals into something better. (I usually rememdy this by changing the storyline and making this chapter as dramatic as the next one XD XD XD)

2. Looking up synonyms because my brain doesn't keep a list

3. Describing a side character --- seems like a waste of time but its important. I used to skip this or keep it brief. But its really important to describe every character as detailed as possible to set the mood.

[MissPaige36]

This! The first point, except you need a somewhat boring/calm chapter because the next one is filled with a lot of action and you can’t have readers being overwhelmed. At least that’s what I believe because that’s how I enjoy stories.

[Leyelle]

after several really exciting chapters, it's nice to calm the story down again before you go back into action, or the story will start to feel like too much. There needs to be ebb and flow, not just constant high-intensity scenes.

[skidiggy]

Wait... HOW DID YOU KNOW??? I sometimes am like "welp, cold tea for me, I guess."

[Leyelle]

no use wasting the time to heat it up again...now food you let get cold...

[Leyelle]

you finish a draft. send it to your editor, and immediately start thinking about what you could have changed or done better

[skidiggy]

"Ooh, I just had an idea for a story arc... But I've already finished that character's journey... Is this new idea better? Should I re-write from Chapter One?"

[Leyelle]

I came up with an idea for Kattar's childhood but was worried I wouldn't be able to add it if i'd made reference to his father's name earlier in the story. fortunately I haven't

[skidiggy]

Oh no, that's the worst! I've definitely had to double-down on unfortunate backstory once I'd written a character into a corner before. It ended up working out, but I'm sure that sort of worry gives authors gray hair.

[Leyelle]

lol, well this leaves the story with about as tragic a backstory as it already had, but just with more detail. it's not like i'm making him an illegitimate child anything. So it wasn't exactly that I wrote the story into a corner, but that it would have had to pivot a little bit.

cue Seinfeld "PIVOT PIVOT"

[Leyelle]

How about that desire to go into a meltdown and be like. I can't do this. I'm stuck on this story, how am I ever going to figure out how it ends. And freak out that you won't be able to write or come up with a good ending, or what happens next, or any other amount of plot points for every story you write no matter how many times you've already done it with previous stories?

[Leyelle]

when there's certain things you should probably research for the story but are wary too because you

a. know you'll get a lot of weird results or don't want that in your feed.

b. it's likely to just be way too much information, but you need a portion of that information