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3 months ago
General
Hello people.
Not the kind of journal I'd like to make, but I'm really curious as to what others think about this. Whilst what I'll be discussing in there will relate to my writing, this could very well apply to any form of art or creativity in a nutshell. I won't make a habit of posting such journals since, at the end of the day, you don't need to hear about my problems and I'd much rather give an aura of good vibes than looking like I'm seeking attention or something.
Basically, the question I'm asking myself lately is the following: Am I the only one that suddenly go so deep into feeling everything I'm working on is garbage? Here's my reasoning. Whilst this may sounds harsh, in the end, I have a folder of my current work-in-progress, with a third of them still in bulletpoint draft (to not forget about the core idea I had at the moment), the other third is work that has been started, and the final third are actually pieces I've finished and could probably be posted, but each time I think about it and re-read my work, my first thoughts usually are "this is not good enough." Thus, I keep re-editing stuff, trying to fix the "mistakes" and making everything flow smoothly so that there is no ambiguity, fix the typos and/or grammatical errors/sentence structuring, almost as if a mistake would be the end of me.
Then, there's the other part of me that had ideas, but I took so long to write about them that someone else ended up eventually having an idea very close to what I thought of, which then sends me in a "if I post/finish this, people will think i'm just someone who plagiarize others." At one point, I was enjoying writing on CHYOA, adding story paths here and there to the ideas I really liked, to spice them with what I enjoyed myself. Even that died up, though, as I'm now thinking to myself "people must get annoyed that I keep bringing balloons everywhere." So even on that site, I have a bunch of unpublished chapters that are absolutely finished and ready to go, but I can't bring myself to press the big red button to send 'em.
I'm somewhat lost, to be perfectly honest. Albeit a bit stressful whenever it's go time, I enjoyed sharing my art and my creativity here and there. But for some reason, while the ideas are still coming forth, I'm never satisfied of the final product. I don't know what to do about it. No worries to whoever's reading this thinking I will delete all my accounts and try to disappear, I will never do that. As long as CHYOA, FurAffinity and DeviantArt exists (or doesn't ban me), my already publicly available work will stay public, and always will be.
I'm just trying to understand what I'm feeling at the moment. If anyone else feels, or has felt anything similar in the past. I'm looking for advice, I'd love to be back to sharing my craft, maybe try to figure out why is it that I'm so unsatisfied with what I'm writing currently. If you have anything at all to offer, I'm all ears. I beg of y'all.
This will be the only journal I'll make about this. My life belt thrown out at sea. If this helps me, great! If not, it is what it is, I tried. Thank you very much to anyone who has read this whole wall of text, and I am extremely sorry if this bummed you while you had a good day. I'll be reading and responding to anyone who comments, no matter what. Until then, take care!
~ Balloonymous
Not the kind of journal I'd like to make, but I'm really curious as to what others think about this. Whilst what I'll be discussing in there will relate to my writing, this could very well apply to any form of art or creativity in a nutshell. I won't make a habit of posting such journals since, at the end of the day, you don't need to hear about my problems and I'd much rather give an aura of good vibes than looking like I'm seeking attention or something.
Basically, the question I'm asking myself lately is the following: Am I the only one that suddenly go so deep into feeling everything I'm working on is garbage? Here's my reasoning. Whilst this may sounds harsh, in the end, I have a folder of my current work-in-progress, with a third of them still in bulletpoint draft (to not forget about the core idea I had at the moment), the other third is work that has been started, and the final third are actually pieces I've finished and could probably be posted, but each time I think about it and re-read my work, my first thoughts usually are "this is not good enough." Thus, I keep re-editing stuff, trying to fix the "mistakes" and making everything flow smoothly so that there is no ambiguity, fix the typos and/or grammatical errors/sentence structuring, almost as if a mistake would be the end of me.
Then, there's the other part of me that had ideas, but I took so long to write about them that someone else ended up eventually having an idea very close to what I thought of, which then sends me in a "if I post/finish this, people will think i'm just someone who plagiarize others." At one point, I was enjoying writing on CHYOA, adding story paths here and there to the ideas I really liked, to spice them with what I enjoyed myself. Even that died up, though, as I'm now thinking to myself "people must get annoyed that I keep bringing balloons everywhere." So even on that site, I have a bunch of unpublished chapters that are absolutely finished and ready to go, but I can't bring myself to press the big red button to send 'em.
I'm somewhat lost, to be perfectly honest. Albeit a bit stressful whenever it's go time, I enjoyed sharing my art and my creativity here and there. But for some reason, while the ideas are still coming forth, I'm never satisfied of the final product. I don't know what to do about it. No worries to whoever's reading this thinking I will delete all my accounts and try to disappear, I will never do that. As long as CHYOA, FurAffinity and DeviantArt exists (or doesn't ban me), my already publicly available work will stay public, and always will be.
I'm just trying to understand what I'm feeling at the moment. If anyone else feels, or has felt anything similar in the past. I'm looking for advice, I'd love to be back to sharing my craft, maybe try to figure out why is it that I'm so unsatisfied with what I'm writing currently. If you have anything at all to offer, I'm all ears. I beg of y'all.
This will be the only journal I'll make about this. My life belt thrown out at sea. If this helps me, great! If not, it is what it is, I tried. Thank you very much to anyone who has read this whole wall of text, and I am extremely sorry if this bummed you while you had a good day. I'll be reading and responding to anyone who comments, no matter what. Until then, take care!
~ Balloonymous
Funnily enough, I did try to see if I could learn Blender to see if maybe I could also sprinkle my stories with a visual or an animation, but good lord is that program hella complicated. I tip my hat to whoever managed to learn it and can release consecutive banger, or maybe I just didn't find the "right" tutorial. (n_n') Nonetheless, your input is very valuable and will be taken into consideration. Maybe the solution is just to accept I can't always outdo my previous work, accept that perfection is never truly attainable but we can get close, or that everything we release can't be a hit, sometimes they can miss the mark.
I'll stir the idea around, redefine to myself what I really want to do. I do like the idea of having a few options, rotating them around and being careful about not reusing the same exact scene too close to another piece. Thank you for the input, it's truly appreciated. :D
“almost as if a mistake would be the end of me”
I am not sure if this was intentional, but “almost as if” is an important distinction I think, since it doesn’t necessarily illustrate you believe a mistake will be the end of you, nor does it ascribe intent behind your actions, instead it is more so clarifying the seeming absurdity of your behavior.
There’s many things that can be driving this, and without having done some self-exploration it can be hard to distinguish how much each area plays a part (and doesn’t, and what other factors outside of them are applicable too). For myself I think these are in part due to presentation being something my parents cared about, getting taught my self-worth is tied to external validation, strict expectations around performance while being told I was very smart in grade school (undiagnosed/unmedicated audhd gifted kid into life-long burnout pipeline), a general self-hatred/low self-esteem, BUT I also do really love putting myself and my energy into my works in an intensive, complex, thoughtful, and caring way.
I love caring about what I make, but I try to (sometimes..) scope it primarily to that if possible. I generally will still understand the fact that caring about what others will think of my work is going to be a factor, as that is a part of me and my nature, so I don’t want to ignore it or pretend it’s not there, but not allowing myself to fall to neuroticism over it is important too (It is just that sometimes I am too considerate, selfishly so)
I spent over a year writing 12,000 words for a story, 3/4s of the year it was “almost done” because I could not consider it “finished” until it was acceptable. Anything can be a mistake, even if it’s not. Something you thought was a great idea, you look back at, now it’s too silly or dumb. I should rewrite this whole thing. This entire codebase needs refactoring (oh wait I’m writing a story). When you’re looking for mistakes it’s so easy to find them and if you’re neurodivergent in any way it can easily get out of hand, losing sight of what you care about, in the work, the process, yourself, etc.
I don’t have a clear conclusion! Just sharing words and thoughts. This is cervinyl btw lol
While I cannot say if that sentence you extracted from my post was intentional or not, I can confirm to you that you are right with the interpretation. Like obviously, a single mistake won't mean something absolutely absurd like getting "cancelled" or any other extreme, but it's something that I seem to struggle. And let's not even talk about me just giving up halfway with almost anything I'm attempting if I don't see results pretty quickly. Just like you, I was also considered "gifted" at school. I learned very fast, almost always top of the class and I couldn't understand why my classmates seemed to struggle. I may have ADHD, but since I absolutely do not have the money to confirm that, I'll assume I don't for the time being until a professional tells me so.
At the end of the day, I do also believe I put my standards waaaaay too high, of either being totally satisfied and/or wanting to outperform my previous work. Of always double-checking both my works and/or my comments to be sure it's all good and/or won't offend anyone, etc. It's probably not very healthy, but I'm not totally sure how to combat that, yet.
I might have found a solution, though, I'll try it out with another personal piece that I'm writing (which will come after the absolutely massive one that'll drop in a nearby future). And if it actually works to unwire my brain, then y'all may expect more stories from me. :D Thank you for your words, even if it was just "sharing your thoughts" as you say. It's really appreciated! And I'm happy to hear back from you. (n_n)
I very much relate lol x3 that being said, I would like to also highlight that there is also nothing inherently wrong with caring a lot about the things you want to care about, no reason to put yourself down either if it’s not a problem :3 As long as you’re being mindful about it I think.
Also, I posted my reply initially to the parent thread by accident lol