I haven't taken up writing for a couple of years due to real life stuff, although I am not going to pretend I was the most prolific author here (also my stories are kind of mid to be honest), but I have this urge to write stories about my favorite horses again. The problem is that when I'm armed with a pencil and paper, I get. . . pre-writing jitters, I guess? Or I write one or two words and think it's the worst way to start a story. How do I get over this?

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Stop caring.

No, legit, stop caring. That's the advice.

You have to condition yourself to accept that you're not perfect, that you may not be able to write something that's worthy of a classic through sheer immediacy. Best way to condition yourself is by giving yourself the permission to write 'garbage'. That's what mutliple drafts are for, to allow a writer to make mistakes and learn from them.

Best way to start establishing this method is by taking one word prompts and just throw as many words you can to create a small fic. Then you take that same word but at a different angle. Rinse and repeat and pick the best written one out of the lot and write your second draft of that fic. Conditioning here is important so that way you don't have to even ask yourself permission to write 'garbage'. It's just a natural state.

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I have the same perfectionist problem, I haven't advanced my story because I want all the details to be consistent.

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What you write will suck.

What I write sucks too.

Let's suck, together.

Write.

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Something that helped me do that in the past was a simple timer. Set up an alarm on your phone, Windows, or whatever for 30 minutes (or 5, 10, or whatever works for you), turn it on, and before it goes off, try to write as much crap as you can. At that point it doesn't have to make sense; it doesn't even have to be coherent; go for quantity, NOT quality.

After the alarm goes off, you can either:

• if you're 'in the flow' - ignore it and keep writing! You'll improve it later.
• if you're not 'in the flow' - stop writing, re-read what you wrote, and try to improve it.

It's the easiest way I found to let yourself go. Usually, after those 30 minutes, you'll be 'in the zone' writing your first draft .

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Hire someone to give you a wedgie and call you a nerd everytime you start being a perfectionist.

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que amistosos ...

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You know what I do when I'm not sure what to write? I say "fuck it" and start writing anyway.

The hardest part is always the start. I find that once I do, however, momentum kicks in and things start falling into place. Remember: you can always go back and fix the start if it's not that good.

7965245
Write anyways.
Write badly.

You can always edit a bad page.

You can't edit a blank page.

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Personally, I think this is one of the big reasons why reading is important if you want to write; that puts you in the same context that almost everybody interacting with your work is going to be in, where you're the consumer instead of the creator. The reality is that most flaws are not going to ruin a story, and I think experiencing that can be a nice confidence boost.

And while I do kinda agree with a lot of the "just do it" advice you're getting here, I also find that outlining and planning a story often makes the actual writing bit go a lot more smoothly. It doesn't need to be anything super fancy or complicated, but "good writing" is, in my mind, far too nebulous and abstract a term to be a useful standard, so having a more specific idea of what you're trying to accomplish does a lot to clarify whether you're on the right track or not. So I would consider stepping back and just thinking about what kind of story you're trying to tell and what specific things would be beneficial to focus on.

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I started doing that and now I actually need to start doing the writing part.

7965245 What you have is a blessing, not a curse. You just have to learn how to use your superpower responsibly.

Bar your perfectionism until you finish the story. That limitation will hurt you, but that's a good thing because it will be extra motivation for you to finish the story.

And when you have a full story in front of you, go super Saiyan on it with your perfectionism.

You see, this site already has more stories than one could read in one's lifetime. We don't need more mediocre stories. What we're missing are polished gems. Only a perfectionist has the superpower to write those.

You may not be the superhero you want, but you are the superhero we need.

You can't improve a story that doesn't exist.
You can't improve as a writer if you don't write.

At the end of the day, those things are true whether you fret over perfectionism or not. So you might as well write something. There's no such thing as wasted writing.

Also, uh. Draft. Write multiple drafts and that will help. Close To Perfect is a final draft problem. Make This Exist is a first draft problem. Do not drag final draft problems into the first draft. It's like worrying about to decorate a cake when you haven't even bought eggs yet.
The first draft can be as ugly and bad as it wants to be, as it should. The second draft and beyond is where it actually gets good, but you can't fix a draft that doesn't exist.

You're going to hate that rough draft. Write it anyway.

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I found some competitions helpful in getting me to write, by giving me a deadline (and sometimes adding constraints such as a word limit). Check out the site news to see some of the current competitions on Fimfiction.

I will admit that writing has never been my best subject despite being so many good so many other subjects when I was in high school and college. In other words, writing was my kryptonite. Nonetheless, this hasn't stopped me from trying to do fanfics. I know that some of you who are probably way better at them than I am will most likely say how third rate my fanfics are, though some just don't like for including a particular that some just don't like. However, I do try to think outside the box as much as I can just to make them special, though that still doesn't make any of my fanfics as favorites to much let alone get them on Equestria Daily no matter how much hard work was put into them.

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Or I write one or two words and think it's the worst way to start a story. How do I get over this?

ONE way is, show us your 'worst way to start a story' beginnings that you wrote, and watch someone cheerfully write a story that begins that way.

A story that isn't the worst possible story, I think.

Make your post a 'reply to' all of us who might want to write the story, please.

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I agree with much of the advice here about allowing yourself to write crap. Had another tidbit of advice to help with this.

When your in the midst of writing and you have one of those moments, "Shoot, there's already a glaring problem with this!" DO NOT STOP WRITING. Instead of going back to fix it immediately, make a note of the problem you noticed, carry on writing making notes of any problems, and then once you have that invaluable first draft done, that's when you can allow yourself to go back and edit to fix those problems. (Edit: use your own discretion whether the problem is big enough that it won't be fixed in an edit and you actually have to start over. Though I would hazard a guess that most of the time, it can be fixed during the editing stage.)

Getting the first draft done, seeing a finished version of your story even if it's very flawed, will go a long way to help you actually get the project to a final draft. Otherwise, you can get stuck in the loop of editting and perfectionism and never see an ending.

Hope this helps, it's at least what seems to work for me. Many of the fics I've actually managed to finish have been because I wrote them this way.

7965245 Try in-medias res. Or however it's spelled. Beginnings are hard to get right, so skip 'em.

Write at 3 AM. One is most in tune with their inner cringe demons in the post-midnight hours as the crippling fatigue kicks in, and to entreat with such eldritch horrors is a pathway to writing techniques that I've found most effective. Just be sure to edit it thoroughly later.

Write to a timer. Can't get picky about what you write if you only have an hour. I found speedwriting to be pretty fun.

Write like you're telling someone a story. It feels more natural to me to get into my own voice. It also means I'm more happy with the little imperfections, since it's me and not some arbitrary standard of writing. What, is you going to bully me on account of my speaking? Not in 2024 bucko.

I find wine helps.

Change where you write. I get quite stifled at my desk and used to write almost exclusively at the uni library or on the train. The change in scenery helps the mental state.

Eat healthy. Won't help the perfectionism thing much but at least you'll feel better with a single-digit wordcount, and you know, being healthy is it's own reward!

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Stop caring.

No, legit, stop caring. That's the advice.

That feels so easier said than done, considering I'm a writer who wants to take extreme pride in making a story look good and not sloppy for people to read.

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It's good to have pride in your own work, but once your pride gets in the way of progress, it's better to set your pride aside until it's ready for publish.

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Instead of "not caring" I look at it as "Don't fret about being perfect; just it your best shot and what happens, happens".

Sometimes I wish some of the fanfics I did have some real love and support, but that doesn't seem to be the case. It feels that no matter how hard I try, they just aren't that good. I even try to make them as special as I can with ideas that force me to think outside the box. Although my fanfics may not be masterpieces, they could the needed support. At least I have the Mane 6 in understanding and feeling my pain when my fanfics don't get that said support.

Aw shucks! I thought he wrote something really good.
I thought his fanfics were beautiful.
I wanted to throw him a party for this.
I thought his fanfics were awesome.
Oh darling! They just don't understand what you write about.
I actually enjoyed reading his fanfics.

My advice is to let wherever happens happen. You can only control so much and it's not worth stressing on.

Seriously, are my fanfics really the worst and don't tell me what I want to hear just to help make me feel better?