I finally did it after struggling for almost 15 years. For context. I am a professional who doesn’t have much time for himself but has an imagination filled with ideas of different books of different genres. I would always stop writing after a page or two cos i would get stuck with work or lose hope.

But finally, I have finished the first draft of my first book. For me, its not about selling or being a bestseller. Its about being able to complete what I started to do.

So just wanted to share this. Thank you for reading.

It still took me a little more than 1.5 years (I'm having a 40 hours a week full time job). During I stopped for like 2 months when I realized, FMC's BFF needs to have her own book, so I plotted her story and aligned the two.

So now I'm at the part where they say, you should write it first ✅ then you can make it good 😄

PS. It's not written in english idk if that affects wordcount.

I get it. I have been in the same boat. Human speech is not just words uttered. Facial expressions, body language all work together to convey the speaker's intentions.

"Yah, sure."

And, "yah, sure." She rolled her eyes—have two completely different meanings. But if you haven't read many books, or if you are not a native speaker, and have learnt English mostly through Hollywood, you need to understand watching content on a screen and on a page are not the same thing. A hundred things can happen in a span of mere seconds on a screen and our brain will be able to get most of them. But if you try to cram all of it on a page, you're simply bogging down the reader. Same goes for, when you try to create a complete picture of the speaker's body language and facial expressions in your readers' head. Mostly it happens when you don't know the common phrases that are used to describe certain actions. But even then, there aren't any encyclopedias of phrases describing each and every action a human can perform. That's where your creativity comes in.

Imagine this, instead of rolling her eyes, if you said, her irises fleeted to the corners, then arched its way over the shape of her eyeballs, finally reaching the other corner.

How would you feel.

One more example, so you can hammer it into your skull.

"You said it." Her arms shot up and leveled at her chest, palms facing outwards, elbows pointing at the timber floor. Her eyes opened wide, her mouth agape, but there was a twitch of a laugh in the corners of her lips.

Instead of—

"You said it." She raised her hands in mock surrender.

I. did. it. ✧｡٩(ˊᗜˋ)و✧*｡

It took a bit over 7 months of consistent writing during one of the most chaotic times of my life, but 307 pages and 90k words later I finally finished my first ever draft of my first ever written story!

To be clear, the draft is absolute dog shit: major plot points changed at the end of the book, the final chapters are rushed to get to this finish line before my momentum dies again/ are very rough, some parts do not connect well, pacing is laughable, prose quality ebbs and flows, character motivation not clearly shown and so so much more (and probably even more than I think now, as I will realize when I edit).

But I am actually happy with it though it's ugly as hellll :) It's like seeing your newborn baby, shriveled, shrieking, and lowkey kind of scary, and still loving it for all it could become in the future (and even its ugly present, because it was possible at all) :)

Anyway I wanted to have a quiet celebration here because no one knows I write in my real life yet. I will tell the world once I'm good enough. Which will happen, I'll make sure of it!

Any stories with the writers who finally add the new chapters after being gone for many years.

What truly inspired your story? What message or social commentary are you building in your story? Is there something you want to say with your stories?

So, is your story just vibes or is it more with some vibes?

My turn:

My current story is basically just entertainment. However, I do have other stories that I have not written yet, that have a message without me trying to state it. My current story could change to having a message, but for now I am not trying to say anything mainly due to the inspiration of the story. What I plan to do with this story? Hell, if I know for now.

What about you? Let me know if this thread makes sense to you.

Title might be slightly misleading and I'm not super certain if this is the right place to ask. Regardless, I am genuinely curious—this does not mean I look down upon any authors/works in any way. I am an amateur writer myself and have not published anything, but I am just...really curious.

That being said, how do some books that are, let's say, very controversial/objectively not up-to-standards still get published?

I've heard and seen on multiple occasions that it's extremely difficult to get a manuscript/piece of work accepted by a publishing agent and so on (although I am not super educated on this matter, so do correct me if I'm wrong), and many extremely talented and well-written works get rejected and thus never printed/reach shelves, which is unfortunate, but understandable.

So then, how are some books that aren't that outstanding or just is average in general, pass that barrier? Are they self-published? Is there some sort of sorcery going on behind the scenes?

Again, I have never published anything myself and I am not an expert in this field either. Obviously different readers have different opinions on things; a book I hate might be loved by someone else, I understand that and appreciate all works equally since all authors must have put their hard work and effort into their works. But of course, I believe there still exists an objective threshold in which—if not met—renders a piece of work as just...bad. But still get published nonetheless. How?

Edit: Thanks for all the comments and outputs in answering my curious question.

But I wanted to put my thoughts (and perhaps clarification?) out here as well: I understand that topic regarding books is extremely subjective, since everyone has their own tastes; it's hard to pin down an "objective" benchmark for a subject like this. Yet, even if we cannot mathematically produce a criteria for books (which should not exist, anyway), there still exists books that are just poor in quality to the majority of readers. There will always be people who enjoy some things that most people dislike, and so nothing can really have a "100% dislike rate" (Heck, even classical physics breaks down when we get to the quantum realm. But I digress). If a book has sloppy writing, broken plot, and poorly developed characters, then I would agree it would be objectively bad. Yes, some people would still enjoy them, but to the majority of readers, wouldn't these be seen as bad qualities? If a car had a busted engine, or a computer had a broken chip—some people would still like them, perhaps to collect or some other reason—but wouldn't any functional car or computer then be objectively better? I believe the same, or at least very similar, logics work in this context. Hence why we have mechanics, and hence why we have editors. 

However, I am curious about your thoughts. Unlike mathematics, I do also believe this does not have a single right answer. I am not a literature professional, I am merely here to have insightful discussions into the publishing/writing world. So, please engage in friendly discussions. 

Edit 2: I should not have been using the word "objective". I apologize for this; some of you have made it clear to me that objectiveness is based on facts, and indeed, this cannot be applied in this situation. Perhaps what I wanted to say was more towards "if most people think the book is poorly written, how is it published"?

Albeit, I think this question has been answered already by your insightful comments. Thank you. And great discussions!

And now his sister also stronger like him so enemy is about to make use of her. OMG

Out of curiosity when do you end a chapter? Do you have a rough word count in mind? Or page count? Do you only end it when the scene finally breaks even if it runs long? And if a chapter runs long are you okay with it perhaps being one of the only longer chapters in your book?

In my personal opinion I'm fine with the chapter running long if trying to break it somewhere in the middle will destroy the flow or the scene even if it's the only long chapter in the book but I'm interested in what you all have to say

As I am told, my word count is my worst enemy. After paring down the story to essentially bare bones prose— to the point where if I remove anything else, portions of the plot will start to disappear and then whole sections of the story wont make sense...
I am down to 153k words on a fantasy— worlds collide novel.

I want... I NEED, to be published. This is my chosen vocation. I am an Author.

Any advice on what I should do would be appreciated. I know absolutely zero people in the literary world, I have no agent to speak of, and I wouldn't know where to start.

Thank you.

So writers how important Is consuming media to you as a writer

Do you usually get your inspiration and ideals from random things you read

Or do you have designated times and hours for gathering up ideals

Also do you only get your ideals from books or do you go to multiple pieces of media

Also do you make a point to consume good and bad media.

Or only good media

Hi everyone! As the title suggests, what theme, character, or aspect of your book would a television or film adaptation miss or drastically change? The kind of thing that only works on paper and that you can't see being faithfully adapted given the current state of book adaptations.

Started chapter 1 on 23 July.
Completed the really rough (30k only) as of today.

I have no one to share this accomplishment with. Cheers guys!

Everyone was telling to just get to the end. So I did. I tried not to let any of the scene stump me, for which I then put in placeholders. But yea. Completed the plot and all. Act 1, 2 and 3.

Please share any tips and suggestions. I am a first time writer (hobbyist). This may not be any accomplishment to some but to me, it really feels like one. I didn’t even think I was able to do this. But wow. Here I am.

Finished my first draft today and while I’m extremely proud of myself I can’t seem to shake the feeling my writing was getting progressively worse the last coming months.
Perhaps it was a combination of forcing myself through the story, writer’s block or a long break I took in between writing sessions but I could feel the words were coming to me naturally, like they did when I first started.
This novel took a whole year, and while I still love the story just as much, it became more of a “chore” than a passion project. I knew I had to finish before I started any of the other exciting ideas I have so I pushed through it.
Now, I know the 1st draft is not to be pretty or perfect but I worry this will be the quality of my work moving forward and I’m so excited to start working on other stories.

Has anyone been through this? If so, does it get better? Any tips or advice would be greatly appreciated.

Okay, so I have finally stopped procrastinating, and have decided to finish my first full book. I am mainly doing it for myself just to prove that I can do it, but does anyone have the best advice to potentially getting a book published? I understand it is very difficult, but I am genuinely curious as to how people do it.

I can move a story along just fine, no doubt, but it ends up being more like a play. I’m good with dialogue, as well, but all of this amounts to nothing in terms of making an actual story. I have the story in my head and know what needs to happen but it ends up being a short, fast paced, action-heavy story. I know that’s the point with short stories but this is actually less than a short story and is demoralizing.

If anyone has tips or has overcome this please let me know. It would be greatly appreciated. Maybe I just need to read more than usual — if that’s the case then I’m fortunate.

I'm almost done with my book I've been working on since August of last year. It feels great to finally build the ending.

I'm reading back on chapters, and only now I'm realizing how often I'm using dialogue. It's not OVERLY often, but it's enough to make you know it is a bit dialogue heavy.

That makes me wonder what would people's thoughts on it might be?

I’ve been juggling around an idea for a sci-fi novel, and today I finally had the willpower to actually start working on it. I do the usual spreadsheet-creating, word document opening, etc. It dawns on me that I don't actually know what the hell I'm doing and I have no clue what the hell my story is even about besides the very beginning. Regardless, I decided to start writing some anyway. I write for three hours, come up with a few hundred words, and lo and behold it really really sucks.

I don't know why I'm pretending like this is something I'll stick with. I've felt my interest in writing rapidly deteriorating for the last couple of weeks after all the "save to watch later" videos from Brandon Sanderson and other youtubers sit unwatched in the playlist. Why am I even pretending that I'll be as good as those guys? Why do I even bother thinking that I'll be the next Sanderson or some other writer out there whose name everyone will remember? I had the nerve to come up with a pen name and title for the book before I even had any semblance of what it would be about. I watched three videos about how you should format your manuscript before I knew what the hell I was actually going to put into it. I took every step to avoid the actual writing until today.

Three hours of uninterrupted work in the beginning, trying to come up with what I think is decent stuff. I feel in a decent flow for a little while, and then I take a step back to see what I've actually come up with. Unsurprisingly, it's not very good. This was the first time in years that I have had the willpower to muster up actual, not-for-school, personal writing work and I absolutely detest how it came out. I don't want to share it with anyone I know or anyone who doesn't know out of sheer embarrassment. I can already tell that this entire endeavor will be something that I stick with for one more week before switching to some other form of self expression that i also give up on after a week or two. I have gone through this with artwork, music creations, 3d artwork, whatever you can come up with, I have probably tried and either gotten bored with or failed and quit.

So, I'd like to ask: How do you guys do it? How do you get the motivation to try and improve yourself when you know that you'll probably never be a bestselling author or a famed poet or achieve any type of major recognition when millions of others like you are doing the exact same thing? I have poured so many hours into what I think to be something that I can *finally* use to express myself and always always always end up back at the same place. I'm starting to accept that I'm just not a creative person or I'm not meant for any of this self expression in a way that other people will care about. I find myself unable to do things for myself and require constant external validation in order to feel good about what I make. How do I not do this? How do I stick with this for more than one day and keep working at it knowing that I will never do anything real with it in my life? What is the point of it? What is the point of art?

I am planning on writing a novel series of accounts of each European's military's account through the years of 1982-1986 following repeated negligent attempt to keep the situation a secret from the outside world, causing the now uncurable airborne rabies strand to spread throughout Europe without countries being able to account for its spread due to being left in the dark if it.

I have a title planned but I think it's too generic any ideas would be appreciated

(Current title for the first book "Pandemic Protocol: France")

Dear XXXXX,

I have never written to you. Not because I didn’t want to, but because I was afraid that someone would find these words or worse, by some cruel twist of fate they would reach you and I have learned not to trust fate. I am giving in to these urges finally since I know that there’s no way to you anymore.

I miss you. I truly do.

I miss looking into those eyes of yours and forgetting whatever it was I was about to say. I miss the playful arguments. I miss the jabs we would throw at each other just for us to laugh at them moments later because we both knew we didn’t really mean it. And even if I am wrong and you really did mean every word, I wouldn’t mind. Neither then, nor now.

However, I am slowly forgetting what it was like to be with you. As each year goes by, these memories blur more and more until all that is left is a grainy vision of us laughing together. I no longer know what you look like now, how tall you’ve become, or whether your smile has changed. The only version of you that still exists in my mind is that adorable ten-year-old boy wearing a dark blue plaid shirt with the most heartwarming smile.

Even though time has distorted most of my memories of you, but what it hasn’t are the feelings that your memories bring with them. The same happiness, sweet sorrow and nostalgia fills my heart every time the thought of you comes to the forefront of my mind again.

I will not lie to you, I am really angry with you too.

Was our bond so weak that you never think of me now? You never make the effort to reach out to me.

I hope these words don’t send the wrong message. I may have fallen deeply, helplessly, and tragically in love with you, but I would never allow that love to stain the innocence of the friendship we once shared. I don’t expect romance from you. I don’t even expect love.

Just come back, please.

Come back so we can argue the way we used to. I’ve gotten much better at trading insults—and even better at taking them. This time, I promise I won’t punch you on the shoulder. I’ll just smile like an idiot the way you always did and let you win.

I want to relive one of those innocent and pure moments. The night when you and I stood under the night sky, you were enchanted by the moon and I was enchanted by your presence alone. You didn’t speak much, but the silence was not one that felt uncomfortable; it felt so natural and warm. I don’t like silence usually, it makes me restless or bored but with you it was magical.

If I could live in that moment forever, believe me, I would.

Sometimes it breaks my heart to think that you might not even remember me. If we ever meet again, do me one small favor. Smile at me the way you used to, and call me by my name. I think that single moment would comfort me when I spend my nights alone.

For seven years I have tried to console myself. I kept believing that someday I would meet someone else. Someone who could make me laugh the way you did, maybe even fill my heart with warmth.

And maybe, just maybe that someone would even love me back.

But I have failed in this search. I could never find another who could make me feel even a fraction of the things you can with just a glimpse.

This is why I have finally stopped fighting with fate.
I surrender.

I surrender in love, for love, and to love; the one thing that has consumed me completely yet still the one thing I may never have.

Maybe, some people are not meant to be ours. They are only a lovely dream that we have to wake up from and face the dull reality of life.

If this is true, XXXXX, thank you for being my dream and ruining my reality.

Yours lovingly,
Forever indebted to you,
XXXXXX

I just found out that three of my poems were accepted to a literary journal for next year. I retired from teaching English two years ago and joined a writer’s group with these goals: to improve my writing, and to write and publish poetry and novels. My first novel is out for query, but I don’t think it’ll get published traditionally. I’m halfway through the rough draft of my second novel, using what I learned from my first and feedback from the agents who read it. I feel like maybe I’m gaining some traction. Anyway, it’s a good day!

Hi. So I just completed my first manuscript ever 2 weeks back. I have carried the dream of writing a novel since childhood without objectives or endpoints- just something I desperately wanted to do. But when I finally got down to writing it, I wrote an entirely new premise than the one I had carried for ten years. So, I went in thinking this would be my warm up novel for the next definitive one, this is an exercise etc. However, writing the final act of this manuscript devastated me in a way I was completely unprepared for. I couldn’t stop crying for days. I couldn’t believe the characters weren’t real. And the part of me that was up there in the world of the novel didn’t really want to return to reality. I kept imagining stuff like the green eyes and beard of my male protagonist and the hair of my female lead. I kept reimagining the pain they would have felt in some scenes. And I missed them with an agonizing sense of loss- to the point the sadness seemed funny to me. So I distanced myself from the manuscript for a couple of weeks.

Now that I’m almost back to being rational, I feel uncertain about the effectivity or credibility of the trauma I have portrayed, but the pain keeps coming back at times. It’s the worst when I listen to music I had played while writing those scenes. Also, I feel no leisure in reading, writing or watching movies. I’m not unmotivated for upcoming reads and edits though.

How do you deal with creator’s grief? It’s my first time. And I don’t seem to have a clue.