[Discussion] What motivates you to write? What helps you write?

[Aix]

I'm kind of wondering how we might get activity in this section, hence this discussion.

 

Personally, I'm motivated to write when I get ideas, often from reading. Any other way that gets ideas flowing in my head works, too, such as when I'm having idle thoughts that drift towards stories or when discussing writing-related topics (I'll probably start some more discussions for the sake). Forcing myself to write doesn't generally get good results and is just painful.

 

When writing, I generally listen to music. It helps me focus, even if it does the opposite for many people. Not even classical music, OSTs, or something like that, needs to be something with a reasonably strong beat. I try to listen to something related to what I'm writing, but not always.

 

I also try to be alone, I always get paranoid that someone will read what I write before I'm done.

[Astolfo]

I write because it's fun.

I love dreaming and thinking up all sorts of fantastical stories in my head.

Sometimes they just pop up, other times they pop up when I read other stories, see a picture, or listen to music.

Lying outside on my patio and watching the clouds is fun too and it helps me think of ideas a bunch.

 

This probably sounds really childish and stupid, but I keep a sleep journal.

Whenever I wake up, I immediately write down everything (or anything) I can remember from my dreams.

When I'm alone and I have time, I like to just read over the things I wrote and think back and visualize the world around me.

[King K. Azo]

I love to write. I love creating worlds and having people enjoy them.

 

That's the catch though. If I don't know or think people are enjoying what I write, I lose motivation fast.

 

To focus, I use music, usually one matching the mood of the scene I am writing.

[Cosmo.]

I like writing because it's a way to get whatever thoughts out of my mind. No one will read most of the stuff I write but just the act of writing stuff down calms me a lot. Also, since I enjoy creating stories.

 

Most ideas come while listening to music (which I do 90% of the time)

[Fusion X. Denver]

To be honest, feedback. When I wrote my YCM story on here way back when, I was motivated to churn out chapters because I knew I'd get something like ten different responses per chapter and it felt great to get that much attention. I should've been less thin-skinned about the negative feedback, but even with those, I felt good from the sense that this person read my work and had their own unique thoughts to offer.

It wasn't entirely that, I also wrote because I had fun dreaming up fights and certain scenarios that I wanted to get just right and to elicit emotional responses out of my readers. 

 

My experience was different than traditional writers because I would get a load of feedback as I wrote the story and I didn't fully plan things out, as opposed to plotting a novel and consulting a handful of people for editing/feedback. In retrospect, as a result, my main narrative was sloppy and sometimes I wrote more to please the readers than writing what I wanted to do.

 

But it was tons of fun. Since people on here would post chapter by chapter, I think being continually engaged is a fair reward and would motivate the writer to continue. That doesn't mean they're entitled to feedback every time (don't need to repeat what happened with YGO Armageddon), but I think if readers do want to see more content, then they should let the writer know.

[Yui]

I love to write. I love creating worlds and having people enjoy them.

 

That's the catch though. If I don't know or think people are enjoying what I write, I lose motivation fast.

 

To focus, I use music, usually one matching the mood of the scene I am writing.

Literally this. The appeal in writing to me is being able to create entire worlds and everything in them, though I fall flat on my face pretty quickly if I don't think people are enjoying my work. If I were to write purely for myself, what would even be the point of writing, right? May as well just keep the "writing" as thoughts in that case; save mad time and can do whatever the hell I want without any consequence. It's probably why I can stay as semi-consistent in RP as I do tbh.

 

There's also the problem of I get easily bored and if I'm not having fun writing a story I don't really see any point writing it.

[mitchermitcher]

Must admit, I don't write anywhere near as often as I should be. However, almost always I get inspired by an idea for a character motivation first. What does my protagonist want the most? Or more accurately, what's his driving internal conflict?

 

For example in my earlier contest piece I did have a prompt to go with, but I ignored it and started with the main character who wanted to be reunited with her childhood friend more than anything else in the world (and in another world too). While the finished entry I submitted didn't go far enough, I came up with the story with the interest of seeing how far she would go to find her friend again, what she'd sacrifice and what atrocities she's willing to commit. That right there is the draw, it's what motivated me to start.

 

It's for this reason that honestly I hate worldbuilding and planning other aspects of a story myself, even if I appreciate and love such elements in other works. Trying to think up of them myself, they feel like a distraction from the main emotional conflict, but without such details as the base for the story to begin in the first place, there isn't a story. That's probably why I usually don't finish writing things, because I lose interest in every single aspect of the story aside from the emotional conflict.

[Kazooie]

There are two things that motivate me, depending on the context I'm writing in.

 

If I'm writing a non-public story, it's the story itself. I might show it to Mel and Josh, but overall, I'm writing to see a story unfold, something that I might be able to be proud of and share someday. Even if I don't, it's valuable practice.

 

If I'm writing something public, it's hearing that people are enjoying it. If I'm writing a fic or something, and there's just utter silence, I lose the will and drive to write that particular story, because it feels as though no one is interested. The silence is terrible to me.

[I Hate Snatch Steal]

I find that statistically I tend to get further on or even finish stories that have a complete story arc rather then ongoing episode by episode style writing. Though there may be other reasons for that pattern. I also just feel like my ability to write for fun comes and goes unpredictably.

[Catterjune]

What motivates me?

I'm not really sure. As far as I know, only like 3 people have read my only actually finished story all the way through and it's always just been "it's cool" with no like... added thoughts. I always tried to push people to give me more opinions on it, what specifically did you like, what specifically did you dislike, what was the best moment, what was the worst, etc etc so I can improve on future installments but I never get much.

I guess what ultimately motivates me is the thought that at least the story is out there. I don't do it for praise or reward (though don't get me wrong, I'd love it if I was praised or rewarded for my story) but I guess it's more like... I've had the idea for so long in my head, so let's just go with it so this idea won't be just an idea in your head and then you can go on to think up other things.

What helps you write?

Music, like most people, however I have two monitors and the thing that helped me the best was just having one monitor solely dedicated to writing. It's just my notepad.exe opened to my current fanfic, and that's it. No distracting wallpaper, nothing else.