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What steals your Mojo?

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mightyutuvan:
What steals your Mojo and what do you do about it?  (I define Mojo as the enthusiasm and motivation to write)

For me there are 2 main Mojo Bandits:

1.  Insecurity.  All those little voices that insist that I am laying down bland, boring drivel and calling it a story or chapter.  They whisper things like "You actually think you are creative?".  I've gotten better at resisting this particular thief by viewing my novel as a marathon.  Right now it doesn't matter how good it is keep writing until you get to the end.

2.  Oddly enough, writing and publishing advice.  While some of it helps (Jim's Blog, Stephen J. Cannell's lecture on screen-writing, and writing excuses podcast) much of makes me feel overwhelmed.  Too much to accomplish with too little talent.  How can I keep all that in mind when I am writing?  Getting published sounds nigh impossible.  I try and recognize this negative influence and limit my reading to select items.  As far as taking advice seriously I mainly use 2 criteria to strain through the sources (1) Are they published professionally (2) do I like their writing.  I also remind myself that I am not trying to write literature, just tell a story I would like to read.

Fox:
You mean besides Dr. Evil (or I guess Fat Bastard)?   ::)



Probably the fear that anything I write will be too derivative of things I've read or seen etc.

mightyutuvan:

--- Quote from: Fox on November 05, 2009, 03:49:19 PM ---You mean besides Dr. Evil (or I guess Fat Bastard)?   ::)





--- End quote ---

Strangely enough it worked out so that once I traveled back in time and teamed up with my future self I realized that I had never... wait, was that Austin from ten minutes ago or Austin ten minutes from now?  Oh no, I've gone cross-eyed!

Starbeam:
For me, it's not so much that the inspiration and motivation get stolen as much as I let it lapse.  I get overinvolved in other stuff, like research and reading, and as much as I want to write to remove the words bouncing crazily in my head, I start having trouble with making myself pick up my pen.  Sometimes I get stuck on a name or description, and I have trouble getting past it.

I learned a long time ago not to bother with how to books.  I keep a copy of Stephen King's On Writing, and a printout of Jim's blog.  I've found most of the other books are pretty useless for me because they get bogged down in all the grammar and literary terms, and they tend to repeat the same things.  I don't bother with figuring out themes, symbolism, exposition, etc.  I just write and leave that to worry about later.  Plus I write speculative fiction, and I tend to need more category specific type things for that.  Like with Orson Scott Card's book that has sections on FTL travel and world building.

If I get the mindset of "I'll never be this good" when reading books, I look at the book I'm reading, and it tends to be something like LotR, and remind myself that pretty much nobody will ever match that.  And then go find a book that's pretty badly written and read it, and tell myself that if that can be published, I have a chance.

Mickey Finn:
Work. I have to get creative with problem solving, and it taxes my brain.

Taxes, I saw.

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