<– Previous Comic Next Comic–>
<– Previous Comic Next Comic–>
*laughs* Don’t worry, I’m not calling anyone out about this.
Doing this? Super common. I just wanna say a couple things about it.
There is nothing wrong with spending a LOT of time filling in your background before you start the Actual Writing. I don’t work that way, but it’s not up to me to tell people what the Best Way to prepare your writing should be.
But I caution you to understand that some people who fall into the preparation trap for years will sometimes become so intimidated and feel so overwhelmed by the preparation they’ve made that they can’t bring themselves to start writing books.
They bury themselves in this safe haven of preparing, and they become accustomed to the idea that there’s always something else still on the agenda to do before they can actually start. There’s a point where you’re going to have to either start a book or realize you’re never going to–that you’ve created a world or a scenario or a set of actors, but nobody’s ever going to live in it.
That’s okay TOO.
You can be into making up worlds and never write books in them! If that’s your hobby then that’s also fine!
But if you do have a desire to write these books and you fall into this trap of always thinking you’re not ready yet, you may never end up creating your dream. Some people think they should wait to write their masterpiece until their skills are better, but . . . you don’t get better skills without writing.
If you do find yourself in this situation and you don’t know what to do, try writing something that isn’t the book yet, to ease yourself in–write about a character outside your main focus meeting one of your characters, or seeing them on the way to their job, or maybe a group of people telling a story about something your characters did, or something unrelated to your characters but set in the same world. That sometimes lets you play around in the world without being overwhelmed by feeling like the story won’t ever live up to the hype you’ve built for it.
But seriously. If you just think you’re not good enough yet? Please write it anyway. Write things. Write something. You have to make things so you can get better at making things.
And if it turns out you really were just not ready to tackle your idea and regret doing it badly, you can enjoy falling into a whole different trap: never being satisfied with your work. -___-;