Well, my writing just dropped to zero.
All four of us now have COVID. So far, just light cold symptoms, but too much headache and brain fog for me to write. Oh well, got a couple good days in first. 
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And we all hope it doesn’t go further than that!
Rest now.
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Hello. I figured I’d drop by here again before I take a writing break (for real this time).
Sharing my work publicly is both the best and worst thing I did for my story, but if I had to do it all again, I probably wouldn’t.
If I have any advice to give to anyone: Don’t push yourself too hard. And when you’re disappointed and start thinking that it’ll become better if you try harder, don’t. You’ll just end up hating your story and suck out all the fun from it.
I wish I had fonder memories of this place.
Good luck to you all.
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I’m really starting to feel the “is it worth it” pain. Sometimes when I open this forum, and read some of the discourse, I get discouraged. Sometimes when I open Tumblr and scroll, I get discouraged.
Then, it comes down to “what’s the goal?” Is the goal to make it big and have a huge following? Gosh, we all want that, but we can’t control what people want to read or not want to read. I know several authors that have huge following without even a demo out yet, What’s the secret? Hell, if I knew… I’ve read an author said in another thread here that a lot of it have to do with luck, well I was never one to be lucky anyway.
From the moment I started writing my story, my goal was to finish it and publish it. Which I’m happy to have finished book one and submitted it. Plus, I worked too damn hard on it to let it sit somewhere on my computer as the next folder to be deleted.
So many times, I wanted to stop, not a day pass that I’m not thinking about stopping. The inevitable “why the hell am I doing this for?” All the wine I could drink, and crime shows I could watch instead of writing on my Saturdays and Sundays.
But right now, there’s like 7 people that like what I write, and in addition of doing it for myself and getting it published… I’ll also do it for them… until I can’t, I guess.
Bottom line. We are not all going to make it big… we are not all going to have a huge following… we are not all going to have a popular story… we are not all going to be lucky.
I do agree with the “don’t push yourself” because once you get exhausted, the best you’ll get is a mention on “What WIP will you bring back from the dead.
Anyway, just me rambling.
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It all depends in the person an their state of mind, experience, and even age. I feel realised when I work hard and end a story is a way of being realised. That and I enjoy deadlines and have a clear goal.
One has to know what is best for their own and search help from others.
I wish I could help you to feel better with your writing. My advice is take a time out and try to reconnect with what you make to write in first place.
I fight every day with Anxiety, depression and impostor syndrome I was burn out and I didn’t write in years. But now, I know I need writing in my life, even if nobody likes my work and laughing about it.
I present to contest after contest knowing I will never win and nobody will pm saying they love my game.
It hurts so much; but I needed to write. And I hope that someday at least one person enjoys my writing and tells me about it.
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I feel you. Though I think I face the opposite problem of: “I’m writing this for fun, so why the hell shouldn’t I be doing [insert weekend activity] instead?” And then before I know it, countless Saturdays and Sundays have passed. Then comes the guilt when I remember I promised an update a while back, and the chapters have not written themselves.
But anyway, watching the olympics made me think about how much time I’ve spent playing various sports (or, for that matter, vegetating in front of the couch watching TV/scrolling through tumblr etc.) And it made me realise that most of the things we engage in throughout our lives don’t have “scoring systems” in the same way that COGs/HGs do. Unless we’re very, very good at our hobbies, these things give almost zero ‘formal’ payoffs. No matter how much squash I play, I still pretty much suck at it. Nobody’ll ever wanna watch a recording of me play. But I guess I can still say: I play squash, in the same way that I can say I write IF in my free time?
(That said, of course there’s still the visceral desire to have what we write be just in the slightest bit recognised/acknowledged by someone. To refresh the page constantly after an update and be thrilled when there’s a small comment that says: ‘this good’.)
This made me laugh. Judging by my work ethic, I think I’m almost definitely going to end up there.
And @Franzinyte: I just wanted to say that I played DDWCaPH and… the amount of detail and polish just absolutely blew me away. It’s so lovingly made, down to how the screen changes to black when it’s a flashback, and the fact that there’s MUSIC, and all the amazing little pictures / cute icons are ridiculously endearing.
I’ll stop here and post on your thread to keep this post on-topic, but I wish you all the best, and please stay well!
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This made me laugh out loud 
So true lol
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Once again, I remind EVERYONE that people are a whole lot more vocal about problems than about things that run smoothly. The only reason I even came to this forum to start with was because of a bug in a game, so I’m only here because of a bad thing. And then I BECAME the bad thing in the forum. 
MWAHAHAHAHAHA cough cough cough. Sorry, inhaled a hell fly there. ahem
NO! BAD CC! BAD! NO DOOMSCROLLING! sprays with bottle
And it’s still not published, because the CoG queue takes FOREVER (and a day)! What am I supposed to do for my interactive horror fix? kicks queue
If it helps, most crime shows are shit and you aren’t missing anything. CSI once tried to convince me that plants didn’t have DNA.
I’m curious how you got to that number. 
Of course, people who come to the forums are a tiny minority, so “number of people who like this” will increase once Keeper comes out.
Aaaaand also because you can’t push creative endeavours, because that’s not how brains work.
Only people who are good at things get imposter syndrome. Except people who are good at dying. Those get ex-poster syndrome. Eh. Eh? Eeeeh? mumbles …'twas a LITTLE bit funny… mumbles
I’m not sure this is a common thing that happens even with REALLY popular CoG writers? I made a decision some time ago that around midsummer I go out of my way to reach out to authors (not necessarily CoG authors) that I really like and tell them I like their work, but I’m weird AF. Also, I’ll probably forget some of them when I do those rounds, because, again, I brain weird. ALSO ALSO, I sort of always feel that doing this is bothering the author? 
HAHAHAHA, what do you mean “social anxiety”, none of that here nope, none at aaaaallllll!
Also, may I suggest putting the name of your work on your bio? That helps with projection around the forum.
I am DEFINITELY going to suggest not doing this. Like, ever. Ever ever. If you work better with a schedule, then set your schedule and keep it to yourself. Because if you do this and something happens (like RL getting in the way or the creative part of the brain just not cooperating or your computer frying or whatever) then that just stresses you out, and that doesn’t help anyone, least of all you. For the same reason, if any gamedev is reading this, for fuck’s sake, never roadmap. If you can’t figure out why, just go trawl the internet for the reactions when everybody else has missed their roadmap (and you WILL miss the roadmap).
I stole the Joker’s laughing gas formula.
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I had some people reach out to me when I ghosted the forums in the couple of years that I didn’t write. I’ve never felt imposter syndrome about writing. But I have felt guilty about failing deadlines or just not being able to keep up with any perceived expectations. I do once in a while get PMs from people who appreciate my writing, and I do as I can. And I am willing to admit that the support of the community helps drive me forward in my writing; giving me another reason to want to, because I do love the feeling of people talking about something I’ve created. If my writing wasn’t generating buzz, I’d need to ask myself difficult questions- like is it because people aren’t interested in the story I’ve chosen to write about, or is it that I need to improve the writing itself and the story topic is fine? I can’t simply binge writing for twenty days of a month any more like I used to be able to- I am okay with that. There were exterraneous circumstances for several years that I think knocked a LOT of creatives off their feet, and the whole collective lot of us have had to figure out our own healing and getting back to it. It really does seem there are a looooot of us creative sorts who had to take a break for a while for reasons we don’t even know how to explain. It’s pretty important to not be ashamed about it, or about coming back and picking up once more. The lost time hurts, but it’s not the end of the world. And it feels really genuinely good to be back at it. I can imagine some are on an opposite wave cycle, or just different, on when is crappy and good moving through time, so it’s okay to be off-footed for a while and not know how to put oneself to right. Eventually it’ll come, if it’s meant to.
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Got bitten by the choicescript bug again after trying to ignore it for a loooooong time. I’m starting my “cozy stardew valley but in space and with my characters” WIP (read: I never actually started on it), but I have to relearn like, 90% of Choicescript, haha… I’m also sort of pantsing this particular draft for the sake of at least test running the concepts and atmosphere I want to make, so we’ll see how that goes. I just want to grow my crops and meet cool people in relative peace…
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I wish you luck. My advice is doing the rpg dynamics are very complex and need lots of code. So take your time and ask for help in the forum.
Don’t feel discouraged by the challenge as other authors have done complex and deep rpg mechanisms.
You can do it your space farm paradise!
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Thank you! Honestly, I’m probably not going to go super hard on the RPG-esque parts to start out, as I want to focus on characters and atmosphere, but we’ll see where it goes.
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But I thought it was in space?
If I can’t make terrible cringey puns, what would even be the point of the internet?
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Well done.
I haven’t posted much this year, since my family and I have been riddled with sickness. First some unnamed respiratory ailment in January had my daughter and I using the nebulizer a great deal, then that gave way to a second bout with Covid earlier this month for all four of us. Vaccination helped, as did our antibodies from the horrorshow that was our first bout with the ‘rona in March of 2020, but I still have a nagging cough and chest/throat tightness.
However, this thread isn’t about that, it’s about writing. And I just had a great writing day, while my girls were out getting their hair done for the first time in almost three years. I ended yesterday at the 8,000 word mark for February, on track to get to my 10k goal by month’s end. I ended today already at 10,000 several days early. I feel the story slowly coming together, and while it is taking longer than I had hoped, at least the end is starting to be in sight.
And if that drive to finish the story is partially motivated by my dark desire to, at long last, give myself permission to indulge in the Gemp addiction I swore off last May until this story was in the publishing queue, well, that’s why it’s important to know what buttons to press on yourself to keep the words flowing.
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Hey aren’t you a little unfair? I read your stories, loved them and told you about it.
I am sure you have more supporters like me,so don’t give up and keep on writing!
We all love you @poison_mara !
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I’m handing over my day job to a fantastic colleague. We’re at the stage where I could stop trying to tie up as many loose ends as possible, and just focus on a few key tasks that wouldn’t bleed over into the evenings as much. They wouldn’t take away my salary for that.
The problem really is that the salary wasn’t my main motivator for doing the job in the first place. Right now I’m in one of our two rural hospitals, saying goodbye to staff who have been on the frontline against COVID for the past couple of years. And for most of March and April I’ll be on the road in our other working areas, spending time with good people and being reminded of how much I still want to support their work.
I think I’ll need to settle for a 10,000 word a month target for now, and try to really get going from May when I’m back in the UK.
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Hello, forum readers. I have to inform you that I can’t find any inspiration to write my game during these events. One of our neighbouring countries uses our territory to attack another neighbouring country, and I can’t do anything but wish for this war to end. I wish to all Ukrainians to be safe.
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Right now I’m opening up my WIP after leaving it untouched for like two weeks…
I keep feeling self conscious because I keep lapsing into “novel” writing mode, in the sense that I keep writing long passages with very few choices, because I want to hit a particular story beat or something needs to happen in such a way…
And then I’m like “ugh, I need to write a choice in” and my progress will stall while I try to incorporate a meaningful choice every 300 words.
Anyway, good luck to you all!!
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I’m not sure if I am a qualified person to give advice on this since I only started using choicescript and these forums a little under a year ago, but honestly, I say just write the story you want to write.
Personally, I’ve had a couple POV switching sequences that are a couple thousand words long where the MC isn’t even in the scene, and sure it’s not everyone’s cup of tea, but I think you’ll find not everyone minds long lapses in between choices (as long as it’s not happening constantly) and I personally wouldn’t write my story any other way and couldn’t imagine it any other way.
The 300 rules isn’t bad by any means and works for a lot of people, but what I’ve found even more important is proper use of *page_break. What I’ve found even more more important is writing in a way that inspires you and tells your story in the exact way you pictured it being told.
All of this is a very long-winded way of saying; write whatever makes you happy and it will be good!
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