Ever felt guilty about not writing?

I hadn't written anyhting in over a year and reading all sorts of stories and fanfictions makes me feel guilty about not ding anyhting. Other than the short stories I use to do in high school, forum posts and a few essays I use to do in school, I hadn't written anything seriously. It just bothers me that I have all these ideas yet afraid to put them because it will sound wrong. Not to mention all these ideas in my head are ripped off from other people stories although I wanted to put my own spin on them. What should I do?

Yes I frequently get, not ready yet, need to do more research, can still plan my story better syndrome.

Recently I started again on writing a story and reached the tenth page so far. I'd say just pick an interesting idea, without being serious, for the sake of having something interesting to write about. Like a short one shot and if you can happen to expand on it later then goodie.

A year? I feel guilty when I stop writing for a day!

edited 20th Nov '11 7:11:48 PM by ohsointocats

Whenever I feel guilty about not writing, I stop feeling guilty and start writing. True story.

And I don't care about my ideas getting ripped off, or ripping off someone else's. In the former, you can call the fact that there's nothing new under the sun. In the latter, you can give credit and not hurt anyone's feelings.

Yes; don't be shy about admitting your influences, but don't let those influences make you feel too shy to show anyone your work. Novelty is overrated in writing.

Not guilty. Just lazy.

No. I feel irritated, but not guilty. It's not as if the world is missing out on great brilliance.

If I had readers, I'd feel guilty about not writing, but as everything I've written so far has been intended for myself, it would be rather silly to feel guilty about not working on it.

Not really. I enjoy world building but usually skip the writing part.

edited 20th Nov '11 9:28:32 PM by YuriStrike

I rather do, given that for some odd reason a bunch of people seem to like it and follow it when I do. It usually keeps me from going too far off the grid.

I'm not sure it rises to the level of actual guilt. Guilt precursors, perhaps, whatever they are.

Story of my life.

Sounds like your perfectionism is what's stopping you from writing. It's OK; a lot of writers have this problem. The trick is to not to take writing so seriously that you freeze up in terror. Of course you should always aim for your writing to be as good as possible, but a first draft isn't the place for that. Just try writing something as your mind takes you. You can always edit it up later. Maybe do some writing exercises to loosen up your mind.

And seriously, don't worry about writing ideas that other people have used before you. You're hardly going to plagiarise every single thing in their stories. In my experience, ideas inspired by other stories usually start diverging from the source fairly soon.

While I love writing, I find it often quite difficult to start, and avoid it in various ways, until I don't.

Guilty, perhaps.

I feel depressed.

I've had a recent month-or-so long break from writing, and I feel guilty only because I have people that genuinely like my stuff and want to see more of it.

Then again, the reason for said break was personal, so if they were any sort of sensical human beings, they would understand.

Do bears shit in the woods?

Tom, that's the kind of saying that accompanies a question whose answer is intuitive and obvious.

edited 21st Nov '11 5:46:37 PM by kashchei

And in my case the answer to that question is my answer.

All.

The.

TIME.

Perhaps perfectionism is to blame. People seemed to like my writing, but I just freaked out months ago over writing things for others and stopped.

I just find it friggin' impossible to name my characters. Everything else is fine, just..names. Ugh. Maybe I should just name them all after metasyntactic variables?

For me, the hardest part of writing is actually dragging myself to my laptop and getting started with all these crazy ideas I have.

I will never understand why this is so hard for people.

Hell no, sometimes I don't even bother to finish my own p

Frequently. Most the time it's because I'm busy with something else - work, kids etc. At the moment it's because I'm having to pack to move house.

I'm telling myself that once we're settled in our new place I'll be able to write again, but until then I'm only getting five or ten minutes free here and there - nowhere near long enough to get into creative writing and get something done.

Yep, most definitely. There's really no excuse for me not writing anything at this point. Hell, I'm feeling pretty shitty right now for not participating in NaNoWriMo.

edited 28th Nov '11 8:09:38 PM by Rynnec