Hey all.
I’ve been writing a novel recently - I’m only 2200 words in. It feels like so little and so much at the same time.
Until I graduated college, I loved writing. Reading, too. Then, it feels like my ADHD got much worse and I lost all the passion I had for both. I had about a year of really intense depression while trying to find my first job during COVID. I had basically written nothing for almost three years up until recently. I started, and did not finish, a short story, and am working now on this “novel”. The problem is that I love writing in the abstract, I love putting words together in interesting ways and telling a story. But I can’t stop looking at the word count and feeling hopeless. I can’t stop feeling like there’s no point to any of it because my writing is shit. I feel like all of my passion has just left and I don’t know how to get it back, but I desperately want it back.
This isn’t a question, really, despite the title. I guess I needed to vent and know if I’m not alone in having experienced this.
I definitely find the “scene” or “vignette” to be much easier to focus on and do effectively. On longer works it’s so easy to get bogged down in the details and the bigger picture setups, so doing the short stuff is good practice for just blasting words onto the page. I saw your other comment where you mention that you sometimes spend too much time on single sentences, and I am definitely prone to doing the same. I figure that if I can get comfortable with writing the shorter stuff, it’ll help me stay focused on the longer.