The joys and pains of writing (and thread to share them)

luciusstorm One thing I can recognize is that the stories are always in my head, whether I write them or not. When I play the game there is always a voice telling stories.
I definitely enjoy looking at pictures I take while playing and interpreting them afterwards. What is happening in the picture. What do the figures' faces tell me. Emotions and dialogues. Thanks for reminding me. 😊

I am always very interested in human development. My characters are on a journey in life where I expect them to develop. Maybe that's the problem with the chapter I'm writing on. There is not much development. I try to remind myself that life is like that too. Periods where there is no development. Maybe it's ok.
For me, it is perfect to read Simlit as I have problems with texts that are too long and complicated.
I started writing during Covid lookdowns and you could say the reading/writing network I found brought me through that period with a feeling of not being isolated. Most of the story writers I followed have now completely left Simlit. I can see that there are so many other new stories to delve into, and I also feel a little ashamed that my energy does not quite match my intentions. I assume it can be compared to entering into a new relationship. It requires time.

queenofmyownfantasy Thanks for sharing. It sounds like you are in a really good place in your writing process. A place where you can use your writing to master your life. It sounds so lovely that it can put a smile on your face.
I can definitely recognize writing as a tool to deal with trauma from my lived life or to look at life from a distance. My entire love for the Sims game arose when I became familiar with the game during a period when my life was challenging and very stressful on many fronts. A sanctuary to create a better and more positive personal story. Simlit writing becomes a place to reflect, regardless of whether you have readers or not. It's good to remember. 😊

where do you find your motivation?

MonaSolstraale , based on what you wrote in your post, I am understanding this question to be asking more about how we continue writing when circumstances make us feel unmotivated, rather than what makes us want to write in the first place.

Like a lot of others here, writing feels like a core part of who I am. I always have stories (or at least characters and scenes) in my head and I feel driven to share them with others. But I also go through periods (sometimes lengthy ones) where taking the stories that are in my head and actually transforming them into a format that other people can experience feels like so much work. Sometimes I'm tired. Sometimes things are going on in my life or the community or the world at large that are causing me pain or weighing on my mind. Sometimes I'm unsure about what I'm writing. Sometimes the scenes I keep daydreaming about aren't the ones I think I need to be working on. Or sometimes I just don't want to do it.

For me, I've found a few things that keep me going, or get me going again.

- Caring about my characters. I stay motivated best when I have a set of characters I feel really loyal to. When I think about quitting, I feel like I would be letting them down. Their "need" to exist and have their stories told keeps me from abandoning them.
- Having someone who really wants to read the story. I think this is why so many of us list "reader's comments" as being important. Knowing that I have an audience waiting really keeps me going. I do feel a sense of obligation. And it's important to me to keep feeling that obligation, because it gives me a reason to push through when the going gets rough. I think sometimes we're hesitant to put "pressure" on each other, but for me that pressure is so essential. If I think no one cares, I start to feel like it's not worth it. I get lethargic and unmotivated and think "why bother?" But if even one person is saying "So when do I get to read more SAM?" I'll pick myself back up and start moving again. I have a couple friends who periodically "pester" me about when my next chapters will be written, and they are the main reason I keep writing.
- Using different types of skills. This is why I have really gotten into writing simlit specifically. It's not all writing. I use all sorts of other skills as well. Pose making, doing custom swatches for objects, set building, costume design, visual scene planning, photography (screenshots), image editing, gameplay, etc.  If one part of the process feels tiring, another part might actually feel invigorating.

I have four main actions I have learned to take when my creative spirit feels lacking.
-Take a break and be a story consumer for a while instead of a creator. I read books.  I read graphic novels.  I play Sims for fun.  I play other games.  I look at artwork.  I watch movies. I watch TV shows. I read other people's simlit. I watch comedy sketches on YouTube. I listen to music. I listen to real people talking about stuff. Creativity, no matter how deeply it is a part of us, has to be fed to stay alive. I start getting excited about my own ideas again by spending some time being excited about other people's ideas.
-Work on the set where the scene will take place. There's something about building the space where my characters will be "acting" that really helps me think about what is going to happen in the scene. I start to see possibilities. Where will they stand? What will they do? What will they say? How will they feel?  Dialogue and action often starts to come to me when I am creating the space where that dialogue or action will be happening.
-Let myself work on the scene that I am daydreaming about instead of the scene I think I should be working on next. This is the reason I jump around so much when I'm writing, working on Chapter 77 one day, Chapter 41 the next day, and a scene that I might not even use at all the day after that. I do not do well trying to work in a linear manner. If I force myself to stick to writing the chapters in the order they will be read, my motivation to write at all just disappears and I get nothing done.  But if I let myself work on what I want to work on, it all gets done eventually. It might mean a few long hiatuses for my readers while I slowly assemble enough consecutive chapters to start posting again, but it works for me so that's just how it has to be.
-Step back and figure out why I'm stalled. Sometimes my lack of motivation is actually because something I have already written (or am planning to write) is really bothering me. I take my periods of writer's block as a signal that I need to do some editing and/or re-configuring of my ideas. Once I figure out what the problem is and fix it, I feel motivated to move forward again.

That is so smart.
I was recently stalled in a RL creative project and it was a similar experience-- I had to get past blaming myself for being stalled, and really work out what about my work was bothering me. And then I had to go to the person in charge and say "look, I think we need to cut xyz"-- oh joy. But, it worked out awesome in the end.

As they say, trust your gut!

MonaSolstraale The complete Strangerville story is a PDF download from the Comic Books link in my signature. Some bits were published as single panels in Simmer Tales previously.

No worries.

luciusstorm I never let game-play get in the way of writing.

When I did my Strangerville comic book I had already completed the adventure in-game several times with multiple characters. For the creation of my story I planned it out on story boards to map out the screenshots I would need to take. I created and entire new game instance that assembled all of the characters I wanted to use and some additional custom building sets and then carefully posed all the shots to line up with my storyboard. Most of the writing was already in place before I ever used the game to create supporting artwork.

My comic strips are much more ad hoc and are inspired completely by what occurs in gameplay

How do you balance playing and writing (and curveballs)?

Let's see... My first stories were extremely plot-driven, to the point that I had all the text written before starting the game and entered the save just to set up the exact photo I needed. My sims had very little freedom to move around and interact in between the poses, and so they almost never let the game decide the plot for me (*I say almost because I used a bit the attraction system to decide the final couples. Of course it was back in the The Sims 2 times*)

Then, in 2019 my old PC running TS2 stopped working and (also thanks to a very good seasonal sale) I passed to TS4. At first I was quite lost with the new game dynamics, it was impossible to make stories the way I used to from day 1 without learning what to expect from the game dynamic. Also, I wanted to experience the challenge of inventing a plot one chapter at a time, following the inspiration of the moment (and then having to deal with dead ends I didn't predict in advance). And so I decided to start the Miller Legacy, which is the story I'm still re-posting right now.
Between unexpected alien abductions, neighborhood stories causing very weird unplayed sims to have surprise relationships and kids, and many random encounters, a lot of the main twists in the story were really caused by random events chosen by the game this time. Sometimes it has been a real challenge to justify certain events (wasn't it exactly the challenge I was looking for, though?), and my story is full of end-of-the-chapter warnings sounding like: "I know that scene looks weird, but it's something that really happened while playing I want to include", but I think that overall it all fits the unpredictable legacy atmosphere I was looking for.

I'm not very synthetic tonight and I don't think I have fully answered yet... Anyway, in short, I would say that for my legacy (so my only story where gameplay had a role) I tend to enter the save with a vague plan in mind, which I usually follow alongside the random balls thrown in by the game. At the end I take all the screenshots that seem to tell an interesting story, move them around a bit and try to write a chapter around them.
Also, many of the twists that started as random game events later became a base for me to plan new plot points, but I tend to be careful not to follow too many branches at once. If I get an idea that I like but that would explode as a side-plot, I tend to take note and use it later on (aka in one of the following Gens) as a main plot point.