@Suuper-san
When I say "do your homework" I mean have a plan on how you want to approach your story. I'm talking outlines. I'm talking themes, conflicts, character arcs and resolutions. Most importantly, what do you want to achieve with the story? A story without meaning is just words filling space. Do your homework, so that you don't end up scrapping 50k words of writing for something completely different. The worst thing you could do to yourself is commit to a story you never had a passion for.
@Xseos
I'm glad I could help! My advice to you on just getting the words down in terms of the "perfect story" is to do your homework as I mentioned with Suuper. Your perfect story will never be perfect, but what you can do is have a good-enough story that you can fine-tune and adjust.
I've had a 2-year-long project going on called
Project Cairlann where I divulge some of my worldbuilding and storytelling to the folks here at MR. From experience, I can say that your first idea could very well be the one you don't write. I usually start out with this big, grandiose story I want to write, where it can be expanded practically indefinitely as I add on more and more details, with a growing character cast and diverse plots and conflicts. But the more I built on it, the more I came to realize that the story I'm hoping to write won't be accomplished in any short amount of time.
So I downsized. I still kept all my notes (since I hate to waste any research) but I pivoted to making just a short story, something like a "Proof of Concept" to show what I want to write is something worth writing for people. In this case, it would be my short story on the
Battle of Garagil Pass. What's interesting here is that I get to keep everything I've built up on, but hone down on a single event where I can more focus on storytelling rather than worldbuilding. Just finishing something with a small, but striking idea is better than a big story with no real buildup.
Don't worry about formatting at this stage. Never get your book process backwards. Write your story first, fix it up, and then you can worry about the glimmer and confetti you want to add on top. Get your 500 words a week down. Doesn't matter if you have to write in different fonts everytime, make it jumbo size or small font, or different colors. Get the story down. A lot of writers only talk about writing a story, but they fail to even type the words for everyone to see. As with my life experiences, I've met a lot of dreamers in life. But unfortunately that's where most stop at. Just leaving their ideas as vague dreams. If you're going to talk the talk, walk the walk. Do something about it rather than wishing it'll happen. I've talked a lot about making stories for nearly 10 years, but it was only the past 2 where I got serious about it. You might be in the same boat as me, just sitting on it, letting it age without use of your ideas. But at the end of the day, no one can force you to write those ideas down on paper.
Routine is everything. You'll beat 90% of writers if you simply commit to a routine. And you'll beat the other 9% when you get your book out in the world. If you know the fable "The Hare and the Tortoise", you'll understand how significant this is. The Hare is like most authors. They have a bright idea, get down to writing some 20-30 pages in one sitting, and then lose steam. They might have inspiration, but they do not have a passion for writing. They get busy with life, they have things to do, and constantly they say "I'll get back to it eventually" but never do. Be like the tortoise. Be consistent. It might be slow, but it's better than no progress at all. You'll cross that finish line eventually.
- Op