The Hopeful Emo Kid

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self-doubt and anxiety: a writer’s burden.

May 12, 2017 by Briana Herr Leave a Comment

so, to go along with my last blog, and this weird ‘let’s talk about feelings and stuff.’ Thing I got going on. -for real don’t know where this is coming from. –

I thought that today we would talk about something that most people writers and non-writers a like feel at one point or another in their lives…or to be more realistic, all. Of. the. time. Self-doubt and anxiety.

These makes you feel alone, it makes you doubt not only what you can do but yourself as a person.

If this has happened to you, I hope that if you take anything out of this blog is that you are not alone. On that note I hope you enjoy.

 

Every writer has voices in their head. It’s how we’re able to write, It’s how we make the magic happen. however sometimes the voices tell you things, these kinds of voices whispers into your ear until they over take your thoughts and soon it’s the only voice in your head.

it speaks louder. Until it’s screaming at you. Things like ‘this sucks.’

‘no one is going to want to read this.’

Soon it even turns on you. ‘who would want to read what you wrote?’

‘this is worthless, you’re worthless.’

This goes on. until you are unable to see yourself in any other light. you start to feel like maybe, this is true.

It builds in your head, a deafening ringing that causes chaos in the deep workings of your mind, making your head feel two sizes smaller but your brain ten times bigger.

A building pressure that spreads to your throat making it hard to breath. Taking a deep breathe seems so out of the realm possibly. something that was once so easy, something that people around you do like it’s nothing, is something that you begin to struggle with. you struggle with basic human needs.

Soon the choking feeling turns into ropes that knot your stomach. Even without the choking feeling, the ropes and knots make it impossible to eat. And standing only makes it worst. The only thing it seems help is curl up into a small ball, to reflect how you feel.

The pressure pulls down onto your shoulders, weighting down on you, like if you were on the bottom of the sea. The weight wears on your body. Your knees, hips, shoulders, every nook and cranny. It pushes you down and makes you feel ten inches shorter.

When you’re busy with school, work, hobbies, family time or whatever. The voices are still, under the busyness of work, it’s the farthest from your mind as you study for that big exam. It’s quiet and calm as the smiles and laughter of friends and family drown it out.

But the moment you stop, the moment you try to sit and pour your blood, sweat and tears onto paper. The voices scream and ring at you as you try to break a piece of your soul to share with the world.

And the worst part is that because of those voices you are unable to talk about the dark sea that you are swimming through. You watch as the world around you. The people that you know and love look like they are floating on clouds, while you have rocks tried to your feet.

Soon, you start to avoid everything that is causing you to stress and panic, and writing has fallen over to the way side.

Before you wouldn’t think about going even an hour without writing. But under the lock of this paralyzing force, you go hours, days. Hell, maybe even weeks without picking up a pen. Or tapping words out.

But that doesn’t stop the voices, it only helps quiets them for a moment. But it doesn’t last long.

At night you are left with only the voices. You toss and turn, unable to sleep but you don’t have the energy to do anything but lay there.

So, there are you, lying in bed as the events of the day plays back in your mind. All the things you would have said or done differently,

It plays all the things you may or may not have fucked up. Things that shouldn’t matter, suddenly feel like 1000 bricks on your back. grinding you down to nothing.

Nothing seems to help, you no longer have a voice in your head, only these new ones are there. that break you down. Nothing seems to be able to stop it. you fester on everything with no hope of ending the feelings or sleeping.

you don’t know when it started but you soon go on auto pilot, going through the day feeling nothing at all but the black cloud over you.

Fake smiles and laughs are getting you through your day time life. night time is spent in solitude, with no motivation other than staring at the wall. Eating is throw at of the window, and you can’t even think about writing.

This takes days, months. Years maybe it’s something that’s been with for most of your live.

The scary thing is You don’t see yourself get to this point. one day you’re fine and then the next you’re fighting with yourself to get out of bed.

Writers live in a world of feelings and what ifs but in this kind of state, your trapped in a purgatory of feeling too much and not enough at the same time. A contend war raging inside of your chest. and you drown in the things that could happen and things that would never happen in a billion years.

It’s hard to break away from this, it’s something that will follow you for the rest of your life, you go through spells where you can break away from the dark. Getting to a point where you can write and live without worrying. With the sun shining against your skin, a sensation you aren’t used to feeling, like you’re normal for once.

But then, after a while, the storm clouds come back. Looming over you, bringing the darkness with it.

How do you fight it? How does one break away from the clouds and get to the sun when the world is so dark? Well, that’s different for everyone. Different reasons to walk through the dark to get to the sun. but something that helps? Writing. Bearing everything to the world.

Something that was part of the problem, being part of what saves you? Crazy talk I know.

but writing is a part of you, it’s in your DNA, it’s build inside every cell of your being. At some point it made you happy, even if it isn’t at the moment.

Writing, hell, anything that you like that might bring you happiness. All of those things are like a flashlight when the sun goes down. Sometimes the batteries are low and flicker. But other times they shine bright, splitting the darkness in two.

Doing the things you love. Being with the people you love. These are somethings to help, but if you really can’t pull out of the dark then it’s best to talk to a doctor. Or reach out to someone.

Because no one should spend their days, feeling the way that you do when you’re trapped in self-doubt, depression and anxiety. And you are so much better than the way these things make you feel.

Well there you have it lovable kiddos. That’s enough feeling sharing for one day.

Until next time!

Filed Under: my life Tagged With: self-doubt, self-help, this is me, writer life

my biggest book pet peeves.

April 4, 2017 by Briana Herr Leave a Comment

Hello lovable kiddos.

Ever read a book that you totally fall head over heels for. And then BAM your biggest pet peeves smacks you in the face, leaving you to just fluster over how much you hate when the main Character says ‘totally’ and ‘like,’ every five seconds.

Or the nerdy ‘unattractive.’ Girl gets a makeover and becomes a ‘mega babe’ which come on, no one needs to change who they are just to become cuter.

So today I thought I would share with you my biggest book pet peeves. So like the angry nerd rant begin!

 

The love triangles

I’m so sick, tired and over stupid love triangles. Some stories have done it very well But I feel like it’s something hard to master. And I feel a lot of times it’s just throw in to start shipping wars about Simon, Jacob, Gale and so, so, so many others just to build fake tense that didn’t need to be there in the first place.

But the real reason why I hate this is because it’s so totally clear who the MC is going to end up with. You can’t hind who the Love interest is and we know who is going to be left heartbroken. Unless god forbid no one is and the character realized that they only liked the MC like a sibling (not kidding, I have read a story like that please, PLEASE don’t do this.) and that’s just stupid.

Either way, I feel love triangles are just to add fake tense and start fan/internet arguments, which will bring all of the trolls out from under their bridges and go on a rampage and burn the fandom down. So moral of the story, don’t feed the trolls.

 

Perfect characters.

If you read my blog post, don’t write Mary Sues! you probably know my feelings on this.

But just in case you didn’t, let me give you a shorter (less Ranty.) version

I find perfect Characters boring and unoriginal. Nothing makes my eyes roll harder and faster than the ‘plain Janes.’ That somehow everyone wants to sleep with because they just don’t know how good-looking they are.

Or the ‘chose ones.’ That are the only ones that can stop the world from burning down. Even though they are only 12 years old.

Or the ‘oh I’m not good at anything.’ But magical good at everything even though they are ‘totally normal.’

The list goes on and on. But some of those are fine. I mean Harry Potter is awesome and that has a chose one in it.

But that I think is totally inexcusable is that perfect characters breeze though everything like a bag in the wind.

I want to see characters fail. I want to see them stubble, flap and flail around like a fish out of water. I don’t want to spend time with a book or characters if all it’s going to be is 300 or so pages of someone moping about how ‘uncool’ they are, all the while they bulldoze through everything like a totally Badass.

They don’t have to crash and burn but at least they could fall down a flight of stairs or two.

Bitchy/dickish characters.

While on the subject of characters, I HATE bitchy characters that are just that way from beginning to end. No change or growth or even any acknowledgement that they’re being a jerk.

A lot of time, authors try to write strong characters and strong characters stink up for themselves and say what’s on their mind. But you can do this without having them be jerks for no reason at all.

They whine and mope about not wanting to be the lead or the chosen one or whatever. Which is totally fine in the beginning, it’s a normal reaction for a person to have when throw into something like that.

But it just gets boring and annoying if they continue to mope about and are awful to everyone around them just for the sake of it.

I love seeing the growth in characters. I love seeing how they change and are different from the beginning to the end but having the character stays a dick is just a huge slap in the face for me.

Using ‘cool and hip.’ Slang/overuse crude language.

I use slang, everyone uses slang, People uses short hand words all the time, It’s great for helping give characters’ different voices. And make them not sounds so robotic and helps make the feel like a real person.

Different places around the world has their own slung which they use to spice up their language. and helps set your story.

But a huge turn off for me is when authors try a little too hard to be ‘hip.’ Overly using words and speech just to make their teenage characters sounds like teenagers or their early to mid 20’s sound like they are a little older. What’s worst is when it’s out dated words and slung that isn’t really used anymore.

And because it’s kind of the same thing I’ll add that I don’t like when books over use swear words or crude, overly sexual language.

I mean, I swear a lot in person but if it’s used a lot in book form it just gets boring and tedious. And it just starts feeling like filler content rather than adding emotion to the speech or a scene.

And again, authors will throw it in swear words to make the characters sounds young or hip but it just is off putting to me and overly sexual comments just because teenagers or 20 somethings are ‘Horny all of the time.’ And it just sounds too try hard for my liking.

Killing characters for the shock.

Death is supposed to mean something, it’s supposed to have an impact on the world in your story and the people on it and change them forever.

Maybe it’s their parents, a sibling, another love one, their soulmate, Maybe it’s just a stranger that died because of them.

I have spent many, many hours crying, feeling all the emotions that the characters feel, sadness, anger, emptiness. I mean, I spend forever crying over all of the death in Harry Potter. Mainly Because there’s a billion of them…

But in any case, when a character dies for no other reason than to make you feel sad over it is when I draw the line.

And I’m not taking about meaningless deaths likes ‘he died in the cave when the door was two feet from them.”

Or “that they died in a battle that they end up losing anyway.” These kinds of things have meaning behind why the author killed them. I mean having people die in a seemingly random way, giving a sense of cruelty to the world, a random act for characters and readers alike to hit too low to just show you what’s at stack here and add to a breaking point for a character.

what I mean is when the death feels like ‘okay this character filled their role and uhhh…. They died because what else am I going to do?”

or “and we’ll kill this girl just so you can be sad by it! Because books are supposed to rip your soul out and leave you on the ground laying in pool of your own tears. ”

those are just totally and company useless in my mind. If you are killing a character because you have no clue what else to do, then you are doing it wrong and either need to cut the character as a whole or change things to do something else with the character.

If you are killing off characters because you want shock your readers then you are also doing it wrong because they will just get mad at you…or turn your books into an HBO show. Either way it still grinds my gears.

Instant love

I know love at first sight is a real thing that happen to people, it’s something that people experience all of the time and as sweet it is to hear someone talk about their cute and epic love that started with just one look. It’s pretty boring to read about.

I mean, if your MC sees someone and their eyes meet, with one magical moment and then five pages later they are doing It in the rain and then for the next however many chapters with it all being peachy and that’s all the plot there is to the sub plot of your story or the main plot (or rather a lack of one.) it’s just painful to read.

Again, this goes back to how I want conflict and not a story about easy choices. If it’s love at first sight and then they realized that love and relationships are not easy and the two characters have to make it work then that’s fine totally. There’s some conflict and something driving a story forward. I love fluff as much as anyone else.

It just bugs me that these types of books that use this kind of instant love paint this picture that everything is all kittens and rainbows

when in real life and in any good love story, love takes a lot of hard work in order to grow into its own. and not only is it a bad message to send young readers that love should be perfect all of the time but it’s just boring to read.

Well there you have it. This is my list of pet peeves. I hope you enjoyed my ranting and I would love to hear about yours, so tell me yours via comments/twitter/facebook whatnot.

Until next time.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: book stuff, this is me, writer life

Hiya!

Hi, I’m Briana! I’m a coffee addicted night owl who likes dark, depressing books and upbeat music. I also happen to be an author. Want to read about my life in lists? Click Read More…

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