Returning To Writing (anyone else had a long, unintended hiatus?)

[emme_elle]

Hey everyone,

I wanted to share something personal in case it resonates with anyone else here. It’s been a long time since I’ve written—about 10 years, in fact. During that time, I was told to silence my creative voice, and I let that take over. Even though I always believed in myself and knew I could do it, I held back because I was told that expressing myself wasn’t okay. But recently, I’ve started breaking free from that silence, and it’s been a journey of rediscovering my voice.

If you’re someone who’s just starting out with writing, or maybe you’re like me and you’re coming back after some time away, I just want to say: it’s okay to feel unsure. I’ve been there, and I still feel like I’m finding my footing. But I’ve learned that it’s important to just keep writing, even when it feels messy or imperfect. It’s not about being perfect; it’s about rediscovering your voice, no matter how quiet or lost it might seem.

Here are a few things I’ve been reminding myself as I try to get back into the swing of writing:

• Start small. It doesn’t matter how much you write each day. Even if it’s just a few sentences, it’s still progress.

• Don’t rush. It’s easy to compare yourself to others, but everyone has their own pace. Just focus on your own journey.

• It’s okay to not know everything. I’m still figuring things out, and that’s perfectly fine. I think the most important part is just to keep writing, without worrying too much about being “good” right away.

• Be kind to yourself. It’s easy to be hard on yourself, but remember that every writer, no matter how experienced, has gone through times of doubt and struggle.

I guess the main thing I’ve learned so far is that finding your voice takes time and patience. So, if you’re just starting out or coming back like me, know that it’s okay to not have everything figured out. The most important thing is to just keep showing up, even on the days when it feels tough.

If anyone else is in the same boat, I’d love to hear how you’re finding your way back to writing, or what’s helped you stay motivated.

Let’s keep writing together!

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Here are my re-training wheels

Read Little Words, Big Hearts | Tapas Web Community

Read The Rebirth of A Soul | Tapas Web Community

Feel free to share yours!

[EncryptedWriting]

100% feel this in every aspect. Graduate school has basically shut down any chances for me to write. Even when I want to sit down and write, I feel utterly exhausted. Not to mention I need to redo the first five or six chapters.

Overall, I keep telling myself to finish my novel and then comeback from hiatus. I'm not too far off, but I'm just unsure who will even read when I'm back to publishing at a normal rate again.

[Leyelle]

I went on an unintended hiatus for my second and third novels because of busy schedules and burnout. The main things that have helped me beat burn out and stay inspired are the positive responses and encouragement I've gotten from people and especially from my family members. My siblings really help encourage me to be my best self. But when it comes to things under my control.

1. Discipline: I write 6 days a week no if and or buts about it unless I'm sick. the more you do something the more inspired you feel and the better at it you become.
2. Sometimes it helps to take a pause from the things that I'm stressing over and work on an idea I'm more inspired by. I draw a picture I want to draw even if it's unrelated to my comic. I write a poem or a short story. Looking for writing contests with prompts is a great source of inspiration.
3. I let daily experiences motivate me: when I write channeling the emotions I'm feeling on any given day I feel more motivated and inspired
4. I write what I'm passionate about. I know I can never really give up on an idea if it matters to me, and passion helps me stay driven and actually complete projects. Sometimes that means pausing one story and working on the one that has me fired up until I feel inspired to go back to the first one.

Lately I've been feeling fired up by my comic 'Mental Soup' and it helps me keep practicing and improving my art in between panels of my comic "Sketchy Business"

Also, "Damsel and the Red Dress" has helped me stay consistent because I have so many supporters on this series I don't want to let them down, and I always want to give them my absolute best. sometimes it's stressful but it's also encouraging and inspiring.

My main novel:

Read Damsel in the Red Dress :: Damsel in the Red Dress | Tapas Community

Mental Soup:

Leyelle on Instagram: "More "Mental Soup" is coming soon. #sadcomics...

Art for fun: (usually digital paintings tbh XD)

[Leyelle]

I say, if it's what you were made to write, then don't worry about an audience, the right people will find you sending good vibes!

[kyupol]

Had so many hiatuses in the many years I've been doing comics. Life just happens and sometimes you get sucker punched by life.

But you gotta get up with a newly discovered power that levels you up where you'd be able to kick life in the ass like a typical shonen anime hero who gets his ass kicked at first then "miraculously" defeats the big bad who is 10 levels stronger than him

[simplykit]

Heeey! welcome back! quick question, what was the reason why you had a hiatus? anyways get those creative juices flowing and let the good times roll!

me myself, am still on hiatus from making comics, just being lazy and busy with stuff and things

[ThunderChicken]

I didn't have a writing hiatus, but I did have a drawing hiatus. When I was a teenager and well into my twenties I drew prodigiously. Any spare time was spent drawing. Then, for some reason, in the mid 1990's I stopped. I did not make the conscious decision to do so; I simply put my pens & pencils away and didn't pick them up again.

Almost 30 years later, in 2022, I decided to start drawing again, and (perhaps more aligned with this thread) I also started writing. Toward the end of my drawing years in the 90's I was starting to get into digital art, so that is where I picked it up again. I bought a decent drawing tablet (Microsoft Surface Pro 8) and started drawing. Obviously both hardware and software have changed a lot in those decades: I went from drawing with a mouse using MS Paint and Jasc Paint Shop Pro to using a stylus to draw in Krita and Paint.net. I still use MS paint for some things as well.

The writing was totally new to me. I had a story in my mind for years, and again in 2022 I finally decided to write it. It is a true story, and so writing it wasn't particularly difficult. After I finished that one I started another, this time fiction/fantasy. It was more of a challenge but I've been enjoying it immensely.

[MelancholicOtaku]

I had a year hiatus,mainly due to burn out and depression.I still wrote hoping to find some form of inspiration.

[Juniper_dG]

I took a long hiatus from writing because of my career in the publishing industry. It made me so depressed to not be doing my own creative work while I promoted others'. I often tell creative people, if you need a day job, get something relatively mindless that is unrelated to your art. You'll burn your creativity out in a job that uses your best skills. I was in marketing, so I wrote a lot of press releases and blog posts. That, combined with having kids, killed my ability to write fiction.

I got back into it by writing fan fiction. I wrote a 150K-word Star Wars fic, and then started another, a band AU. I realized as I started to write it that it wasn't fic; it was my own story, and it became the novel I'm now publishing on Tapas! I've also been hired by a book packager to write a novel. I still write fic, though.

Read If I Never Saw the Sun :: Chapter 1 - The Milton Fitzfoxes | Tapas...

[Leyelle]

I hope you're feeling better now! Did sticking with your writing help you through the burn out/help you find inspiration?

[MelancholicOtaku]

Yeah it did ,writing was like the light at the end of the tunnel ,it gave me an opportunity to slowly climb my way out of my depression. @Leyelle

[clementina]

Welcome back to the writing community! Just like you I had a very long, unintended hiatus--it was brought on because I was so severely depressed that even my passion for writing had been taken over my poor mental health. However, since I have been getting therapy, I've been doing much better and am now able to come back to my writing (and hopefully, create a career out of it).

I have my own re-training wheels that I'm working on and hoping to finish. It's meant to be a short story, but let's see how it goes. It's supposed to be a very lighthearted and sweet romance (:

[thisisadriane]

I'm so happy to find this thread. My hiatus hasn't really been as long as some of yours. My last meaningful writing update was back in 2022. Afterwards, I tried writing but it was just never the same.

The funny thing, while a lot of you are blocked by depression or life hustles, mine is the opposite. I started writing when I was 7 in my own language, and I started writing online in English (which is my second or third language) in 2015. It was in a fanfic platform, so nothing impressive. I was, at the time, very depressed and was burdened with school. Yet, I wrote a 3000-word prologue to a fanfic that would later top its category in about 2 hours. Writing back then was like a high. Just typing them down brought me to a different headspace. It's a sugar-rush minus the glucose - a manic episode. I could write a 7000-word chapter in a day without food and sleep. If I have a thesis deadline, I'll miss it by writing 5000 words of full of fanservice online.

Come 2022, life became different. I found the love of my life, I was in the process of moving to a different country, made actual friends, scored a new job, adopted 2 cats, and suddenly I'm not depressed anymore. Readers flocked to my comment section asking if I contracted the AO3 curse. I didn't! I am, for once, happy and content. And I lost my writing-high as consequence.

You didn't know how many times I cried in front of my screen, fingers frozen atop my keyboard. No clackity-clack, just silence and frustration. I'm trying to find my passion for writing again by posting in Tapas. I think my muse is coming back. They're close, but not quite where I'd like them to be.

[Leyelle]

This is great though. since you're not doing writing for a living, being too happy to write is honestly the best kind of writer's block ever, even though I'm sure it's still frustrating. However, since you want to get back into it, my best tip for beating emotion-centered writer's block, if you're interested is this:

Write based on how you're feeling on any given day. If you're feeling happy, write something happy. It doesn't have to relate to your story ATM, you could add it to a happier part of future chapters or a whole different story. I've collected lots of lines that i'm not sure where to put them yet, or that are coming much much later in my main novel series. I think if you write to express your emotions rather than writing because you want people to like what you write or because you're trying to be good at writing, it helps beat writer's block

It's meant to be a short story, but let's see how it goes.

XD, if you're anything like me, that short story will end up much longer than you intended it to be. What's the story's plot summary?

[thisisadriane]

I mean, it does sound great, but it is very frustrating. I'm still getting used to being... content. It's actually kind of new to me.

Interestingly enough, I've never considered how my mood could impact the tone of my works (the motivation to write itself? Yes. The story? Not sure). I think I'd like to mull about that a little more. Plus, I don't see my chapters as 'happy' nor 'sad'. But it is an interesting point to make. Though I admit, the part about writing to please people does turn off inspirations! How do you get rid of that??

[Leyelle]

@thisisadriane

Yeah, I can see it being frustrating but I say we should try to look at the positive, right?

Our mood definitely can affect the tone of our writing and it really helps create natural work/find inspiration no matter how we're feelings. Sometimes I'll challenge myself to write a poem where I describe something I find beautiful and it's really inspiring (like trying to describe how it feels to be content sitting in the sun on a warm day.)

As for how you get over other people's opinions, the emotions help there to, in my experience. If you write because there is a feeling you want to express, then whether anyone else likes it or not, you've gotten it off your chest and you can forget about anything else. Hope this helps a bit!

[miuthecat]

I once did a one-shot made of 50 pages, it took me 7 years, enough said
You can make 30 pages in one month when you're motivated, but when you're not, 1 page might take a lifetime...

[thisisadriane]

Yep, writer's math. Posted all at once on the same page? Yep, totally a one-shot. LOL

[rocs90]

I’ve been “trying” to write my novel since 2021
is it what you call writers block?
i have moments where i’m just like ugh i need a break, and then bam, im submerged in it and then again, i don’t want to touch it

[clementina]

Oh boy, I never got back to you I'm sorry about that. But, the overall summary of my short story is cats being matchmakers and helping humans come together.