u/88piano88

I’ve been juggling around an idea for a sci-fi novel, and today I finally had the willpower to actually start working on it. I do the usual spreadsheet-creating, word document opening, etc. It dawns on me that I don't actually know what the hell I'm doing and I have no clue what the hell my story is even about besides the very beginning. Regardless, I decided to start writing some anyway. I write for three hours, come up with a few hundred words, and lo and behold it really really sucks.

I don't know why I'm pretending like this is something I'll stick with. I've felt my interest in writing rapidly deteriorating for the last couple of weeks after all the "save to watch later" videos from Brandon Sanderson and other youtubers sit unwatched in the playlist. Why am I even pretending that I'll be as good as those guys? Why do I even bother thinking that I'll be the next Sanderson or some other writer out there whose name everyone will remember? I had the nerve to come up with a pen name and title for the book before I even had any semblance of what it would be about. I watched three videos about how you should format your manuscript before I knew what the hell I was actually going to put into it. I took every step to avoid the actual writing until today.

Three hours of uninterrupted work in the beginning, trying to come up with what I think is decent stuff. I feel in a decent flow for a little while, and then I take a step back to see what I've actually come up with. Unsurprisingly, it's not very good. This was the first time in years that I have had the willpower to muster up actual, not-for-school, personal writing work and I absolutely detest how it came out. I don't want to share it with anyone I know or anyone who doesn't know out of sheer embarrassment. I can already tell that this entire endeavor will be something that I stick with for one more week before switching to some other form of self expression that i also give up on after a week or two. I have gone through this with artwork, music creations, 3d artwork, whatever you can come up with, I have probably tried and either gotten bored with or failed and quit.

So, I'd like to ask: How do you guys do it? How do you get the motivation to try and improve yourself when you know that you'll probably never be a bestselling author or a famed poet or achieve any type of major recognition when millions of others like you are doing the exact same thing? I have poured so many hours into what I think to be something that I can *finally* use to express myself and always always always end up back at the same place. I'm starting to accept that I'm just not a creative person or I'm not meant for any of this self expression in a way that other people will care about. I find myself unable to do things for myself and require constant external validation in order to feel good about what I make. How do I not do this? How do I stick with this for more than one day and keep working at it knowing that I will never do anything real with it in my life? What is the point of it? What is the point of art?