45 Stress (1/2)

Back in my class with my mentor, one of my fellow students got stressed out with our assignment which was writing an anthology composed of only 1500 words. This should be a collection of short stories and tales which tells the tales of 100 years of a nation's history.

Actually, this guy was the one who asked about a writing prompt, so he could practice writing, expecting a valuable lesson learned afterward.

However, only two of us submitted our works and the rest, aside from one person, had a hard time of finishing more than 600 words.

I can understand what they felt for it was really frustrating to come up with three short stories or might only be called snippets within 1500 words.

At first, I exceeded to 1800+ words and condensed it. But I felt it was a half-assed work. Like, a lot of things were missing. You can't totally express or add words to build up emotions of the characters or show an awesome description of your story. It's all because of a word count limitation.

Yet, after writing one, I can't tell that it was a failure, but I've learned a valuable lesson myself. On how to condense stories and use adjectives to express or explain the fierceness or awesomeness or absurdity of a situation or person in an efficient way.

I'm used to writing a lot of words but with this prompt, I learned to target words that are more useful to tell my story in the most practical way. I don't know for you but try to write an anthology with limited word count and feel the frustration.

So, this fellow student called the prompt a shit. One good thing with our mentor is that he is very patient to all of us. Instead of reacting in a harsh manner, he is guiding this person to look for the source of his stress. If it is the prompt then what he feels won't be that severe.

Thus, the person shared openly his frustration against famous Litrpg stories in RR, while no one reads his story. I'm not sure if no one is really reading but not as much as the other novels. At the same time, he is trying to balance work and writing. He still needs to work to pay bills and daily necessities.

Here is the most painful statement he said, ”I want to write and have people care about what I write as much as I do.”

I feel his bitterness. Isn't this a common denominator about the authors' desire?

I'll write here a few of the advice our mentor said.

1.) If you've got anxiety, find the root of it.