<div class="quoteheader"><div class="topslice_quote"><a href="https://elliquiy.com/forums/index.php?topic=308675.msg15058126#msg15058126">Quote from: Mature Desires on 04-09-2019, 13:33:55</a></div></div><blockquote class="bbc_standard_quote">Hi everyone, <br/><br/>I'm sorry everyone for being away (though not sure if anyone noticed lol) it's been a crazy long weekend full of work and dealing with my depression has been hard. I've been thinking about this post for a few days now. It's been even harder to find the effort to write and contribute. Writing was once of the few interests I had that kept me feeling good and being able to create characters and stories. Now I just feel like it's a chore and I'm so behind all the time with posts. It's also been very challenging doing all my posting by phone (I don't have a computer to use outside of my work one that email my posts to myself and upload through my phone. <br/><br/>This website really showcases some amazing writers and all of you in this group certainly make me feel that I have to really push myself to post at the quality I see here among all of you, it truly is amazing to see and read, you all have such amazing gifts for words! This is a wonderful group of writers with some very interesting characters. I feel maybe I should have upped my game when creating my character Cleo to make her more appealing and with more depth so she has more to write off of.<br/><br/>I think through all this rambling I'm struggling to see how I can continue to enjoy this group RP. I know everyone would say "do what you need to do" and "take care of yourself first" but I feel bad leaving everyone waiting on me to post and contribute. I don't feel that's fair to the rest of you all that can post more frequently and see the story moving along, jeez I don't think Cleo has even finished Day 1 technically and I didn't even get time to post a reaction to the competition, totally my fault, but it's also showing to me how diffi ultimately it is for me to be able to stay engaged and caught upon what's going on. I don't know I guess I'm at a crossroads. On the one hand I do enjoy staying here and reading the stories and trying to contribute(I know Capone has put up with my flakiness long enough, I'm sorry!!!) But I also have to recognize where I'm at and maybe walking away from E and the other site I RP on is in my best interest. I can't keep stressing myself out about the posts I haven't created yet and making people wait (I know I hate waiting). <br/><br/>So through all of this I'm wondering if people have struggled with this? If so how have you dealt with it? If you haven't what words of advice can you give to me to sway me in one direction or the other (staying vs. Leaving?) I want to do what's best for the group and I want to know where everyone else's expectations lay, since I've said I hate making people wait on my posts and I have to be real I can't do daily posts like some of you (so envious lol).<br/></blockquote><div class="quotefooter"><div class="botslice_quote"></div></div><br/><em>*ahum*</em><br/><br/>Dear MD,<br/><br/>You're gonna see a lot of messages like this of people reaching out and expressing sympathy because the truth is that the majority of people on E, those who stay for longer than a passing interested at least, are struggling in a similar fashion. They're here to find some escape.  ^-^<br/><br/>Now for my personal contribution to the many support messages.<br/>Your struggle with posting sounds all too familiar to me. When I got here I was really excited and eager to hop into games and create characters and meet people, and then reality tripped me and kicked my teeth in. I discovered what my writing process is like and what the limitations of it are. I'm an emotional, slow writing, perfectionist, who has English as his second language. With the emotional part I mean that I need to be in the right mood for writing and that it's very easy for me to get distracted. When I write it's a meticulous process where I first write down in broad terms what I want to happen that post and then turn each of those lines into a paragraph to flesh it out. During this process I write from the perspective of my character who doesn't always agree with the plan I laid out, so things might have to change or compromises have to be found. Then I go through the whole post again to check for grammar errors and to see if the flow reads nicely, making sure I don't use the same words over and over, try to restructure and reorganize sentences, and finally fix the BBCode. If it sounds like a lot, that's because it is, for me at least. I've tried, or am trying to care less and just write something and post, but I never feel good about those, especially when I read it back and see mistakes I could have easily prevented. So, posting is a real chore for me, and not all stages are equally fun, but the payoff of having a post that I can be proud of makes it all worth it for me.<br/><br/>This all does mean that I am a slow poster. Especially if I have am not getting much to work with from whoever I am writing with. Struggling int he setup can cause me to procrastinate and the longer I wait with starting a post the higher my expectations for it become until eventually there is just no way I am going to be satisfied, even if the post ends up pure gold. I'm a difficult individual.  XD But, I am also analytical. So I've looked at myself and my process, and the things that influence it, and this has helped me to manage myself.<br/><br/>Firstly, I am very critical about my writing partners for example. No matter how pretty or cool their characters look on paper, if their style doesn't excite me then chances are I will lose motivation to respond. So I always check out the posting history of those I might be writing with.<br/>Secondly, I need to manage my excitement for an RP. I love creating characters and plotting out scenes and connections, but I need to restrain myself and make sure I can follow through on these. So, Never should play more than 1 character! I sometimes make the mistake of giving in to a second, but that always negatively impacts my characters across the board.<br/>Thirdly, I need to manage my RP's. I generally only focus on 1 RP at the time because I am bad at being equally excited and motivated for different stories at the same time. Sometimes I make an exception if I have a writing partner who understands and accepts my ways. I have a 1 on 1 going that's progressing perhaps 1 post per month, but my partner is a gem who doesn't mind the pace.<br/>forth, I structure my writing time. For the most part I do my post writing early in the morning, or at least get the first draft of it on paper. It's easier to continue a post than it is to start one. I need to start early in the day because that's when I feel the most free and least inhibited. The later it gets the more I'll have to deal with thoughts like planning for dinner interruptions, having to finish things that needed to be done that day, dealing with people who come home from work, or wake up on the other side of the world and start chatting. Unfortunately this means that if I wake up late, I already know that there's not gonna be any post writing that day, and because of all these things my average posting speed is once a week.<br/><br/>Oh, and lastly is a word of advice. When you feel you've been lagging behind in your posts, making people wait or the number of things you need to respond to is piling up, then you kinda gotta suck it up and trust that your partners are awesome people. The best things to do then, I find, is to kick all your expectations and demands for your quality out the door and just compile a junk post. It sucks, it's certainly not pretty, but at least you'll have a bunch of actions down that others can work with and you lesson some of that ever building pressure to post, which annoyingly works to keep you from posting. You can always apologize in OOC for releasing some steam, and you can tidy things up in a little in follow-up posts. You know, have the character think back or revisit certain actions made int he previous post that he/she is now mentally justifying/explaining. It's not easy, but if you can do it you'll find that posting becomes a lot less stressful after that.<br/><br/>I'm not sure if any of this is at all helpful to you, but at the very least you now know that you're not the oddest bird in this nest.  XD<br/><br/>Oh, and one last piece of advice. If you find that you are losing interest or motivation in your character and that this is causing you to struggle posting, then just come clean and cut your losses. Love Island is a perfect RP for that in the sense that replacing characters, cycling through some until you find one you really like, is kinda build into the premise. I'm sure you can work something out with Mel where you drop one girl and replace her with another, or you offer to have your character voted out and then rejoin the cue of waiting players with something new and fresh entirely.