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Q&A Curbing Self-Indulgent Writing

I have written both professionally and on an amateur level for several years. A lot of it basically fell into my lap, and it hasn't been my primary profession for a couple of years now. I have some...

3 answers  ·  posted 7y ago by aga‭  ·  last activity 4y ago by System‭

#3: Attribution notice added by user avatar System‭ · 2019-12-08T05:55:19Z (over 4 years ago)
Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/q/26007
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
#2: Initial revision by user avatar aga‭ · 2019-12-08T05:55:19Z (over 4 years ago)
I have written both professionally and on an amateur level for several years. A lot of it basically fell into my lap, and it hasn't been my primary profession for a couple of years now. I have some projects now that I'm interested in and working on in my off time, but I've noticed that a lot of my side projects quickly descend into metafiction. That's something I love when used by great writers, but I find it pretty off-putting in texts on the level I'm producing. It's certainly not something I'm interested in doing nearly as often as I do. Most of it just ends up in the bin on the first editing pass. The issue is that it sucks up valuable writing time.

I've been trying to stop it and redirect but that can derail me and make me lose momentum. Writing through it occasionally helps, but it can also end up just kind of spiraling. Does anyone has any advice for working on reducing or mitigating this sort of self-indulgent tendency?

#1: Imported from external source by user avatar System‭ · 2017-01-12T05:14:24Z (over 7 years ago)
Original score: 6