Pantsing and Stripping Forums

Just a quick question to my favorite authors on here…
(All authors, actually)

How often do you actively work (write) a story on here versus how often you plan/think about a story?

Do you feel pressure to produce?

Is your free time spent writing/crafting your stories?

Just curious.

NudeBaG wrote: Sat Jan 17, 2026 9:58 pm Just a quick question to my favorite authors on here…
(All authors, actually)

How often do you actively work (write) a story on here versus how often you plan/think about a story?

Do you feel pressure to produce?

Is your free time spent writing/crafting your stories?

Just curious.

for me. depends on the story. at the start I took longer writing cos I didn't need to plan all that much. but now I spend more time thinking about the ideas and if I can make a story from it. naturally I spend longer writing cos time flies by.

I feel abit of pressure when I want to get it done at a certain time so like Christmas for example (I've only done it once but still). especially if I don't want to write. I know you shouldn't force yourself but I like to get things done when I set a target. and also I'd start forgetting shit.

my free time isn't consumed by it. again only if I feel like it if I haven't started the story yet. I know my stories are short in comparison compared to some on here so they also don't take as long but still time consuming

I don't write nearly as much anymore, but when I did I didn't tend to spend all that much time planning things out ahead of time aside from some bullet point situations I wanted to reach. I usually wanted my stories to flow naturally with character dialogue and actions, so I'd have them react in the moment I was writing them as opposed to mapping out long parts ahead of time and then trying to shoehorn them in. I've always worked best in an improv/roleplay type system because it's easier to mentalize the characters if I'm not jumping around in time too much.

Always felt pressure to produce, especially when I had long series that were behind on an update schedule. And this would often burn me out on the story, partially from my ADHD issues, so it wasn't the best system to use. Unfortunately, releasing from that system always resulted in a story being indefinitely paused until I pushed myself to jump back into it. That's part of what knocked me out of my mental zone working on the Time to Recall conclusion chapters, which I need to get back to doing at some point.

Originally I never devoted too much of my free time to my stories and wrote as a calming hobby, but my most active period in writing in the early 2020s saw me putting a very high percentage of my time into it. I was using writing as a means to deal with serious depression issues at the time, but it had a side effect of increasing my stress issues sometimes. I came to a point where the huge time investment for my larger projects stopped feeling worth it in the end for what little dopamine "reward" they'd provide me. Got a little too "job" for a hobby.

Recent medical problems have meant I haven't written for over a year - I can't seem to concentrate. However, I always like to work out the structure of the story before typing anything. And then the characters take over and it all changes. Sometimes I've had to abandon a story as it isn't going where I wanted. (I once saw an interview with a published author who said that she had a scene all worked out, but her characters didn't want to go there.)

Whenever I try planning out a story, my writing becomes robotic and boring. However, when I find an idea that inspires me, I’ll often spend hours daydreaming about it, replaying the key story parts in my head. I’m like a kid with a new toy…

Once I’ve replayed the idea a few hundred times over multiple days, I will usually have a well crafted story to write and most of the tripe will have already been discarded.

I mostly just wing it. If I come up with an idea, I just write it out, and if it fits, I use it. And I don't worry about schedules anymore. When it's done, it's done. You guys are just going to have to wait. You're getting it for free anyway

I have probably close to 100 unfinished stories that I gave up on because they weren't going anywhere, or weren't hot enough to me. I have no idea how to fix that problem.