How do you deal with not spoiling your own story? Whenever I think of a plot point I immediately want to tell everyone. But you're very good at not spoiling things!
I think it's both a personality trait but also a habit you have to train.
I'm not a very open person by nature, and I'm really good at keeping secrets because unlike people who seem to WANT to tell a secret as soon as they have it, I greatly enjoy simply having info that others don't.
On the other hand, I just know myself well enough to understand that as soon as I give people spoilers, that makes me lose motivation to tell that story through, well, comics! So I need to keep mum so that I have the drive in me to funnel that into storytelling.
Because here's a little thing I learned as I grew older:
The secret is that your brain is not as smart as it seems.
You know the satisfaction you get from having accomplished something? That happy chemical? The internal feeling of 'oh, neat, I'm a person who can do ____!' or 'my friends are proud of me for accomplishing ___!'
Well, technically you can get that same chemical reaction by just telling people that you're going to do something.
Typically, we think that this is how is happens: you do a thing, you tell your friends about it, because that's on topic, and then you get recognition for it - either internally, or externally!
But the thing is - your brain doesn't actually know you NEED to learn piano. It wants to take shortcuts. And as a social animal - no matter how introverted you are, or how much of a loner, your brain seeks recognition from peers! So as soon as you tell your friends you're learning the piano, your brain gets those happy social-mammal chemicals and is like "wow, we did it! :) We can play the piano!" even though you have just barely started.
Suddenly? BAM. All your motivation to learn the piano is GONE because your brain took that satisfaction of your social group knowing you play the piano now, and it doesn't have any reason to continue to do the actual thing.
Same thing happens with drawing/storytelling. As soon as you tell others you're making a comic, or your plans for the comic, your brain interprets that as comics -> have been consumed by people and that marks off the mental checkmark in your brainlist. After that? No more motivation. Your brain assumes that goal has been accomplished.
And look, before you come at me:
No, not all people are wired exactly like this. Obviously it will be different for many people, but there ARE a lot of people who don't realize this is happening to them, and I just want to help point it out.
No, this is not Executive Dysfunction. Your brain is functioning exactly as it was meant to. You're not stupid for falling for this trick! Your brain is doing what it has evolved to do - impress your social group and make yourself feel good! There's nothing wrong with it, it's just... not super great for long-term projects.
The best way to get over this is to either keep your stuff to yourself, or train yourself to have internal motivations - consciously - to finish your projects that will keep you going!
So to get back to your question - I KNOW that in part, my brain falls for this trick, so I've consciously trained myself to NEVER give anything away. The less people know, the more I'm motivated to tell them the story THROUGH the story, instead of through a series of short, relatively boring asks. :)
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