with my head in the clouds

Unreliable narrator? More like unreliable author

my OCs are sooo cool you guys don't know what you're missing. if you could see the show i'm watching in my head rn you'd go so crazy i'm telling u

This scene was so raw you guys

on usefulness. on becoming both the blade and the lamb

''what if my writing isn't good eno--'' what if it's a reflection of your soul. what if it has a place in this world. what if you write it anyway

"came back wrong" what about Came Back Afraid. You used to be brave. Too brave maybe, defying the odds at every turn, a fighter, cocky, playing with fire, first to throw yourself at the enemy. Until one day it all caught up to you. You came back, somehow, but now you know all too intimately how it feels to lose, to die, to be destroyed. Now you flinch and freeze and cower at the slightest provocation. Who even are you now if you can't be brave? The grave may have let you go, but the mortal fear still grips you tighter than ever.

make that character aroace. NOW!

writing advice for characters with a missing eye: dear God does losing an eyes function fuck up your neck. Ever since mine crapped out I've been slowly and unconsciously shifting towards holding my head at an angle to put the good eye closer to the center. and human necks. are not meant to accommodate that sorta thing.

other things I'm bitching about but which could still be useful as writing advice for 1 eyed characters:

2. they're going to favor their sighted side, obviously, but it doesn't always manifest in the way you think. when I walk down a hall I walk much closer to the wall on my sighted side than on my blind side. which is the opposite of how it might seem logical to do that bc it means the world at large is on your bad side, but the reason is I can't fucking See the wall if it's right next to me in the blind side and I end up knocking into it.

3. door frames and poles are my enemy. If your character is smart this will not be a problem but for me it is. I am King of walking into shit I could absolutely see but couldn't tell how far away from me it was. on this note, their blind side hand is getting bashed into every jutting out thing in a 5 mile radius.

4. having 0 depth perception is less of a big deal than you'd think it is. Especially with driving. I've become a Much safer and more wary driver because I can't tell how far the other cars are from me. however I fucking suck at parking now. because I can't tell how far the lines are from me either.

5. you know how people who lose limbs get phantom pains? that happens with eyes too but like. phantom sights. for me it's like. a lot of bugs. like every so often my brain will just put something suddenly skittering beside me there. hate that.

6. it is completely possible to "get stuck" somewhere because your ability to tell how wide a space is is just Gone. shopping isles especially where bumping something or Someone is matter of embarrassment or potentially breaking something. it can be legitimately paralyzing and also irritate everyone around you because they can tell there is Plenty of space for you to get your cart through even if you can't.

7. if the eye is still in their skull it can still be the normal kind of painful. Glares off of shiny surfaces causing weird sharp pains you can't figure out the cause of are genuinely one of gods greatest tests of my patience.

*writes two paragraphs after months of literally nothing and it took three hours*

this is your sign

Your writing deserves love, kudos, recognition, and it is totally VALID to want those things, but a lack of it does not diminish nor determine your worth as a writer.

I know it's frustrating, but your stories are worth telling regardless. (+ sometimes a story pops off months after it was first published).

I hate I when I get an idea for a novel. Like oh no here starts the slow sad slip n’ slide to dissapointment again.

You ever been 30,000 words and hundreds of research hours into a project when you realize hey wait a minute. I don’t like this. This is bad.

Ok adding to this though that even though it is extremely relatable, this is a KNOWN thing with professional writing. 10k is often referred to as "having a pot boiling" or "having a stew" - it's the point where you often see an idea coming together and it's exciting! But THEN... 30k-50k is the point where that fun has to start coming together. In theatre, it's usually week 3 of a 5 week rehearsal period where you have to stop talking about the play and really get it all up on its feet and cohesive. In art, it's committing to what are going to be the final visible layers of colour and texture, in sculpture the moment where you're truly at the point of no return with carving out the shape.

It usually feels really bad. Because this is the point it becomes real craft. It's so, so difficult to really be able to identify if it's truly not going to be anything or you're just in the hardest part of the process, and really the only way to know is to... write through it. Write it badly. Or, if you really can't, put it in a drawer and come back to it after a few months of breathing space. Remember, you can fix so much in the edit, but you can't fix nothing!

(I say, fully looking at my latest draft of my book and considering throwing it in the bin. But my editor said exactly this to me, so I'm passing it along.)

this is 100% true. I've written 6 complete novels at this point and every single time around the 40k mark I feel lost in the woods. Nothing seems to be working. I feel awful; I can't sleep. I keep going even though I'm convinced I'm going to fail. And then... It's like leaving a tunnel and getting back out in the sunshine. Stuff starts coalescing. Things that weren't working have obvious fixes. I "can write" again, except I was writing the whole time. It just felt hopeless in the moment. It's not. You just gotta get out of the woods.

Ah yes the Slough of Desponds. Professional author with 13 books, and this is normal for me as well. (Checking for tension issues usually helps!)

Lmao I literally wrote a whole blog post abt it once.

https://www.patreon.com/posts/writing-advice-1-82451675

This is interesting!

I got hope. I'm not sure it's actually WHY I write but I think the descriprion is pretty accurate to HOW I like to write whump 🤔

Oh.

hmm

Oop, actually don’t think I needed this insight today… but very fun and interesting nonetheless

Interesting idea for a quiz! Surely this won’t call me out on a rude personal level…

I FUCKING KNEW IT

no. no. what the fuck? my writing's not allowed to make me feel things. i MADE you. you fool, i MADE YOU

If you're a writer you're supposed to write a lot of bullshit. It's part of the gig. You have to write a lot of absolute garbage in order to get to the good bits. Every once in a while you'll be like "Oh, I wish I hadn't wasted all that time writing bullshit," but that's dumb. That's exactly the same as an Olympic runner being like "Oh, I wish I hadn't wasted all that time running all those practice laps"