misery does love company

i hate how you get desensitized to the cool stuff in your WIP if you've been writing it for a long time so when you read back over it you're like "this isn't as cool as i thought :(" but it still is! you just read it too many times

Gotta recirculate this post periodically just cuz

Just don't read the post too many times.

Oh god oh fuck

Real thing that changed how i write: I started asking "what does this character think is wrong with them" and separately "what is actually wrong with them." Those two things are almost never the same. She thinks she's too much. She's actually terrified of being too little. He thinks he's bad at commitment. He's actually just never met someone he trusted enough. The gap between their diagnosis of themselves and the real thing, that's your character arc right there. you don't have to explain it. just write both.

The funniest part of being a writer is that the thing that makes you good at it is also the thing that makes you impossible to be around sometimes. you notice everything. every hesitation, every word choice, every thing someone almost said and didn't. you clock the silence after a joke that didn't land. you remember the exact tone of a conversation from three years ago. people think you're quiet. you're not quiet. you're collecting. you're always collecting. it's a wonderful terrible way to be alive.

Whenever they gave us one of those "read through ALL the instructions before you begin!" trick assignments in school where the steps lead you on an increasingly ridiculous goose chase until the final one tells you to just put your name on the paper and turn it in without doing anything else, I was always like, "Okay, but what's the point? Surely the REAL world won't be anything like this." And then I grew up and discovered that not only is the real world often exactly like that, some people won't even read the first line of the instructions even if they make perfect sense. And these people are called "co-workers"

hey bestie i think ur post might be charmed 'cause you aren't gonna fuckin believe what happened today