A smol fangirl

SO, I LOVE fanfiction, it is my main source of entertainment and joy in life, especially in these troubled times.

And I read a variety of fandoms and pairings

I also WRITE fanfiction; usually inspired by an episode/part of the book/movie not going the way I would like it to (usually in respect of my OTP of choice) 

Now, I don’t write for every fandom I read, but I have written something in most of the fandoms I have become invested in.

HOWEVER, whenever I start to write something that is getting lengthier, something I am really starting to feel proud of, its like I run out of steam. I, along with my readers, am DESPERATE to know what happens next (or sometimes, I have the end all mapped out but am stuck between here and there). BUT I AM TOTALLY BLOCKED AND HAVE NO WAY TO GET THERE!

Way back when, LJ used to be the place I would go to beg for assistance from the relevant community, but its so desolate and forgotten now. And although I LIVE on AO3, there is no facility on there (that I am aware of) to ask for assistance beyond maybe leaving a Note on the story itself (which I have done on some)

Currently, I have about a dozen fics of varying lengths in a variety of fandoms; some of which I don’t even read anymore, but I CAN’T bring myself t orphan or abandon the fics because I am proud of them and I really want to see them finished; I just need a little help and/or inspiration.

What needs to happen for you here is for you to get yourself un-cornered at least once, so that you’ll know by experience that it’s possible. After that you’ll be able to carry that certainty along with you to free up other stuck works.

So let’s take this step by step.

(1) First of all: assess the spread of works that you’re most desperate to get going on. Identify the one that you’re most desperate about; the one for the sake of which you’d gladly murder someone to get it going again and completed.

(2) Put that one aside. There’s too much energy bound up in it, and if the tactics to follow don’t work for you, you might lose heart.

(3) Pick the one that came up second to that work as the one you’re most desperate to complete. This is the one you’re going to operate on. I use the term both advisedly and with intent to indicate what’s going to happen.

(4) Identify, in advance, a period during which you’ll have a quiet… afternoon? (or similar period, judging by what you know to be a comfortable reading speed) to read through what you’ve got of that work in prose form (not your notes, but the actual written work). The pieces do not have to be connected.

(5) On the day you’ve chosen, take the work out and read it top to bottom. No rewriting. You can take notes if anything useful occurs to you, but otherwise, leave it alone.

(6) Now put it away for a week. NO PEEKING. Go do something else, be something else, read something else. Anything else. Lots of anything else but not, under any circumstances, that.

(7) After a week, take it out again. Your dealings with the work in this pass are going to be strictly diagnostic. You have three questions to ask yourself about this work, and answer. If you can’t find answers to them all within a day or two, put the work aside and come back a week later and have at it again. The questions are these:

(a) What is this story about? (Boil it down to the most prominent trope. “Love will find a way.” “Sometimes you have to suffer.” “Your first choice could be wrong: don’t be afraid to change your mind.” Etc.)

(b) Regarding the overall arc of what story you’ve got: Who does it hurt? (Meaning: who is the person, and what is the situation, to or from whom/which most of the pain [and therefore the drama] in this story flows?

© What material is in this story that doesn’t need to be there (i.e., doesn’t serve the answers to the first two questions, doesn’t advance the plot / the characters’ development toward the final place where you hope to leave them)?

(8) What you’re allowed to do now is some light editorial. Use the answers that come up to question © as a guide toward cutting out at least some, if not all, of those unnecessary elements. You may be shocked at how much stuff you lose at this stage. That’s perfectly okay. After a session or two of editing in this mode, no more than three, put it aside again for a week, and once more go do/be other things.

(9) Now comes the stage where so often the magic happens if you know what question(s) to ask next. …My experience with stoppages of this kind in the past has shown me that routinely there is a motivational element or plot problem that you haven’t sufficiently thought through. Most often of all, like 85% of the time or better, this takes the form of character business that hasn’t been sufficiently resolved. Once you get it resolved, the stoppage routinely comes undone.

So you need to find a couple of chairs. One of them is for you. One of them is for one of your characters. Because routinely there will be an important character who needs to have a conversation with you – one who has something important to share with you about why this isn’t working.

You get to “sit” that character down in that chair and say to them, “What do you have to tell me that you haven’t told me before?”

And then you wait.

You may not get anything back right away. This is normal, because this technique routinely freaks everybody out (including experienced psychiatric professionals, like yours truly). Keep your butt in the hot seat and keep theirs there too. Wait for an answer.

Routinely you’ll get something back within an hour or so. It may take longer. The exigencies of life do often impinge and you may have to get up and go do something else. But every day, you need to sit in the chair and sit them down and ask them again, “What have you got to tell me?”

The answer will routinely surprise you. It may turn up in the middle of the night. It may come to you in a dream. It may come up in conversation with someone real. But it will arrive.

When it does: (a) write it down, FFS. And then (b), consider what to do with it. But again, routinely, a way forward will suddenly appear. May indeed seem obvious. Resist the urge to bang your head against the wall.

Then start writing again.

So: give that a shot and see how it works for you. If you need more assistance, you know where to find me.

Nothing brings me more joy than people learning from history and then modernizing it up a bit.

Like you wanna grow your hair long? Stop washing it so often and brush it more to keep it clean. Your hair will be way healthier too. And stop cutting it (and use a boar bristle brush, it’ll work better)*for straight hair!!!! Does not work on curly hair!!!

You want to keep cool in the summer? Out with the polyester and in with the linen, cotton, and wool. Natural fibers are going to keep you cooler because they’re literally made to breathe

You want to preemptively stop the underwire in your bra from poking through? There’s a very simple embroidery stitch you can do that the Edwardians used to do to stop their corset boning from coming through.

Choke. Just think about it, seriously. Think about what choking is and imagine speaking while it’s happening. That would fuckin’ hurt, man.

Hiss. Look, it’s just not possible, okay? No matter how “evil” you want your character to seem.

Snarl. Animals snarls. The Beast from Beauty and the Beast snarls. The Hulk snarls. You know who doesn’t snarl? PEOPLE WHEN THEY’RE SPEAKING.

Shriek. Come on, 99% of the time, “shriek” is not the word you want.Let’s face it: if you put an exclamation point at the end of the sentence, your reader gets the picture. Don’t bring to mind banshees and screaming toddlers.

Hiss is a low, threatening whisper. Raw, guttural, vicious. It is NOT a literal hiss like an animal, it is a tone of voice that serves the same function. Someone will hiss that they’re going to cut your throat- a message from one person to the other.

Snarl is the same kind of thing. Not literal, it’s a tone of voice that serves the same function. It’s raw and gutteral like a hiss, but more savage than vicious. It’s loud, it’s showy, it’s intimidating. It’s very alpha male, big man, look at how fucking dangerous I am. I’ll take ALL of you on. Even if they’re snarling at one person in particular, nobody better back them up or they’re gonna get fucked up too.

Shriek. Come on, seriously? We’ve all heard people shriek either in fear or outrage. High pitched, loud, out of control, feminine. Men can shriek, but it’s funny and emasculating. Think angry italian women throwing pots and pans or ladies on tables who just saw a mouse.

I signed up to see what it was like. The color scheme of the site was yellow on black. You had to select one of three options indicating if you were single or not. I don’t remember what the first two were, but the third one was, “you can go to hell,” which meant that for whichever reason, you weren’t interested in anyone. If you chose this option you couldn’t even search the site, so I backed up and chose a different option.

-His wife ditched him and asked for 900k a year,

-He was sexually assaulted which he said kicked him into a deep depression

-He stated that the stunts from the 3rd Mummy movie completely destroyed his body and he was in and out of the hospital for 7 years even having to get surgery to repair his vocal cords.

-He apparently blamed himself for all this which only worsened his depression.

Compare with this image from the GQ article last February:

Proper lighting, professional setting, good angles etc.

Plus

2019 Brendan is still slaying, so btfu

I mean, look at this adorable face:

👏🏼👏🏼

Ihr Wahlkreis ist Nürnberg-Nord. Wenn ihr also in diesem Wahlkreis lebt, habt ihr die Chance, mit eurer Erststimme zum ersten Mal eine trans Frau in den Bundestag zu wählen.