there is a cat

(voice of a person spiralling) its embarrassing but i still havent figured out if its ok for me to be alive

[yelling at the club to someone i met ten minutes ago] do you think im a burden be honest

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.

If you're a new writer and you're asking yourself "is this too personal, is this too much, will people think this is weird" that feeling is the exact location of your actual voice. The stuff that makes you want to close the laptop is the stuff nobody else could write. The safe version is always worse. Always. I have never once read something and thought "this would have been better if it was a little less honest." go further. It's always go further.

a dynamic I really enjoy in fiction is when a relationship starts with some power imbalance, then changes into something sweet and balanced, and eventually shifts into imbalance in the other direction 🤤

love it when characters do a sacrifice play ostensibly to save others but mostly so they don't have to face themselves

affirmations they will not kill me at work today. it is not in my job description to get killed. if they did kill me at work that would be weird and probably not worth it for them

locked in? no. i'm tucked in. goodnight

i like to pretend i already died and asked god to send me back to earth so i can swim in lakes again and see mountains and get my heart broken and love my friends and cry so hard in the bathroom and go grocery shopping 1,000 more times. and that i promised i would never forget the miracle of being here

having unwashed hair will have you believing shit like i can’t be saved

guess who just found out the difference between wax paper and parchment paper the hard way

wait what’s the difference?

one you can use in the oven safely and the other you can also use in the oven if the thing you are trying to make happens to be fire

fuck, marry, kill: the wound that won’t heal, the past you can’t undo, the ghost that keeps returning

i love love love a character with extreme touch aversion. who goes completely catatonic when someone so much as brushes against them. yes? now make them desperately filled with longing for a cuddle. that's the shit right there