Disaster with a Pen

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.

Additionally, if you get some people going 'idk if this is realistic for x people' and you're x people? That's your cue to lean into it harder

Protip you can do this with writing too

[Image description: a two-panel comic titled “My Art Evolution”. In the first panel, labeled “Past”, a beelike person frowns at a drawing of a happy sun and says “Oh no. It isn’t perfect no one can ever see this”. In the right panel, labeled “Present”, the person holds up the same drawing, and with a sly jokester expression (which includes a nose), says “He he. Who wants to see my new eye crime”. /End description.]

are you okay i noticed you reblogging "a raven with a damaged wing. it can still fly with ease" again

Writer confidence is not a thing you build and then have. It's a thing you have for about eleven minutes after writing something good and then it evaporates and you have to make more. There is no reservoir. There is no saving it up. You produce it fresh each time from scratch like some kind of emotional artisan bread and if you don't write for a few days you run out and have to start the whole process over again from flour.

the thing they dont tell you about learning to "trust the process" is that you forget and relearn it every single time you make a new piece of art. unfortunately there is no cure either

thank god vampirism is a flexible metaphor

it’s about being queer it’s about surviving assault it’s about alienation and most of all it’s about how everyone who loved you before might not be able to even look at you now, no matter how many times you try to explain that you didn’t ask to die and you didn’t ask for that death to leave you only half-eaten when it got bored of you.

i just heard the phrase “if you wouldn’t trust their advice, don’t trust their criticism” for the first time and i don’t think i’ve ever needed to hear anything more

And once I was told "if you don't agree with their actions, why do you seek their approval"

screaming, crying, throwing up, as I force myself to write a story i'm very passionate about and love writing and have no obligation to write except that i want to

Close enough welcome back Chekov's gun.

I also like the idea of showing something as a problem before it’s shown as a strength. Almost every character trait has two sides, and by showing the “bad” side first, it sets things up to not only make sense, but to also be very satisfying.