as much charm as a dead slug

There are going to be days (or weeks, or months) where you sit down to write and feel... disconnected. From your voice, from your characters, from your ideas. Like the person who used to write your stories just packed up and left.

They didn't. They're just tired. Here's how to keep writing anyway:

Lower the bar (Until it's on the floor) You are not here to write something brilliant. You are here to write something. A paragraph. A sentence. A single line of dialogue. Movement matters way more than quality.

Write around the story Don't force it. If you can't write the scene, try: ⋆ A character ramble / journal entry ⋆ A conversation that won't be included in the final draft ⋆ A list of things the character would never admit out loud ⋆ A messy summary of what should happen Engage with the story from a different angle.

Borrow a voice until yours comes back No, not with AI. Read something that feels close to what you want to write, or watch a scene that captures the tone, then write immediately after. Not to copy, to reignite your instincts.

Write the emotion, not the plot. What is your character feeling in this moment? What are they afraid of? What do they want but won't say? What's being kept from them? The emotion leads, the plot catches up later.

Stop trying to "feel like a writer" first. You don't write when you feel like a writer. You feel like a writer because you write.

it's unusual for careers to die in the bloodbath and there's no indication that other careers took him out, so it was necessarily somebody from the lower districts. while it's possible that other tributes that died in the bloodbath could have done it, it's unlikely, as a large part of kat's narration during training focused on how underfed and scrawny her non-career competition was. thresh seems to have skedaddled as soon as the gong sounded, leaving peeta as the most likely killer.

he's willing to kill people as part of the career pack and they don't comment on how he's getting his hands dirty for the first time

peeta is injured post-bloodbath in a way that suggests that somebody got close to him (bruises on his face) and he's a competent hand-to-hand fighter (i'm not posting screencaps for this bc it's commented on so often)

he's handy with a knife