You probably hear a lot of "DON'T EDIT AS YOU WRITE" advice, don't you? 😬

Don’t get me wrong, it is super helpful if you can fix those things while writing. But speaking for myself (and a lot of people like me) that is not always possible. Sometimes any fixes can completely stall your progress. 

For me, it is much easier to go back and edit for content, plot holes, info dumps, and unnecessary dialogue after I’ve done the hardest thing for me, which is the writing. 

Someone kicking around in 1985 was probably living in a house built decades prior, and their parents last renovated in the 70s before the kids were born–because there’s no money for that when you had kids.

I mean look around today, there are plenty of people 10+ years behind the times. Old cars are out there, old fashions, old music–the present day is haunted by the past around every corner, the date doesn’t roll over to a new decade and all the old stuff doesn’t just disappear–it’s all still here.

Those achingly period-appropriate homes you see in movies and TV are just that–sets. Unless you just moved into a brand new home and all your stuff was lost in a fire so you had to replace it your home is not going to be all modern present day shit.

looking back, it was a classic icarus story. i flew too close to the sun, so my boyfriend leaked my sex tape. i hated max, but even more than that, i hated myself for letting my guard down. the headmaster was right. i needed to channel my anger, and that is exactly what i did. peaking in high school is cringe anyway.

The two Big Rules when instructing younger students was- 1. Compliment before Critique 2. Don’t say ‘but’, say ‘now’

Praise kids on what they get right first, especially if they are struggling. Like OP said, kids don’t like to engage with people who make them feel bad. They need encouragement when learning new things.

Number two boils down to this. If you tell a kid a compliment, then say “but you need to fix this”, that ‘but’ completely negates your compliment. It’s gone. It was canceled out like adding a negative to a positive. Using “hey, that punch is looking great, now let’s focus on your stance” doesn’t verbally cancel out the progress they’ve made. It’s like they’ve checked off something on their list of stuff to work on.