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Happy migraine and headache awareness month. This may seem like a minor terminology nitpick, but it’s a serious misconception about migraine: nausea is an actual migraine symptom, not a thing that happens because of the headache. When people with migraine experience nausea during attacks, it’s not because the pain is so bad (the idea that migraine is always excruciatingly painful is also a myth), it’s because migraine causes a lot of symptoms that aren’t pain, including nausea.
This goes for other symptoms as well: although pain can definitely contribute to people’s experiences of these symptoms, fatigue and brain fog are actual migraine symptoms, not just pain symptoms.
This is also your friendly PSA that nausea is not a normal tension headache symptom, if you frequently get nauseous with your headaches, you almost certainly have migraine.
Elderly lady mail clerk and young customer are chatting. Customer says, "oh! I'm wearing my boss's coat right now, give me something weird to put in the pocket!" Others within earshot all start looking for something because, hey, important quest. Mail clerk finally reaches under counter, pulls out a large roll of labels, and tears one off.
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Saw a representative for Grammerly quoted in a New York Times article about AI programs designed to help students get away with using AI to cheat and she said something to the tune of "In the future everyone's going to be using AI to write anyway."
Ma'am, not a single word of the great works of literature was generated by a computer chip; no one 'needs' AI to be creative.
Sometimes you hear a song and a fic pops into your head full formed. This is a trap. The fic may be fully formed in your brain, but you still Have to write it down. This is an important step that most people forget about.
Hey! First, thank you for running this blog; it's a treasure trove of great advice. Second, may I ask some?
Lately, I've been having a hard time writing due to psyching myself out. I keep thinking about past fics I've written that turned out great with a lot of praise for my style, and I'm constantly feeling that anything new I write won't be as good and live up to the standards my past fics have set. I know that a first draft is allowed to be messy and imperfect, but I keep feeling that if I let myself do that and not aim for perfection the first time, I'm being lazy or lowering my standards. I want to just cut loose and write, but I'm having a hard time getting past this mental block. Any suggestions?
You've got a lot of very complicated feelings going on, anon, and I just want to give you a hug 💗 Let's see if we can break this down a bit, okay?
You've written well-received fics in the past and you're worried that your new fics won't be well-received. Where is this worry coming from? What's at the root of it? If your next fic doesn't receive the same praise that your previous ones received, how will that impact you?
I think it's always important to keep in mind that a lack of praise is not the same thing as the presence of disapproval. Just because no one says you did a good job, that doesn't mean you did a bad job. You say that your past fics turned out great. If you hadn't received the praise that you got, would you think they had turned out poorly?
What standard have you set with your past fics? If your standard is related to the amount of comments and kudos you received, you're setting yourself up for failure. I've written before about how the stats on your fic are largely out of your control and that if you focus on them too much you might need to find a way to a healthier relationship with them.
Who else is aware of this standard and is measuring you against it? Readers tend to focus more on tags and summaries than on specific authors when they're looking for something to read. Readers who have subscribed to you won't be looking at the numbers on your fic. They'll be reading the chapters and enjoying your words. Other authors might feel competitive with you, but that's their own issue to handle and more about their own mindset than about your writing.
Perfection is not just an unrealistic goal, it's an impossible one. Being imperfect doesn't mean that you're lazy, it means that you're human.
There will always be a better phrase, a more interesting metaphor, a more apt verb or adjective, a juicier trope. You'll never be able to make a 100% accurate transfer of the idea in your head to the words on your page - not just because you're interpreting your own thoughts but because your readers will be interpreting your words after you get them down on paper.
What is your actual goal when you're writing? Why are you doing it? What's the driving need you're satisfying by writing a story down? Right now, you're so caught up in how people are going to react to your writing that you can't actually write anything at all. Reconnect with yourself and the reasons why you tell stories. Why do you love it, and why would you be unhappy if you didn't do it anymore?
This breakdown is EVERYTHING op!! super super super good advice and better phrasing than i could come up with for sure hfadjklhfdsk
There's one part of the ask that stuck out as super familiar to me, so I wanted to drop my thoughts in too going as deep as i can into that aspect, because at least for me, it was a huge huge part of getting myself to actually write and finish things.
The "I know that a first draft is allowed to be messy and imperfect, but I keep feeling that if I let myself do that and not aim for perfection the first time, I'm being lazy or lowering my standards" part. Or basically, when perfectionism is more self-motivated than externally-motivated and really hard to talk yourself out of, the part of creating where even if you never shared the thing, it'd still bug you because you know its not what you wanted it to be. (and the part i find rears its head the most with my first drafts)
(cut because this gets long, apologies in advance sykdjydjtjtd)
It stopped me from finishing stuff for so so so long, not just writing but every kind of creativity. I think (at least my experience) we as artists can hold this illusion that our perfectionism is giving us the upper hand. I had this sort of back-of-my-mind belief that because I could see all these things wrong with my work, i could fix them all, like a heightened awareness that'd let me reach perfection in my art, specifically. That i can make this thing perfect, i can be the exception that reaches that the level of perfection everyone else tells me not to worry about. If I just trust this innate feeling, if i just work hard enough towards this standard I know I can reach.
And its very human, the whole idea of not really believing something until its been proven. It's really really hard, especially living in a world where we're raised on the idea that working "hard enough" is the key to all success, to a theoretical point of perfection we can imagine, that feels so close because we know in theory exactly how to get there. And its even more difficult when you have the accompanying feeling that the absence of working "hard enough" is laziness, is slipping, is losing that special something you were relying on to make your art feel worth existing, even just to yourself.
A lot of posts out there explain how perfection isn't real, the first draft is allowed to be messy (allowed being a keyword to me, like its optional), that artists need to forgive ourselves for mistakes, all that stuff, but at first (at least for me), it felt like coddling. (a lot of that from my end definitely came from growing up in the conservative southern us but it's not exclusive to that experience) The sentiments felt sweet, I'd encourage them heavily for everyone else, but deep down it felt like a participation trophy kinda thing. like something solely said to make people feel better, something that didn't apply to people trying to make something truly exceptional, something i could say to myself when I'm down, but wasn't a universal truth because i knew i could theoretically get perfection.
Im not saying you're anything like this, i genuinely have no way to know, this is just my experience. But just in case any part of this is relevant to you, the thing that helped me be able to really just create again was a mindset shift in what makes art good, what I'm trying to do with my art, plus actually proving to myself that perfectionism isnt helping me and that im not lowering my standards by changing my mindset.
This is the mindset I came up with:
perfection in art isn't just unachievable, its not really real. Art is completely subjective, everyone has a different definition of what is good, and fandoms honestly a really good example of how subjective everything really is, because no opinion in fandom is universal. My favorite piece of art of all time, and the one thing i consider closest to perfection as physically possible (Arcane), still has people that hate it, and still absolutely has its flaws.
Perfection is a feeling, not a thing. Usually applied to the stuff we make ourselves, because we're not sure what else we're measuring by. So you can't really use it as your metric of "good", It depends on your mood, what you're comparing it to, what you imagine other people think, and literally if you've eaten enough today. its too inconsistent, its an unstable variable and that makes it a shit guidepoint.
The remedy to this is what op suggested towards the end, looking deeper into yourself and your writing to find the specifics your after when you want something to be "perfect", you gotta find your goal, guidepoint, metric, whatever word fits. You can find it by invesitaging the reason you like art, deciding the moral or theme or point of your story, what the appeal of the idea you want to translate to a story, or something else entirely. that can be as nebulous or concrete or vague or abstract as you want, it can change depending on the fic or it can be a connective tissue among all you work. It doesn't need to be in words, or it can be a bunch of phrases and ideas that only you really understand together. I don't really have mine down in words very well, but in general, my love of art comes from a love of humanity, feeling things and being complicated, the human experience being subjective and varied, and how the audience connects with aspects of humanity recreated in fiction. super vague, hopefully not too pretentious sounding dhmxmhxnhxgnx
Then you need to find a way to prove to yourself that perfection, the illusion that you can achieve it if you try hard enough, and the feeling that a lack of perfection is some kind of moral failing, is all just feelings. they're there, they're real and that's not a fault or a bad thing, but they're not truths about the world. That its smarter to use something else, something more grounded (both more measurable and forgiving)
(( Im trying to walk the line between phrasing things like an advantage to your skill (because for me that was the only way to get me to entertain this kind of thing) and like a forgiveness you owe yourself, but it really is both. being kind to yourself will not damage your work's quality, its taking the boot off your neck so you can run free. ))
The way I proved to myself that perfectionism isn't a solid metric was to look at something i liked, something I had on a pedestal (id recommend not your past successful fics just because that can get demoralizing fast, but technically it could count) with the same critical lens i applied to my own art, and then (this is the important part) see those flaws and see how good it is anyway. it takes concious effort, but you see something flawed and you ask why its still so loveable anyway? what about this story/art do I still love? Is it inspiring emotion (what emotions?) is it making me feel seen, depicting a human experience, is it the honesty or the idealism or the catharsis or the magic? Is it the technicalities, the way peices fit together, is it the suspense, the tension, or the adrenaline and triumph from all these cool moments. (or it's something entirely different!! something that hasn't crossed my mind but you know personally)
Something you can look at as a whole, with all positive and negative traits accounted for, and appreciate as an incredible work of art. To recontextualize your own art with a more accurate lens (without the negative bias that is "this is my work and therefore it has to be good to deserve to exist"), and give you a more objective understanding of what you're doing when you want to make something good.
You don't have to get rid of the perfectionism feeling entirely if you don't want to (i certainly haven't) but the bitch needs to be demoted. severely. I still use my perfectionism like a metal detector. After i get a complete draft down, i go in and use it to search for spots i think need work. follow that gut feeling around and dig around a little when it blinks, but understand that sometimes it goes off for the most inconsequential things or maybe its got a low battery or something. wacky equipment.
And when i do find something, i can use the more specific metric of good (the goal, etc) to determine if its actually in need of fixing. Going in again with that perfection-is-an-impossible-metric bit, sometimes in order to "fix" something you end up complicating other things and you trap yourself in a loop of fixing problems you create by trying to fix the one tiny problem. So you reference the goal for what you want your writing to be to decide what aspects are most important to that. I was watching this video explaining a pretty weak subplot in Arcane and what they could've done to fix it, and it was a huge point of the video that fixing this subplot would probably ruin a lot with the more important plots and characters. It works as is because even though it has its flaws, its not important enough to take priority over other parts of the story.
(also if you like analyzing writing i highly recommend Schnee, the channel i linked, he's extremely good at analysis but never gets pretentious about it, its all sincerely about the love of art, and that makes it easier to refocus on your love of art!)
as for the draft thing, thats another thing you kinda have to prove to yourself. that the first draft isn't the final fic, isn't representative of what your fics gonna end up as. im less sure of how to go about proving that part to yourself mostly because everyone's best drafting process is entirely different. I could tell you that my 'first draft' is almost always incomprehensible, sometimes downright awful, and that my fics only ever start being "good" to me after I've gotten into editing, but im not sure i come across like a reputable writer to you dukdkydkyxum i can recommend looking into the processes of writers or the processes for works you admire and saving little details in your brain for when you feel like your writing isn't living up to your expectations fast enough. (one of my favorites is a little tidbit that arcane spent like 2 whole years in the writers room. I cant even remember if thats factual anymore but just the idea that it did take a whole team of people a long time to put it together makes me feel better about taking forever to get my longfic sounding right)
I wish you the best of luck anon!! i promise you're harsher on your writing than any decent reader would be, and there is so much magic in what you make, a unique mix of perspective and experience and creativity that is individual to you, and your stories deserves to exist however you'd like them to.
also thanks to literally anybody that read down this far fhaklhfdsfhdjk hoping this makes like. any sense fhalhfdkjfsdjkal
The Sunlight Sisters were performing one of their biggest concerts to date; the stadium was shaking with the fans’ energy. The song the artists were singing was one of the most energetic in their setlist that night, and Honmoon was… happy, moving along with them and the spirits of their fans, her blue color shining brightly.
Until a rift opened in the sky, and three unconscious, bloodied bodies fell from the stars. Honmoon quickly caught them, guiding these people toward the stage.
The impact of the bodies hitting the stage floor reverberated through the hunters’ souls; expressions of disbelief, surprise, and terror flashed across their faces before they dropped their microphones and rushed toward each of the bloodied women.
Poppy, the oldest of the group, walked straight up to the woman with pink hair; the iridescent jacket she was wearing was stained with blood—blood that was running down her arms and dripping onto the stage. She grabbed the woman by the shoulder and flipped her onto her back.
Mi-Yeong went to the woman closest to her; she looked a little older than Mi-Yeong.
Celine, the leader and youngest of the group, went to the woman in front of her—a woman with purple hair and patterns on her skin that resembled those of demons too closely for Celine to feel comfortable.
She gently cupped the woman’s face, then checked her pulse, noticing how fast it was racing. She looked back at her face—a trickle of blood running down her forehead and her arms slightly burned—and a strange, faint maternal impulse washed over her just before this woman, who was definitely older than she was, opened her eyes shakily.
“Eomma?”
Celine froze for a moment, the sound around her deafening her ears, and her manager’s shouts through her in-ear monitors—telling them to keep the show going—acting as white noise for her thoughts.
Eomma? Did this woman think she was her mom?
“Oh, hey, baby,” Celine offered a shaky smile, though her hands were steadier than she’d expected. “Can you tell me what happened? Where does it hurt?”
“Heh, you haven’t called me that in years…”
The paramedics quickly rushed to her side, taking the woman by the hands and carrying her off the stage on a stretcher.
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its actually easy to de-enshittify your digital experience all you need to do is install this browser extension and this browser extension and this browser extension and input this custom script into the advanced box and go into your system settings and reconfigure all these options you didnt know existed and change your entire workflow and switch to this alternative operating system and this alternative web browser and this alternative chat client and this alternative word processor and this alternative- sorry that one turned out to be malware delete that one okay now double check your task manager for unwanted background processes and element block these ads and invest in a good VPN and append all your searches with AI blocking keywords and wait a few years until everything you just did becomes shitty too so you can do it all over again okay kitten. its literally that easy.
I think the thing that annoys me most about AI on a personal, day to day, level is what it has done to grammar checkers. If you've never done a lot of editing, or used to 5+ years ago but haven't really in the last couple years, I can't even begin to describe how fucking BAD this shit has gotten. And as an author it is EXHAUSTING.
I just want to catch spelling errors and accidental double spaces and repeated phrases and whenever I use the wrong too/to or affect/effect and shit. But no. They've shoved AI up the ass of every grammar checking software out there and now they all fucking suck and make the most random, obnoxious, nonsensical suggestions.
And yeah, I can ignore all the times it's trying to get me to cut out any semblance of my own voice, or shove things into the wrong tense, or make the most random suggestions on comma usage. But if it's getting all that WRONG, what is it just straight up missing that I SHOULD be correcting? What real spelling and grammar errors are still lurking in there?
I get why people keep saying this (and other versions of it like "Use Adobe alternatives" and "Use Google product alternatives."). But here's the problem: I do not create in isolation. Even my own 100% personal projects are getting sent to other people whether it's editors or printers or beta readers and unless every single person in that train is using the same products, things can get wonky.
Libre Office and Word handle formatting differently on the back end, which can completely break documents if you move them back and forth between the two. So if I write in Libre Office but my beta readers are still using Word, when I send them a manuscript for review there's a good chance things won't look right and my beta reader will not actually be reviewing what I sent them.
Industry standards are industry standards FOR A REASON. Having everyone on the same workflow can be crucial to getting things done effectively and correctly without creating a lot of extra work. And those things are not going to change overnight, as much as we might want them to.
Yeah, Word, let me just leave this whole chunk of dialogue without the closing quotation marks. That's the thing to do. How dare I have two punctuation marks in a row. It's not like that's how closing quotation marks fucking work.
And you know, for young writers, this has got to be so detrimental just from the perspective of opening your document and seeing a million corrections that, frankly, don't need to be there. If you're a young writer you're likely not going to have the background knowledge to know what is and isn't a good suggestion, you're just going to see a document that makes it look like you made every mistake possible so clearly you must be a terrible, stupid writer and should just give up.
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"stories dont need conflict" girl anything can be a conflict if ur story is about chickens going on adventures the conflict is the fucking fence they gotta hop over. if ur story is about making a lovely cup of tea the conflict can be turning on the stove. like u literally cannot write a story without conflict
ALSO i hate mfers who say this shit and then go "thats why i like ghibli movies cuz theyve got no conflict" OH YOU MEAN HOWLS MOVING CASTLE, NAUSICAA, PRINCESS MONONOKEY CASTLE IN THE SKY ETC THAT ARE ALL ABOUT THE HORRORS OF WAR
even the ones that arent about the horrors of war. in kiki's delivery service kiki growing up and learning to trust people and accept help is the central conflict of the story!! my neighbour totoro's central conflict is how the girls are dealing with their mom being sick and the responsibility they feel this puts on them!! i could go on!!
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