✧✦ кєѕтяєʟ ✦✧

They should invent a new form of imagining my blorbos that doesn't make me feel violently unwell for them.

americans be like dude learning to drive isnt that bad but they dont know youre in ireland sharing a lane with a horse who is a bad person. And the horse and the instructor are friends and he keeps dapping the horse up through the window. And the horse called you a bitch under his breath so quiet the driving instructor is trying to convince you that you must have misheard him but you didnt. and theres a roundabout coming up and the horse didnt indicate

Something nobody prepares you for is that the better you get at writing the harder it becomes. beginners write freely because they don't know enough to know what's wrong. then you learn. and suddenly you can see every single flaw in real time as you're making it and you have to write anyway while your own brain is in the corner going "that's a weak verb. that transition is lazy. you've used that word three times." getting good at this is mostly just getting better at ignoring yourself.

The thing about a good character flaw is that it has to be the same thing as their greatest strength just turned up too high. the person who loves deeply and therefore controls. the person who sees everything and therefore trusts nothing. the person who is so loyal they lose themselves. there are no clean villains and no clean heroes and once you understand that in fiction you can't unsee it in people. everyone is just their best quality at the wrong volume.

I don't know who needs to hear this but... start living. The days are flying by and all you do is work, pay bills, and stress. Enjoy what you can like walks, sunsets, music, laughter. Joy doesn't have to be expensive. You deserve it.

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.

have you reopened the wound? will you reopen the wound? when will you reopen the wound?

Took me years to understand that boredom is not the enemy of writing. It is the raw material. Every good idea i have ever had arrived during a walk with no podcast, a train with no phone, a shower where i just stood there. The moment i fill every silence with content i stop generating anything of my own. I am just processing other people's thoughts instead of having mine. The empty space is where the work comes from. Protecting the empty space is the actual job.

The most interesting question you can ask about any character is not what do they want. it's what do they believe they deserve. because those two things are almost never the same and the gap between them is where your entire story lives. a person can want love completely and believe they don't deserve it and that belief will destroy every good thing that comes toward them in ways they won't even notice they're doing. write the gap. the gap is the character.

I dunno, stop apologizing for your art. This includes not posting enough, too much, changing style, inconsistent style, repetition, subject. Its your art its your expression. Have fun.

you should always be weird next to people you want to befriend. if you want to befriend people and for them to like you as you are then you can't hide yourself. if people you like/want to befriend react to you being kinda weird by getting angry or making fun of you, then they're not worth befriending.. you GOTTA look the way you want and dress the way you want and talk weird and be nerdy and have interests. you gottaaaaaaa be yourself and then people who like you the way you are will naturally be drawn to you. please. promise me you'll be weird

Steal from everything you love. watched a movie and thought "wow that scene hit different"? figure out why and use it. read a book where the banter made you kick your feet? study it. saw a tiktok that made you Feel Things? that's research. keep a notes app full of random lines you'll never use. screenshot tumblr posts at 4am for "inspiration." your influences should be obvious and chaotic. remix everything. that's not theft that's apprenticeship.

Shout-out to characters who don't plan to survive their stories! Heroes who think they can only atone for their failures through sacrifice, villains who don't think they deserve to live in the world they're trying to create. Gimme that passive suicidality baby, mm-mm, delicious.