writing: a socially accepted form of schizophrenia

justintimberlake Last night. Thank you guys 🙏 | February 1, 2019

Apparently celebrating JT’s birthday… I have many questions:

Marcelo and Ramos:

Marco and Isco:

Modric and Ramos:

Courtois and Navas:

Ramos and Varane:

Bale and Benzema:

Kroos, Modric, And Casemiro:

Zidane and Lopetegui:

Madridistas and Llorente:

Florientino Perez and Real Madrid:

To all of you fanfic authors, bloggers, artist, to write/make something and then post it means that you are satisfied with the product. Now, to have created a piece that is fully/mostly constructed of text and to not have made the effort to at least get a grammar check is called arrogance. “I don’t care what you think, I wrote it, you read it. Who cares if you’re struggling to get a past every sentence. That’s your own problem!” You’re basically setting yourself up for negative feedback and criticism which, while many don’t bother to give, I would provide without hesitation.

Some say “I don’t need approval.”(which I sincerely don’t believe). Well, then, why are you posting this? Isn’t the whole point sharing something you can enjoy with people?

And then you start getting defensive and angry about it. “Well, English isn’t my first language!” I don’t care! Nobody does! Plus, if you post something online you should anticipate criticism. Great artists, celebrities, and basically everyone, face criticism on a daily basis EVEN WHEN the final product is marvelous.

English is fucking hard. Your spelling is arbitrary, your tenses don’t make sense, and what the fuck is going on with your prepositions anyway? But you still expect everyone to be perfect at it because it’s a ~global language~ or whatever. Spoiler alert, that’s stupid, you’re just entitled.

When I started out writing in English, I was shit. I can exactly map my skill level from the first time I published on FF.net to when I went to live in England to study writing for three years. Every writer sucks when they start. That’s just a fact. But non-native speakers writing in English are doing the whole thing with both hands tied behind their back, they’re struggling to come up with a way to say what they mean in a language they don’t know that well yet, they’ve got seven different dictionaries open in their browser. They’re frantically checking that they’re using the right names because they read Harry Potter in their own language when they were little and even though they’ve read the original now they’re still calling Rita Skeeter ‘Kimmkorn’ in their head. It’s a goshdarn STRUGGLE.

There’s that horrifying bit just after you start writing in another language where the words don’t work in your own anymore but your English skills haven’t really caught up yet and nothing you’re getting out on the page can do justice to what it felt like in your head. It’s a terrible, awful feeling that you’re not good enough at this and you can’t switch back somehow and you’re stuck in the middle producing stuff that you hate because it’s not right. It’s discouraging as fuck, but so many people stick with writing anyway, because they (we) can’t help it! There’s too many stories to tell, even if right now it feels like they’re kind of shit.

So who the fuck are you to go around preaching your elitist, prescriptivist bullshit at people who are pouring blood, sweat, and tears into their work and getting nothing in return except maybe the hope that someone somewhere gets a little bit of joy out of it?

When I started out, I put disclaimers on my fanfic that English wasn’t my first language, and people were super nice. They told me I was doing a good job, made suggestions on how I could improve, and corrected my idioms without being dicks about it. Because of that, I was brave enough to go to a different country to write and get a degree and keep writing stories for people to maybe enjoy on their lunch break, for free. Do you think your attitude encourages people to keep going and get better?

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