raine

if you go through life not investing in your friendships the same way you invest in romantic relationships, you will always be looking for love, feeling lonely, completely blind to the love all around you

I saw my whole life as if I’d already lived it. An endless parade of parties and cotillions, yachts and polo matches. Always the same narrow people, the same mindless chatter. I felt like I was standing at a great precipice, with no one to pull me back, no one who cared… or even noticed.

i. write with a black pen, always

ii. drink tea, coffee, less milk, no sugar

iii. read the classics in your free time

iv. use roman numerals

v. wear plaid skirts and basic, beige colored turtlenecks, boyfriend jeans with a maroon sweater

vi. quote random historical facts and philosophical facts to your friends—throw them off their rhythm.

vii. maintain a journal, document your most mundane activities, make your writing sound as prolific and verbose and pretentious as possible.

viii. learn a new word every day, know its usage, write it at the back your books to remember it

ix. make an effort to read the newspaper—nothing sexier than a person who can quote both Plato and the latest political drama on the front page.

x. bookmark your pages with dried flowers ;)

stay safe, loves,

I don’t know if this belongs here, but I’ll give it a go.

This is a story about my sister. Throughout her entire education, primary and high school, people kept telling her that she would never amount to anything, that she’ll never make something out of herself. Teachers, students, and even some of her friends. She was told by a teacher that she would never finish high school, and that she would live a hard life. Because she was told all of this, she started to believe it, and a result she did what people expected her to do. She skipped class, she didn’t try because she was worried about putting herself out there only to be shot down.

suck a dick

This was meant to provide motivation, but honestly, this is more of a list of ways to make sure you get it done, rather than make yourself “motivated”. Either way, this should benefit you somehow.

In the words of Chuck Wendig, “do not fucking multitask”. Carve out a specific time to write and use it to write. Don’t try to simultaneously write and tweet and check your email. Whether it be 15 minutes or 2 hours, write, and only write.

Take breaks occasionally. You can’t just sit there and fog up your creative lens. Go outside and go for a walk. Go to coffee with your friends for an hour. Do something to relax your brain for a while. It’s the same with studying. Don’t drive yourself up the wall because you feel you’re “on a roll”. Your ideas and plans will still be there when you get back. If you begin to get frustrated or your foot starts to fall asleep, take a break.

Use a rewards system. Say, for every 100 words, you get a piece of chocolate. After eating a regular sized Hershey’s bar, you’ve got 1200 words. Go you! (I personally fine this incredibly useful.)

Have people you trust hold you accountable. Have your best friend (or partner, if you’ve got one) check in when they know you should be writing to make sure you did.

Read books like a writer. Read a shitty book and pick it apart to find what you don’t like about it. Read a good book to find what you do like. Use these reflections and apply them to your own work. Nothing helps quite like learning from other people’s mistakes and success.

Don’t get stuck in the planning stages. You may get really excited while planning a story, that huge plot twist, a minor character’s backstory, etc, but keep in mind that at some point you’re going to have to sit down and hash it out. A lot of promising writers never get past the planning stages, so in the words of my very wise boyfriend: “Just write”.

Write in places that make your creative juices flow. Get cozy in bed with your laptop open to a word document, light a few candles, make some tea, get that incense going, and write. Music really helps to get in the mood as well, and if you would like to take a look at my writing playlist, here it is, free for public consumption.

Keep your mind open to new ideas and changes to your story. Your idea will develop and evolve over time, and the beauty of writing is that you can change anything you want and there are no consequences. If you decide to completely scrap a character, remove a subplot, add one in, or change the plot but keep the same characters, you’re totally free to do so. Nothing about writing is set in stone, so stay open minded to new concepts and changes and, most importantly, criticism. (I won’t elaborate on this because I might end up making a whole other post about this topic in the future.)

As always, this is just a compilation of the tips and tricks I’ve found the most useful in my own experience. They may not help, they may help a lot, it really could go either way or somewhere in between, but all the same, I hope this proves useful to you.