to be brave

A baby pangolin is born quite helpless, other than the ability to suckle and cling. Until the baby is big enough to travel on its on, a mother pangolin will tote it around on her tail.

‘you made me hate this city’ - various lyrics by taylor swift about new york and how it is/was her home

Dina supported Ellie every step of the way, but now she’s prioritizing the baby over this journey. Which in fact is what Joel would do. Joel would put protection of the people close to him over this mission. What Tommy was trying to tell Ellie in the very beginning is “Joel wouldn’t do this.” For that scene we had a line we end up cutting where Tommy talked about how Joel never tried to find that soldier that ordered Sarah’s death. “He was never about that. That never crossed his mind, and now you’re trying to do this thing that he would never do.”

— Neil Druckmann

The arc for Tommy is one of the more interesting pivots to me. In the beginning he represents Joel. We have this line of dialogue after Joel dies where he says to Ellie, something to the effect of — Ellie says, “Joel would be halfway to Seattle by now,” and Tommy said to her, “Joel didn’t even go after the soldiers who killed Sarah. He would stay and protect the town.” He’s only going after these kids to try and get to them before Ellie does, because he knows Ellie is this unstoppable train, and this is the best thing he thinks he can do to try and protect her.

Tess and Maria could have ruled Jackson together as much as I love both Joel and Tommy I think Tess and Maria being together would have been 10 times better

Jesse could go get some and be a pain in someone else's ass other than Ellie's

Also I think Marlene and Tess would be a bomb ass couple

Abby wouldn't be so angry all the time if she had a proper orgasm and wasn't faking one for Owen.

Scrivener is a writer’s best friend. 

It’s a word processing software created with unruly, complicated novels in mind. However, some writers stay away because its many features can be seem overwhelming at first. If you want to use Scrivener, but haven’t taken the plunge yet. Or if you already use Scrivener, but haven’t explored its many features, check out my three part guide to writing a novel with Scrivener, from planning to editing and all of the key smashing in-between. 

1. Planning with Scrivener

Scrivener comes with tools dedicated to outlining, researching, and brainstorming your manuscript. The first part of this series details everything you can do in Scrivener before setting that first line down in ink (or pixels.) 

2. Drafting with Scrivener 

The second part in this series covers the actual “writing” part of writing. It covers multiple composition modes (even making your screen mimic Microsoft Word!), writing in split screen, word targets, and more. 

3. Editing with Scrivener

The third part of this series gives advice on exporting your writing into a standard manuscript format, saving each version of your work as you go along, and the best tools for revising your manuscript. 

Download a free 30-day trial of Scrivener at its official site. 

I forgot how utterly amazing this software is, so I’m re-blogging my three Scrivener guides! 

The four features that are killing it for me right now are:

A separate text file for each chapter. The organization make it so easy to move around my manuscript, so that doing things like going back to certain chapters to find information I need isn’t an utter nightmare. Equally important, I try to make sure my chapters are between 1,500 and 2,500 words for consistency. Having a separate text file makes it easy to see how far away I am from that mark. Which brings me to feature two.

Targets! I can set manuscript targets, session targets, and chapter targets. This means I can tell Scrivener I want my novel to be 40,000 words long, my chapter to be 2,000 words long, and that I’d like to write 1,500 words today. I can even say I want to finish my book by August 1st, and it’ll tell me how much I need to write each day to meet it–adjusting automatically if I go over/under my daily goal. It’s motivational too, pushing me forward because I’m never far away from hitting a goal. 

Statistics! Scrivener goes above and beyond for manuscript statistics. I click one button and it tells me how many words there are in my book, how long the paragraphs and sentences are on average, how many chapters there are, the longest and shortest chapters, how many pages the document would be as a paperback, and even how long it would take to read!!!! I. Love. It.