Sarah's Seattle

If you are like me and always need to be working on something to keep your anxiety under control, during this quarentine why not helping scientists by looking at pictures of some neat penguins? or even galaxies?  There’s this site call Zooniverse, where you can help on scientific projects by analyzing pictures and data!  Right now my favorite project has returned, called Penguin Watch (where yeah, you get to watch penguins, it’s amazing)

you basically have to analyse photos looking for penguins, their chicks, eggs or even predators and human interaction But there are lots of interesting projects you can help in areas such as biology, physics, history or even art: 

every character’s first line should be an introduction to who they are as a person

even if you only wrote one sentence on a really bad day, that’s still one sentence more than you had yesterday

exercise restraint when using swear words and extra punctuation in order for them to pack a punch when you do use them

if your characters have to kiss to show they’re in love, then they’re not in love

make every scene interesting (or make every scene your favorite scene), otherwise your readers will be just as bored as you

if you’re stuck on a scene, delete the last line you wrote and go in a different direction, or leave in brackets as placeholders

don’t compare your first draft to published books that could be anywhere from 3rd to 103rd drafts

i promise you the story you want to tell can fit into 100k words or less

sometimes the book isn’t working because it’s not ready to be written or you’re not ready to write it yet; let it marinate for a bit so the idea can develop as you become a better writer

Tiny Crochet Cat Couches With Matching Granny Square Blankets

Link: An interview with the producer of the show.

Hey!! I’m super nervous about this but ADHD Awareness Month is winding down and I really wanted to share some information on rejection sensitivity before it ended. This is a defining feature of ADHD that is often overlooked, despite how harrowing it can be for those of us who experience it! My main goal here was to remind my fellow ADHDers that they are not alone!

The transcript version of this guide can be accessed here. 

but anyway, this lady came thru my line buying a book and the review on the front said: “few books are well written, fewer still are important, and this book manages to be both”

as i handed her the bag i was trying to say “thanks, youre all set” and instead my brain mashed up the review and i said “thanks, youre important”

there was this short pause in which i tried to figure out what the fuck id just said. she blinked and then said “oh thank you! youre important too!”

Which, actually, not such a bad thing; I’m a big guy and can come across as imposing pretty easily. The position calls can help defuse that, and also help avoid collisions.

One morning, my mom hollered at me to wake up, and half-asleep me yells at full volume,

In the midst of having a heated discussion about the Lord of the Rings movies, the drive thru beeped in my ear. I threw off my gloves, and while walking through the kitchen to the till, answered “Welcome to Lord of the Rings, what can I get for you today?” 

Get Out wasn’t the 1st racist horror concept Jordan Peele was apart of.

in 2010, a camp counselor goon logged on to the somethingawful forums asking for help with the zipline he build from scratch, and with no engineering knowledge, that didn’t seem to be working right. when he tested it with a sandbag, it continued to gather speed during the entirety of the 143 foot drop (19 degree slope) until it slammed into the wooden platform at the bottom at a speed of 65mph, presumably creating a child paste that would have to be scraped off to be sent home. there were pictures.

And some visual aides

first of all, major props to you for trying the shitty first draft. this past semester it was the #1 thing i wanted my students to take from the class. for those who do not yet know the power of the SFD, i have made a very helpful visual aid:

let’s say you read anne lamott’s “shitty first drafts” (and you absolutely must read anne lamott’s “shitty first drafts”), and you come out of it believing in the three draft method: 

down draft: get it down

up draft: clean it up

dental draft: check every tooth

but you think, potentially, the better your down draft is, the better your up draft will be, and the easier your dental draft will be. perhaps you think, the shittier your first draft, the shittier your final draft, or maybe, the more you’ll have to revise.

NAY. 

i’d like you to turn your attention to my gorgeous and professional graphic which took me a whole 30 seconds to make. i’ve drawn two spectrums which indicate the quality of writing, from :( (awful) to :) (most excellent) based on your own definitions of good/bad writing.

let’s say the top line represents a writer who has written a very decent first draft. the absolute best they can do. they’ve put their all into it. they revise it once and it’s a little bit better. they revise it again, but at this point it’s mostly fixing a typo here and there. they have checked every tooth. but it’s still not great.

the bottom line represents a writer who projectile vomited onto a piece of paper (metaphorically) and then cried for an hour (literally). their first draft is written partially in wingdings for reasons they don’t know. they forgot the word for “wrist” so they wrote “hand ankle.” objectively speaking in the grand history of the universe, according to god, it is in the top 1% of worst things ever written.

then this writer cleans it up a bit. now, it’s about where it would be if the writer had tried to write a clean first draft. it’s something they might be willing to show an extremely tactful friend, or someone with very low standards.

and now, magic happens. they revise again, and the draft is infinitely better than what they knew they could write. i don’t know why this happens! but it does. it’s happened to me. it’s happened to every student who has had the terrible fortune of stepping into my classroom. i promise you it works. 

writing badly is not just about getting your ideas down in a somewhat messy way. it’s about writing intentionally badly. it’s about aiming for the absolute worst of what you’re capable of. to write badly means to identify and define what you think is good writing, because you’re aiming for the opposite. maybe you hate stories that have run-on sentences, or which seem to lack self-awareness. that means your first draft is going to be FULL of run-ons and have no idea what it’s trying to be. but run-ons can be tidied up to create beautiful prose. and mindless nonsense that relies on tropes and cliches can be organized and added upon to be meaningful. but you need to get it down before you even know what the thing you’re writing is. we write as the process of thought, not the product of it. 

which brings me to my next point: *commentator voice* 

THE UNKNOWN

i’ve written before on the interaction between fear, the unknown, and writer’s block. one day i’ll write a big fancy craft essay on it that i’ll try lamely to publish, but for now i’ll be very blunt: 

all writer’s block is fear. all fear is the unknown. to resolve fear, you must make something known. to make something known, you enact a procedure.

this is true of almost everything in life. everything you hesitate to do, everything you procrastinate or put off. every bad attitude you have. it’s all the unknown. if you open yourself to the process of knowing, everything in life becomes less scary. 

how do surgeons perform life-saving surgeries? how do pilots keep a plane from crashing? how did i go to work as a bank teller in a bad part of town, day after day, knowing i would eventually get robbed? we have procedures. if this happens, you do this, this, and this. 

as mary ruefle puts it in her essay “on fear” – what is the poet’s procedure?

this is, of course, a rhetorical question, but i’ve taught this essay many times, and read it many more, and i am obsessed with the idea of a writer’s procedure. combined with donald barthleme’s essay “not-knowing” which is also about the making things known, we have a foundation for which to understand the process of knowing.

so what is the process?

i have my own process which might work for you, which i adapt from project to project, but you’ll have to make your own. and when you do, you have to trust it. writing badly is easier when you know, like me, you have at least 8 more drafts to do no matter what. no matter how good i think it is, i will do every step of the procedure, every time. i have faith in my process. there is no point where an element of the story is so unknown to me that i am afraid to continue. i know that by the end of the process, i have done my best work, and there’s not much more i can do without the help of the people who have accepted it to be published.

recently i’ve decided i want to start drawing. it’s a daunting endeavor – i used to draw a lot when i was a teenager, but like many of us, certain creative interests we had when we were younger get shoved to the side for one reason or another. for me, i never got the hang of shading, and i couldn’t handle ruining my lovely line drawings with my hideous attempts at making things look three-dimensional. 

now, i’ve tasked myself with picking it up again, but i’m afraid. i ask myself why i’m afraid. it’s because i don’t know anything about drawing anymore. i don’t know what to draw. i don’t know where to draw. i don’t know what to use to draw. i don’t know when to draw. 

but now, just by acknowledging what i don’t know, i have a list of things i need to make known, one small thing at a time.

what to draw: i take a picture of a fruit basket. i follow some mandala artists on instagram. i look at art blogs. i make a list in google keep/drive of things i want to draw. i keep my mind open to inspiration as it arrives.

where and what to use to draw: i need tools. i’m interested in watercolors, ink drawings, and calligraphy. i go to amazon and i pick out a couple things – a watercolor notebook, crayola watercolors, micron and brush pens. it’s about $20. enough to get me started at least.

when to draw: i schedule two hours three nights a week to draw. i download the harry potter audiobooks to encourage me to do it. 

when it comes time to draw, the only unknown thing is where to place the first line. there is no risk in it, no fear – i do it with pencil. it can be erased. there is no way to be wrong. once the first line is down, i move to the next and the next, making the drawing known one line at a time. 

the first step in the process of knowing is naming what you don’t know.

so my advice to you is this: make a list of questions you have for your narrative. if they’re too broad, break them up. make them tiny. then ask yourself, not what are the answers, but “how do i make these things known to me?” 

the response is usually “i don’t fucking know” followed potentially by “well i’ll have to try doing this thing that i know is wrong.” it might be wrong, but it’s known. and so you have to write it down, then trust that it will eventually be right.

thanks for the great question, anon. more on this at the start of the new year, but soon i’ll be launching a ko-fi gold! if you’re interested in getting one-on-one feedback for your writing or would like to buy me a coffee, feel free to follow me on ko-fi!

The Captain and The Prince

This story belongs to Sarah J Maas. I claim NO ownership of this.