Lyn Writes

Nothing. You get it fixed, or you don’t. Whatevs.

You know what actually happens when you are depressed or sick or on your period and don’t cook dinner?

Nothing. You still get to eat something, nobody scolds you, it doesn’t have any real bearing on your future success, and you don’t get soft shunned for a week by your family.

You know what actually happens when you break stuff, forget stuff, get sick, fall asleep, are rude, miss a flight, don’t know how to do XYZ thing on fixing cars or canning food or whatever, lose things, get lost because you can’t read a map and forgot to charge your phone, buy the wrong groceries, plant the wrong plants, not make your bed, make your bed wrong, jump on your bed, sleep on your bed, eat crackers in your bed, have emotions literally anywhere?

Nothing.

Nothing happens.

No one is mad.

No one can hurt you, and if they do there are laws saying they can’t and that it’s an actual crime with legal consequences.

All there are are outcomes and different paths and different problems and different situations and you just bumble your way forward into dealing with those and that’s it. That’s the whole thing. It’s not the wrong choice, having problems isn’t indicative of your inherent badness or inadequacy or lack of applying yourself. It’s just life, and it’s happening to literally everyone.

I’m not even kidding.

You just do stuff and nothing bad happens. Walk around existing? Nothing bad will happen. Wild.

I got told to "take care of it soon please" and let go with a warning. Today I went to the DMV and paid a $5 late fee along with the 2-year fee for registration, got new plates and stickers and that was that.

A year late. No big deal. No one was shocked or appalled. It was just a thing that happened and then I took care of it. No biggie.

Do you know what happens if you forget to file your income taxes one year (look, I was still drinking pretty heavily, I forgot a lot of things that year)?

Literally nothing, the IRS has a little section on their site that reads “did you forget to file? Just file within 3 years to avoid any fines.”

People mess up. We make mistakes. There is almost always a mechanism to fix them.

Copyright is a noun. It refers to the right to copy a particular piece of media (and certain other subsidiary rights, mostly related to commercial exploitation).

To copywrite is a verb. It means to write copy – the word “copy” in this context meaning “the text component of a printed advertisement”.

Victoria Schwab Tweets:

“This just in: you can love writing and also find it hard.

“I was once on a panel and another author essentially said, ‘if you don't enjoy every moment, then why are you here?’ and I was...exasperated. Creativity is a complicated beast. You don't have to love every second to be a valid participant.

“I love the ideas. I love brainstorming, and problem-solving, and I love making this better, fine-tuning language.

“I also hate drafting, claw my way through self-doubt, crawl on my hands and knees through the frustration of the unrealized.

“I'm not here because I love every second.

The raptors were not the most dangerous animals in the park.  Hollywood had greatly exaggerated their size, first of all, and while they had a mischievous streak (one individual in particular was fond of stealin zookeepers’ wallets), they were far from the hyper-intelligent murder lizards everyone expected.  Their intelligence was less of the predatory sort and more the comical intelligence of a corvid, devoted mostly to play and caring for their fellow flock members.

The mosasaur was not the most dangerous animal in the park.  Though it held no loyalty to the zookeepers, it had taken to training well enough, and would dutifully move to a specific section of the tank when signaled, giving the keepers space to carry out any business they needed to accomplish in its tank without fear of harm.

No, by far the most dangerous animal in the park was the Struthiomimus.  Everyone expected it to be easy - what were these animals in pop culture beyond being fodder for the carnivores?  Surely the bird-mimics couldn’t be much of a hassle.  Sadly, they weren’t just any bird mimics.

No, in temperament, the Struthiomimus mimicked a swan.

Highly territorial and vicious to the bone, more keepers had suffering brutal beatings by the struthis than had been hurt by the rest of the park’s fauna combined.  And when they learned to chew through the fences…

Everyone:No, she’s one-dimensional and still only exists to please the hero’s ego

Male scifi and fantasy writers:You’re never happy! This is how characters are written! Besides, it’s much harder for us to write women because we are men!

Terry Pratchett: *creates a female character who is literally the embodyment of a dog, sets her up to be the love interest of Protagonist Hero Man.* *writes her as clever, emotionally tortured, lonely and powerful* *uses her to explore difficulties of bisexuality and masculine dominated workforces*

Terry Pratchett: *Creates a pair of old witches, one of whom is a virgin and the other who has slept with lots of men.* *makes them best friends, never dismisses one lifestyle of the other, explains lifestyle choices based on characters history and personality, uses this to develop each character as the books progress*

Terry Pratchett: *Writes Sybil Rankin* *makes the powerful rich lady heavy set but beautiful, never plays her by her looks, develops her as she ages, acknowledges the way society views such people and then spits on their attitudes* *does it again with Agnes*

Terry Pratchett: *Writes a book about an entire army secretly being women, creates complex female relationships, introduces same sex relationships completely naturally*

Terry Pratchett: *takes old joke about female dwarves and uses it to explore gender identity without making it seem forced or unnatural, carefully discusses some of the issues and complextities whilst still making funny and witty observasions and maintaining genuine fantasy tropes*

Nothing. You get it fixed, or you don’t. Whatevs.

You know what actually happens when you are depressed or sick or on your period and don’t cook dinner?

Nothing. You still get to eat something, nobody scolds you, it doesn’t have any real bearing on your future success, and you don’t get soft shunned for a week by your family.

You know what actually happens when you break stuff, forget stuff, get sick, fall asleep, are rude, miss a flight, don’t know how to do XYZ thing on fixing cars or canning food or whatever, lose things, get lost because you can’t read a map and forgot to charge your phone, buy the wrong groceries, plant the wrong plants, not make your bed, make your bed wrong, jump on your bed, sleep on your bed, eat crackers in your bed, have emotions literally anywhere?

Nothing.

Nothing happens.

No one is mad.

No one can hurt you, and if they do there are laws saying they can’t and that it’s an actual crime with legal consequences.

All there are are outcomes and different paths and different problems and different situations and you just bumble your way forward into dealing with those and that’s it. That’s the whole thing. It’s not the wrong choice, having problems isn’t indicative of your inherent badness or inadequacy or lack of applying yourself. It’s just life, and it’s happening to literally everyone.

I’m not even kidding.

You just do stuff and nothing bad happens. Walk around existing? Nothing bad will happen. Wild.

I got told to "take care of it soon please" and let go with a warning. Today I went to the DMV and paid a $5 late fee along with the 2-year fee for registration, got new plates and stickers and that was that.

A year late. No big deal. No one was shocked or appalled. It was just a thing that happened and then I took care of it. No biggie.

Do you know what happens if you forget to file your income taxes one year (look, I was still drinking pretty heavily, I forgot a lot of things that year)?

Literally nothing, the IRS has a little section on their site that reads “did you forget to file? Just file within 3 years to avoid any fines.”

People mess up. We make mistakes. There is almost always a mechanism to fix them.