Local Lizard Lady

okay but can we talk about writing advice that actually made my writing worse for a second

like not in a “this is bad advice for everyone” way in a “this absolutely sabotaged me personally” way

because ??? some of this set me BACK

1. “show don’t tell” (taken too literally) this one almost ruined my prose

i got so scared of “telling” anything that every sentence turned into… over-explained action

instead of writing:

she was nervous

i’d write:

her fingers tapped against the table, her leg bouncing, her breath uneven, her gaze flickering toward the door--

and it just KEPT GOING

like yes, showing is important but at some point you’re not “immersive” you’re just exhausting

2. “cut all adverbs” this made my writing feel so stiff it hurt

i started replacing simple phrasing with weird, clunky sentences just to avoid using one single “-ly” word

like… why am i doing gymnastics to avoid “quietly”

no one is giving out medals for adverb avoidance 😭

3. “write every day no matter what” this one burned me OUT

because instead of listening to my brain when it was fried, i forced myself to produce words i knew weren’t going anywhere

and then i’d reread it later and hate everything i wrote

which made me want to avoid writing even more

consistency matters, yes but forcing it when you’re running on fumes just trains you to associate writing with dread

4. “plan everything before you start” this killed my excitement SO fast

i’d spend weeks outlining every detail and by the time i actually started writing…

the story already felt “done” in my head

no curiosity left. no momentum.

now i leave gaps on purpose so i actually want to keep going

5. “make your writing sound pretty” this is the one that made my writing feel the most fake

i was so focused on making sentences sound “good” that i stopped focusing on what was actually happening

everything turned vague. floaty. kind of… nothing

like yeah it sounded nice but nothing hit

now i care way more about clarity and impact than sounding impressive

6. “your first draft should be terrible” okay this one is half true but also messed with my head

because i took it as: “don’t even TRY”

so i’d write things i knew weren’t working and just leave them

instead of… fixing them a little? making them better?

your draft doesn’t have to be perfect but it also doesn’t have to be painful to read 😭

idk i think the biggest thing i’ve learned is:

advice isn’t universal

what helps one writer can absolutely wreck another

so if something is making your writing worse, harder, or more miserable

you are allowed to drop it. immediately.

no guilt. no “but everyone says this works”

like okay… it doesn’t work for ME.

I was looking up facts about Cormorants to find a title for this and found out about the liver bird a mythological creature from liverpool that is literally just a cormorant which I find kinda funny

The sharpest, best-trained pilots make worse decisions when they're tired or sick or stressed out, so there's two of them. The most dedicated and experienced air traffic controllers garble an instruction over the radio sometimes, so pilots are trained to always repeat clearances back to catch misunderstandings quickly. The best and brightest maintenance mechanic still overlooks a screw or misconnects a wire once or twice in her career, so aircraft systems are built with two or three or four layers of redundancy, and pilots are exhaustively trained to deal with failures safely. 

The Black Nerd. A common character type, the nerd will always be very interested in all things nerdy: science, video games, mathematics, etc. In an continued effort to combat stereotypes, the Black Nerd will be lack athleticism, probably being asthmatic (the nerdiest of conditions). The Black Nerd will dress smartly, suspenders and bow ties. They’ll always talk smart too, using proper English with complex words.

Now, I don’t have a problem with a black character being a nerd, indeed black people are a people; we aren’t all the same and we all have varying personalities. The problem I have is that too often we see a distinct disconnect between Blackness and the Black Nerd. The Black Nerd doesn’t listen to hip hop or rap, only classical music. The Black Nerd only has white friends, the only other black characters are into not nerdy stuff. The Black Nerd never ever uses AAVE at any time in any context.

Well @dumbey, seems we’re in similar boats

☀The monarch and knight🌙

Carolina Milanesi, an independent technology analyst, said Google is trying to make its cash cow business — search — richer and more personalized, and it will make shopping easier. But there is a risk that users may have fewer choices about what to click. "Right now it's: I ask a question, I get a bunch of answers and I feel that I'm in control as to which answer I take, or if I'm looking for something, which product I'm going to end up buying. That is going to be less so going forward," she said. Milanesi envisions AI-enabled search and agents proposing products to consumers — perhaps even those they have requested — but with less clarity or choice around where it's coming from. "If you're going to say: 'I want a pair of Jordans, go find them,' you're not necessarily sure what steps have been taken and whether the AI has used a source or a store that was paid for and therefore came up in the search results," she said, "or if AI actually went and did their due diligence and picked the best for me as a customer."

And here's one from Time magazine (May 20, 2026):

While Google already has “AI Mode,” the company will now power the whole search bar through its new Gemini 3.5 Flash model.  Instead of the classic list of blue links, Google Search will now also generate a custom page with an AI-generated summary of what you’re searching about, which will then trigger a conversation with AI Mode on the main page, allowing users to ask follow-up questions—similar to the kind of layout you would see when opening ChatGPT.

And a little more from Time's article on how this may affect the websites that we are trying to search for:

“It will severely cut into the main source of revenue for most publishers and it will disincentivize content creators who rely on organic search traffic, which is millions of websites, maybe more,” she told Technology Magazine.