The Zelda Diarist

Fatalistic sarcasm is a thing, however, it usually hides deep feelings of insecurity, and whether you consciously recognize this or not, it validates them. Seriously, I used to constantly make jokes about how other people’s work was better than mine, and it did nothing for my self-esteem, it was a tool to deflect from my own feelings of inferiority and it actively worked against me thinking critically about my own and other people’s work. If it was a joke I could put myself down instead of analyzing why someone’s work was better and trying to incorporate that into my own

As someone who took creative writing courses I was constantly surrounded by other brilliant people, if I hung my head in shame every time I read something as good or better than mine I never would have lifted it. 

As someone who has watched a lot of writers with very good idea’s crash and burn I mean it when I say you either develop a healthy sense of respect for your own work or you stop writing. 

There’s three things I really wish more people consider

1. Do you think their work is better because it’s a different style, one that you like? There’s an element to ‘the grass is greener on the other side’, I have seen people work in some amazing styles that I wished to god I could replicate, some I managed, some I never did, but there’s nothing wrong with either. having a different style Is Not the same as having a bad style, each has their own strengths and you can admire one without putting yours down

2. Knowing someone who is a better writer is a blessing and if they knew you were using their work to bring yourself down they would not be happy, mooch off that friend, analyze their work, ask them to edit your shit, as long as you’re not annoying them be shameless about it. the best thing creative writing did for me was give me the confidence to ask people to critic my work and shamelessly better each other for that sharing 

So I've had these three sitting in my computer folders for a while, smh.

Characters for a currently-unnamed Zelda AU I've been playing around with in my free time. Basic premise is that a long time ago, due to some Ganon attacks, a bunch of Hyruleans flee into a giant mech that they live in for generations. It's powered by a sacred energy, but over time, the mech begins to break down. The original architects of the mech (seemingly) left no instructions for how to maintain it, so its inhabitants, fearing the outside world, try their best to repair it on their own. Inhabitable parts of the machine grow smaller and smaller, so people start building in, uh, odd places. Upside down, on the walls, basically anywhere they can! They have magic that lets them change gravity in certain areas. Meanwhile, monsters creep into the abandoned parts of the machine from the outside, feeding the machine-dwellers' fear.

Ideas for individual characters below...a lot of them are still super up in the air but. yeah

Oh my, my favorite kind of ask, thank you 🤩

I think they would definitely have at least two cats, all rescued from Castletown - and surely one of them gets named Midna 🤭

I found in my old drawings folder something that might fit this ask perfectly:

"Kill your darlings" means "if something is holding you back, get rid of it, even if it sounds pretty."

That's it! That's all it means! It means if you're stuck and stalled out on your story and you could fix the whole block by removing something but you're avoiding removing that thing because it's good, you remove that thing. That's the darling.

It does NOT mean

That you have to get rid of your self-indulgent writing

That you should delete something just because you like it (?wtf?)

That you need to kill off characters (??? what)

That you have to pare your story down to the absolute bare bones

That you have to delete anything whatsoever if you don't want to

The POINT is that you STOP FEELING GUILTY for throwing out good writing that isn't SERVING THE STORY.

The POINT is that you don't get so HUNG UP on the details that you lose sight of the BIG PICTURE.

recycle your darlings