Maybe If I Keep On Lying To Myself Eventually I'll Start Telling Myself The Truth

Writing, Neil Gaiman, and Kon Satoshi

I almost gave up writing altogether after reading Neil Gaiman’s The Sandman.

I didn’t read it as it was coming out in comics, but later, when it was published in collected volumes.

It was too perfect. Too complete. It seemed like it had sprung fully-formed from Gaiman’s head, and he had to spend years waiting for artists to catch up.

It was overwhelming. Unattainable.

I wasn’t reading the book’s post-scripts, though, because I wanted to avoid potential spoilers. I wanted to experience the material, not the author dissecting it.

I did read them on a second pass. There’s a story on Dream Country, the third volume, about a writer keeping a muse captive so she can give him ideas. It’s a piece with characters that tie into Morpheus’ past and who will come up again, woven into the larger narrative. The book also contains a post-script on how the story came about, where Gaiman states it was at first about a succubus, before moving on to talk about his process for working with the artist.

My eyes kept moving forward, brain storing words from the original script, but my consciousness had taken a step back.

Wait, back up, what was that character again?  Who? Calliope. Originally a succubus, replies brain, let me keep going here.

Yes, stupid me. I had assumed Sandman had been gestating inside Gaiman from the start, waiting for an opportunity for the entire story to burst out. He didn’t transcribe a long epic he had already come up with. He wasn’t born with the tale. He worked at it for years, sometimes throwing away material and replacing it with things that fit better. Like a normal human being.

I keep making the same mistake. I wrote about a similar mental bug when talking about Kon Satoshi and Dream Fossil.

We only see the finished product. We don’t see the author sitting down at the typewriting and bleeding.

It’s all work. Some people have more potential and have it easier, others have to work harder at it, but in the end it’s only work. If you want a chance to get better at it, you should treat it as such.

Staff about to hack meta, tiktok, and twitter just like they did with 4chan

I swear guys this next update will be the one. Just wait for the next one it'll bring everyone to tumblr and make us billions just wait.

Yall how do I eat in another kfc while being aware about this knowledge

the story of kfc fucks me up man. the colonel founded this gas station that expanded to restaurant, the chicken at the restaurant gets popular, makes KFC, it gets big and he sells it to a corporation for a lot of money. realizes he got sorta scammed out of the true worth of kfc so tries to get more money and they refuse and the courts side against him. then he starts a new chicken restaurant claiming the corporate people were not making chicken to his standards and kfc sued him because kfc owned the colonel's likeness and the courts agreed. a corporation owned this man's name and appearance. he wasnt allowed to use either, thus legally erasing his reputation making it harder for him to get taken seriously in any food venture. the man, to the day he died, was going into kfc's and throwing fits because the food had fallen into such bad shape he hated it was associated with him. and it's like, whether he's a bad man or a good man or whatever, a corporation owned his identity, stopped him from using his reputation and identity in other businesses, and refused to acknowledge his outrage that they changed his recipes and still attributed it to him. this is literally the obnoxious plot of a jay and silent bob movie, but it was this dude's real life. what the fuck.

this is so mean but sometimes i see published writing and suddenly no longer feel insecure about my own writing ability. like well okay that got published so im guessing i dont have much to worry about

Well, the ants decided to have a colony inside my mech keyboard.

This cr smells like febreeze the same way one would use febreeze to mask the smell of blood on the floor after a murder

Why is this me

Intro to the 1989 reprint of The Color of Magic the first Discworld book by Terry Pratchett.

“At least ten.” Lmao

My existence is nihility

Reblog if you have not been booped yet

Imagine if King Charles III started singing You'll Be Back rn