I Was Rewatching Nailed It On Netflix, Which Is A Baking Competition Show Except Instead Of Competent

stuck in the constant limbo between “really excited about my own writing” and “pretty sure I can’t actually write”

Do you ever suddenly remember something you wholeheartedly believed as a child that just makes your skin shrivel up like a prune

So, um, from time to time, I just suddenly get really motivated to create something, a flash of creativity, but only for a few hours. Naturally, I think on writing, but I can't put my thoughts on paper, my head seems to be going crazy, it's a really weird feeling and mostly confusing, so I was thinking if you could help me on this, giving me some tips to start writing?

Oh, this is a fun one, because this is something I think everyone struggles with. What happens when creativity is high, but motivation or ideas are low? I’ve got a few tricks that I use for myself:

1) Store writing prompts in drafts

I do this all the time. If at any point I’m scrolling through tumblr and see a prompt I like, or think I could use later, I store it in my drafts. Then, when inspiration hits, I’ll scroll through my drafts and see if any of them pique my interest. This is also a good way just to start writing, even if you veer away from the original prompt. Some of my favorite prompt blogs include @gingerly-writing @corvidprompts @deepwaterwritingprompts and @promptsforthestrugglingauthor

2) Free write

While similar to using prompts like above, allow yourself to just write anything. It doesn’t have to be on a specific WIP, or even with specific characters. Write literally whatever comes to mind. I like to use this especially when paired with music. Put your music player on shuffle and write in accordance to what comes on. Or better yet, put on music without words–video game music is great for this, because it’s meant to hold your focus. I created a pandora station for myself feeding from video game and movie OSTs that I use for writing all the time.

3) Writing sprints

If you are competitive like I am, writing sprints are a great way to get words on the paper. These can be done with other writing groups, or on your own. Set yourself a timer, and if you want, set yourself a word count goal as well. Either way, I usually do 10 or 15 minute “sprints.” During this time, I write and do nothing else. Then break for about the same amount of time to let yourself recover, and think about what comes next, get a snack, whatever else. Usually I’ll end up sprinting 3-4 times like this, and sometimes I don’t end up breaking in between because I’ve finally found my groove. The days during NaNoWriMo when I wrote 5k-7k in one day was almost always done in sprints like this. I like using the program Write or Die, but there are plenty of others out there too. Find what works for your reward system, and feel free to experiment!

4) Allow yourself to do something else creative

Maybe the words just aren’t coming. That’s okay! Sketch out character designs, make yourself a cover, put together a playlist, write a poem, write a song, or just work on your outline. Brainstorm ideas and color code them. We can’t be actively writing all the time, but that doesn’t mean the work you’re doing won’t help you later.

5) Look for root causes of this restlessness

I don’t know about you, but I have anxiety issues, and sometimes that comes through as restlessness, or an inability to focus. A lot of times, I just need to settle myself down to allow my brain some space to think and plot. Try doing something with your hands, and give yourself a sense of order or space. Wash the dishes, clean your work space, walk around the house to burn off some excess energy, or even take a hot shower or a bath. Let your hands and body focus on something else, to give your mind a chance to breathe and process what you’re trying to accomplish. Also, check yourself: Have you had enough water? Food? Sleep? All of these things can put a block on the writing process. Your mind and body are your instruments, and you have to keep those running smoothly as well. As much as we would love to be able to pluck the words from the air, it’s a more complicated process than that.

I hope this helps! Good luck!

TW Don’t kill yourself today

Don’t kill yourself today

Because your Netflix trial still has a week left

Don’t kill yourself today

Because no one else will finish off the chicken in the fridge

Don’t kill yourself today

Because I know for a fact that Starbucks is releasing a new Frappuccino sometime next month

Yes, your mother will miss you

Yes your bully will make a sappy Facebook post about how what a a wonderful person you were

And yes

Suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem

You know that

You’ve known that

Everyone and anyone has been shoving that down your throat since they first learned what the word suicide meant

So don’t kill yourself

Until you finish your shampoo and conditioner at the same time

Don’t kill yourself

Until Doctor Who is finally cancelled

Don’t kill yourself

Until you tell someone your best pasta recipe 

Don’t kill yourself 

Because I will keep coming up with reasons for you not to

And I need you

To hear all of them

Don’t kill yourself

I love you

You’re important

It’s a bad day

Not a bad life

There is more to this

The world will keep spinning on its axis without you

But

Think of all the sunrises you’d miss

I know this sounds pointless

But when you’re sitting in front of everything deadly you own

Revising your goodbyes

There will be too much darkness 

To see anything else

But this is not about seeing anything else

This is about turning off the lights

This is about finding the bed instead of the noose

This is about giving yourself one more day

Even if it takes ten thousand of those

One more morning’s

Until

“I can’t wait for tomorrow”

This is about staying alive

Because there’s gonna be a new Marvel movie

No one should miss that

This is about staying alive

Because the future is coming 

And it’s ready for you

I don’ t need you to see it

I just need you to believe you can make it 

Until then

- Hannah Dains

a lot of people on this site are like, deeply existentially freaked out that they haven’t been in love by 19 or whatever, and are desperate for any explanation for this that might make it ok. i just want to say, you are completely ok, no explanation needed. this is MUCH more common than you think, especially if you’re not straight. you’re very very young. you’re 100% fine. if you want it, it will happen in its own time.

I wish movies could be about LGBT characters without being written off as “gay movies”. Why don’t you just call it a “movie”? Nobody calls your movies “straight movies”.

you were raised in comparison.

it wasn't always obvious (well. except for the times that it was), but you internalized it young. you had to eat what you didn't like, other people are going hungry, and you should be grateful. you had to suck it up and walk on the twisted ankle, it wasn't broken, you were just being a baby. you were never actually suffering, people obviously had it worse than you did.

you had a roof over your head - imagine! with the way you behaved, with how you talked back to your parents? you're lucky they didn't kick you out on your ass. they had friends who had to deal with that. hell, you have friends who had to deal with that. and how dare you imply your father isn't there for you - just because he doesn't ever actually talk to you and just because he's completely emotionally checked out of your life doesn't mean you're not fucking lucky. think about your cousins, who don't even get to speak to their dad. so what if yours has a mean streak; is aggressive and rude. at least you have a father to be rude to you.

you really think you're hurting? you were raised in a home! you had access to clean water! you never so much as came close to experiencing a real problem. sure, okay. you have this "mental illness" thing, but teenagers are always depressed, right. it's a phase, you'll move on with your life.

what do you mean you feel burnt out at work. what do you mean you mean you never "formed healthy coping mechanisms?" we raised you better than that. you were supposed to just shoulder through things. to hold yourself to high expectations. "burning out" is for people with real jobs and real stress. burnout is for people who have sick kids and people who have high-paying jobs and people who are actually experiencing something difficult. recently you almost cried because you couldn't find your fucking car keys. you just have lost your sense of gratitude, and honestly, we're kind of hurt. we tell you we love you, isn't that enough? if you want us to stick around, you need to be better about proving it. you need to shut up about how your mental health is ruined.

it could be worse! what if you were actually experiencing executive dysfunction. if you were really actually sick, would you even be able to look at things on the internet about it? you just spend too much time on webMD. you just like to freak yourself out and feel like you belong to something. you just like playing the victim. this is always how you have been - you've always been so fucking dramatic. you have no idea how good you have it - you're too fucking sensitive.

you were like, maybe too good of a kid. unwilling to make a real fuss. and the whole time - the little points, the little validations - they went unnoticed. it isn't that you were looking for love, specifically - more like you'd just wanted any one person to actually listen. that was all you'd really need. you just needed to be witnessed. it wasn't that you couldn't withstand the burden, but you did want to know that anyone was watching. these days, you are so accustomed to the idea of comparison - you don't even think you belong in your own communities. someone always fits better than you do. you're always the outlier. they made these places safe, and then you go in, and you are just not... quite the same way that would actually-fit.

you watch the little white ocean of your numbness lap at your ankles. the tide has been coming in for a while, you need to do something about it. what you want to do is take a nap. what you want to do is develop some kind of time machine - it's not like you want your life to stop, not completely, but it would really nice if you could just get everything to freeze, just for a little while, just until you're finished resting. but at least you're not the worst you've been. at least you have anything. you're so fucking lucky. do you have any concept of the amount of global suffering?

a little ant dies at the side of your kitchen sink. you look at its strange chitinous body and think - if you could just somehow convince yourself it is enough, it will finally be enough and you can be happy. no changes will have to be made. you just need to remember what you could lose. what is still precious to you.

you can't stop staring at the ant. you could be an ant instead of a person, that is how lucky you are. it's just - you didn't know the name of the ant, did you. it's just - ants spend their whole life working, and never complain. never pull the car over to weep.

it's just - when it died, it curled up into a tight little ball.

something kind of uncomfortable: you do that when you sleep.

W o aH

Writing Websites

1. a website with a list of superpowers and what they are

2. a website that generates random au ideas

3. a website that generates names, basic info and futures in a bunch of languages

4. a website that checks your grammar

5. website that lists types of execution in the states

6. a website with info on death certificates

7. a website with info on the four manners of death

8. a website with info on the black plague

9. website with information on depression

10. a website with info on the four types of suicide

11. website that lists famous quotes

12. website with different kinds of quotes

13. a website with info on food in every country

14. a website with a list of different colors

15. website with a list of medieval jobs

16. website with a list of fabrics

17. website with a list of flowers and pictures

18. website with a list of flowers and no pictures

19. website with a list of poisonous plants

20. website with a list of poisonous and non-poisonous plants

21. website with a list of things not to feed your animals

22. website with a list of poisons that can be used to kill people

23. website with info on the international date line

24. website with a list of food allergies

25. website with a list of climates

26. website with info on allergic reactions

27. website with info on fahrenheit and celsius 

28. website with info on color blindness

29. website with a list of medical equipment

30. website with a list of bugs

31. website with an alphabetic list of bugs and their scientific name

32. website with a list of eye colors

33. website (wikipedia sorry) with list of drinks

34. website with a list of religions

35. website with a list of different types of doctors and what they do

36. website (wikipedia again sorry) with a list of hair colors

37. website that generates fantasy names

38. website with a list of body language

39. website with a list of disabilities

40. website with an alphabetic list of disabilities

Do you have any tips to stop cringing at/hating your own writing? Thanks!

yeah actually: write cringe shit on purpose

do you know what so fucking cringe? superheroes. most people irl associate them with five year old boys and gamer bros who like excluding people based on whether they know how many Robins there are. you MIGHT get lucky and have them associate you with shippers and fandom folks. when my brand new housemate said to me ‘oh so I hear you like superheroes?’ I felt my soul fucking evacuate my body.

anyway so I took my favourite cringe genre and made it more cringe. I stripped out most of the action and made it about melodrama. about romance. about three line prompts centred on feelings. and I filled a whole blog with it. thousands of prompts, tens of thousands of words of nothing but the most cringe-inducing, self-indulgent, emotional twaddle. I write it fast, on the fly--for most of this blog’s lifespan I was producing two prompts a day, and there was no time to edit out the yikes or the badly placed commas or the overwrought betrayal. I’ve written cancel-worthy smut prompts and twee little tooth-aching cuteness. I’ve written so much junk that no one in their right mind would show another living soul, and published it in front of more than EIGHT THOUSAND PEOPLE. 

it’s an inoculation process (get your flu shot, kids). if you write cringe shit on purpose, you mind a lot less when you write cringe shit by accident. in fact, sometimes you start to enjoy the cringe even in your serious work, because you start to recognise a fundamental truth: everything is cringe. purple prose is cringe. romances are cringe. redemption arcs are cringe. em dashes are cringe. superheroes are cringe. 

you will always be writing something cringe. always. even when you’re a bestselling author, you’ll write something and think ‘oh god that’s so fucking cringe’. the difference between you now and you in that future is that you in the future has written so much more cringe shit. you will be (semi) cringe immune. you have survived the cringe before and you will survive the cringe again. 

so keep writing. keep cringing too, but most importantly: just keep writing. it’s the only surefire cure. 

hope this helps!

oh, i am finally old enough to know why my parents took so long to grab their coats. why they would ask us to get ready to go only to sit down for another round of coffee. what would i tell myself, at 10 years old? it’s okay. sit down with them too. take in the extra hour with your friend and her family. when you get home, write down every moment in your diary. one day you will be older and you will be waving goodbye to your best friend, and you will turn the key to start your beat up little car engine, and you will look back over your shoulder. her hair will be blowing in the wind and she will be beautiful and you will be, for a moment, struck by all of it. what you will feel is so wide and nameless that it will engulf you. and you will think of being 14 and kicking her under the table in math every time you wanted to whisper something behind the teacher’s back. you will think about how long the days felt, and how you could hold her hand whenever you wished, but you didn’t. and you will think about all of the people you could have lingered with. and you will wish, more than you have ever felt a wish, that the universe just gave you that - more time to linger. more time to say - i love you. i know i need to leave, but i don’t want to leave you. and when i go, i am leaving a piece of my heart that lingers too. 

one more round of coffee. the days are so short, and you are so lovely.