caitymschmidt

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woop there it is

#oh hi its me #I'm real bad at social media #even tumblr #which is fake social media

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y’all want some cool, muslim-made, modest fashion ideas for your hijabi characters?

absolutely nobody asked but here, have them anyway (all via the Islamic Fashion Institute):

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You know what would make a GREAT plot twist? Fidelity.

#that line is burned forever in my brain

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yes, hello. THIS is why my books are what they are.

It's so annoying when people act like fantasy and sci-fi are cute offshoots of Literature, because interpreting all other stories through the lens of SFF themes and tropes unlocks a lot of really neat insights

#my writing

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Love character arcs where two people start in the same shitty place but one of them starts toward redemption and the other spirals further and further downward. Like yessssss the hardship of choosing to become a better person in spite of who you were before and the people who want you to stay like that. yessssssss suffer and spiral and become worse in spite of the better choice you refuse to accept. yesssssssss the inherent tragedy of losing someone you once loved to the person they are now.

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a dim and grim fantasy tavern but the drinks are very colourful and fruity with little umbrellas & curly straws

#i love this

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humans are humans are humans.

How the media depicts the Apollo 11 mission:

Actual quotes from the Apollo 11 mission:

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This is literally what the magic system is based on.

Me, watching the welding shop guys, and going oooohhhhhhhh.

#TWW #magic system

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ok but like when did self-sacrifice become synonymous with death? writers seem to have forgotten that people can make personal sacrifices for the greater good without giving their lives. plots about self-sacrifice and selflessness don’t always have to end in death. suffering doesn’t have to be mourning. you can create drama and emotional depth on your show without killing everyone. learn to explore the meaning of living rather than dying

#;)

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It’s April in a couple of hours here.Which means its time for a reminder that A*tism Sp*aks thinks that we need a cure - that this is something that we need to save people from.

It’s not new, it’s not going anywhere, and it isn’t a problem to be solved.

#autism #autism acceptance month #autism pride #actually autistic #not writing #but highly important to me

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oh boy, I have Many Thoughts and Feelings here. Starting with the ‘why did you make him black’ thing because I’ve heard that before. It causes the same little flare of rage that ‘why did you make that character gay/queer/neurodivergent/fat/disabled/old/trans/a girl?’ causes. I don’t need a plot reason for someone to be a bisexual, multiracial, neurodivergent girl. She just is. That’s who she is, her existence is shaped by that, regardless of whether or not it’s critical to the story that she has 4A curls. Straight, 20 something white boys with a spotless health record aren’t a default for characters, but because for so long they’ve been treated like they are, we all fall into that rut. Anything different feels like I’m trying to be pushy about it. (hello, groundwater racism)

I have to fight the way I feel like I’m trying to be edgy, trying to buck the norm by having a characters of color be the default in my universe. I am, because fiction is hella white, but it also shouldn’t be a big deal. It drives me fully insane because both things are true at once, so in practice, the result is that I’m endlessly uncomfortable.

To the first point though, I cannot do paragraph physical intros for characters. I just can’t. My Immortal ruined them for me. And since I write third person limited, I find it super weird for a person to self describe their own body.

Personally, I find that social reference is the most reliable way of communicating it. At the least subtle, having the narration comment that the shopkeeper is watching as she shops, but not the white girl in the next aisle. Or use a family reference, explicitly have a character describe their parent’s appearance in contrast to their own. Or have them pause to put on sunscreen with a narrative comment about it sucks that she’s dark skinned enough to get all the racism, but still susceptible to skin cancer. Basically, physical description based on context instead interrupting the flow of the story.

I’ve been sent asks about OCs appearance before, because I never really write a top down paragraph, it’s spread across six chapters of revelations that are context more than descriptors, and apparently some people h a t e that. I don’t care. I’m still not going to do intros. All I can hear is “My name is Ebony Dark’ness Raven Way” and then I delete it out again.

Sometimes that means people miss that a character isn’t white, bc their own bias defaulted to it, and they missed where I talked about wash days and the salon and the character’s Haitian mother (ffs I even explicitly said Black Girl in the first two pages, jfc). But that’s on them. Not you.

Characters aren’t created by modifying the platonic ideal. Its super apparent when we talk about skin tone and race, but its lurking in gender, sexuality, intelligence, neurotypicality, and physicality. We don’t start with your Basic White Boy and flip through the settings til we get someone else. There is no default, no matter how long the tradition for that may be.

currently wondering the best way to introduce a character as black in a story

Sure using black as a descriptor is perfectly fine, especially like ‘John is a tall black man with blonde curly hair.” I just find it boring to list exposition.

If I’m trying to use more creative description techniques though, it feels heavy handed. “John towers over most men, has hair the color of the sun, and skin as dark as coffee.” It feels so in your face. But,whenever I find myself reading about any new character, the faceless being i create in my head to be the main character is white unless specified otherwise. It’s a result of growing up around so many white people, etc. So I add in the skin color line, so that the reader knows without a doubt that the character is black.

But *then* I get people who are like ‘why did you make him black?’ in perhaps the most innocent way possible. Like: ‘are we going to get a scene where his skin color is going to be a factor?’ well, sorta. He’s got dark skin, so he’s not going to sunburn as quick, but that’s really all that comes up. To put it another way, if this story is about John going to a park to pick apples, sure, you can have on your mind ‘he is black therefore experiences systemic racism,’ in fact, I would prefer that. Let that simmer, always. Mostly though, I’d like for you to think about a tall black man is in a park, picking apples. Because that’s what the story is about.

This is rambling and unstructured but it’s bothering me as I write more black characters

#writer problems #is this hard af for me? #yes it is #so I constantly worry I'm doing it wrong? #also yes #but screw you to the anon that asked why I made Frey a Not-White-Girl #And screw the people who think I'm being 'woke' by making Jac biracial #That's who she is #That's who she's always been #any change to that makes her a different person #This is rambly and not super coherent #bc I'm once again upset

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I write a lot about mental health, chronic health issues, and how people cope with what they’re dealt. It isn’t always stated clearly, labelled as such, but it is in there. I’ve found some clearer descriptions of it recently.

For me, depression is an ocean. Really bad episodes are whirlpools, dragging you down no matter how hard you swim. Most of the time though, it’s just an ocean. Like being dropped into the center of the pacific. There’s no land in sight, there’s no boats. There’s not even big waves or monsters or a storm approaching. There’s just you, alone in the water. You don’t know which direction to go, and there’s no promise you’ll make it. But you have to swim. Because if you stop, you’ll drown.

For me, anxiety makes it easier to swim. Anxiety convinces me that there are sharks lurking, and gives me an endless list of goals. Escape this monster. Now this shark. Now this storm. None of them are real, but it gives you a reason to swim. Because you might be willing to drown, passive and unnoticed, but that’s not the same as letting the sharks have you. The fear aches, but you keep moving.

For me, the promise of land in the distance would be enough. It’s a goal. No matter how hard that goal may be to reach, no matter how far it is to swim, I can work with that. I can brace myself for the work, and get to it.

For me, hearing there’s a battle to be won is a motivator, even if its on par with slaying a god. But hearing there is no monster, no storm, no land to reach, no goal to achieve, no war to wage -- that’s telling me that all there is, is the ocean. Water to cross, the same every day, exhausting and overwhelming. No promise of a rest, just a monotone repetition that defines every beat of your heart.

#mental health #chronic conditions #character development #personal #I'm waiting to hear if there's land over the horizon #so I finally found some words for it

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Hey so. This is how you should think about your dialogue and punctuation choices in dialogue. And is what you should forward to your editor when they say you’re grammatically wrong. All that nuance we understand when reading text online with friends? Use that. Your dialogue will make more sense than if you worry about grammar when they’re yelling during a sword fight.

"ok" : I understand what you have said

"ok cool" : this meets my expectations

"yeah ok" : this is weird but I accept it

"ok yeah" : I hadn't thought of it that way but you're right

"ok so" : I am about to tell you something dramatic

"oh ok " : I am crestfallen but trying to act cool about it

#writing

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Fun fact: The reason the Peregrine Order has Generals, Lt Generals, Captains and Lieutenants, but no ranks lower than that, is because for the life of me, I cannot consistently spell the word Sargeant. Sargent. Sergant? Seargant??

#english is a weird language #my writing #this sort of thing is why I love writing original works #don't like a word? #or a food? #or a fashion style? #congrats! it no longer exists in that world!

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yarn chicken is so freaking stressful.

#yarn #when i cant write i crochet

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Hey, you. Aspiring writer here; I love engaging with and analyzing fiction (esp fantasy), but it's very difficult for me to sit down and write anything. I just feel like the process is immensely boring, whether I'm writing by hand or typing, probably on account of associating it with school essay writing. Makes me feel like it's impossible to 'enjoy the journey' so to speak. Any advice for maybe overcoming that?

I might be able to help!

I will start by saying that I am a madman (read: nerd) who has enjoyed writing since middle school and who regularly delivered double the required word count on essays. So, if none of this resonates for you, that’s on me, but hopefully something sparks for you.

1. One thing that I do a lot is the  “drunk” version of the story. That’s the version of the story or scene as you would describe it if you were giddily describing it to your friend/date/stranger. The one where you say things like:

“...And then, BAM! He gets out of the cell at the last minute, right as they’re coming to get him. How? Who knows. idefk. have to figure that out, but he does, possibly with that rope trick I was talking about earlier. When he gets outside...”

I’ll write an entire scene that way when it’s refusing to come together. It’s sloppy and fast, and feels like I’m rambling in a bar. 

Then I move on, write the parts that want to be written, and loop back to the drunk scenes. Since they’re already kinda, sorta written, I don’t feel like I’m writing the scene, just filling in the holes, which is much less stressful for me. It also helps me see where things are missing, where things are too far, and where things need to be thrown out entirely.

2. Another weird way I come at writing is dialogue first. Partly this is because I started in theater, but it seems like lots of people hear the dialogue before the know the rest of the scene. So... write the dialogue. Don’t worry about dialogue tags (he said, she cried) unless you’re in the mood for them, just get the dialogue down on the page.

Then, same thing as before, come back through, and start filling in the details you need to make the dialogue into a scene.

3. Something that always makes me feel like I’m writing another thesis is when I get into really long, really structured paragraphs. I was, frankly, terrified, when I showed/posted/published for the first time because my relationship with proper grammar is.... let’s call it tenuous.

I write the same way I would tell a story in a chat.

I use hard returns and run on sentences and fragments to communicate tone. I don’t know what your personal style is, but why not start by writing exactly the way you’d tell your discord group? You’re not trying to hit MLA format. Story is about communication, so if you communicate via gifs and tiktok references, start there. Sure, you might come back and trade out gifs for descriptions, and depending on your audience, tiktok might need to swap for something else, but that comes later. It might not come at all. All of those options are valid.

4. If you want to break from the habits that have you thinking of school, and kind of rewire your brain for creative writing: write poetry. Or songs. Or find an RP partner. Write a text message fic. Jump as far from writing proper essays as you possibly can. Without knowing quite what you normally do, I’m not sure what that is. But fling yourself as far from grammar rules and structure as you possibly can. Stake a new claim on writing that has nothing to do with essays and grades, and once you’re comfortable there, you can start spreading out into new things.

--- I hope something in there is helpful to you, or at least gave you an idea of something else to be helpful to you. School tends to suck all the joy from writing, so you’re certainly not alone. The best comfort I have for you is this: If you want to be a writer or a storyteller, odds are very good that you’ll find a way to reclaim it. Story is inescapable, and if it’s already grabbed you, I have faith that you’ll find you way in time.

#replies #how to write #writer's block #writers of tumblr #writer problems

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Inside the Lines

After three rounds of mistakes while uploading, I don’t really want to wait until tomorrow and then find two more mistakes meaning I have to re-render. So let’s talk about how great internal rules are when you’re writing! Because they’re amazing! Don’t listen to those motivational posters telling you to color outside the lines, or the bros telling you that tropes are the devil!

#writers of tumblr #writer problems #let's learn #education #keysmash edu #ps my necklace is snakes