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#yeah :)

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Writer Beware makes posts on which publishing houses to avoid at all costs, which words to look for and which words to watch out for in contracts, and several other things that will keep you in control and knowledgeable about the publishing process.  I’d suggest reading through the website if you want to avoid getting ripped off, cheated, or scammed.

#ref

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Heist movies aka found family trope for bastards

#yeah!

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reblog if you’re an active writeblr.

writersociety is a brand new blog that i’m dedicating to the writeblr community. i want writers on tumblr to connect with each other, to interact with each other, to lift each other up and inspire each other.

in short, i want to boost your blog.

from this account i’ll be reblogging author introductions, wip intros, creative writing, prose, poetry, fanfiction, short stories, writing prompts, etc., with one goal: to get you and your writeblr friends the recognition you deserve.

like this idea? follow this blog, reblog this post, and start tagging your work with #writersociety. dm me posts from your favorite blogs. send me an ask and gush about your friend’s wip. tag me under a writing resource post. get me out there, so i can return the favor.

this is for every single one of you. this is writersociety. this is just the beginning.

#I’m not really active yet but I’ve followed and when I start posting intros I’ll use the tag!

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My hobbies include: Longingly looking at books I can’t afford

#life is just longing for books

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―BEND THE STARS.

(a wip introduction)

genre: high fantasy

status: first draft, outlining/drafting

pov: third, past, multiple narrators

themes: found family, romance, vengeance, courage, perseverance, finding oneself, loss, grief, pining, romance

SYNOPSIS. 

Known as the Star Priestess, Adhira Bakshi plays puppeteer for the sky. She bends the stars into new constellations, glittering new patterns every night to leave the kingdom of Batra mesmerized. She’s little more than a showmaster, all gold and luster with no real shimmer.

But there are changes coming, changes fast. The capture of the last known ravi- a face from her past- starts a tumult of change and unravels everything Adhira and the kingdom of Batra has ever known.

 page wip. tag. 

CHARACTERS.

ADHIRA BAKSHI is better known as the Star Priestess, an enigma who rearranges the stars into glittering new constellations every night for the royal court. Having been raised in the cutthroat politics of Batran royalty, she secretly longs to run far, far away from the court that she so heavily despises. 

ARJUN KASHYAP has been on the run for years, but a disaster with his ravi powers causes his capture, bringing them to the palace of Batra. He is brought face to face with a person they never expected to meet again, and never did he imagine the circumstances. 

DEV MAHAJAN is the heir to the Batran throne, but under the seemingly perfect princely facade, he is beginning to have doubts about his ability to lead and about his kingdom himself. An encounter with the mysterious new arrival is enough to change his perspective forever.

MEENAKSHI AHUJA is the child of the royal advisor and has spent their whole life immersed in the life of the royalty. They dream of better days, and wishes that she could do something to change the laws. They have been silenced all their life. This time, her voice will be heard.

TAGLIST.

(please ask to be added/removed)

Keep reading

#:O

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Writeblr Re-Introduction

I'm back baby!! And this time I have actual writer friends to hold me accountable. And they better *squints at max*

About me:

elena

she/they

17

lesbian

I mostly read and write litfic! Here are some things I seem to rly like writing about:

horrible horrible people! Deeply fucked up women are my favorite thing to write all my WIPs have them <3

lesbians. Literally incapable of making a book without lesbians

the 20th century

complicated/toxic/bad romance (rah rah rah ah ah)

twins / siblings

religious motifs

classic lit / shakespeare references

My WIPs, in brief:

SLOW POISON - this is my main focus rn. It's a revamp of an old historical fiction WIP based on some real historical lesbian writers that I've decided to totally change up and set at a women's college in the 90s. I'll probably make an intro for this!

LOVELY WORD FOR DUSK - coming of age thing set in immediately post-soviet Moscow. Needs some work but the characters are very near and dear to me

[TITLE PENDING LMAO] - follows the young life of an aristocrat and her awful family / descent into femmefatalehood. Don't tell anyone but it's a Hélène-centric war and peace adaptation / retelling. If that doesn't mean anything to you don't worry! Basically this book said Fuck Leo Tolstoy

SHORT STORIES - I write 'em! I don't have a fancy collection name or anything but I'll probably mention them on here too

That's all folks! You can also find me @millymygirl if you enjoy chaos and nonsense and books that I DIDN'T write. Say hi!

#you had me at deeply fucked up women and it only got better from there #can’t wait to see some of your stuff!

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is this? accidental competance??

#bloop

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Happy Valentine’s Day!

Please share a shippy moment from your WIP with me :)

#literary flirting!!

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FINNPETRA FLUFF FEBRUARY ❃ DAY 15: DOODLES

i’m writing a little fluffy prompt piece set around my wip muddy roads & foxgloves every day for the month of february. see all FinnPetra Fluff February posts here!

POV: Finneas.

setting: dating for a while.

synopsis: Petra tries out her hidden artistic skills on a new muse.

words: 838

Reyna Hill Park was an oasis of green in the middle of Richeport, a break from the unforgiving steel and concrete of the streets. Once climbing up the hill, one would immediately find themselves surrounded by trees and boulders and squirrels and maybe even a raccoon or two, if they weren’t feeling shy. Only the occasional peek of the skyscrapers downtown through the branches and the faint, distant hum of the traffic on the freeway served as a reminder of still being in the city.

“Look at those ferns,” Petra gushed, pointing to a group of them clustered at the base of a tree, their fronds fully unfurled. “Did you know that some fern species have remained biologically unchanged for the last one hundred and eighty million years? Also—”

She stopped suddenly, hesitated, then began, “Sor—”

“If you apologize one more time for talking about plants…” Finneas cut in.

“Right,” Petra said. “No more apologizing. Sorry. I mean—”

He shook his head with a little amused smile and gave her hand a gentle squeeze. Spotting a small clearing through the trees, he said, “This spot look good?”

Petra nodded, and the two veered off the path. Finding a nice crook between two large roots protruding from the ground, Petra slung off her book bag and settled at the foot of a tree to pull out her sketchbook and a pencil. Finneas stretched himself out on the grass next to her, laying his head on his girlfriend’s thighs to stare up at the foliage above them, through which he could catch glimpses of the fluffy white clouds passing by.

Keep reading

#oh that’s so soft I love them 🥺🥺

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I know this has been said before, but with tumblr’s shitty culture of black and white and nothing in between, I think it warrants saying again: 

It is very much okay to write straight relationships.

We need wlw and mlm, and we need non-binary characters and bisexuals and asexuals and queer platonic relationships and healthy polyamory. But we also need to have good mlw relationships and straight characters present in literature, because as much as we don’t have the diversity of sexualities, we also don’t have diversity within straight characters. 

Diversity such as mlw ships in which…

One or both characters are poc, (but neither is fetishized or ‘ambiguously tan’.)

One or both characters are disabled.

One or both character are allowed to be non-gender conforming while still identifying as a binary gender.

One or both characters identify as either trans, or a binary-leaning gender, like a demi-boy/girl.

The characters are a part of a healthy polyamorous relationship.

The characters are in any healthy, loving relationship where both characters have equal power and agency within the relationship and the man is not worshiped as a feminist monument for accepting the woman as his equal (because men should not need to be given a prize for treating a woman like another human being, thank you very much.)

Now, if you think I’m saying you should go out and change your non-mlw relationships, then you are vastly misunderstanding me. There should always be characters with diverse sexualities in every book because there are people with diverse sexualities in every culture and every age, and because including these characters, (especially as non-pov characters), is so easy that any non-homophobic monkey could do it in their sleep.

What I am saying, is that we need to stop protesting writers who are writing amazing diversity and happen to have a straight protagonist or a mlw central ship. 

There’s a difference between a writer who adds token diversity to a straight world for brownie points, and a writer who writes with diversity while still using their stories to show that the common mlw relationships in media aren’t the full picture, nor the way mlw relationships should be.

#you’re right and you should say it!

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Hey! Do you have any advice for writing about really young children and babies?

TIPS ON HOW TO WRITE YOUNG CHILDREN AND BABIES

Babies (Ages 0-1)

Babies usually learn how to sit up at 4 to 7 months, to crawl at about 7 to 10 months, to stand up at 9 to 10 months, and to walk at 9 to 12 months. Babies can learn to talk as early as 6 months, though they only start to form two to four word sentences from 18 months to 2 years old.

Babies are cute little bundles of joy that lighten up the entire household, though they do have their moments.

My biggest pet peeve about people who write babies into their stories is that they only concentrate on the cons. The baby is always crying and annoying the characters, who make snide remarks about how they wish it would shut up.

The writers set it up so that the baby sounds like more of a burden than anything else, and unless your other characters don’t want the baby and feel like it is a burden, then I highly suggest you switch it up and describe the happy moments that the characters have with their babies, too.

They don’t just cry because they’re hungry or need to have their diaper changed.

Contrary to popular belief, whenever a baby cries it does not mean that it needs to be fed or that it has pooped itself. Babies cry over all sorts of things because they literally have no other way to communicate when they’re unhappy.

They cry when they’re tired.

They cry when they’re left alone. (Separation anxiety is very prevalent in babies, who feel afraid and unsafe whenever their guardians are not with them

They cry when they’re frustrated and can’t do the things that their parents and siblings can do.

They cry when they’re scared.

They cry when they are left with the parent that isn’t their favorite. (This usually happens to dads when the babies are left in their care)

This may sound annoying, but babies are just trying to make it known that they’re unhappy. They can’t say “Hey, I’m upset, can you help me?” so their only other option is to cry. Since they’re young, these things that are happening to them are the WORST things they’ve ever experienced. When a baby throws a fit over a broken toy or separation anxiety, that’s probably because it’s the scariest and most heartbreaking thing that has ever happened to them!

They need constant love, care, and attention.

This is literally a young human person. They’re just as aware and alert as you and I, and they need constant stimulation to keep happy. Parents really have it cut out for them; they have to raise this little human larva into a fully grown homo sapien that will function well in society, and in order to do that they have to provide a lot of TLC to make sure the baby’s mind develops correctly.

A lot of parents in stories don’t do this; they only give their baby attention when it’s crying and I can’t help but think: that’s not??? How it works????

Things that parents do for their children to help them develop:

Read books

Sing songs

Play with toys with them

Play games like peek-a-boo and patty cake

Put on music

Put on educational TV and movies (Though they shouldn’t do this too often!)

Simply be around them

Parents should not leave the baby alone for extended periods of time.

This is a given. Babies can get themselves into a lot of trouble: They can roll of couches, touch hot or sharp objects, and eat things that they shouldn’t. Babies have to be under constant supervision, and it gets me really annoyed when characters in stories leave their child unattended for a long time.

Babies need a lot of equipment, which can include:

- Crib

- Bib

- Pacifier/Binky

- Bottle and formula (If parents don’t breastfeed)

**FYI babies on formula or breast milk need to be burped after they’re fed because they swallow air and can have gas buildup within their stomach and intestines. Some babies need to be burped a lot, while others don’t; it all depends on the baby, though bottle fed babies tend to swallow more air than breastfed ones.**

- Blankets and mats to lie on

- Toys (LOTS of them!)

- High chair

- Baby friendly food (for older babies that are off formula, which occurs after the sixth month mark), which can include actual baby food, Cheerios, fruit that is cut into small pieces, animal crackers, and anything that can be eaten with fingers that can’t be choked on.

The parents, if they’re caring ones, are always thinking about the baby.

This is especially if they’re first time parents. Babies are a BIG DEAL, and they become the most important things in their parents’ lives. They’re always thinking about the baby and can tend to worry a LOT when they’re separated from them. They take many precautions, such as baby-proofing the house, to keep their little ones safe, and most parents would take a bullet for their baby.

If the parents in your story don’t fret over their baby at least once, then you’re writing baby parents wrong.

Toddlers (Ages 2-5)

Many important milestones in a human’s life happen during these critical years. They start forming complete sentences and developing social skills. They learn that to get what they want they don’t just have to cry; they can communicate in other ways, though sometimes they take to crying if they don’t get their way.

Toddlers can be marginally more worrisome than babies; they’re mobile now, so they can now reach higher and move around faster than their younger counterparts. Their crying no longer is cute, but rather more annoying now that they’re older and are starting to develop their personalities, and there’s a reason why they’re called “The terrible twos”

Toddlers are just like upgraded babies that need most of the things babies do but can now communicate, walk, and eat real food.

However, the most important thing writers should know: TODDLERS ARE NOT SAGES

They should not be spouting deep, philosophical life lessons at every turn; that aspect of children that’s been developed in books, about how they “know things” just because they’re young and innocent, is completely false. One or two meaningful lines should be fine, but remember that they’re still kids; they like talking about dinosaurs, superheroes, princesses, animals, and trucks, and 98% of their dialogue should merely be them being a kid.

Hope this helped!

#little tiny humans! #I hope I did baby Orestes well in my Iphigenia at Aulis telling #it was a fun juggling game of who has the baby and should that person have the baby #and also when is baby sleeping and getting fed with all this going on #he doesn’t have much bearing on the plot yet he’s there to be cute and loved and to establish his existence for later #in my defense Euripides also did not do a good job keeping track of baby Orestes

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a complete guide to panic attacks for writers

I’ve seen many posts about this and many of them are either not very complete or somewhat misleading, so here goes, a certified anxious wreck’s guide to panic attacks. 

First thing: there isn’t a clinical distinction between a panic attack and an anxiety attack so I’m not sure why everyone is splitting hairs over it. In the DSM “panic attack” refers to the quick, sudden onset of intense fear and stress, the sympathetic nervous system response, and all the associated physical symptoms (that i’m about to get into). “Anxiety attack” isn’t a clinical term, and yet I see all kinds of posts “explaining” the difference and none of them actually agree on what the difference is (duration? severity? trigger or lack thereof? I’ve seen so many different things), so to me it seems like a dumb thing to split hairs over. Generalized anxiety is definitely different, but even then the lines can blur and when we’re talking about a discrete *event* where the symptoms come upon a person, that’s an “attack” and saying panic attack suffices. Or anxiety attack. Just. Whatever. 

TL;DR: there is no clinically recognized difference between a “panic attack” and an “anxiety attack,” everything I see explaining the difference has a different idea of what the difference is, and it’s not like, offensive or something to use the “wrong” term so just. Yeah it’s not a big deal. 

What is a panic attack? 

A panic attack is basically when someone all of a sudden feels extremely terrified and panicked, without being in actual danger. They’re associated with anxiety disorders and post-traumatic stress disorder, though they can happen to someone who doesn’t have a mental illness. 

Panic attacks are not just the emotion of fear, though; there are a lot of physical and mental reactions that go along with them. Feeling terror isn’t the only thing that’s happening. When the brain perceives a threat, the sympathetic nervous system causes a bunch of things to happen in the body to prepare the person to either fight or run away from the threat. That’s called a fight-or-flight response. Breathing and heart rate speed up, while digestion is suppressed, and so on. These responses affect almost every system in the body. The person’s mental state also changes. They become very hyper-vigilant to threats and “tunnel-visioned” on whatever it is that seems to be the threat. 

A panic attack is basically all this stuff happening, but there’s nothing to fight or run away from. It’s bad. 

Symptoms, physical and mental

Some things to keep in mind, that I haven’t seen addressed in any post before: I’ve known a lot of people, including myself, with various anxiety disorders who experience panic attacks and all of them experienced a different grab-bag of symptoms. In some cases, the symptoms could be very weird. It would take forever to exhaust all the possible symptoms of a panic attack, but I’ll do a list and explain (I’ll go into more detail about how to write all this in a bit). There’s a whole range of severity, and the loss of control/thinking you’re going to die happens with the more severe ones. One person can have both small attacks and huge ones that are much worse, and the symptoms they have can change over time. 

Intense fear - panic attacks are terrifying. They vary in how terrifying. I know saying “terrifying” is exactly what it says on the tin, but it’s hard to convey to someone who hasn’t experienced this exactly HOW terrifying they can be when they’re really bad. When I was younger, I had attacks that lasted hours wherein it seemed almost as if I had suddenly realized that nothing in the universe is kind or good or safe and nothing I could hold onto for security felt even real. I know that sounds damn dramatic, but it’s what happened. On that note: 

Feeling a sense of immediate impending doom. Again, no real way to describe this well but its Bad 

Being convinced you are going to die. I mean convinced.  

Feeling like you are losing control or going crazy. This goes along with the things I just discussed, and is usually with a severe attack. 

Racing or pounding heart - this is one everyone will know. Basically, your body is convinced you need to run from something or fight something. 

Feeling that the room is swirling or spinning around you. 

Choking/suffocating feeling or feeling like you have trouble breathing - This is scary. Honestly, a lot of why panic attacks are so scary is that the *symptoms* are scary. I used to always feel like I couldn’t pull air far enough into my lungs, or that no breath I took in was deep enough. You might feel like your throat is closing up. Expect a character to possibly gulp or gasp for air that they don’t feel like they’re getting. 

Dizziness or feeling lightheaded or faint. Can result from hyperventilating as a result of feeling like you can’t breathe. Your character might need to sit down all of a sudden, or lean against a wall. 

Crying, or screaming: Not everyone will respond this way, but a person’s stoic-ness or “toughness” doesn’t have a lot to do with whether they do. Even a strong, tough person can react this way. An emotional person won’t necessarily cry. It depends. 

Talking to oneself, babbling, muttering, moaning, really any kind of vocalization. “Ohmygodohmygodohmygod.” That kind of thing. 

Pacing rapidly, fidgeting uncontrollably, unable to sit still. Messing with items around you and throwing them aside. Your character might walk around in tight circles or gesticulate frantically, clutch at their hair, etc. 

Really any tic or nervous habit that a character has might get worse and possibly harmful.

Shaking/shivering/trembling uncontrollably: A lot of people will think hand tremors or being “shaky” with nervousness, which I guess happens, but this can be and very often is very intense, teeth-chattering, whole-body stuff. Often seems to happen in waves or spasms, and you can’t stop it. If you’re having a very bad attack, think violent, uncontrollable waves of shivering. It’s very unpleasant. 

Tunnel vision or black around the edges of your vision: This is not something I can find on google but I know it’s happened to me at least once. 

Sweating. 

Goosebumps or chill-bumps. 

Chest pains. Not something I have experienced much, so I can’t elaborate too much. 

Numb, tingly fingers or hands. I don’t have any personal experience with this, but apparently this happens to people. 

Racing or spiraling thoughts. Even if it didn’t have a trigger at all, your thoughts can still be really panicked and disjointed. Expect your character’s internal monologue to be very repetitive and unstructured. If there was a trigger, expect extreme obsessing over the thing that caused the panic. But in some cases, panic attacks can be almost purely physical responses. Multiple times I’ve been overcome by the symptoms and mentally just been like “Oh, this is…happening to me.” 

Anger or aggression: The intense feelings of a panic attack can come out in some weird ways, and this is one of them. Snapping, lashing out, irritability, or other ways of responding with anger won’t be out of place. You might be extremely defensive or ready to fight back. 

Nausea: Panic attacks always came with very severe nausea for me, though I never actually threw up (that’s rare, but it happens to some people.) This doesn’t happen to a lot of people, though. 

Other digestive distress: You can definitely have diarrhea or stomach pains. 

Hot flashes. 

Face turning pale/blanching. 

A feeling of weakness in your body. 

Feeling like what’s going on around you isn’t real; your surroundings seeming surreal. (Derealization. I haven’t experienced this much, so you can do more research on your own if you want to explore this one.)

Feeling detached from your body or like you’re observing yourself from far away. Feeling like you aren’t real. (This is called depersonalization.  Not much personal experience with this, either.) 

And these symptoms aren’t even close to all of them. Honestly, a lot of weird crap can happen, because panic attacks affect the entire body and everyone’s body is different. Of the list above, I’ve experienced everything at one point or another except depersonalization, stomach upset, and the tingling hands/arms and many of the above symptoms happened to me as flukes (I think chest pains happened like once). Some of the things on the list developed later in life. (I started getting hot flashes due to anxiety when I was 16.) Some symptoms disappeared as I got older. (I haven’t actually experienced shortness of breath much since I was a kid.) Everyone I know has a different set of these traits. I have no idea why. This is all just to show the wide variety of symptoms that can occur, and show that everyone is going to experience it differently. As for your character, you can just pick whatever feels right to you. Racing heart and shortness of breath are pretty much staples of the panic experience, and the shaking/trembling and dizziness are very common as well, but everyone is going to be different. 

Now, how does one actually write a panic attack? 

If you’re writing about panic attacks, you most likely have a character who has some form of trauma or anxiety disorder. Now, panic attacks can happen totally at random, but there is usually some sort of cause. 

When I say “cause,” that can be “the room is too hot” or “I saw something in an article about one of my phobias.” (These examples are drawn from my friend and me, respectively.) Really little things can set the snowball rolling. Stress or anything unexpected will do it, and so will exposure to your character’s triggers. 

When I was younger, my triggers were all related to my phobias, which were mostly health-related. That meant reading something about some rare form of cancer, or something like that, could cause me to have an attack. Triggers could be related to a character’s trauma, or they can just be something that scares or stresses out a character. it depends on the character. Trauma related triggers can be very little and random. Anything they associate with their abuse or abuser–a scent, a certain song, a phrase said in a certain way–can set them off. 

When I say “snowball,” that’s really how it works. The thing about panic attacks is that the attack itself is absolutely terrifying, to the point that a lot of people who experience them develop extra anxiety just over the prospect of having another one. The hallmark characteristic really is intense terror. When you’re not good and jaded and used to having them, the symptoms themselves will make you freak out more. Panic results in feeling like you’re struggling to breathe, and struggling to breathe results in more panic. I was especially screwed because my main triggers were–guess what–all related to illness. Yay. 

Your character is going to be in a very altered state of mind, most likely. They will be obsessing and spiraling and latching onto worst-case scenarios so that they can’t really objectively analyze what is going on with their body. Everything is Bad. Everything seems like it’s as bad as it could possibly be. On this same note, your character is not going to be able to think or reason their way out of this. Their irrational, fearful thoughts are going to be a lot stronger than the reasonable ones and will be flashing like strobe lights on top of it. If that didn’t do it, the extremely powerful bodily response they are dealing with sure would. The “sense of impending doom” or of feeling like you might die is overwhelming and hard to counter with thoughts because it just feels so vast. 

Write a severe panic attack as you would excruciating pain, because that’s the best way to put the kind of mental state. It has to stop, it HAS to stop, but it doesn’t stop, there’s nothing you can do because there’s no actual threat. 

And yet, if your character has experienced this many times, they may be able to hold onto sanity and control their physical responses. I’ll get into coping skills in a bit, but I’m putting this out there to say that the first time and the fiftieth time might be really different. 

The first time people experience a panic attack, they often call 911. I’m serious. The thing is, you have to learn that what you’re physically experiencing is a result of panic; you don’t just instinctively know that. The first time I had one, I was 10 and the shaking and spasming didn’t feel like an emotional response, it felt like what in the actual hell is going on? Am I dying? It takes several more times experiencing this to figure out how your body reacts during a panic attack and several MORE to be able to piece yourself together enough during it to say to yourself, “I am having a panic attack,” and identify the symptoms. 

That said, even when you know what’s going on with you, it’s still very scary because what do you do when you feel like you have to run, but there’s nothing to run from? Or you feel like you can’t breathe, but you know you’re taking in air? 

All that to say: the emotional response of fear isn’t the central thing your character will be conscious of. Their thoughts, and their physical reactions, are as important and they might even seem detached from the feelings of fear. So don’t just have your character being like “I’m terrified, I’m terrified, I’m freaking out…” It feels like some kind of medical disaster. I wasn’t always able to identify my attacks as fear at all. Obviously your character is scared. But show that through their thoughts (spiraling, disjointed, obsessive, babbling) and what’s going on in their body (cant breathe, sweaty, shaking uncontrollably).  

Panic attacks can last anywhere from a few minutes to hours. When you get to ones that are hours long, usually it’s happening in multiple “waves.” Your character can start to calm down, and then they can start to think about stressful things again and hyperventilate and go back into it. A lot of definitions list them as “brief” but the briefest one I’ve ever had probably was no less than 20 or 30 minutes. Again, it will vary with the character. 

After your character starts calming down (this can just happen due to utter exhaustion, getting the symptoms under control, or just realizing that it’s been two hours and they’re not dying), they will feel exhausted. Especially if it’s a long attack. If they’ve been in panic mode for hours expect them to be feeling like a beaten rug hanging on a porch. Panic attacks are draining. They probably won’t feel up to much after. Their energy will be gone. They might feel a sense of calm and security after they’re done, or they might feel very sick and bad. It just depends. 

On Coping 

The best coping skills usually target the body itself and focus on slowing down the fight-or-flight response. This is why breathing exercises are recommended. But they don’t always work. Being super aware of my breathing would always make me freak out more. The mental and physical aspects bounce off one another and if something that’s helping in one area is making it worse in another, it won’t help overall. 

In my experience, knowing what was happening to me, all the causes of the physical things I was feeling, and that they were all just results of the panic attack helped me fend off the worse things–feeling like I was going to die, et cetera. It may not be that way for everyone. But just knowing what is happening to you, or not knowing, makes a lot of a difference. 

What not to do: I know it’s hugely tempting to have your character be held and reassured by their love interest and calm down, but…really, with a panic attack, you’re not going to pull someone out of it. It has to pass. Especially once the snowball is already rolling, it needs time to pass. Even the best damn coping skills in the world aren’t going to erase this and neither is a hug from someone cute.

Different people will need different things. Some people will be helped by being hugged or held tightly, but that’s not everyone. Some will want to be left the hell alone. Some people will want you to be near them and talk to them, but not touch them. For some people, holding their hand is enough. 

There’s a post going around somewhere saying that grabbing someone and holding them tightly to you will stop a panic attack. This goes for both real life and fiction–DO NOT DO THAT. Ask!! Ask!! if it’s okay! to touch them!!!!!! Never ever ever ever ever touch someone who is in this sort of distress without permission and especially don’t keep doing it even if they struggle. They could feel trapped and start to feel even worse, or if their panic is trauma related, they might have  a flashback to an assault. In either case they might fight back and hurt you or themselves. Don’t put this in a book and show it actually working and being a good thing because NO. 

If you want to indulge some hurt/comfort or fluff,  just show the love interest character staying with them, asking what they need, doing what they can to help. Your frightened character’s love interest can coach their breathing, bring them a blanket or a glass of water, or just talk to them. They can remind the character that they aren’t suffocating. I mean, sure, they can hug if you like. Some people are comforted by being hugged. Just don’t portray it as some kind of cure or instant fix. Someone who is having a panic attack isn’t going to just immediately calm down upon falling into the arms of the right character. They may not calm down at all. The love interest might feel very inadequate. The most comforting things in the world are not going to be that comforting right then. Anyway, showing the love interest sticking through and being compassionate and attentive through ugly, scary hours of terror, even if there’s not a lot they can do, is sexy. 

If you wanna do cuddles, put those in post-attack, when your character is mostly calmed down and now is just spent and tired. They probably need the comfort and a long hug or back rub might do them good. 

On the topic of hugs, give someone with an anxiety disorder a hug for me today, will ya? (Ask first.) This was emotionally exhausting. Whew. 

#I get chest pain with mine and for me it feels like someone’s shoving a baseball under my ribs #it’s pressure more than pain but still scary as hell the first few times #I’ve only actually felt like I’d die once and the only reason I didn’t go to the hospital is I didn’t want to wake anyone up to take me #so I was just like. guess I’ll die rather than inconvenience a loved one so there’s some fucky anxiety thoughts for you #info #anxiety

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unpopular opinion but that post that’s like “I don’t consider fantasy world building complete until you can tell me about common grammar mistakes in your conlang and what books are popular now verses in the past” is a bad post. 

When you’re world building, you should really, really stick to the stuff that’s going to be relevant to your story. You should NOT throw in details into a story that are unnecessary to that plotline. A dedicated fan of your series might really want to know more about the humor of your world’s people, but generally speaking that’s where they start to fill in the blanks themselves. 

I don’t know a damn thing about toy production in Lord of the Rings or common grammar mistakes in Dovahzul. I don’t want to know about how people in Narnia get an education or what people in Westros read for fun. It isn’t important. DONT waste your time developing these things when you can be spending your time actually writing your story. 

#worldbuilding #if you *want* to come up with that stuff absolutely go wild we’re here for a good time #but you don’t need it #however LotR was an interesting choice for a post about *not* going overboard on worldbuilding

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Viking dresses by Savelyeva Ekaterina

#LOVE these #clothing ref #clothing insp

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There’s now a Gritty reference in No Illusions and I’m not sorry

#as there should be! #that’s the appropriate brand of chaos

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QUESTION FOR WRITERS WHO USE COMPUTERS!!!

what font do you write in? 😊

#Cambria but I fuckin #I got a textbook that is published in a *gorgeous* serif font and I want to make that one my default #but I don’t know what font it is or how to find out so I’ll just have font envy I guess #it’s got just enough personality while still being a passably standard serif font #and I don’t know how a font makes itself *more* legible than average but it’s just so nice to read #I know one part is the d and b are like tilted so they aren’t mirrors of each other