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“omg you’re so creative. how do you get your ideas” i hallucinate a single scene in the taco bell drive thru and then spend 13 months trying to write it

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i could be such a good writer if i would just *clenches fist* write

#me when im composing prose as im trying to fall asleep

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i love this character so much......i hope they get seriously injured and almost die

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*through sweat, blood, and tears* YOU WILL NOT EDIT THE FIRST DRAFT AS YOU GO. YOU WILL NOT EDIT THE FIRST DRAFT AS YOU GO. YOU WILL NOT EDIT THE FIRST DRAFT. AS YOU GO.

YOU. WILL. NOT. EDIT. THAT. FIRST. DRAFT.

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Spring! So over the course of the story, we arrive to summer (and, perhaps, autumn)

Spring has so much rejuvenating energy; we perk up after a long, dark winter with a renewed sense of hope and joy for the world around us. This is when my characters will be at their very best, and I can illustrate what inspires them. It’s a good place to set their baseline for the reader. (Yes, I suffer from Seasonal Affective Disorder, why do you ask?)

Summer is comfortable. Weather is less volatile, which means fewer environmental discomforts. Characters can come and go here and there with relative ease. Characters’ actions and choices are less affected by inclement weather, so I find it easier to let their stories shine. (I am generalizing, of course; storms and natural disasters and oppressive heat are still a thing.)

Autumn is when the world slows. It gets dark, the wind and rain force people indoors, and it is the first call of the coming winter. There is less excitement as characters bid farewell to the warmth and daylight. I find this is a nice place to end a story; people spend more time together around a hearth, sharing meals, and making their own merriment when the weather turns cold.

I am known to change it up, though. It all depends on the mood of the story. The raw fortitude winter demands of us adds a little je ne sais quoi to a character’s journey. The environment can hinder a character, give them moments of weakness and hopelessness, or illustrate their strengths.

I write mostly fantasy/romantasy, so my characters and their cultures rely mightily on good weather to do, like, almost everything — including just surviving. And I am heavily influenced by my local climate (southern Canada) bc I haven’t experienced the seasons anywhere else, so all I know is 7 months of The Dark Times and 5 months of Life Is Good, Actually.

Hey Writeblr, today's Writing Question

Do you have a favorite time of year to set your stories in?

Something about summer storms and the wet season as always felt so right for Saints of Storm and Sorrow. Thinking about shifting it just seems wrong.

#thoughts #tips

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Me: Okay, Brain. Think about what happens next in this chapter.

Brain: *Skips three chapters ahead*

Me: No, no. This one, this chapter, the one we are writing right now.

Brain:.......*47 scenes forward*

Me: NO

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Hey, you wrote today! Congratulations! It doesn't matter if it's 1000 words or half a page. You still did it, you're moving forward! Keep going!

You've got this ⭐

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this quote from hbomberguy’s plagiarism video really resonated with me:

“creative people have trouble recognising their skills as skills, because eventually they feel like second nature. […] this stuff really is valuable. if it wasn’t, people wouldn’t be stealing it. creativity doesn’t feel special or unique until you realise people have to plagiarise it”

your craft is and always will be valuable, please never let anyone make you doubt that

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“You can bite me back if you like.”

He continued to stare down at her for a moment, the gears behind his eyes visibly turning. Finally, he shook his head. “What am I to do with you…”

“I have a few ideas.”

I'm shamelessly stealing this from twitter, but writers !! Quick, reblog with the last line or two that you wrote, no cheating.

#sorry - technically 4 lines #is that cheating? #from a Gale Dekarios wip

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Just learned about garden path sentences.

They’re basically a literary prank– the sentence starts out in such a way that you think you know where it’s going, but the way it ends completely changes the meaning while still being a complete and logical sentence. Usually it deals with double meanings, or with words that can be multiple parts of speech, like nouns and verbs or nouns and adjectives.

So we get gems like

The old man the boat. (The old people are manning the boat)

The complex houses married and single soldiers and their families. (The apartment complex is home to both married and single soldiers, plus their families)

The prime number few. (People who are excellent are few in number.)

The cotton clothing is usually made of grows in Mississipi. (The cotton that clothing is made of)

The man who hunts ducks out on weekends. (As in he ducks out of his responsibilities)

We painted the wall with cracks. (The cracked wall is the one that was pained.)

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The List of Raw Quotes from the Internet:

“People who value any aspect of creation would do well not to pit gods against one another.”

“Hell is empty, and all the devils are here.” 

“I will face God and walk backwards into Hell.”

“Then perish.”

“I have been through Hell and come out singing.”

“Do I look like the kind of man who dies?”

“Do you think God stays in Heaven because He too lives in fear of what He created?”

“To become god is the loneliest achievement of all.”

“You kneel before my throne unaware that it was built on lies.”

“This is Hell’s territory and I am beholden to no gods.”

“Impudent of you to assume that I will meet a mortal end.”

“Bury me shallow, I’ll be back.”

“Take this gift, for the gods surely won’t.”

“One day, you will be face to face with whatever saw fit to let you exist in the universe, and you will have to justify the space you’ve filled.”

“Will you fight? Or will you perish like a dog?”

“Deviation from the norm will be punished unless it is exploitable.”

“You cannot kill me in a way that matters.”

“Pick a god and pray.”

“We deserve a soft epilogue, my love.”

“We are the timeline that God has abandoned.”

“Pick a Hell and rot there.”

“Every day we stray further from God’s light.”

“I survived because the fire inside me burned brighter than the fire around me.”

“I’d sell you to Satan for one corn chip.”

“The risk I took was calculated, but man am I bad at math.”

“If the world chooses to become my enemy, I will fight as I always have.”

“I am a monument to all your sins.”

“It’s not about whether you win or lose. Sometimes it’s about how many pages you add to the rulebook.”

“You’re rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic, my friend.”

“The man who sleeps with a machete is a fool every night but one.”

“I don’t believe in divine retribution, but then life throws people like you at me.”

“God wanted me dead, now you get to find out why.”

“The fruits of the earth do not exist to be worth something to us.”

“I’ve got a date with destiny, and it ain’t gonna end with a kiss.”

“Hostage or not, sometimes it’s nice being held.”

“To sit still is to submit to a god who cannot stand to see such power in potentia mere inches from realizing itself and overcoming him.”

“That sounds like a you problem.”

“…but sadly I am only a little bug and you are a garden.”

“In a society where all adventure has been destroyed, the only adventure left is to destroy that society.”

“How many times have people used a pen or paintbrush because they couldn’t pull the trigger?”

“So hope like hell your captor is an evil man. A good man will kill you with hardly a word.”

“…For they are a scoundrel and a foul beast of fields untouched by green.”

“Do you not think that Satan, too, has some affection for the inhabitants of Hell?”

“Does poetry flourishing even in the cracks and grime of the world devalue its beauty? Is the divine rendered plain when it becomes commonplace? Would you have the sublime subjected to the gatekeeping of a self-serving elite? Better it should be used and misused as us absurd commoners see fit.”

“Lock your doors and windows. God will forgive your absence.”

“I stand here, a fool of my own making.”

“Canon is but the sandbox in which I strike lightning to form glass. Trouble me no more with your quibbling and quorums, lest I grind you to dust beneath my heel and build stories from the remnants of your bones. Avast, foul fiend.”

“In the end, everyone is aware of this: nobody keeps any of what he has, and life is only a borrowing of bones.”

“’It’s not that deep.’ Maybe not originally, but the ground is soft and I’m ready to dig.”

“Ask the moon. Ask what it has witnessed.”

“Some things don’t belong on this plane of existence and the universe conspires to correct that.”

“Weird is a prerequisite to all things good and entertaining.”

“The sunrise has never caught me sleeping.”

“People are trying to be right no matter how wrong they are, I am here, accepting my primal desires.”

“Swear all you want, but the gods have shut their ears.”

“Tis the nature, curse, and cure of humanity to be forever attracted to the abyss.”

“If you hit a mole over the head for long and hard enough, eventually it learns to mind its own beeswax. Keep whacking.”

“If we built a tower of Babel, in this day and age, no one would stop us. We would build, and build, and one day inevitably breach the gates of heaven. And we would send in a probe, and then an exploratory team, clad in hazmat suits and protective gear, to enter the gates, and lo! before them would be a great, winding mass, a crumbling chitinous mountain range, a swooping winding wormous cavern, pale and sickly and turned to dust. And we will understand why no one stopped us: it will be the exoskeleton of God.”

“I must make time fear me most.”

“My third eye is open but damn it needs a monocle.”

“Some sins follow us, trotting along and planting themselves in dark corners, high shelves, gathering dust like a forgotten potted ficus, forever a part of the inner scenery of our minds. They thrive there. In the dark. Knowing we will someday stumble in. This is why ‘tis unwise to explore the inner chambers of our souls.”

“Ideals are made of gold and light, but human lives are made of blood and tears, and spill with slippery ease; choose carefully what hills to build and die upon.”

“I shall dig my very own shallow grave. Onward.”

“Confidence! A fool’s substitute for intelligence!”

“Weird hill to die on, but at least you’re dead.”

“Our paths may have crossed briefly, but you’ve still had the misfortune of knowing me.”

“What’s a little blood and bone? We all come down to it, in the end.”

“I could set the world on fire and call it rain.”

“War allows us to dress our monsters up as saviors, and many would say I’m one of those monsters.”

“You haven’t learned anything until you learn monsters have nightmares too.”

“To live is to haunt.”

“Can’t shake the devil’s hand and say you’re only kidding.”

“In the future, you will stand at the grave of God which I dug, weeping, and I will be the only creature you will be able to answer to. You will beg for death, but due to what you said today, I will deprive you of that luxury.”

“I wanted rain and I thought the best way to do that was to make God cry.”

“Love is dead and never existed. All you did was betray me as I lay sick and festering. You are the definition of dread.”

“Here’s the thing about a haunted forest: it’s not going to haunt itself.”

“Your skull is the garden where fact flowers into meaning.”

“I shall use your voice for violin string and serenade your widow.”

“If God had wanted you to live he would not have created me.”

“I’ve heard it said that we only gain wisdom through suffering, and tonight I intend to make you very wise.”

“If I cannot bend heaven, then I will raise hell.”

“Remember that if you go knocking on enough doors asking to see the Devil, eventually he may answer.”

“No one of honor is interred here. The dead are raw materials, and nothing more.”

“That there is a feller what sat down on a snake in the grass one day, and it ain’t crawled outta his asshole yet.”

“Pay a man enough and he’ll walk barefoot into Hell.”

“All these moments will be lost in time; like tears, in the rain.”

“To feel sorrow is to deserve peace.”

“No one will know the violence it took to become this gentle.”

“There is no light at the end of this tunnel; so it’s a good thing we brought matches.”

“The answer to despair is action.”

“You’ll be reduced down to a single atom when I’m done with you.”

“What’s at the end of a million? Zero, zero, zero; big old hole, with a wall around it. That’s all a bank is, you know: a great big old hole you throw money into, and all it ever seems to do is make the walls higher.”

“Always strive to eat the stars.”

“Why would you want to savor the taste of poison?”

“The brave may not live forever, but the cautious do not live at all.”

“It is better to die standing than to live kneeling.”

“The anger in your heart warms you now, but it will leave you cold in your grave.”

“Darkness without light is an abyss; light without darkness is blinding. You cannot have a coin with one side.”

“We can’t have faith for everybody.”

“Kill me and live with the memory. Then tell the stars you won.”

“To rend one’s enemies is to view them as objects: hollow of existence and meaning.”

“Your soul sparks with a nonsense that makes this world bearable.”

“He ain’t one of the creatures God made.”

“The unconscious hides in a language like a thief hides a diamond in a chandelier.”

“I just know no fruit has ever tasted as sweet as the ones I ate while bleeding under the blistering summer sun.”

“I pray nobody kills me for the crime of being small.”

“That’s the problem with gods; their pleasure and their wrath often look the same.”

 “If I am killed for simply living, let death be kinder than man.”

“Stupid should hurt.”

“do you think god is nuclear. do you think you cannot look upon deities the same way you cannot look at the center of a mushroom cloud. do you think the energy generated from fission is released from divine clutches. do you think that god exists in the space between the nucleus and the electrons and in the bonds of compounds and in the numbers on the page that got us there. do you think radiation is a warning. do you think it is an eraser. do you think it is wrath or a mistake or a byproduct of entropy. do you think god is plasma, where electrons are wherever you want them to be. do you think that we were supposed to find this out.”

“If you aren’t worthy enough to pull the sword, be strong enough to lift the stone.”

“I can’t go to hell. I’m all out of vacation days.”

“Despite everything, its still you.”

“The more you kill, the easier it becomes to distance yourself. The more you distance yourself, the less it will hurt. The more easily you can bring yourself to hurt others.”

“My mother says kissing a man without a mustache is like eating eggs without salt.”

“A character is a ghost, a story is what it haunts.”

“Pain travels through families until someone is ready to feel it.”

“The gods did not breathe the breath of life into us and give us gifts of a shape, a will, and a voice just so we could pay bills and die”

“you gotta have friends who are older than you, not because you’re a dumb kid, but because you’ll be terrified of growing up otherwise.”

“you’ve made me so hard i beg for softness”

“Scorn is more palatable than the howling hunger for things to have been different for you.”

“Being able to endure something does not equal an obligation to withstand it.”

“To live is to haunt.”

“I am a chewy rubber Polly Pocket skirt and God is a four year old girl.”

“The big picture is made up of brush strokes, fool.”

“Hearts are wild creatures, that’s why our ribs are cages.”

“these are old bones and i am merely a passing occupant”

“The board is getting dusty but the boogeyman has not yet blinked. when he does, you better make that move.”

“And when we kill the gods neither heaven nor hell will be waiting for them because they created those to imprison us.

“What makes a man a warrior is his willingness to place himself between what he holds dear and anything that threatens it. This is the way.”

“The anchor gives the ship the world to love.”

“In a society where adventure has been destroyed, the only adventure left is to destroy that society.”

“You pretended to be the hero of a story you never saved.”

“this world is a banquet of knowledge and each of us has brought a dish to the table.”

“This is the time of vengeance and no life is worth saving.”

“The ghosts that inhabit this place are more alive than you’ll ever be.”

“May the only thing that dampens the flames of hell for you be God spitting in your face.”

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What it’s like being a writer

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It annoys me unreasonably when you want to ask people "what bird and what mammal would make the worst gryphon" as a fun thought exercise, and people with no joy and no imagination always interpret it as "a gryphon that sucks, is physically impossible, and would hate being alive", and - being predictable and lacking in imagination - always, always answer with "a hummingbird and a blue whale lol".

Like come on. Why do you have to suck the fun out of everything. Why not use a fraction of imagination and delightful whimsy. Imagine the combination of a mouse and a sparrow. That creature would be merciless, burtal, absolutely determined to get into your trash and has the power of both wings and hands to do its will. Or a crow and a cat - that thing is smart enough to fuck with people and not afraid to do it. Imagine the ungodly shriek of the noble fox-seagull, also determined to get into your trash.

A gryphon that is a combination of a kangaroo and a cassowary. The only proof we have of a loving god is the fact that those things do not exist. If hell is real, it's full of them. That thing can't fly, but it will run you down, it will kill you, and you will look stupid the whole entire time you're dying.

Why would the first thing that pops into your mind at the words "the worst gryphon" automatically be "a gryphon that hates being alive". Can you not picture a gryphon that fucking loves being alive, and has both the power and the will to make it everyone else's problem.

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in which Drizzt finds a gut-wrenching surprise

Chapters: 32/? || Words: 65, 851 || | In Progress

I’ve had this chapter half-written for months — I couldn’t wait to publish it! I’m already sinking my claws into the next one ;)

#the legend of drizzt #drizzt do'urden #origami souls #ficblr #writeblr

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few things make me happier than when a fictional character has some kind of condition that makes it difficult for them to show affection in basic ways we usually take for granted, like holding hands or even touching at all, but instead of trying to change who they are the people that love them find a suitable compromise that works for them both. like in pushing daisies when the guy can't touch his resurrected lover without killing her again, so they kiss through a sheet of clingwrap. it's not perfect, but just the fact that they love each other enough to try to make it work in spite of the obstacles that lie between them makes it all the more meaningful.

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The stigma of self-inserts is so harmful to the creative process. Relax. Admit it. Everything you make is derivative of yourself, always, no exceptions. You can turn the mirror into tinier and tinier shards or you can make it as big as you want to reflect as much as you want. At the end of the day it's always going to show you inside of it. Pretending otherwise is stupid.

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