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national-nobody-writes · 3 years

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2020 Creator Wrap

2020 Creator Wrap: Favorite Works

I was tagged by the oh so talented @irolltwenties!

Rules: it’s time to love yourselves! choose your 5 (or so) favorite works you created in the past year (fics, art, edits, etc.) and link them below to reflect on the amazing things you brought to the world in 2020. tag as many writers/artists/etc. as you want (fan or original) so we can spread the love and link each other to awesome works!

I’m not a particularly prolific writer (WIPs for days, but completed projects? Not so much). Somehow in this hell year though, I did manage to complete more fics than in any previous year for a total of seven new works (~49k words, all on ao3), plus a chunky chap of a long running WIP (~20k words) so I’m actually pretty damn proud of myself! I also made some new fandom friends in 2020 which has easily been one of the biggest delights of the year & has definitely helped my creative momentum, so ty all for that. <3

Counting down from 5, here are my favs:

5. Downtime

I have endless love for JayRoy and it felt so good to finally finish something for them for once this year! All of my past WIPs primarily focused on them ended up firmly in my graveyard folder, including the fic that this one shot was originally meant to be connected to. I liked the way this turned out well enough to clean it up and post it on its own though, so at least now I can say that I have something published for them at last.

(Also it got me back into the JayRoy headspace enough to outline a whole YJ/Earth16 JayRoy fic that I’m excited to start drafting in 2021, so we’ll see where that goes...)

2.3k NSFW; A mix of playful sweet and roughness, just like them.

4. Mirror Image

Bluepulse Week really saved me this year in terms of forcing me to just write, damn it! Did I finish all the prompts this year? Nope. Did it get me to complete a handful of fics that I ended up really loving? Yes. This was one of them.

This fic zoomed into existence entirely out of necessity as an alt idea to a prompt that I had a much longer idea for, but didn’t have time to complete. It then got a positive enough reception that I decided to turn it from a crack-adjacent, passable one-shot to a slightly more developed two-shot by request of one of my commenters. Really, it was writing that second chapter that ended up endearing the fic to me.

6.3k Humor, time travel shenanigans & accidental dating. This fic is the sweetness of teenage crushes, the confusing mess of discovering your sexuality, & laughter with your best friend.

3. Soft Wesper One Shots

Would you look at that, another nsfw piece. Could it be that I’m starting to get to the point where I can look back at completed nsfw fics without cringing terribly? Love that for me.

This fic took me by surprise, tbh. I wouldn’t consider myself a part of the grisaverse fandom (I’m utterly ambivalent toward the OG trilogy & have no plans to read them), but I did fall deeply in love with the whole Six of Crows gang earlier this year to the point of having quite the book hangover afterward, unable to pick up anything else except related fanfic for a couple weeks straight. These fluffy, nsfw scenes were born out of that, and I was pleasantly surprised to see such a positive response to them in the comments. The whole SoC gang has my heart, but the dynamic between Jesper and Wylan in particular got my writing fingers itching.

3.7k Domestic, post-canon fluff & tender sex with flirty Jesper & blushing Wylan abound.

2. Stick With Me

Ohh, I still get warm fuzzies thinking about this fic! If I’m only low-key proud of the first three on this list, this is one I’m legitimately very proud of. I had this idea on the docket already from a convo with @ivyxwrites early this year (or maybe last year? who knows, time means nothing anymore) but used Bluepulse Week as the excuse to finally get started, and I ended up adoring the process of writing it far more than I anticipated.

As much as I love planning out meticulously crafted, plotty stories, sometimes all you want to do is pick some well-loved tropes out of a hat instead and run with them (in this case: stuck in a cabin, only one bed, & heated argument leading to confession). It was freeing to just mess around and have fun with this fic, knowing pretty much right from the get-go how I wanted it to unfold and seeing it so vividly in my mind. It also probably helped that I was writing it for Ivy; it’s much easier for me to stay motivated when creating directly for my friends.

Finishing this was also such a serotonin-filled burst of pure victory for me since, as previously stated, I’m terrible at finishing projects--particularly multi-chap fics, particularly within a decent timeframe.

25.5k A showcase of the essence of what I love about the best friends-to-lovers dynamic. Part character study, part wires getting crossed & uncrossed, and whole idiots to lovers. This fic is the warmth in the pit of your stomach from a yearning made real & the sudden clarity of realizing what you were looking for had already been there all along.

1. The Rest Pt 1: Delicate (Remember Me Chap 4)

Oh, Remember Me. Of everything I’ve ever written, this story remains the one I’m most proud of and certainly the closest to my heart (not to mention the longest running, whoops). The first iteration of the beginning of this story was actually drafted back in 2017, but I walked away from it for a couple of years before deciding to dust it off and try again. It has spiraled into something far bigger in scope than I originally planned for, but I’ve come to love the path it’s led me down so far, and finishing this whopping 20k chunkster of a chapter was like breathing a huge (if temporary) sigh of relief.

This chap was particularly cathartic to write because it allowed for a number of convos between the boys that had really needed to happen, and was finally the ‘getting together’ moment the fic had been building toward for a while. It’s also so sappy I could die, but I will not be apologizing for that, lol. I was really hoping to get Chap 5 up this year as well, but y’know. Sometimes things just don’t work out like you plan for and that’s okay.

Chap 5 does have 17k done already (with prob another 5-8k still to go) & I’m itching to share it, but no sense in rushing if the end result would suffer for it. Luckily, everyone in comments has been kind enough to beat me over the head with ‘take your time, we don’t mind/we’ll still be here!!!’ which I’m immensely grateful for. So, at least the pressure to hurry up and get it done is purely self-inflicted.

Of all my works, this fic has not only gotten the most passionate responses, but has also been the main gateway for me to interact with other bluepulse creators, which has been a real joy. Nothing brightens my day like the essays people leave me over there from time to time after discovering the fic. That kind of engagement is the highest praise, & responding is very self indulgent fun for me (bc, clearly, I could go on and on about this fic & YJ in general forever).

54.8k total so far (WIP). Bart & Jaime’s relationship journey from beginning to ‘current day’ (aka the moment the fic begins), using amnesia/memory restoration as a framing device. The high highs and low lows of first love, navigating a 3 yr age difference, and the long, winding road from best friends to lovers as the years roll on. Slow-burn-adjacent (in terms of both the boys’ relationship to each other and reader’s relationship to the fic bc of how long I take between goddamn updates).

Tagging @ivyxwrites, @incorrectbatfam, @paintingwithdarkness, @bluepulsebluepulse

#writing #fanfic #dc #young justice #bluepulse #jayroy #wesper

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coffeeandcalligraphy · 5 years

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Water Babies + The Light When You Close Your Eyes | Writing Update

Hey People of Earth!

*This update is a few weeks old, whoops!*

It’s been some time since I last posted, and so much has happened! I’ve been uber busy with school (October and November always suck?) but I’m back for a quick writing update.

I’ve mentioned it on here before, but if you don’t know, I’m actually taking a writing class]! It’s split up into four units (I think lol), and so far, we’ve covered: intro to writing, poetry, and we’re currently working on fiction! For fiction, we were asked to write two short stories (actually technically flash fiction but), and this update is about these stories.

(I meant to post this weeks ago as it was finished, however, I’ve held out in case I decide to fix these up in the future and publish them, so no excerpts this update, but I’ll be back with a FOSTERED update chock full of excerpts soon! I’m sorry!!)

WATER BABIES:

So the first story I’ll be updating you on is a short piece I wrote called Water Babies!

The original draft was a pretty easy write, and made me realize how much I definitely wanted to revisit this story. (Which, this just in, future Rachel who is editing this post, has currently started! More on this later!)

What’s it about?

WATER BABIES follows twelve-year-old Bea and her seventeen-year-old stepbrother Pluto as they con their way across America, when they get wrapped up in a murder committed by Pluto.

Conception:

For this assignment, we were tasked to write a story based off a prompt (around 200-300 words). I didn’t have many ideas for a story (and by not many I mean zerooooo), so took to reading some short story collections as preparation (ya girl is not hecka experienced with short fiction). After reading Emily Geminder’s Houses, I was uber inspired!

When I sat down to write the story, I knew I saw the image of a boy standing on a hotel porch smoking, and the first paragraph flowed easily from there.

Most of the plot meat came to me whilst on a night drive with my folks! In the initial draft, Bea and Pluto were just sort of meandering across America, but after handing in the story and brainstorming further, quickly concluded that they’re both definitely thieves (and pretty good ones, if I do say so) who quickly get wrapped up in a murder after a stint goes very wrong.

There was a bit of a *tragic* twist to this story, that being we had to start the short story with a writing prompt. I mean no offense to the writer of these prompts, lol, but they weren’t all my faves. I really wanted to choose one that didn’t imply a plot, so I chose: “Leaving two years ago was the best thing I ever did.” <<< The writing prompt was required to be the first sentence (the prompt I chose is actually dialogue).

The writing bit:

I drafted this story rather quickly and painlessly! The first draft came out to be around 800 words. @sarahkelsiwrites slashed it (thankfully), and cut it down to about 400 words. In terms of prose, I didn’t find it was anything special since I was definitely restricting myself so I could hit that word count. Looking back, that wasn’t the best decision, because I think the line level struggled a bit (was a little flat), so I’m happy that I’m redrafting!

Speaking of redrafting, I’ve been very slowly chipping away at this story since the beginning of the month, and it’s been going rather well! I’ve written about 270 words, which I’m fairly happy with. The story definitely started off in a completely different place than the original, though I’m really happy with the change! Also, murder in the first sentence, folks. Murder in the first sentence.

The aftermath

The story I handed in is super short, and will serve as the third-ish scene in the story! By the time I’m editing this post, I’ve already begun the redraft of the actual story, and OH BOY does it begin with a bang (literally).

I made an aesthetic for WATER BABIES (which prolly will have a title shift who knows):

THE LIGHT WHEN YOU CLOSE YOUR EYES

I haven’t written many stories, however, I feel like I can officially deem this a Classic Rachel story because OH BOY.

What’s it about?

THE LIGHT WHEN YOU CLOSE YOUR EYES follows twenty-four year old Leigh Suzuki as she seeks revenge against her ex-best friend, ft. a voodoo doll. This story has basically the same plot as a music video @sarahkelsiwrites and I made last year, wherein Sarah was a murderous jealous twin who spotted me with another friend, and spends the entirety of Daughter’s Burn It Down making a voodoo doll/clone of me, and subsequently, stabbing said voodoo doll to (what we can assume is) death. (January of last year was a dark time folks HA.)

Conception:

The concept of this story is a lil funny. I talk about this in the most recent writing vlog I’m editing, but this story was for a focus on character assignment. Meaning, we were required to design a new character and write a story featuring them.

I think we had about a week to complete this story, and being the *weak bitch writer* I am, had a great idea, and decided to just make a character profile using my character Emily from FOSTERED.

If y’alls don’t know, I’m a Pantser. I don’t plan things and that’s what’s always worked best for my process. Can y’alls guess what happened.

I spent about an hour writing out a character profile for the assignment, as well as wrote up some exercises for it, and then got ready to write the story. I had a list of ideas for the scenes, assuming I’d write about a witch doctor of some sorts. And would you believe it! I started writing the story, and it wasn’t even the right character. It was most definitely not the story I planned, nor did the voice suit any of the characteristics I’d planned. lol.

What was funny is, Leigh (derived from Emily do u see me do u see me) totally had FOSTERED’s MC’s voice (Reeve we love u), and it just caught me by surprise. I was predicting I’d write a very upbeat story and instead it’s violent. Not predictable at all. I’d say Leigh definitely has some differences, however she’s very much if Reeve and Emily mushed into one.

The writing bit:

I drafted most of this story in a 15 minute writing session, and came out with around 600 words. After finishing it up (adding an actual beginning lol), it came up to 1100 words. It was supposed to be around 600, so I cut it down to around 700 (saved the original tho because there is so much SALT)! This story is basically a salty rant about friendship gone wrong.

The aftermath:

I handed in this story knowing it would be sort of a gamble. I wasn't sure how my teacher would feel about the POV/the style in general since it’s kind of severe/violent (#catholic school lmaooo), but she really liked the story!

Like I said before, there won’t be any excerpts in this post, but I still hope you guys enjoyed this update! I’ll be back with more stuff in 2019, folks, buckle up! Happy New Year!

--Rachel

#writing #writingupdates #writerblr #amwriting #shortstories

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spamzineglasgow · 5 years

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Blissful Tendencies: An Interview with Robin Boothroyd

Robin Boothroyd’s pamphlet Another Green World, which takes its title from a 1975 Brian Eno album, will shortly be released through SPAM Press. In advance of the pamphlet’s launch in London this week, SPAM editor Maria Sledmere caught up with Robin to find out more about his thoughts on procedural strategies, ambient poetics, influence, post-internet poetry and writing as an act of attention.

Robin published his crowdfunded landscape poem Quintet for Wind and Light in 2016. He also has a debut collection forthcoming with Sine Wave Peak.

You can pre-order a copy of Another Green World here.

Can you talk about your first encounter with Brian Eno’s album Another Green World, and what drew you to write a pamphlet after it?

I read about it before listening to it. This was in an article on the Quietus celebrating the album's 40th anniversary. Instead of focusing on historical context, as is usually the case with such pieces, the writer had foregrounded their personal experience of the record, and there was something in the way it had made them feel which struck a chord with me. Further, the piece mentioned Eno's Oblique Strategies cards used during the album’s composition – flash cards drawn at random to open creative pathways – which I instantly knew would be useful in my work. So the album has always been associated with creativity for me. With this context, and the way the music floored me when I first listened to it, it was perhaps inevitable that I'd write a pamphlet inspired by Another Green World. In fact, I've written two!

What was the process of writing, responding and revising?

In 2016, I went to a workshop at the Poetry School led by Emily Berry. One of the exercises she gave us to do, I think via Wayne Holloway-Smith, was to give us a sheet of song lyrics with every word of every line erased apart from the first. We then had to write a poem using this skeletal structure. I enjoyed working with the tension between improvisation and constraint, and thought it might be worth applying the exerciseto a sequence. And what better source than an album which was already central to my personal mythology? Turns out it's pretty hard to write more than one though! So I sought out some prompts to finda way into the poems. I realised I had a string of key words, so I decided to use Google's suggested searches to 'autocomplete' some of the lines. These were then used either as a springboard for improvisation or verbatim asa new line.

Can you talk a bit about what the title means to you. It could imply a kind of iteration: Oh look, another green world. Or maybe it’s an invitation, a gesture towards/into some alternative space. Are we exhausted with utopia, or is this doing something different? What kind of green world do you want to conjure?

You know, I haven’t really given the title much thought! It’s always just denoted the album. It’s surprising how often such things go unnoticed. For example, it took me around 20 years to realise that The Beatles is a pun. But to answer your question, I’d lean towards the alternativespace idea. Because I’m very much interested in the power of the imagination to conjure an alternate reality, another green world.

Your practice of generating lines from Genius song lyrics and Google search results mixes improvisation with intertextuality, a kind of poetic aleatory that has its lineage in everything from Mallarmé to Sam Riviere. What drew you to this technique, and who are some of your favourite influences that use variations of it?

I have to admit that I needed to look up the word 'aleatory', an anagram of a Tory ale. I see that it means 'used of the element of chance in poetic composition', so it's bang on! I'd be lying if I said that Riviere's work wasn't an influence. There are certainly parallels between the generative technique he used for Kim Kardashian's Marriage and my own. Another influence would be Jackson Mac Low's Complete Light Poems, which were composed using chance operations, a chart listing 280 kinds of light and a code based on dedicatees' names. It’s such a fascinating book!

What do you understand by the term ambient poetics? Would you describe Another Green World in this vein?

For me, poetry – whether writing or reading it – will always be an act of attention. And the ambient, at least by Eno's definition, is the opposite: an atmosphere, a vibe. Which is to say, a form which is intentionally undemanding of your attention. So the idea of an ambient poetry is a paradoxical one, and therefore attractive to me. I’d describe the work of Aram Saroyan as ambient, and Void Studies by Rachael Boast. Another Green World is more concerned with mood than it is with meaning, so I suppose it is in some ways ambient, yes.

I’m interested in what happens when you structure a poem in song form, with verse, chorus and instrumental sections. It’s like something escapes, deliciously, in my reading: I’m aware that the poem is a compression of something bigger, like it retains its virtual charge. How did you find using this structural constraint: was it a mode of compression or expansion? Do you see the lines as playfully ‘set’ to music or is it more complicated than that?

Every poem is a performance. Poetry is performed when it’s written, and it’s performed when it’s read. When I sourced the album’s lyrics from Genius, they included various descriptors in square brackets – [Verse], [Chorus], [Epic guitar solo] – which I found amusing and theatrical, so I chose to keep them in as remnants of the songs. I’m glad you feel that these make them retain their charge. For me, their presence highlights the performance of the poem. I invite the reader to imagine – which is to say perform – the guitar solo, for example. So it’s a compression before an expansion.

When you first submitted the pamphlet, you highlighted the fact that Eno’s album Another Green World is ‘pre-internet’. Given SPAM is self-described as a post-internet publication, obsessed with putting the internet on the page, as it were, how do you see the relationship between post- and pre-internet in terms of both music and poetry?

Many people would have you believe that we read less these days, but it’s simply not true. If anything, we read more – instant messages, articles, emails, social feeds. It’s just that reading isn’t centred on the book any more. I’m fascinated by the different attitudes and registers between these bodies of text, and seek to recreate them in the poem. That’s post-internet poetry for me. I was born in the mid-80s, so I experienced the majority of my childhood before the invention of the internet. And there’s a tendency, among my generation, to yearn for those blissful offline days when we weren’t barraged with information or paralysed by the anxiety of the infinite. Pre-internet as prelapsarian. Another Green World is interesting to me because it demonstrates the hopeful yearning of much late-70s experimental music, which has often been characterised as ‘nostalgic for the future’. Perhaps every generation is defined by their nostalgia.

Many of the poems are, like their Eno namesakes, ‘instrumentals’. How do you understand this working of a clearing, of silencing voice or lyric articulation in the space of a pamphlet?

It started as a joke. I was surprised to find entries for the instrumental songs on Genius, which is fundamentally a database of song lyrics. The idea of a poem withno words was amusing to me, so I kept them in at draft stage. But the more I read them, the more I felt that they could also offer an imaginative space – room to dream – triggered by the titles. When you silence the poem, the poem sings.

Another Green World has obvious environmental connotations. You describe a previous publication, Quintet for Wind and Light, as a ‘landscape poem’. Do you see Another Green World, as well as its procedural germination, as ecological in any way, a kind of reflexive, pastoral intervention within the contemporary?

Hmm. I’m not sure. What I remember finding in Google’s suggested searches was a desire for connection &/or information, most often regarding technology. Very few were pastoral or ecological in nature. But as I touched on before, the poem is a space for the imagination to go to town. This is how Another Green World is linked to the Quintet, by conjuring (sometimes imaginary) landscapes. Looking through the pamphlet, I see that the titles are pastoral: ‘Over Fire Island’, ‘In Dark Trees’. And some of my original lines concern nature: ‘Picking rosehips in winter’, ‘Who knew snakes don’t have legs’. Perhaps I wrote them to emphasise the contrast between the physical and digital worlds, which could be ecologically motivated.

It strikes me that there’s this strange quotidian tenderness throughout. Lines like ‘I’ll frogtie you with twine’, ‘Just add plant food’, ‘I’m eating a gluten rich flapjack’, ‘Taking my sweet time’. I’m seeing this as a sort of recognition of what’s worth keeping, an ethic of noticing and sharing. I love that line, ‘Everything not saved will be lost’, how it reminds us of our contemporary over-archivisation of every tiny detail of life. What function does poetry have as an everyday archive; is it something about accumulating a more humble mythos for the present, or something else?

When Frank O’Hara writes 'It is 12:20 in New York' and tells us about the walk he goes on, I really feel that it is 12:20 in New York. The poem becomes the present moment. I value the quotidian in poetry because it’s where life takes place. Not every moment is an epiphany. A few years ago, I wrote a set of lighthearted ‘rules’ for my poems, and the first one is 'be attentive'. Even outside of poetry, I’ve always made a point to enjoy the little things in life because they add up to something bigger. I suppose you could describe it as a kind of grounding technique, self-care. The everyday is also intensely personal. One of my favourite books is The Pillow Book by Sei Shōnagon, written around the year 1,000. It’s a diary in which she kept lists of her likes and dislikes. ‘Things that can't be compared’, ‘Things that create the appearance of deep emotion’, ‘Splendid things’. These give us such a clear portrait of what she was like as a person; her hopes, dreams, fears, desires (and, by extension, those of the society at the time) are all there in the lists. In a way, our internet search histories give us the same portrait today.

In the pamphlet’s epigraph, comprising the opening words of Eno’s record, there’s this line ‘Everyone just ignores them’, the words that ‘float in sequence’. Do you think we tend to ignore the elements of poetry or music we find difficult in this way? Is there something about beauty or function in meaning’s recalcitrance here, or are we just lazy readers/listeners?

I’m not sure whether people do ignore difficult artworks. I think they tend to hate or dismiss them. ‘Rubbish!’ Or, ‘My toddler could’ve done better!’ Perhaps that’s the same thing. For Eno, I think he was commenting on the fact that a great pop song doesn’t need good lyrics because no one pays attention to them anyway. They just hum the tune. You can’t not pay attention to the words in a poem, so I thought it would make an interesting epigraph.

How do you want people to read Another Green World?

As an invitation to play. I'd hope to elicit laughter and spark daydreams.

How do you see this pamphlet in relation to your other work and ongoing projects? What’s next in the world of Robin Boothroyd?

Quintet and Wind and Light, my previous pamphlet, was also inspired by Another Green World. It even quotes some of the lyrics! So they’ve always been two sides of the same coin. As for what I’m working on at the moment, I’ve started to gather a selection of concrete/minimal poems that I’ve been writing on and off for about five years. They’re a mixture of word associations and hybrids (e.g. ‘rhinoctopus’), and a couple were published on M58 back in 2015. My working title is Atomised. I’ve also begun a new landscape poem, ‘Vermilion Cliffs’. In terms of publications, Holiday Eyes, my first collection, is forthcoming on Sine Wave Peak.

#poetry #Robin Boothroyd #Sine Wave Peak #interview #poetry interview #literary iinterview #SPAM #pamphlet #Brian Eno #Another Green World #ambient poetics #Sam Riviere #concrete poetry #music #Genius

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the-sapphic-desk · 7 years

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|4 september 2017|

it’s finally back to school time for most of us and, at least for me, it’s also time to start good habits, crack down on the bad ones, and just begin to prepare for the year ahead. i’ve been in school for a couple of weeks now and, so far, i’m doing pretty good. below, i’ve compiled some simple tips that help me in day to day life that i would love to share. so let’s get cracking:

prepare outfits and pack your backpack on sunday instead of in the morning. i know for a fact you have more time on sunday to prepare your outfits and pack your backpack than on monday morning so planning in advance will most definitely benefit you. instead of running around in circles trying to find that shirt, hang them up in the front of your closet or place them in the top of a drawer on sunday. and instead of throwing random pens in a bag, pack your backpack and put it in front of your door. it’ll save you time to do other things such as eating and washing your face.

prepare and eat a breakfast. whether it’s some cherrios in a bag on the way to class or eggs and bacon cooked that morning, eating will definitely benefit you. you’ll have more focus in class and it’ll get your metabolism going. if it’s easier for you, think about preparing your food the night before and packing it in bags or tupperware.

have a tray by the door to put small things in. oh, how many times have i forgotten my earbuds or keys. keep yourself organized and not calling your roommate to get an extra set of keys by just having a tray on which you can put smaller things you don’t put in your backpack. then, just grab them before you leave and voilà! you aren’t locked out.

on sunday, do your meal preps, weekly spread, and clean your room and workspace. i am such a procrastinator during the weekends and there have been so many days that because of that, i am trudging through knee high messes in my room because i just won’t pick up. i also commonly forget to plan the week and prep my meals and then boom, it’s monday and i’m a mess. so don’t be a mess like me, do it all on sunday.

have a letter tray to put class handouts and old assessments so you can put them in binders later. using a letter tray to collect handouts and assessments can be so beneficial to keeping your desk clean. and without it, i tend to throw out old graded assessments i could study instead of putting them in binders. keeping all those papers in one binder is super helpful, so put them in a binder and finals won’t be your doom.

have a bedtime routine. having a bedtime routine can increase your productivity and sleep time because, one, it can help you stay organized and, two, it helps put you to sleep. the more your brain associates doing certain tasks with sleep, the faster you’ll be able to drift off. so be smart and enjoy an extra hour of sleep.

have one journal for in class notes and one to retake and organize your notes at home. in class you do not have time to keep your thoughts organized. with tangents from your teachers and questionable notes, its best to just use a pencil, pen, and highlighter to make scratch notes in class and then come home and organize it into something that you can study from. this idea has kept me afloat time and time again.

talk to your teachers. do yourself a favor, ask and answer questions in class and go to your teachers’ office hours if they have them. if you do this, your teachers are more likely to recognize you and will be more lenient with your grade (since it shows you’re engaged and involved). you don’t necessarily need to like the teacher, just pretend you care. smile and nod along as you ask about their lives, questions about the content, and for advice that you are never going to take. this is a pretty slytherin thing i’ve been doing for years and it has got me so many half points back, especially in math and science.

use quizzes and tests to study for finals. as i stated earlier, it’s important to save your assessments to study, and that is especially true during finals. teachers commonly use similar questions on the final as unit tests and quizzes. think of how many more points you can score on that final if you just study your tests.

make a study group. find friends and people in your classes that you would like to study with and meet up! they’ll definitely be able to help you understand topics and it’ll be more fun than holing yourself up in your room. also, explaining concepts to others will help you better understand them and answer those questions on your tests.

make a weekly to-do list. some of you may already do this in your weekly spreads, but it’s important to make to-do lists of goals and tasks you need to complete. this isn’t necessarily studying and notes but things such as cleaning your room, watering your plants, or going grocery shopping. make lists, organize yourself, don’t be a mess like me.

reward yourself for doing well. whether it’s talking to your teacher or scoring straight a’s, we all work hard. so why not treat yourself to a nice dinner or relaxing bath? have fun, relax, and don’t let yourself get too stressed. remember to unwind.

sit up front in class. i know, i know, you don’t really want to, but think about it. if you’re up front, you are going to be 100% more engaged and paying more attention. and this will make your teacher remember you, which you now know the benefits of. you will also be able to see the board easier, get your questions answered, and hear what is going on.

talk to the people around you in your classes. jeremy from physics sneezes on you and suddenly, you’ve got the flu and can’t make it to your lit lecture. what are you going to do? text that new friend you made from lit that sits next to in the lecture hall of course. simply talking to people on your first day can help you stay on top of class in case you miss or can help you study before the test. never doubt the benefits of knowing people.

if there’s an opportunity for extra credit, take it. i don’t care how good you are in that class or how perfect your grades are, take the extra credit. those few extra points could be the ones that take you from a b to an a. just do it and don’t question it, you may need them.

outline all papers and presentations. you have a draft due for your class in a few hours and you open you computer and prepare to type. but where to begin? what are you writing? how do you want to phrase it? well, you could already know that if you had outlined it. take the time to research, write a thesis, and fully understand your prompt before you write. especially if this is a persuasive essay. do this as well for presentations and visual assignments so you say every fact and point you want to.

keep your test dates by you at all times. no matter who you are, you need to know when tests are coming up. and, as someone who tends to leave things at home sometimes, i may not have my planner with those tests dates next to me when i need them. but what do i have? my phone. i use the app My Study Life to keep track of those dates. i explain that beautiful app in this post.

have a ‘school survival kit.’ by now i think you’ve caught on to the fact i can be a bit forgetful. so i like to have a little bag with me that has things i may need that i could have forgotten. this includes a pen, pencil, highlighter, a few pads, some mints, pain medicine, allergy medicine, tissues, band-aids, hand sanitizer, tide-to-go (stain remover), and other such items. i may make a list of these items at another time.

if you have a question, ask. i’ve already gone over the benefits of talking in class but it’s also extremely important to understand your content. it’s better to ask than not know, even if you think the question is dumb. there’s a good chance someone else has that exact question. it’s also better to look stupid than have that count against you during assessments.

if your university, college, or high school has a writing center, use it. i work in a writing center and we are here to help. we do nothing so much of the time and you coming in makes our day. contrary to the popular opinion, we aren’t going to judge your writing or insult you (unless you ask for it). but we also aren’t going to correct your entire paper, we want to help you learn how to edit your papers and make sure you’re fitting the requirements. and this goes for all tutoring centers; if they’re an option, use them.

#thesapphicdesk #mine #studyblr #study tips #life tips #tips #study #studyspo #study motivation #studyspiration #study notes #notes

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bloggerjoedoe · 4 years

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One of my favorite times every year is right around the beginning of August. Not because of the weather – summer where I live – but rather it’s when beta season is in full swing. Apps are putting polish on features, the full update scope is set, and everything starts to feel stable. And there’s nothing better to me than a new Drafts update to coincide with new OS features, bringing new uses of the app to my répertoire.

With the release of iOS and iPadOS 14 this year, it might seem on the surface that the updates to most apps are minimal. Widgets are the hot new feature of the operating systems, along with the visual changes of macOS Big Sur. While most apps will benefit from these changes, the productivity category will be greatly helped. And like Shortcuts, Scriptable, and others, Drafts benefits greatly from these new changes. It might take you a bit of time to see how this will fit your use cases, but once you give that some thought, it will open up new opportunities for you to use the app.

Widgets in iOS 14

By far the largest and most impactful update across all platforms is the introduction of widgets. I won’t bury the lede: the Drafts widgets have transformed the way I interact with Drafts on my devices. This has given me the opportunity to re-think how I’ve approached my Home Screens on my iPhone 11 Pro and iPad Pro 11”. While the limitations Apple’s imposed on this first Home Screen implementation of widgets isn’t ideal, Drafts is the epitome of what third-party productivity widgets should be on iOS and iPadOS 14.

Five good options to choose from. Nice.

Drafts has two types of widget styles: grid and list. Both widget styles are customizable for theme and the use of tint color, meaning the color of the workspace or action used. The other customizations for the widgets are based on which type you use. To edit the widgets, tap and hold on one to reveal a small popover menu with options to edit the widget, the Home Screen, or remove the widget. Stacks add the option to edit the stack or remove it.

The list widget style comes in medium and large sizes. This widget style shows you the drafts list for whichever item you choose: you have your choice of the Inbox – your unfiltered view of Drafts – or any workspace you choose, which is customized in the widget settings. You can also specify which folder within that workspace you’d like to show. Using the Inbox will show your most recent drafts; tapping on an individual draft will send you right into the draft with the editor loaded and ready to type. This is ideal when you’re moving back and forth between another app and the Home Screen. While it’s not the widget I use, it’s there for those who want it. If Apple changes some of the interaction models, I would love to see a widget that contains a specific draft, such as a grocery list, where I could interact and check off items. I’m not going to hold my breath on that one, however.

There are plenty of combinations to create for an all-Drafts Home Screen.

The grid style comes in small, medium, and large sizes. Each of the up to 16 elements in the widget are customizable in three types: built-in actions, opening workspaces, or running actions. The small widget only allows for a single button: this is a limitation by Apple, and one I cannot understand at all. You need to look no further than Drafts or even Apple’s own Shortcuts app to understand the utility that would be added with multiple buttons. Given this limitation, I’m not using this option at all on my Home Screen; the only use case I currently could imagine for it is a launcher for a workspace, but I’m not devoting that much screen real estate to a single launcher. The medium and large widgets provide 8 and 16 buttons, respectively. Within the widget editor, you can select or search for the workspace or action name to make it your own; you can also reorder the elements, which I’ve done based on one-handed reach to the tap target. Having this many available actions and customizations opens the door to multiple possibilities.

At first, I wasn’t sure how I was going to use the widgets. I could launch Drafts from my dock just fine and jump into a workspace from there. But as I started customizing and tinkering with the possibilities, it became clear that this is a whole new interaction model. Over the course of the summer betas, it’s completely changed my use of the app and done something I didn’t think would ever happen: Drafts is no longer in my dock. This isn’t because the app has lost its usefulness, rather it’s actually increased in versatility so much through the widget that I no longer need it elsewhere.1

Starting with my iPhone, I played around with using the large Drafts widgets, but there was an information density with other apps like GoodTask and CARROT Weather that I missed having. So I’m using stacked medium grid widgets in the bottom, which affords me 16 total customizable targets. I have the widgets stacked in a particular order, which I’ll go through in reverse. The second widget has quick access to my most used workspaces: General, Journal, Writing, and Work. I also have quick search and a New in Workspace action to create a draft with specific tags already applied. The remaining two buttons are the same between the widgets, which I’ll explain in a moment.

My current Drafts widgets on my Home Screen.

The first widget in the stack is all about action. It may take a while to get what you need for these types of actions, but where I started was using some existing actions that fit well. I have the built-in quick search and new draft actions for quick access; there is also an “Empty” space, which just opens Drafts itself; I would have liked to have a label on it like the Drafts logo, but we’ll see if something like that gets added in the future.

My Add Item to Grocery action pops up a prompt which allows for a single entry into my grocery list, without the need for creating a draft to do it; I often use Siri for this, however there are times where I don’t want to speak and need to quickly enter it. In my original review of Drafts, I created a massive text modifier action; I couldn’t use it in the same way for the widget. Instead, I modified it and created a new action which grabs the clipboard text, applies the selected modifier, then places that modified text back into the clipboard. Again, this does not create a draft when doing this and doesn’t clog up my workspaces more.

I use GoodTask because of its Reminders integration, which I leverage in Drafts as well. Most of my task entry occurs through Drafts. With that in mind, I started to see some developers publishing their quick add shortcuts to their widgets, and decided to do the same here with Drafts. I had the first action mostly complete before: this action already existed, though I’ve updated it since and modified it slightly. This displays a prompt, gets the task title and sets a date for the reminder; you can optionally set an alarm, which really just puts the time in for the date, otherwise it’s an all-day reminder. There are other times I just want to add something to the inbox. I took the previous action and simplified it even more, creating a new one which just adds a single reminder to the inbox. Both of these work quickly for entry, and are right there when I pick up my phone, making them easily accessible.

The final action that I’ve created (for now) is for tweeting. This started because I wanted a way to quickly write a tweet without opening up Twitter and getting sucked into the news of the day. I wanted to have the option to tweet it straight away, but there are many times when I’ll want to compose a tweet and save it to reflect on whether or not I should even post it. This gave way to creating a tweet action which provides a prompt and the option to tweet, save, or cancel and delete it forever. But in version 21 of Drafts, support was added for advanced HTML previews. These interfaces are completely customizable to whatever the user needs. This fancier HTML version still needed the same options of tweet, save, and cancel, but I also wanted to have a large space for composing and a character counter to count down from 256; when you go over that, it pops up an error in the prompt window itself, and shows you that you’re out of characters. It combines some of the elements in Twitter’s own compose window with respect to text entry. I’m sure someone with more coding capabilities could create an even better version, but this is perfect for what I need.

I much prefer tweeting in a more fancy way.

When considering the actions you want to include in your widget, you may want to start by looking at some of your most frequent actions which involve creating new drafts. Packing lists, task management templates, and related drafts might be great use cases for you. I think the little utility actions can be so useful to start with. As you begin thinking of what’s most important, you may find yourself using one or more widgets in a stack to gain additional levels of access or to separate functions. The great thing about iOS 14’s widgets, and Drafts in general, is the level of customization a user can apply to their own working needs.

My only gripe with using actions through widgets again resides with Apple: there isn’t an API available to automatically exit your app to the Home Screen. The only real way to do this is to purposely crash the app. This isn’t ideal for Drafts because of the iCloud syncing in the background. I wish Apple would provide this option to developers so I could go into the app, do a quick action, then pop back to the Home Screen immediately. In lieu of this, I’ve turned on the triple Back Tap setting found in Settings ⇾ Accessibility ⇾ Touch ⇾ Back Tap. After my action is run, I can triple tap the back of my phone to go back to the Home Screen. This feels like such a hack that could be avoided, and is something that Apple should fix in the future.

Overall, widgets are a fantastic addition to all of the OS updates, and my second favorite feature added this year. With the new HTML previews in Drafts, I can see a whole new level of action being created for the app’s widgets by providing more customizable and better-looking interactive models. With Drafts and many other apps adopting widgets and gaining new ideas, I can see the feature getting better over time and causing everyone to re-think their daily interactions.

Scribble with Drafts

My personal favorite new implementation in this release, which is not a unique feature of Drafts itself, is Scribble. This feature has been an incredible addition to the way in which I approach my iPad use. When I saw it announced back in June I immediately thought it was the most important update for iPadOS, and that it would completely change not only how but where I would use my device. A few months later my suspicions have been confirmed: Scribble has changed the iPad for me in so many ways, and by far the most with Drafts.

So why use Scribble in a text editor? Let me start with my primary use cases: capture, writing, journaling, and note taking. Capture is the most important. As I sit and consume content on my devices, a thought will often pop into my head. If I’m already using the Pencil as the main input device, I can simply bring Drafts into view via Slide Over and start writing. And because Scribble works anywhere you can enter text, this works in prompt steps also. I can capture ideas, tasks, and more.

For both writing and journaling, two use cases for which I use Drafts exclusively, I’ve found myself sitting on the couch or in a chair with my coffee in the morning, writing more intentionally and better processing my thoughts. I start my journal entries with Shortcuts, and end with a pre-filled entry in my journal workspace. I’ve always loved the feeling of writing in Drafts, but I now feel that even more tangibly writing with the Apple Pencil. I plan on taking this new approach in my writing going forward.

The one place where I think Scribble has impacted me the most has been note taking. When you couple Scribble with the other available features of Drafts, it makes the whole concept of organization easier. Version 20 introduced wiki-style links to Drafts. This ability to place [[double brackets]] around text to then create a new draft with that title was already intriguing. When everything at work got busier again, I found myself in need of a system that I could manage. Because I can’t show you my actual work, I’m going to pretend that I work and participate in everything related to MacStories and its related properties, for the purposes of illustration.

There’s a lot going on in the MacStories Universe.

I started by writing down my areas of responsibility into a draft titled ‘MacStories Wiki.’ Again, not typing, but physically writing. Once that was complete, I added the brackets with my Pencil to create a new draft for each area. This allowed me to keep it all organized, with deep links back and forth. I created two actions, one for capturing a line to my ‘Current Tasks’ draft as a task, and the other for deleting the line completely. I can now fluidly move through my various drafts, capturing items in the proper places, and moving items over as tasks when necessary; when the task is complete, I simply delete the item or copy/paste into my ‘Completed Tasks’ draft to keep it handy for the end of the year activities. I have all of these notes in my ‘Work’ workspace, with the main drafts in the inbox, and all of the sub-drafts flagged ‘not visible.’ Doing things in this way makes everything visually cleaner, and helps me navigate the app more quickly with a few taps.

Creating links to navigate between drafts is made better by Scribble.

You could apply the same strategy to other use cases: whether it’s notes for a class or preparing to write a novel, you can set everything up using your Pencil and a single draft. With the improvements to this version of Drafts surrounding this style of linking, you can even create a wiki-style link to a specific section of a draft by using [[draft title/section name]] to navigate directly to that point in larger drafts. I’ve found that brainstorming in this way causes my brain to think more critically of what’s important. I don’t have to think about how to tie it all together, I simply write it all out and modify it later to include the deep-linking features as needed.

I know that I can do this all by typing, but there is an irreplaceable feeling provided to me by working in this way. My notes have been better and more concise. My journaling has been raw, emotional, and liberating. My writing has been more considered. I feel like I’m using different muscles to get things accomplished, but with better results. If you need any proof of how great Scribble works in Drafts, this entire section of my review has been written, links and all, using nothing but the Apple Pencil.

Everything Else

Drafts 22 also packs visual changes which mimic the design aesthetics of iOS and iPadOS 14. For iOS and iPadOS, the app gets refreshed menus, rounding the menu item corners and creating separation with color changes. For macOS, the app has been redone to accept the big change within Big Sur.2 There is a new Vivid Dark theme, my new favorite and featured throughout this review, which pops a bit more color into the system. The changes here are subtle, but help it fit into the broader visuals of the system updates.

Workspaces get a new filter for dates. Within the workspace filter settings, you can select start and end dates for filtering your drafts. In the example published with the version 22 release notes, you can use the Today in Review action which assembles your drafts into a temporary workspace and shows your created and modified drafts in a preview window, along with pertinent information such as character counts, links to open each draft, and their tags. You could modify this preview more to show other aspects if you have the right coding skills. I think that given some time, this will open up some opportunities for me to use Drafts when combined with other features in a whole new way. But for now I’m still parsing through the possibilities of what I might be able to do in the future.

Actions get some nice updates as well. Additional modifier keys are now available to provide more power at your fingertips when connected to an external keyboard. You can now use more modifier keys to kick off actions, notably the arrow keys, in conjunction with other key presses to kick off your actions.

Additional modifier keys give you more power with an external keyboard.

Have you ever been developing an action, made a mistake, and have to redo the entire thing? I know I’ve done this a lot. With action versioning, this is a thing of the past. At the bottom of the edit action window, there is a new button which loads the versioning page. As you are developing an action, you can create a new version which can be restored later. In developing actions for this review, I used this extensively to make sure that I could go back to the last “good” version I had where everything worked. As I added new elements to some of them, things would break, and I would have to revert back. When I did this before, I would need to create a duplicate action or – more often than not – scrap it and start over. This is a perfect addition for those that develop actions for Drafts.

Action versioning is perfect for action creation.

I would love to see this feature further extended to include versioning with the Action Directory. I can envision a future where I upload different versions of the same action to incorporate new features of each OS release, that way users who don’t upgrade immediately can still use the action as it once was. The current system does not allow for that, and this would be a welcome change for action sharing.

I absolutely love how the new features added to Drafts have yet again transformed the way I work with the app. Every update brings more capability and refinement, providing more power than ever. Widgets bring quicker access and greater functionality from the Home Screen. The Apple Pencil is yet another input device that can complement or augment your experience.

Drafts is the perfect example of an app that incorporates the best elements of new releases, providing users new opportunities to benefit from the app in the process.

At least for my iPhone. My iPad does retain the app icon, but only because I do need multitasking and Apple has inexplicably left the Home Screen customization option off of iPadOS 14. ↩︎

Most of you will know that I’m 99% iOS and iPadOS only. I don’t use the Mac, so I don’t always cover it in detail. Know that for this release, the main (and extensive) update for the Mac is the visual refresh for Big Sur; all of the other updates to follow with the exception of one are all available for macOS as well. ↩︎

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firemedicdiaz · 7 years

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Z is for Zoonotic Disease (26/26)

Fandom: Star Trek (AOS/TOS). Pairing: Reader X Bones. Prompt: Fic 26 of 26 in the CMO’s Log – A to Z series. Z is for Zoonotic Disease. Click here for a listing of all the fics in this series! Word Count: 3032. Rating: Teen+. Author’s Note: The last fic in round 1 of this series! I’m pretty emotional right now. This is the first time I’ve ever managed to finish a writing project I’d started, and I’m honestly kind of floored. I never could have done it without the support and interest of all of you amazing people. Thank you for sticking with me and reading these! I hope you’ll stick around for round 2: A to Z 2.0, and for other fics I post in the future! Cheers!!! (As an aside: the medications mentioned in this one can be found here.)

CMO’s Log – A to Z – Z is for Zoonotic Disease Your vision is fuzzy around the edges and your hearing is vaguely muffled as you walk unsteadily over the threshold into med bay. You’ve been feeling unwell for days with an on-again, off-again high fever, cough, aches, and chills, and while you’d initially thought you’d had the flu, a visit to the med bay a couple of days earlier had revealed instead that it was pneumonia plaguing you. At that time, you’d been given an antibiotic and asked by Dr. M’Benga to follow up once a day for a quick assessment to see how you were progressing, and so as ordered, you’re shuffling into med bay for a daily check, feeling worse than ever. “Y/N,” Dr. M’Benga calls from several feet away as he sees you wander in. “Come over this way, let’s sit you down.” The tone of his voice suggests that you look as bad as you feel and you slowly make your way over to the bio bed he’s standing beside and allow him to help you up onto it. Lying back, blinking away the harsh overhead lighting, you relax as he begins an assessment. Your head aches so badly that its affecting your hearing, and even so near your head the whirring of the tricorder sounds like it’s coming from underwater. “You’re not responding to the antibiotic,” Dr. M’Benga explains as he holds a holoscanner over your chest, looking at the x-ray image there showing him patchy consolidation in your lungs. “We need to keep you here and isolated until we figure out exactly what kind of a bug you’ve got.”

You groan at his words, wanting nothing more than your own warm, comfortable bed away from all the white and chrome, the background noise, and the antiseptic smell. His hand lands on your shoulder and squeezes gently. “I’m going to have Nurse Chapel move you into a private room and help you into a gown,” he offers. “I want to have Dr. McCoy come to see you as well. His expertise might help me to get you feeling better sooner, if that’s alright with you.” Your heart begins to beat a frantic allegro in your chest at the CMO’s mention. You’ve been seeing one another on and off for a while, but haven’t exchanged any deep, meaningful sentiments. Still, you’re involved enough that you chose Dr. M’Benga over him in order to avoid awkwardness and impropriety. You know, however, that if Dr. M’Benga is seeking the other doctor’s counsel on your case, things must be bad, and while you really don’t want things to be uncomfortable, you’d also like to get better as soon as possible, and so you agree with a single nod. Things happen quickly after that. Dr. M’Benga disappears from your bedside and is replaced with a softly smiling Christine Chapel. She’s gentle with you as she half-leads, half-carries you over to an isolation room off the main wing of the med bay. She murmurs soft reassurances as you’re changed into a thin, light patient gown and settled into bed with only a single blanket for warmth – we don’t want to feed that fever, dear. The head of the bed is propped up so you can breathe more easily and before you know it, a soft knock sounds against the door panel and Dr. M’Benga is striding into the room, closely followed by Dr. McCoy. “Y/N,” the CMO says softly, approaching your bedside, his eyes quickly taking in the numbers displayed on the bio bed’s readout. “I wish you’d told me you were sick.” “Didn’t want to worry you,” you mumble, the fever making clear speech a challenge. “S’not that bad.” His low grumble is nearly inaudible but his expression is clearly unimpressed. You watch him through half-lidded eyes as he repeats the scan Dr. M’Benga had done earlier, his features marring with concern. “Administer an albuterol neb, then keep her on two litres of oxygen,” he orders Christine. “Start a course of genericillin, and give her numinol tetramidaphin q four hours.” “Wouldn’t you rather use a tryptophan-lysine distillate?” Dr. M’Benga asks. “The corophizine hasn’t even touched the infection.” The CMO shakes his head, setting the holoscanner aside. “We’ll save the big guns for when we need them,” he replies. “Genericillin will be fine until a culture proves otherwise. I’ve got this, Doctor; please, leave me with my patient.” You can’t help but tune out more of their discussion as Christine steps into your line of sight and applies an oxygen mask to your face. There is medication mixed in with the oxygen – you know just by the taste of it as it hits your tongue – and you’re glad to see that breathing is becoming easier by the moment. She’s gentle as she places an IV in your arm and injects the medications Dr. McCoy has ordered. She’s done quickly and leaving you alone with him – it seems he’s finally convinced Dr. M’Benga to leave the two of you be, too. As the door slides shut on Christine’s exit, Leonard approaches your bed and perches on the edge of it, reaching out to cup your cheek with his large, warm palm. Your eyes drift closed and you sigh, the mask on your face fogging with your breath. “Next time you get sick, you leave it to me to decide how bad it is,” he admonishes softly. “You’re lucky you came in when you did today.” “Am I gonna live, doc?” You ask jokingly, your voice hoarse. “You’ll be fine,” Leonard assures you. “But we need to figure out what’s making you sick so we can treat you with the right antibiotics. Do you think you’re up for answering some questions?” You nod, watching the doctor as he reaches to remove the mask from your face, replacing it instead with a much more comfortable and manageable nasal cannula. Its soft prongs tickle a bit as they’re seated into place, but you barely notice them after a few moments. What you notice instead are Leonard’s warm, gentle hands coming to rest on your neck, his fingertips prodding, feeling how swollen your lymph nodes are, how hot your feverish skin is. “Tell me everything you’ve been experiencing since this started,” the CMO instructs. He steps away from your bedside for a moment, returning with a stethoscope. He offers you a hand to help you sit up a bit and immediately begins his exam, not wanting you to be sitting up for too long. You consider his query as he asks you to take the occasional deep breath, resisting the urge to cough. “It started off with a fever and aches four days ago,” you begin as Leonard finishes up and helps you settle back against the bed. “I came in and saw Dr. M’Benga and he gave me an antibiotic to take. Since then, my fever has come and gone. I’ve had a constant headache and a bad cough, too.” The doctor makes a noncommittal noise and works efficiently, keeping you covered nearly to the waist with the blanket while simultaneously pulling your gown up so he can press on your abdomen. His expression becomes even more concerned when he glances down as he thoroughly but carefully palpates your stomach but you’re distracted from the look by a sharp jolt of pain as his hand prods at the left side of your abdomen. “When did you get this rash?” He asks, pulling his hand away and gesturing to your midsection. You gasp as you glance down and notice a very dark and angry-looking red rash around your navel and off to either side. “It wasn’t there this morning,” you reply. “I didn’t see it when I got dressed a few hours ago.” Leonard makes another noise of consideration and pulls your gown down, tucking it back in under the blanket and pulling out a tricorder. He scans you quickly, pausing over your chest and abdomen briefly before reading through the results. The decrease in white blood cells and platelets and the increase in liver enzymes in your bloodstream worries him. “I think this is more than garden variety pneumonia,” he explains. “I’m going to look through your file and talk to Dr. M’Benga. I’ll send Christine in to get some samples for analysis and I’ll be back to see you in a bit. In the meantime, try to get some rest.” You sigh and nod once again, turning your gaze away from the CMO and to the ceiling. You’ll never admit it, but his concern and the lack of the toldja-so attitude he always gets whenever you’ve neglected your health are worrying you. You haven’t given his observational skills enough credit, though, you realize a moment later as his hand lands on your shoulder and squeezes reassuringly. “I’ll get you sorted out, kid,” he promises. “We’ve slept together and you’re still calling me kid?” You huff. “Gee, thanks, doc.” Leonard chuckles softly and brushes a stray strand of hair back behind your ear. “Sick to death and you’ve still got an attitude,” the doctor ribs good-naturedly. “Yeah, you’re going to be just fine.” He leans in and presses a gentle kiss to your forehead before taking his leave. It doesn’t take you long to drift off to sleep and aside from Christine coming in to check on you and get the samples Leonard had mentioned, the next few hours pass uneventfully. You doze off and on in between bouts of coughing, and you finally rouse to the sounds of frantic orders being exchanged elsewhere in the med bay – the product of an accident down in engineering. Shifting around, you slowly sit up, shivering as a cold draft licks at your back where your gown has parted a bit. The shiver leads to a paroxysm of coughs, and suddenly hurried footsteps are approaching your bedside as the monitors begin to sound an alarm. A warm hand lands on your back and you’re sure it’s Leonard’s, even though you’re coughing so hard your eyes are screwed tightly shut. The hand rubs gentle circles into your skin, warming it where the draft had left a chill, and he murmurs reassurances as the hacking passes. “Take deep breaths in through your nose for me, sugar,” Leonard instructs you. “We need to get your oxygen levels up.” It’s a struggle at first as every inhalation tickles at your throat and makes you want to cough again, but eventually your breathing grows easier and the monitors quiet down, signalling your stabilization. You glance up at Leonard wearily as you collapse back against the raised head of your bed and you’re grateful when he reaches for a cloth and begins to gently sponge at your feverish forehead. “Do you know what’s wrong with me yet?” You ask. Leonard shakes his head. “You’ve only been out a couple of hours,” he replies. “It’ll take a little longer than that to get a comprehensive analysis back. I just need you to sit tight and let us take care of you in the meantime.” You nod, resigned to your fate, and shut your eyes. Your lips quirk up in a small smile as you recall your last away mission two weeks ago. For once things had gone smoothly, and you’d had plenty of time to visit a number of Hanon IV’s protected wildlife refuges to observe the xenofauna there. Many of them had been remarkably unique, but many more still were very similar to Terran animals, and you feel at home as you picture a flock of starlings dancing around, a murmuration passing overhead as you’d collected some samples for analysis. “What’s on your mind, sweetheart?” He asks, having caught sight of your expression. “Birds,” you reply softly. “Birds?” He queries further. “Back on Hanon IV,” you explain, licking your dry, cracked lips, sipping gratefully from a cup of ice water Leonard offers you when he sees how parched you are. “There were birds everywhere. It reminded me of Earth, of home. Their evolutionary history and adaptations were remarkably similar to those of Terran birds, and I can’t wait to get back to my lab to keep working on my samples.” “Have you found anything interesting so far?” Leonard asks, attentive though his eyes are taking in the numbers on the bio bed again, ensuring your condition is stable. “Nothing earth shattering,” you reply, taking in a slow, deep, shaky breath, rejoicing when it doesn’t lead to more coughing. “Some of the feathers we collected show signs of poor health in certain individuals, which could indicate parasitism or infection, but nothing you wouldn’t expect with a large population of birds.” You close you eyes as Leonard reaches up and gently strokes your hair, his touch soothing you. You think back on those samples you’ve just mentioned and you suck in a breath as something dawns on you, this time eliciting a paroxysm of coughs. Leonard soothes you through them, and once you’ve caught your breath, you look up at him, having had an epiphany. “I need to contact the ornithology lab on Hanon IV,” you say. “I have an idea. It’s crazy, maybe, but worth a shot.” Leonard stares you down with a trademark quirk of his eyebrow. “There are some diseases that can be transmitted between humans and animals, right?” You ask. Leonard nods. “Sure,” he replies. “Zoonotic illnesses – lyme disease, tularemia, you name it. Why? What are you thinking?” “Psittacosis,” you offer. “It can be passed between humans and animals, it would explain some of the signs of illness I’ve found in my samples, and it shows up as pneumonia in people, doesn’t it?” Leonard’s eyebrows furrow in contemplation for a few moments and you can practically hear the gears turning as he takes your symptoms and history of exposure into consideration. “It does,’ he replies eventually. “And while I can’t pretend to be an expert on it, I think it might explain some of my other findings, too.” His hand leaves your hair where it’s been stroking the stands for the last several minutes as he straightens up and you follow him with your gaze; you’re not getting up any time soon. “There’s no need for you to go to the trouble of contacting the lab; I’m going to have the lab here test for the Chlamydophila psittaci antigen in your samples,” Leonard explains. “I’ll be back the moment I know anything. If you’re right, which I’m reasonably sure you are, the antibiotic we’ve switched you to should do the trick.” You nod in understanding as he speaks and return the smile he shoots you before turning to leave you once again. With him gone, you let your eyes drift closed and you listen to the steady beep of the overhead monitor, one for every one of your heartbeats. It’s a rhythmic, hypnotic sort of metronome and it quickly lulls you off to sleep. This time, you don’t even twitch when Christine comes in to give you another round of medication, nor do you hear Leonard’s footsteps return to your bedside. Your awakening this time is much more gentle, though you’re confused for a moment at the feeling of a warm weight on your shoulder. Blinking through the waking fog of a fading dream, you focus on the form at your bedside and allow yourself to feel reassured by his touch even before you realize it’s Leonard. “Hey there, sleepyhead,” he says softly, squeezing your shoulder gently. “How’s my little genius feeling?” “Your little genius?” You croak, your voice still thick with sleep and strained from all the coughing. “Your diagnosis was right on the money, sugar,” Leonard explains. “And the good news is that psittacosis isn’t very contagious, so once we’ve got you stabilized a little better and your fever’s broken, you can spend the rest of your recovery in your quarters.” You’re elated to hear it, but something about his words catches your attention. “If it’s not very contagious, how did I get it?” You ask. Leonard laughs softly. “Not very doesn’t mean not at all,” he reasons. “And it’s easier to catch from wildlife than it is to catch from another person. You probably inhaled some aerosolized droppings that contained the bacteria at the sanctuary.” You wrinkle your nose in disgust at the thought, earning yourself another good-natured chuckle from the doctor. “However it happened, it doesn’t matter now,” Leonard assures you. “All you need to worry about now is resting, breathing, and getting better.” You smile tiredly and nod, patting the bed beside you. “With the Federation’s best doctor here to take care of me, I know I’ll make a full recovery,” you say confidently. You shift over as he moves to join you on the bed and snuggle into his chest as he lays down at your side. The metronomic beeping of your heart monitor is quickly replaced in your ear by the sound of Leonard’s heartbeat at your cheek and you sigh in contentment as you almost immediately find yourself being pulled back into the slumber you’d been awakened from a short while before.

@imamotherfuckingstar-lord @feelmyroarrrr @starshiphufflebadger @fandomheadrush @yourtropegirl @theonlyparadox @musingsongbird @the-alpha-otter @gerardnot-gerald @earinafae @ababyinatrenchcoat @arrowsshootyouforwards @alluramc @medicatemedrmccoy @wonders-of-the-enterprise @star-trekkin-across-theuniverse @answer-the-sirens @devanshade @dolamrothianlady @startrekimagines @itsjaynebird @mccoymostly @goodnightwife @thevalesofanduin @distinguishedqueenofbooks @elsa-lost-in-translation @yourtropegirl @impalaanddemons

For my entire masterlist, click here! If you would like to be tagged in future fics, drop me an ask!

#star trek #star trek aos #star trek tos #star trek reboot #star trek 2009 #leonard mccoy #leonard bones mccoy #dr. mccoy #dr. leonard mccoy #leonard h. mccoy #bones #fanfiction #reader insert #star trek fanfiction #star trek imagines #imagines #cmo's log - a to z #trek fest 2017

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happyk44 · 7 years

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Okay that last Billy/Jason completely tore me up. Like I'm mad that you did it but it was so good so I'm angry at myself for loving it 😩any way would you mind doing a flirty Jason/Billy one? Run with it however you please. Also I hope you're doing your homework and not procrastinating like a pro like me 😫😭

Bc i have xkit, I save prompts to my drafts so i can continously work on them, except i accidentally posted this one instead of saving it so I legit just moved it into a private posting and speedwrote all of this in the last forty minutes (so it’s incredibly short and ridiculous). REST ASSURED THOUGH, ANON. Someone else requested a flirty cranscott too so a better one should be coming sometime in the next few weeks??

“You want to what?”

Billy gestured loosely with both hands. “Try pick-up lines on you.”

Jason flushed and glanced to the side for a second, trying to wrap his mind around what Billy was asking. “You want to hit on me?”

“Yes.” Billy rubbed his face. “They’re important to romance, I’m sure of it.”

“Billy, they’re really not.”

“I looked it up,” Billy insisted. Before Jason could protest, Billy quickly added, “And I asked Zack. And he has two girlfriends so he must know what he’s talking about.”

Jason rubbed his eyes agitatedly. He was going to slap Zack next time he saw him. “I just don’t think-”

“Please?” Billy squeezed his hands into tight fists at his side.

“Billy-” Jason sighed. “Why do you want to anyway?”

Billy eyed him for a second, quiet. Then, he rocked back on his heels, stopped looking at Jason and said, “There’s a guy. I like. At school.”

“And you think pick up lines will make him date you?”

“I think they’ll help to see if he likes me back,” Billy explained. “But I need to know which ones are better.”

Jason sighed and settled onto the edge of his bed. “Alright, Billy. Woo me.”

Billy burst into a wide grin, hands rapidly clapping together. “Okay, okay. Um, hmm. I wrote a bunch of them down.” Billy fiddled through his pockets, pulling out stray bits of wire and screws until he got to a small but thickly folded piece of paper. It unravelled into a long list. “I’m going to go in order.”

“Okay, Billy,” Jason said, rubbing his face.

If he was lucky, they’d all be too terrible to feel any which way towards.

And if he was luckier still, the guy Billy liked would disappear off the face of the planet before Billy could hit on him.

Billy cleared his throat. “I’m just wanted to let you know that I’m not a hoarder.” He glanced up, eyes meeting Jason’s, soft and warm. “But I really want to keep you forever.”

It was cheesy and ridiculous but the way Billy said it, soft and wanting, had Jason’s insides squirming. When Billy didn’t continue on, Jason rubbed his arms. “Uh, that was- it- mm, that one’s fine, Billy.”

Billy grinned. “Yeah?”

“Yep.” Jason popped the ‘p’ and refused to meet Billy’s happy face. “Definitely should- should use that one.”

“Okay!” Billy glanced back down at his list. “Are you a camera? Because every time I look at your face, I smile.” And he did, grinning wide and happy at Jason’s face.

Warmth bloomed in his stomach but Jason just snorted. “A little cheesy, Billy.”

Billy nodded. He licked his lips. His hands shook a little and he exhaled. “Um-” He scratched under his ear and looked up at Jason. “I don’t believe in love at first sight, but I’m willing to make an exception for you.”

Jason laughed. Okay, that one was pretty cute. “Smooth, Billy.”

Billy smiled and went on. “I don’t normally let people touch me but angels are a different case.”

There was a patient pause as Jason took that in. He squeezed his hand into a brief fist. “That one’s good too.”

“Probably because it’s true.”

Jason smiled, thinking of all the times Billy let him and no one else touch his arm, his skin, brief or longer lasting.. “Does that mean I’m an angel?”

“The most angelic,” Billy said patiently and Jason’s smile grew a little wider. Billy glanced down at his list again and Jason waited for another cheesy but sweet ringer when Billy, voice shaking, said, “I guess that means I should call God, cause he’s missing his most important one.”

Jason paused. Blinked. Considered what was happening and exhaled slowly.

Billy bit his lip. In his hands his paper was crinkling as he tightened his grip on it. “Not good?”

Jason shook his head and stood up sharply. “No, no. It was good, Billy.” He rubbed his neck. “But, um, a nicer one would be-” And he dropped his hand, running his fingers soft and light over Billy’s face. “-I didn’t know angels could fly so low.”

Billy smiled softly. “You know, Zack bet me twenty dollars that you wouldn’t get the point until the last one.”

“Well, I guess someone owes you twenty dollars then, huh, Billy?”

Billy shrugged. “Not as a bad as owing someone three months worth of kisses.”

Jason laughed. “Can I start putting a dent in that?”

The list fluttered to the floor and Billy stepped closer into Jason’s space. “Yeah, but you should know that you’ve accrued a lot of interest.”

Jason smirked and nuzzled Billy’s cheek, letting his arms draped over Billy’s shoulders and keep him close. “Can’t wait to start paying it off.”

AO3 || Tip the Writer

#cranscott #billy cranston #power rangers #jason scott #billyjason #PROMPTS ARE STILL NOT OPEN #I POSTED THIS TOO SOON SO I JUST SPEEDWROTE MOST OF IT????#IM SO SORRY anon #i wanted to write something a lot better but instead i fucked up #and wrote something so insanely silly??#my writing #happy's asks #anon #my fanfic

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alo-piss-trancy · 7 years

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Okay I found one of the super/girl drafts on my laptop and was relieved for a minute and prepared to start writing, only to find that all I had saved was the prompt itself c':

I don't have the energy to try and recreate what I had rn (it was at almost 1000 words so far and about Cat and had great sassy lines I am dying) so instead take these ideas for Winn and Kara omo bc their bff relationship gives me life and no one talks about it even in general much less in omo and also I really want Winn to soak himself bc he's cute and I'd kiss him

1. Consider the day when Kara first started working at Cat/Co. Ah yes, the cute new assistant who sits right next to Winn and they have a nice enough time chatting with each other while he gives her a general idea of how things work around the office. They have a few more conversations between projects throughout the day, and towards the last hour or so of the day Winn realizes that Kara hasn't left her desk for anything ALL DAY except to bring Cat lunch and some papers (and maybe you could have guessed that she'd gone then, except he'd admittedly been unable to take his eyes off of her whenever she walked by, so he knew she hadn't gone near that direction), and he naturally gets a little concerned that she's probably dying by this point and oh crap maybe no one told her where they were and she's just been too nervous to ask? He's super embarrassed to even bring it up but finally manages to blurt out a casual (aka not casual at all but awkward af) "Hey, uh, you know the bathrooms are just down that hall, right? Like, in case no one told you...". Kara, of course, with her superhuman bladder of steel, hasn't even felt much of an urge yet, and just casually nods with a "Yeah, I know, thanks." before she goes back to her work. Winn probably looked her over just to make sure she wasn't just faking casual because he knew some people were shy enough to deny it even if they were about to burst, but she honestly looks just as unbothered as she sounded, so he drops it and wonders how on earth this girl is fine when he's had to take at least 3 breaks today.

Throughout the rest of the week Kara continues to last the entire workday from morning 'till night without bathroom breaks, and Winn is probably impressed but it also makes him kind of self-conscious to be the only one getting up and drawing attention to himself multiple times or interrupting their conversations. So the next Monday he decides to try and start holding back and hopefully match Kara's unholy endurance, because if someone as normal as her can do it then maybe it isn't actually that hard and he's just kind of weak (he's already the office nerd, it probably isn't much of a stretch now that he thinks about it). He makes it through the first few hours and his first break okay (well, not okay, but he can keep still), but about an hour after lunch he's starting to really feel it, pressing his legs together or crossing them at the ankles or scooting his chair around as a distraction. Kara probably gets a little concerned by the soft moans under his breath that her superhearing picks up and asks if he's sick or something, but he manages to brush off her worries and insists he's fine. It works, but only a half hour after that he's absolutely DYING and he can't sit still and nothing is comfortable and he decides to cave and get up because he really can't do this except the second he tries to stand he feels a leak into his boxers and sits right back into his chair with a strained squeal. And by this point Kara is definitely worried because poor Winn is all sweaty and blushing and she definitely heard that leak and figured out what was going on, so she casually scoots her chair over to try and talk to him without drawing everyone else's attention, and he finally admits that he's never had to pee this badly in his l i f e but he really doesn't think he can stand much less move and oh gosh every breath is slicing into his bladder and he has to stop whispering to her so he can grab himself and hunch over with a nervous little moan bc holy shit he can feel it running right up to the edge of his dick and he doesn't know what to do and what if Cat comes over how on earth is he going to explain this and he's just rocking in the edge of his seat trying to hold on and shaking like a leaf. Kara really has no clue what to do either because she can't exactly justify using superspeed to rush him to the bathroom bc there's no way to explain suddenly teleporting there or even just scooping him up bc you don't just do that to your coworkers, and helping walk him there isn't even an option since he can't stand.

There are two ways this could play out.

Either A. she tells him to try and hold it in for just a few minutes while walks out as casually as possible before whooshing around the different floors looking for something useable, and if they're lucky she comes back and manages to sneak whatever the object is (like a large soda cup or a personal trash can or smth) under his desk and Kara finds some loud distracting way to keep everyone in the room from hearing (maybe she sets off an alarm in another part of the building or just 'accidentally' bumps someone else's computer to play music really loudly while they struggle to shut it off) while Winn gushes into the makeshift toilet with the force of a firetruck's pressure hose.

Or B. Kara really can't think of anything to do to help and before she can think much further Winn starts leaking harder and gasping and groaning and he's trying to keep quiet but it's hard when the feelings are so strong and painful and he loses complete control a second later in the chair, warm piss completely flooding his pants and running down his legs into his shoes and it's pooling in the seat and drenching the carpet and it's hissing loudly enough to draw attention and it's honestly all Winn can do to keep from crying bc it hurts but it's also SO relieving and also completely mortifying he's going to be the laughing stock of the office and once it's over Cat pipes up from where she'd arrived in time to witness the last of the event and makes some kind of snarky remark comparing him to a toddler before snapping at him to go get cleaned up, change at home if he needs to, and then come back to work bc he's still got half a day left and she isn't paying him to hide under a rock in shame. Once Winn slinks out and people go back to work Cat's probably about to call the janitor but Kara insists she'll clean it up bc she doesn't want more people to find out about it ('Kara you should know I'm not paying you overtime for doing someone else's job') and Cat relents bc as long as that mess gets cleaned up before the germs multiply she really doesn't care who does it. Kara probably uses a smidge of secret superbreath to make sure his spot is as dry as can possibly be when he gets back and she probably got him some kind of sweet treat to brighten him up a bit.

No matter which ending happens Winn is absolutely beyond mortified bc he just almost/actually pissed himself in front of Kara and everyone else and he probably looked completely pathetic and gross and she's never going to want to talk to him again jfc. Of course then Kara is nothing but sweet and understanding and tries her very best to help take his mind off of it and get things back to normal and makes him feel a lot better about the whole incident. She also takes the hint after that and starts taking more frequent bathroom breaks at work even though she doesn't really need them, just so he's more comfortable about it.

Okay this was intended to be a whole list of cute scenarios but look at my wordy ass getting WAY out of hand with number 1 jfc I guess I'll save the rest for more posts lmao at least you get this one for now I'll do the rest later

#omorashi #male omo #male omorashi #bear txt #superpiss #dunno if that tag counts since it isn't kara wetting but its the same show so #lowkey praying this doesn't pop up in the character tags bc this site is lagging way too much for me to put slashes through all of them #@the fandom i'm sorry if you find this and aren't into omo just ignore it lmao #dc omo

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lawandlinguisticsandeuropeandfun · 5 years

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CLS Hindi Acceptance! and Advice

*Obligatory my opinions are just that, my own. They do not represent the views or objectives of the CLS, the US Department of State, or American Councils.*

I’ve had an exciting week! I just found out I received the U.S. Department of State’s Critical Language Scholarship for Hindi. That means I will spend this summer in Jaipur, India studying the language for about 20 hours a week while doing various cultural activities in between. Find out more about the CLS program here. Though I haven’t done much for the program aside from getting accepted, I really recommend the experience for any American langblrs out there. I’ve seen that langblr/Tumblr is really lacking some CLS information, so I want to relay some things that I’ve learned so far plus a little bit of advice for getting the scholarship, based on my experience.

Use all the resources available to you.

The CLS website is really great because they have names of previous participants, your campus advisors for every language at your university, webinars and so much more. Take a weekend to sit down and survey all the advice that CLS itself offers: most of what I’ve learned I’ve taken directly from what they’ve told applicants to do. The CLS application process is, in my view, extremely straightforward: they’re not trying to trick or weed out applicants for any weird reason, they want who they say they want on the website - passionate, interesting college students who will work hard to learn a language. If you can give that impression in your application, you’re golden.

Outside of CLS, gradcafe forums, some older Tumblr/Reddit posts, and Youtube all helped me get an idea of what the program is like. Likewise, an hour of googling can give you some more specific nuggets of information to include in your application.

ALSO on-campus resources at your college will likewise be super helpful to you. I visited my college’s Writing Center I think 4-5 times to draft and revise my essays, and I’m so glad I did. Ask around, and find study abroad officers, alums, and CLS advisors at your school to help you prepare for your application, and hopefully, your time abroad!

Don’t let Imposter Syndrome stop you: This program isn’t just for foreign language majors or people from “prestigious” colleges.

CLS goes through extensive lengths to recruit applicants from a variety of colleges, experiences, and majors. Finalists come from community colleges and the Ivy league, and language majors are far from the only participants. CLS just wants to see you make a unique case that your experience and your field of study will benefit from the scholarship: do some research on the country/ies that speak your target language and find connections between that and your academic career.

Make your application specific and construct a timeline.

To be blunt, CLS is already aware of the fact that 1 billion people speak Chinese/K-Pop is gaining global musical influence/Farsi is an important language due to historical Iran-America relations. Not only that, the readers for the program have likely been told these very general factoids in thousands of application essays. My advice is to save that space in your essays and give the readers a few tangible and vivid details of your relationship to that language. It goes without saying that you think more people should speak your target language because that’s the entire purpose of CLS. Also, if you speak/use other languages in your daily life make a really interesting connection between the two! For example, I previously was an exchange student to Croatia, so I discussed my interest in the religion and politics behind the Serbian/Bosnian/Croatian and Hindi/Urdu linguistic divides. Write essays that give the readers a good idea of who you are, and try to stay away from bland and well-known facts about CLS and your language.

Another thing that really helped my application was that my advisor told me to draw out a timeline for my future as I see it now. With those long-term goals of mine, I wrote how Hindi and India fit into my life, and featured those connections in my essays.

Also write to impart some sense of urgency upon the reader: why CLS now? When you give the impression that your goals are detailed and realistic, your application will be so much better!

Talk about what you’re doing now.

CLS wants to see a demonstrated commitment to the goal of acquiring and using your target language, in whatever unique way you’ve gone about that. Be creative! If you have a langblr for your target language, talk about it! Write how you’ve made vocabulary lists and answered writing prompts in your language. In my essays, I wrote about how I couldn’t take Hindi classes at my college due to a schedule conflict, so I arranged to audit lessons instead. I’ve heard of people starting study groups, conversational coffee hours, and tutoring programs, in addition to things like dance and martial arts lessons, calligraphy, and so much more.

Choose your language first, not the program.

Sidenote: while CLS is amazing in that it fully funds all travel, room/board, and academic expenses for every student, I’ve come across people online trying to “game” the program by trying to strategically choose less common languages that receive fewer applications to the program. CLS offers about 16 languages, and from my experience the bigger programs are Russian, Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, and Korean. So for example, a student may really want to get into CLS in general, and despite their having five years study of Russian, they may choose, say, the Azeri program because it receives fewer applications. As a very competitive and generous program, I seen people prioritize getting accepted over any consideration of the actual language they will be spending months studying.

So the first problem with this approach is that a) we don’t know the exact distribution of applications for a given language for any given year, and b) CLS compensates for the fewer applications of these less-spoken/studied languages by offering fewer spots. So the low amount of information applicants receive means that practically you should choose the language you would do the best studying over any sort of strategy to get into CLS in the first place.

Secondly, your application will likely be stronger if you choose the language you are most passionate about and connects best to your future career.

#CLS #Critical Language Scholarship #CLS Hindi #CLS Jaipur #Hindi #Langblr

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kristinejrosario · 7 years

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How Do You Blog Consistently When You Have Very Little Time?

From ProBlogger Expert Ali Luke of Aliventures.

Do you ever feel like your blog is yet another responsibility on a very long list?

For the vast majority of bloggers, blogging has to fit in around an already full life. Perhaps you’re:

Building an online business, which you’re marketing by blogging … but the business takes up loads of time

Starting out as a freelancer writer, and building a client list through your blog and newsletter … but you need to focus most of your working hours on your paid writing

Raising a young family – with sleepless nights, hectic mornings, and tons of housework along the way

Working long hours at a busy day job … leaving you very little time or energy to write

Even if you have very little time, you can blog consistently. Here’s how:

Step #1: Remember That Consistent Blogging Doesn’t Mean Frequent Blogging

Perhaps, right now, you can’t realistically commit to publishing posts on a frequent basis.

That’s fine.

You don’t necessarily need to blog weekly (and you definitely don’t need to blog daily). I’ve never met a reader who unsubscribed because a blog didn’t publish quite as much great content as they’d have liked; I’ve met plenty who unsubscribed because they felt overwhelmed by the volume of content … or who left because the quality dropped.

I suggest blogging between once a month and once a week: decide on the frequency and do your best to stick with it.

If you can, write a post or two to keep back for times when you’re particularly busy. If you haven’t been posting for a while, delay starting back until you’ve built up a little stock of posts.

Step #2: Batch Together Your Blogging Tasks

When you’ve only got, say, an hour a week, you don’t want to waste your time struggling to come up with an idea.

I’ve been blogging for nine years now (on my own blogs and as a guest poster and freelancer), and over time, I’ve learned that it’s easiest to batch together different content creation tasks.

Batching can be a huge help with managing your energy as well as your time – take a look at Naomi Dunford’s great post How To Stay Amazingly Productive On Low Energy Days for examples of how different blogging activities might fit your “ebb” or “flow” times.

Here’s how I suggest you batch your tasks:

Ideas

Set aside 20 minutes. Come up with as many ideas as you can (try to get at least 10). They don’t have to be amazing ideas! Get lots down as quickly as possible and you’ll soon find that you move beyond the unworkable or boring ones.

If you’re stuck, try using the ProBlogger blogging prompts to spark off ideas: you can get a whole pack of them when you join the ProBlogger weekly newsletter (which is also a great source of blogging inspiration)!

Planning

Set aside another 20 minutes. Pick four ideas. Spend no more than five minutes very briefly planning for each one.

It helps to come up with a consistent structure (which I’ll get to later in this post). For a very basic structure, think:

Introduction

Several key points that all relate closely to your idea/ title

Conclusion

Outlining

You might be happy to write straight from your five minute plan (especially if your post is a short one). If you want, though, you can add an extra “outlining” stage into the batching process.

Go through your 5 minute plan and flesh out each key point. Add notes about:

What specific tips or ideas you want to share in each section.

Any links or examples you want to use.

I’d suggest spending 10 minutes per outline at this stage.

It’s absolutely fine to change things about your plan at this point, too – don’t feel that you have to stick 100% to what you’ve already written.

Drafting

Once you’ve got an outline, drafting your post is pretty straightforward! It’s just a matter of going through and writing out each section that you’ve planned. You won’t need to worry about where you’re going next, and you won’t find yourself going off on a long tangent.

You also don’t need to draft your post in a single session. You’re not trying to store it all in your head – your outline is down on paper already – so you can draft in short bursts (e.g. 10 – 20 minutes per day) if that suits your schedule better.

Rewriting

If you created a good outline before you drafted your post, you may well not need this stage! If you didn’t, you may have found that your first draft went off in an unexpected direction or that your initial idea needed some refining as you wrote.

If that’s the case, set your post aside for a day or two, so you can come back to it with fresh eyes. Then:

CUT: Cut out any sections that don’t really fit the post. Save them for a different piece.

REARRANGE: See whether any sections (or even paragraphs) would read more smoothly or logically if you reordered them.

ADD: Check whether there’s anything you need to add. This might be simply a link to another post or an explanation of something that new readers may not understand.

Editing

When you edit, you’re looking very closely at your post: at the sentence structures and word choices. (This is why you want to rewrite first, if your post needs a fair amount of work: there’s no point perfecting a sentence that you’re only going to end up cutting out altogether.)

You may find that it’s helpful to have a batch of 2 – 4 drafts ready that you can edit in sequence, with your critical “editing” hat on rather than your creative “writing” hat in place.

Formatting and Links

If you’ve not already done it when editing, go through your post one last time and make it look great.

Put in an image (or several images), Header 2 format for subheadings, bold text for key points, blockquote format for quotes, bullet points for lists, and so on.

Also look out for any opportunities to include a useful link – whether that’s to an old post on your blog or a post on someone else’s site.

Step #3: Use a Content Calendar

If you sometimes struggle to know what to post, or feel like your blog needs more variety or consistency, you need a content calendar or editorial calendar.

This doesn’t need to be anything fancy or complicated. I make a simple calendar in Evernote each month, with one blog post title and one newsletter piece listed for each week:

You can take this a step further and “theme” the different posts that you do. For instance, if you write one post a week, your standard calendar template might look like this:

Week 1 – “how to” post

Week 2 – re-run an old post (see tip #4)

Week 3 – inspiring, encouraging post

Week 4 – round-up post, linking to good posts elsewhere during the past month

Alternatively, you might make a calendar that rotates around different topics. For instance, if (like me) you blog about writing, you might have a calendar like this:

Week 1 – fiction-writing

Week 2 – freelancing

Week 3 – blogging

Week 4 – publishing

There are plenty of different ways to use and structure your calendar, and Darren covers lots of good suggestions in this podcast on creating an editorial calendar.

Step #4: Have a Consistent Post Template

All blog posts have a structure. At the very least, posts start with some sort of introduction – even if it’s just a sentence or two – then have a main body of content. Ideally, they should have a conclusion too.

Bloggers who produce a lot of content generally have at least one standard post structure to work from. Michael Hyatt has a very specific template that he uses for pretty much every post on his blog, for instance.

You might think that using a template will make your posts less interesting. In fact, the opposite is true. It’s easier for readers to engage when your post has a logical progressing (instead of being a meandering collection of points) – and it’s generally far easier for you to share your thoughts if you have a structure to contain them.

Step #5: Recycle Old Posts

If you’ve been blogging for any length of time, you’ll have an awful lot of posts that new readers won’t easily spot. Even if these are listed in your archives, they won’t necessarily be seen.

One very easy way to post regular content when you’re busy is to revive an old post. Simply choose one from your archives (I’d suggest going back to at least a year ago), and repost it.

Depending on your topic and how old your post is, you may want to:

Update the post with new information or facts, if those have become outdated.

Update the post with fresh examples and links – these can date quite quickly, so do check all existing links in particular to make sure they still work.

Change the formatting or layout of the post – perhaps you’ve altered your blog’s theme and the post no longer looks as good as it once did.

Include a note to state that the post was previously published. I like to do this to avoid confusing readers! I usually pop a line in italics at the top of the post, e.g.: This post was first published in 2012 and updated in 2017.

I’ve republished several of my favourite old posts, and so far, not a single reader has complained … and several have thanked me for publishing content that was just what they needed, right now! So even if you’re reluctant to republish content, give it a go and see what happens.

Of course, there’ll probably be a fair amount of old content that you decide not to republish. You could still save time by using it in other ways – ZenOptimise has a handy list of 12 different ways to do this.

Step #6: Look at Your Whole Weekly Schedule

If you’ve tried the above tips and you’re still struggling to find enough time for your blog, then you need to take a look at everything else going on in your life.

Chances are, there are a lot of things you can’t realistically change (e.g. the hours you spend at your day job, the hours your partner works, how long your baby naps) but there probably is at least a little bit of leeway. For instance:

Can you set aside one or two nights a week for an hour’s blogging, e.g. from 8pm – 9pm? You don’t have to work all evening every evening!

Can you get up 15 minutes early to blog in small increments? (Check out Tip #2 on batch producing posts, above.)

Could you reduce the time you spend on some household chores? For instance, could you batch cook a couple of nights a week so you don’t have to cook each night? Can you order groceries online so you don’t need to get out to the shops at the weekend?

If you live with a partner, can you arrange your joint schedule so that you both get a little more free time? For instance, perhaps you’ll take the kids out on Saturday afternoons and they will have the kids on Sunday afternoons: that way, you’ll have time to blog and your partner will have time for their hobbies.

If you don’t know where your time is going, keep a time log for a week to find out and write down everything you do. If you’re mostly at your computer, use RescueTime to track what you’re spending time on.

There may well not be any easy answers, and you may be frustrated that a lot of your schedule can’t be changed. Focus on what you can change and control, though.

Moving Forward, Step by Step

Blogging can feel a bit relentless at times: your blog needs fresh content week after week. Treat it as a marathon, not a sprint – don’t burn out.

Also (and I really struggle with this!), do try not to compare yourself to other bloggers. They may well be at a completely different stage of life from you (perhaps they don’t have a day job, or they don’t have kids, or they can afford to pay a team of assistants…). Instead of thinking about them, stay focused on what you can do to keep growing your blog – or, as Charlie Gilkey puts it, watch your own lane.

Ideally, you want to gradually move towards a position where you do have more time for your blog – so you might look at creating or growing some income streams, for instance, so you can afford to pay for some childcare or for a virtual assistant.

I know how tough (practically and emotionally) it can be to keep up with blogging when you don’t have much time to spare. Take it at your own pace, step by step. And while overall consistency is important, if you do feel overwhelmed, it’s fine to take an occasional week off!

How do you fit your blogging in around your busy life? Does one of the above tips already work well for you, or do you have something else to suggest? Share your ideas in the comments below!

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richardrobertsimsuccessblog · 7 years