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soundofseventeen · 4 years

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13 Days of Christmas (Lee Chan)

Happy holidays from Erin and me, and thank you for enjoying what our single brain cell manages to come up with! I’ll edit this after work and gif creds to the owners

Word count: 1727

“Gather ‘round everyone,” Junhui said, holding out a Santa hat upside down. “Gather ‘round! It’s that time of year again!”

“You’re finally going back to China,” Minghao quipped, not tearing his eyes away from the article on his phone. “It’s about time too.”

“If I’m going back, you’re coming with me dummy,” he retorted with a roll of his eyes. “Okay, so in this Santa hat are 14 names. You will each pick one name from here and you will be that person’s Secret Santa.”

“Secret Santa’s boring,” Jihoon jeered. “Not everyone can keep a secret.” His eyes flickered to the three idiots on the floor giggling at some video Soonyoung swore was funny.

“Hey,” Seungcheol whined from the kitchen sink, “I was almost there. It wasn’t my fault Chan left his present in the closet.”

Your ears perked up a little at the mention of Chan’s name, but you kept your gaze on your phone, wanting to break your current high score. You already knew you wouldn’t pull his name whether Secret Santa happened or not. But you knew they’d go along with Jun’s plan just because he suggested it. The more uninterested you looked, the better.

“I think it’s a good idea,” Mingyu said, drawing a diagonal line on the tic-tac-toe game he was playing against Chan. He immediately started a new game.

“Y’all hear something?” Seungkwan broke his attention away from the little screen. “It sounded...annoying. Oh hyung! It was just you! Can we hear what the more important ones have to say?” He swatted his hand at the flying pencil which ended up hitting Soonyoung, who then decided his audience didn’t deserve to see the video so he exited the app and sat on the couch, which ultimately distracted you and made you lose your game, which upset you too.

“This better be good Wen Junhui.” You could feel your nerves already hitting overdrive.

“Always the grinch, aren’t we Y/N?” he teased you, holding the hat out to you. “Since you look like the most excited one here, why don’t you go first?”

“Nothing would make me happier.” You crunched down on the candy cane in your mouth, savoring the minty taste (but also knowing you’d need some sweet ones too) before reaching into the hat and pulling out a slip of paper. You had your hopes and your expectations. The odds of getting the boy you wanted was one in thirteen. You didn’t mind having the other boys but maybe you just wanted the opportunity to buy something for him without having to look weird. You unfolded the scrap and read the name.

Junhui.

“Did you get yourself?”

“No,” you shook your head.

“Then my work here is done. He made a show of running back and forth between the members so everyone would have a fair turn, and everything was running smoothly when he asked Seokmin, “Did you get yourself?”

“No, I got Minghao.” And the next thing he knew, everyone was pelting him with whatever they could get their hands on. “I’m sorry, okay? Hey, that one hurt.”

“Alright, scrap this round. Everyone put the papers back in here and I’m gonna shuffle them again and now...Hannie hyung, you’re going first...did you get yourself?”

“No, but this isn’t who I wanted.”

“Too bad, next! Wonwoo-ssi, you’ve been so quiet so it’s your turn.”

The mistake repeated thrice more when Mingyu announced getting Jun (you pulled out Soonyoung for that round); Chan spoiled it when he revealed Seungkwan’s name (you pulled Jeonghan); and Seungcheol ruined it when he said he got you (you picked Mingyu) and then Junhui huffed out a, “Unless you got yourself, keep your mouths shut.” He managed to glare at the culprits as they pulled out their picks. “Okay Y/N, it’s your turn.”

You didn’t bother holding your breath anymore; it seemed like all the pent up anxiety went away with the disappointment of not pulling his name in the last 15 minutes. You didn’t feel your hands tremble anymore as you unfolded the little, somehow dirty with the grease from potato chips (and after a quick scan, you figured out that Vernon pulled out this at least once. You’re ready to get this over with and then you feel the nerves come back tenfold.

“Did you get yourself?”

“No.” You finally pulled out Chan’s name...and now you were terrified.

Once you were in the comforts of your own place later that night, you brought out a notebook and your laptop and opened the tabs that’d hopefully help you out. But what the hell do you get the future of kpop? He got everything his heart desired on a silver platter. You fell back on your bed with a groan, hating the universe for finally listening to you. You could've gotten any other of the boys something like a watch, or a pair of shoes or even just a new camera, but you hated the fact that you had a crush on Chan because now you had to go all out and get him something that was special.

You would’ve made him something but your own idol life kept you from actually things you enjoyed...besides the dancing and music. And buying him something just didn’t feel personal. Maybe if you bought him a dog...no, a cat...wait maybe a rabbit...a lizard...how about a turtle...a parrot! Your hand found your pillow and you resisted the urge to smother your face in it when you threw it on you. A wallet? Nah, one of the boys already bought him one when his ripped during a concert. He already had plenty of clothes...and shoes. What if you bought him a MacBook? Nope, one of them (Soonyoung) would try setting it up and then they’d be asking for a new one.

“What?” you answered your phone, your voice still muffled.

“Whose Secret Santa are you?” Speak of Kwon Soonyoung and he shall appear.

“Why would I tell you?”

“Because if you got me, I’m just saying there’s this new grill I saw at the hardware store last week and it’s on sale. And even if youre not my secret Santa, I’d appreciate the gift.”

“Goodbye Soonyoung.”

Suddenly, a trip to Ibiza didn’t sound so bad and you would’ve booked flights but Seventeen had a much tighter schedule than you did so they would’ve gone to waste. You finally stood up, finding something in you to put your shoes in the closet. Okay, they honestly, would’ve been fine where they were, but you didn’t wanna stare at the laptop anymore in case you decided to yell at it for not helping you. You never wanted to do Secret Santa for Chan again. It was a lot more stressful than you decided.

You threw your shoes on the floor, ready to go back to your bed when a pen caught your eye. Admittedly, you wanted a distraction so you bent down to pick it up, cursing yourself for leaving your backpack open so everything could fall to the ground. Not too far from it a plasic bag caught your eye, and you reached over to take it out and a smile broke out on your face. It wasn’t perfect but it’d do.

“Merry Christmas from your Secret Santa,” Joshua said with a smile. He gave you a poorly wrapped present which you took gratefully.

“I’m afraid now,” you teased him.

“As you should. I spent almost two months collecting everyone’s toenail clippings.”

“This is why you’re single.” Even though you knew he was kidding, you still shook the gift...just to be sure. Something clinked in there and your paranoid gaze met his mischievous one. “You didn’t really do that, did you?”

“Be grateful it wasn’t coal,” he said, referring to the fact that Soonyoung’s secret Santa (which turned out to be Seungcheol) did just that.

You unwrapped it hesitantly, heart pounding a lot faster than it should’ve and it was only when you saw a Winnie-the-Pooh and friends stained glass design that you breathed a sigh of relief and almost threw it at him. “This is beautiful. I love it. Thank you, okay then, ‘bye. Okay, Chan. Merry Christmas from your secret Santa aka me.”

“Did you get me cologne? Someone, not to name names-” his eyes shot to Jeonghan accusingly, “finished all of mine last week.”

“If you told me that sooner, I would’ve saved myself the headache,” you groaned.

“But you didn’t and that’s okay. So, what did you get me since you can’t give me the world?” He took your gift bag curiously, examining the sides. “It’s too small to be shoes, and you didn’t put it in a box.” He reached into it and pulled out a leather journal with his name written in both Korean and English. He opened it right away and read the little message you put in.

“Now that you’re doing more choreographies, maybe you’ll want a place to put your notes in. Or you can just jot your words down.”

“Y/N, I was wondering when you were gonna give me this.”

“Huh?”

“This is gonna sound really weird but a couple years ago when we went to your house...this was before you moved...I was putting some chicken, i think it was away back in the fridge and I saw this in a bag mixed in with vegetables. I thought it was yours but then i saw my name on it...I thought you might’ve forgotten about it.”

You were confused for a moment longer and then you remembered. “Oh yeah! I did but I didn’t. I bought this for you awhile back but I wanted to give it to you for Christmas but then it would’ve looked bad if I got you something but not anyone else, and then when Jun wanted to do Secret Santa, I was hoping I’d get you but I never did...and then I just gave up on the idea.”

“You are really the cutest. But it’s better late than never.” He tapped your head affectionately with it. “Now if you’ll excuse me...Hey, hyung! Guess what I got.”

You couldn’t stop that stupid grin from forming on your face. Lee Chan called you cute, and it just made your day a lot better.

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hopeispunk · 5 years

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my 2019 challenge:

this year i am challenging myself, my friends, family, and anyone that will listen to reduce our waste. recycling isn’t going to cut it, so here are a few tips that i am going to start and continue implementing in my lifestyle:

1. banishing single-use plastics

this means; plastic bags, straws, plastic water bottles, plastic cutlery, Styrofoam containers, to-go coffee containers, etc.

plastic water bottles, probably cost you around $1.50 a bottle, but there are pretty inexpensive (~$9 for a nice reusable water bottle, or, less than a week’s worth of plastic water bottles)

for most drinks, straws are not a necessity, so when you go out to eat, you can simply request that your waiter/waitress not bring any. or there are plenty of reusable options, like stainless steel straws (tons of options here) and speaking of restaurants, if you have leftovers, bring your own tupperware instead of styrofoam.

travel coffee mugs are also pretty cheap, and you or one of your friends might already have a few that aren’t being used. plus, some coffee shops will give you a discount on your coffee for bringing your own mug.

plastic bags. most of us collect tons of plastic bags after shopping. this creates tons of waste. instead bring your own bags when you go shopping. leave yourself a note so you don’t forget to grab them before shopping.

finally, there are tons of other things, like plastic wrap that can be replaced with beeswax wrap, zip lock bags that can be replaced with reusable snack bags, and much more. i challenge you to reduce what you can.

2. composting

i, personally, live in an apartment, so composting is not something i can feasibly do. however, the university i attend has an agriculture department with a compost pile and they welcome everyone’s compostables, so i collect all of my food scraps and freeze them until the end of the week when i am able to drop them off. if you can start your own compost pile, i encourage it, but if you can’t, check out if there are any near you. here is a source that lists some, but not all, composting facilities based on zip code. but, i’d also recommend checking community gardens out to see if they have one. here is a list of all sorts of things that can be composted.

3. reducing electricity consumption

i often times get into the bad habit of letting my phone, laptop charge over night, when really, these items only need a few hours to charge. leaving them overnight is not only tough on the device because it kills battery life, but also it is still eating electricity. so, i’m going to break this bad habit and charge only during the day and unplug when things are charge, along with unplugging all electronics when not in use/open windows and blinds rather than turning on lights.

this may sound trivial, but every small bit adds up, plus it’ll reduce your electricity bill. here’s a source that lists a few more ways of doing so.

4. cancel unnecessary mail

everyone hates junkmail, but we all receive it. this wastes paper and energy to deliever said mail. but there are several ways to cancel junk mail. paperkarma is a really neat phone app that allows you to take an image of the junkmail and they’ll remove you from the mailing list. here are more sources on that.

these are just a few, relatively straightforward things that you can do to cut down on waste. i’ll add a few more if you’d like more of a challenge (here, here, & here) a bunch overlap, but i like the differing styles of organization. And if you aren’t convinced already on why we should reduce our waste, here is an great source.

if you are already doing all of these things, good on you, i encourage you to spread these practices to others you know. change happens with every person. this is all in effort to be kinder to the planet that we share, not only with other humans, but every other living creature. be kind to each other and the earth.

#new years resolution #go green #sustainability #2019 #reduce #i could go way more into depth on sustainable practices but that could go on forever

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gratescoff · 5 years

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Reducing Food Waste in the Kitchen

I’m not the best at reducing food waste, but thanks to Great Depression survivors (aka my grandparents) plus partly growing up in poverty during the Great Recession, I was raised to waste as little food as possible. As y’all’s Sober But Weird Aunt (at least in spirit), I thought I’d pass those tips on to you and hope they help with cost savings and reducing human waste in general. Because while yes, the biggest culprits for food waste are corporations and the food service industry, that doesn’t mean consumer food waste doesn’t add to the problem. Unwarranted food waste is still waste, even if it’s small.

Note that a lot of these tips involve the use of a regular-sized freezer. If you don’t own a freezer or are limited to a mini-fridge, don’t worry about anything involving a fridge or freezer. You’re doing your best with what you’ve got and that’s perfectly fine.

Before we begin, here are some handy websites: Eat by Date, Can It Go Bad?, and Still Tasty:

https://www.eatbydate.com/

https://www.canitgobad.net/

https://stilltasty.com/

Not Buying Too Much in the First Place

Ideally make a meal plan for the week/month/whatever works for you and shop according to that meal plan. Buy things that you’ll actually eat. (For example, I hate iceberg lettuce, so even though it’s cheaper than spinach, I never buy it.) You’ll waste a lot less if you know that you’re going to use everything that you buy in a recipe.

If you have leftover ingredients, figure out how to use them in other recipes and don’t be afraid to get creative and experiment. Learn to like leftovers or give them away to neighbors/classmates/coworkers instead of just tossing them out unless you have a very good reason such as a long-term power outage. Some ideas for using up leftovers: empanadas, quiche, mixing into savory quickbreads or pancakes, herbs frozen in butter or coconut oil.

Making the Most of What You Already Have

Keep track of when your food really expires. The best by date is not necessarily the expiration date. There’s websites or apps for this or you can keep a physical list on the fridge or on a whiteboard etc. Try to incorporate ingredients into your cooking well before they expire.

If it gets close to expiration time (it happens), then there’s a couple of tricks to expend its life: Cook and eat immediately in lieu of food that still has more time left. Cut and freeze if it’s things like bell peppers or carrots. Turn into meals that can be frozen e.g. quiche, empanadas, etc. Note that this will only extend the life of food by a bit, depending on the food item, so still prioritize eating these things and don’t leave them in the freezer for the next year. (Be better than me and label when you cooked the food before you freeze it.) You can also make quick pickles out of many things using white vinegar and salt and they’ll keep in the fridge for up to 3 months.

Orange peels and other citrus peels and zest can be saved whenever possible and used to flavor things. They also have other uses! Lemons in particular can be used with salt to scour things like granite mortar and pestles (since soap is not recommended and will stick to the pores of the granite). Lemons can also be used to scour stainless steel (a great way to use up what’s left after you’ve juiced them for a recipe). Once their use has been maximized, compost the peels.

Thoroughly cleaned vegetable scraps from veggies that are fairly sturdy and add flavor (e.g. onion peels, tops and tips of carrots, scraps from peppers, etc) can be saved in a freezer bag and used to make vegetable broth. The same goes for meat bones e.g. if you roast a whole chicken or make carnitas or a roast, save those bones. Bones can be frozen if you don’t want to use them right away.

Herbs will be preserved longer if you cover the tops with a bag and stick the bottoms in a jar of water in the fridge. Alternatively, wrap it in two layers of paper towels to reduce the moisture that rots it faster.

This is gonna make me sound like a complete heathen to some food purists, but cheese (and grated cheese) can be frozen if you’re like me and don’t eat it that quickly or if you buy it in bulk and use it slowly. (Works pretty well with vegan cheeses, too.)

Stretching Food

If mold starts growing in your food, it’s probably been in there too long. But if the food is hard, such as a hard cheese or vegetable, typically you just need to cut off the mold (typically with up to an inch on each side of the mold cut off too to ensure no spores are left). Moldy soft foods are just gonna have to be tossed, so keep a closer eye on them if you can.

If you don’t like eating the bottoms of green onions (scallions) and they still have the stringy roots attached, you can regrow them in water and possibly even flower pots or planters. Look up instructions for specifics as I am not exactly an expert green thumb, just good at keeping a mint plant (literally a weed that lives to spite everything in its vicinity) alive despite my hectic schedule.

Used tea bags from black or green tea can be saved in the fridge and used to soothe burns if you’re prone to accidentally burning yourself while cooking or sunburns during the summer. Just remember to throw them out after a few days, regardless of if they’re used for burns or not. Wet tea leaves are great breeding grounds for mold and bacteria. (Some used tea bags and leaves, particularly the herbal kind, are also good for composting, but double check so that you’re not accidentally poisoning the compost pile with something the microorganisms can’t eat.)

Something acidic like tomatoes or lime, garlic, crushed red pepper or hot sauce, and a bit of cheese can rescue a lot of savory recipes that originally turn out just “meh”.

If a soup or stew is accidentally too salty, add some potatoes to absorb some of the salt. Note that this won’t save stuff that is wayyyy over-salted (e.g. added a tbsp instead of a tsp), but if it’s just a bit over-salty to the point of being unpalatable, potatoes just might rescue it. Sugar can also sometimes rescue sweet stuff that’s accidentally too salty. Alternatively, you might need to make an additional batch without salt and mix the two together. Worst case scenario (e.g. a cake that’s already cooked and over-salted): toss it out and don’t waste any more ingredients.

If something is too spicy, there’s a few options for rescuing it. If it’s a sweet dish or already has a sweetener in the ingredients list, add more sweetener. Alternatively, add citrus juice such as lemon, lime, or orange, depending on the original flavor profile. (E.g. lime would be better for Thai or Mexican food than oranges, but oranges would be better for orange chicken that’s too spicy and certain Spanish recipes.) For a lot of spicy dishes, but especially Indian or Pakistani meals, dairy such as plain full-fat yogurt or cheese works really well to cut the heat. Alternatively, serve the meal with a glass of full-fat milk (you want the fat to dissolve the capsaicin and remove it from your mouth and throat). A last resort is increasing the plain, starchy side that the dish is served with, such as rice or bread, and eating small portions of the spicy food with generous helpings of starch.

#grate scoff #cinnia says stuff #not a recipe #cooking advice #food #food mention #long post #scheduled post #not an april fool's post

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bamyersauthor · 5 years

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Avoiding Writer Burnout

We've all been there. You get really excited about a project, write to it non-stop, then somehow days, weeks, or even months go by and you realize you've lost passion and enthusiasm for your work. And you've worked so HARD on it.

I get it. It recently happened to me.

Here are a few tips that have helped me get through rough patches so you can avoid that dreaded Writer Burnout.

No. 1: Take Breaks. This is a BIG one. I don't know about you, but when I get going on a writing project, breaks aren't automatically on my mind when I sit down at the computer. My goal tends to be: WRITE. This isn't a healthy way to look at writing which is why I suggest routinely taking breaks while working during long stretches. I find getting up after a scene or halfway between a chapter to do something else (even just to refill my water or grab a matcha latte), is enough to give my brain (and eyes) a break from staring at the computer screen for too long. It's good for you, and I promise you, your story is still going to be there when you get back.

If it helps, set a timer on your phone to go off every hour to remind you to stand up, stretch, crack your neck, and get your butt out of that chair, even if it's only for a minute. I realize many of you fiercely protect your writing time, but I have found more frequent breaks actually makes me MORE productive. Try it out. Your body will thank you. And refuel on that caffeine while you're at it.

No 2: Take Notes. Lots and LOTS of Notes. When I really get into a project, I have everything in my head lined up perfectly. I will take some notes, but I often find not enough. This can be an issue later when I might be returning to a project after a few days break or months. So do yourself a favor and take plenty of notes in the beginning. Heck, I wholeheartedly encourage you to sit down at your computer or with a pen and notebook and writewritewrite about everything you can think of about your story. Character details, bits of dialogue, world-building questions, plot possibilities. EVERYTHING.

I keep a separate notebook for each writing project I have, often several notebooks as ideas grow. This helps me stay organized, and I'm easily able to access and refresh my knowledge of worlds and plots when I'm been away or consumed in another story for X amount of time. If you're like me and enjoy discussing your ideas with others, and/or just find better flow with speaking out loud (hey, whatever helps!), I recommend getting a digital recorder. I bought one of these beauties a few months back after Susan Dennard did a newsletter covering diction (HERE--You should check her site out if you haven't already. Amazing author and invaluable writing resources). I haven't looked back when it comes to note-taking. It has encouraged ideas to flow easily, and the handy part is you can replay hours of discussion and take notes after. I often have even more ideas during my times listening to conversations. I highly recommend this method if you find it hard to take notes without cramping your brain flow. I also utilize the Notes app on my phone. Smartnote and Evernote are two great options if you'd like to sync content between devices. Especially when an idea hits you as you’re falling asleep. :P

No. 3: Try writing somewhere different. Okay, I'm not as great with this one. I have my nice cozy office that is set up for my writing needs. I struggle to write outside of this writer haven because it's so dang perfect. But it helps reduce distractions if you write outside your comfort zone, even if this is only venturing as far as your patio and getting some fresh air while you log your word count (I hear it's spring in other non-desert states :P). I'm not telling you to get crazy here, just to try something different to break the repetitive cycle that can lead to stress and the dreaded burnout. This can be your local library, coffee shop, or even a park. If you're really prone to distractions ala the internet, you might even want to venture to places without wi-fi. (Gasp! I know, I said it. I'm evil.) The point is to change things up frequently enough to trick your brain into being productive when it might not want to be. Added bonus: you get to people-watch when you leave your home and write somewhere different.

No. 4: Read a book. If you're really having a hard time sticking to your project, books can help with the solution. I like to pick titles that are similar to what I might be currently writing (epic fantasy, urban fantasy, contemporary, sci-fi, you get it). This helps me two-fold: by letting me familiarize myself with what's in the current market for the type of book I am writing and what content/plots already exist, and as means for inspiration. I don't know about you, but when I read a really good book that unexpectedly sweeps me away (Hello, Victoria Schwab), I get riled up and inspired to WRITE. I mean, we all started out writing because we loved books. We wouldn't be pursuing our hobbies or dreams of improving our craft if we didn't, ammiright? Books are an amazing outlet of escape. They always help calm my stress, give my brain a break from my own work (see this recurring theme?), and remind me that what I'm striving toward (getting traditionally published), is possible, because right there in my hands is an author who has been through it all (and possibly more) than I have with writing. Like I said, inspiring.

No. 5: Schedule writing time. Write for one hour a day during a certain time each day. Or make it two hours. Just set yourself the task of chipping away at your manuscript without overdoing it. I started doing this when I read an article on Sarah Dessen (bestselling author or YA contemporary titles like The Truth About Forever and Saint Anything). She writes from 3-5pm every single day. Breaking it up gives you time to split the rest of your day doing things you love or need to (like work, dinner, caring for kids, adulting). But slotting your writing time helps create balance which is really what you should strive for in an effective and productive writing routine. Here's the article if you're curious about how Dessen has written 13 successful novels with a 14th on the way this June.

No. 6: Take a longer break. Now, sometimes no matter what you do, the words just won't flow and you are miserable working on your current WIP. In this case, might I suggest you step away for a bit. By this I mean, take a mini vacation from writing. Now before you harp me for suggesting not to write when common advice is to sit your butt down and just write anyway, hear me out: it's okay not to be writing. Let me put it this way, you're a writer even if you're not writing every single day. You're a writer if all you can manage is 100 words in a day, a week, a month. The point is, your life shouldn't be only about writing. Life is about balance, and if you overextend yourself or do too much you will burn out. Trust me on this one. So before you hurl your computer/notebook/current WIP across the room or out the window, remind yourself you can step away. I have taken writer hiatuses as long as six weeks for various reasons--re-outlining, stress, life crises, and to avoid scrapping an idea. There is no set amount of time to take off. Find what works for you. I often find that I get an itch, for lack of a better word, and I want to write again. It could be only one day or three, or more, months. Take as long as you need. Your story will be waiting for you when you return. I promise.

No. 7: Whatever you do, DO NOT give up.. Take the break if you need to, but make sure you come back to it. I don't know how to reiterate this enough. If you let yourself give up on your project you will never finish it and it will hang over your head. It's easy to tuck that WIP away when the going gets tough--I've done it, we ALL have--but make sure you return to it and see it through. I really like to make Vision Lists to help me recapture the enthusiasm and passion I have for a project when it's fizzled out. Sometimes this is all you need. A piece of paper and a pen and time to list all the things you want in your story, all the things you love about it, why you want to write it. This helps keep you focused to avoid the dangerous Shiny New Idea Syndrome that can kill an idea and guarantee you won't finish your WIP.

Here are some journal prompts to and help get your passion and motivation flowing once more: -Why am I writing this story? -What do I love about it? -Why is my main character important to me? -Why is the story I story I want to tell important to me? Jon Acuff talks about finishing goals in his book Finish. Pick it up for motivation if you need it!

How do you handle burnout? I'd love to hear in the comments below!

<3 B

#writing #writing advice #writing craft #writing tips #writing prompts

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teacherkmd · 5 years

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Struggles of teaching in China

If you’re in a TESOL prep program, you’ve likely run across articles that talk about the challenges of teaching in China. Well, at the special request of a previous professor of mine, here’s my version.

There are some very good things about teaching in China. For example, it is literally culturally ingrained in the fabric of society that teachers will be and are respected. It means my word will not be questioned (even though sometimes maybe it should be?). What I say goes. Classroom management issues (at least at the collegiate level) do not exist. My students are highly motivated and disciplined. I do not have to worry about attendance; they will not skip. This being said, here are 10 very real struggles I’ve had to face in the classrooms here.

1. The classrooms do not belong to the teacher.

One of the biggest differences between China (and Taiwan) and the United States is that the classrooms do not belong to the teacher. In the US, we often think of the teacher as getting to design their own classrooms and buying materials and decorating it and being the perfect “pinterest” teacher. The students tend to rotate and switch classrooms when the bell rings. Here, that is literally impossible (which might actually be good since I’m poor, not artistic, and don’t have much free time). Teachers are the ones who rotate and the students stay in their classrooms. This set-up means I would have to buy or create duplicates of anything I wanted to hang on the walls. It is good in some ways (gives students ownership of their space, they have a space to study after school hours, they’re responsible for cleaning and maintaining it, etc) but it is also bad because I can’t take up all the wall space. I am sharing with all the other teachers in the department. If I want a vocabulary word wall, or want to put giant “I am thankful for...” turkey’s on the wall or display student work... I’d need to make sure it didn’t bother the other teachers first. If my vocabulary word list would be seen as cheating or distracting for another English class... well it can’t be there. It also means that if teacher’s aren’t cleaning up after themselves a lot of crap ends up laying around the podium. I remember walking in and being annoyed at all the random textbooks, pens, pencils, paper clips, scraps of paper, tea, and other junk in my teaching space. Oh, and don’t think about rearranging the desks... that doesn’t go over well. Not ideal at all. I’ve never taught in a place where I have gotten my own classroom to decorate and create the environment I want, so I guess I don’t really know what I’m missing. I can imagine all the cool things I could do if I did though.

2. Poor study skills for Western educational expectations

Another issue I’ve come across is what I consider “lack of common sense” when it comes to studying and taking notes. I have to be VERY explicit about literally everything. Do my students need to bring paper to class? Then I better tell them ahead of time. Do I think they should have a place to take notes? Then I better tell them to buy a journal for my class. Do I think they should have a place to put handout? Then I better tell them to buy a folder. Do I think something is important and they should write it down? Better tell them to write it down. I’ve had to give pop quizzes on things I’ve said in class multiple times to prove to the students that they should be taking notes in class. I’ve had to tell them that maybe that random page in their textbook isn’t a good place to put notes. I’ve had to say so many things where I know in America students would be like “duh”. But, that's now how teaching and learning work here. They take notes by taking pictures of my PPT and that is about it.

3. Poor communication styles for Western educational systems

China kind of skipped over e-mail. They went straight from fax to WeChat (a social media platform this is kind of like What’s app and instagram all rolled into one). Therefore, when I tell my students they need to turn in their homework via email, a whole truck full of problems crash into my inbox. No subject line. No names. No attachments. No message. I have had to show them exactly what I want them to write in the email so I know who they are, what class they’re in, and how to formally address a teacher. I haven’t let them vary their emails yet, but if any of them plan to study abroad in America or to teach students who wish to go to the US for schooling, they really need to learn how to write emails. I just wish I had time to cover everything.

4. Fear of speaking up

“My students are smart. They understand what I am saying. It isn’t my fault they aren’t answering.” -- I constantly have to remind myself of this. I can put them in groups and have them discuss a topic. If I walk around and listen, I hear them all on task, on topic, and answering and sharing opinions correctly in English. Then if I bring them back together as a whole class and ask what they talked about or for examples of what they discussed: dead silence, heads bowed, avoiding eye-contact. It is the most frustrating thing. I know they know the answers, I heard them talking about it, and I literally went around the room telling them good job while I was listening. The cultural expectation that the group is more important than the individual causes a standstill. Almost no students will volunteer an answer freely. They don’t want to be seen as immodest or like a know-it-all. They would lose face if they did so. But, if I call on them, it isn’t them choosing to answer, they will answer correctly and accurately. They’d lose face if they didn't answer a direct question. They can’t be the peg that needs to be struck back down. My classes are slowly getting better.. they know I will hold them over the end of class time if they aren’t responding to me. I’ve reminded them that there are no right or wrong answers. I’ve told them if they don’t know the answer then I need to know they don’t know. I can get group responses quite easily, but class discussions that include the teacher just aren’t happening. I’ve gotten them to speak up by asking them things and saying “I don’t know the answer, so I can’t tell you if you’re wrong. I just want to know what you think”. We had a pretty good discussion on cultural appropriation and halloween costumes.

5. No concept of plagiarism

“The right answer is the only answer” and “Imitation is the best way to learn” are common beliefs of my students. If you don’t know how to write or say something, say or write the exact same thing as someone else. Shared knowledge is better than individual knowledge. Nevertheless, 0s have been given out already this semester along with in-depth discussions about how I don’t want perfect work turned into me. If it is all perfect, I could go back home.

6. Fear of failure to the point of not following instructions

The all important grade. It doesn’t matter if they feel more confident, or if I tell them I see significant improvement. They are only focused on one thing: their grade. They focus on it so much, that if I give them instructions like “don’t write down your conversation and read it for your homework recording”, they will completely ignore the instructions if they think their grade will be better. They were shocked when the recording that was perfect with good intonation, proper grammar, native like pronunciation, etc got a 0. When they asked why, I said they didn’t follow instructions. They wrote down their conversation. How could I tell? Not once did they hesitate, not once did they act interested or surprised by what their fellow classmates had said. It was all scripted. And they can’t understand me if I ask a question, so how would they understand their classmate without having to pause and think about it? hmm? I will say this issue has been very quickly solved. They’ve come to realize in my class that I want them at the level they’re at not at some superficial level they want me to think they’re at.

7. Highly stressed students

My students have absolutely no free time. They take 18 hours of class a week. Some of them are in military training still. Some have other clubs. Every weekend there are at least 6 or 7 competitions for them to compete in. I assigned a speaking homework and all the responses were about how tired they are and how they can't sleep because they’re so stressed. It broke my heart. The following week, I asked them to take 30 minutes to draw minions in halloween costumes for homework to make relaxation mandatory. I sat outside with a group of them after an English Corner event for 3 hours and talked with them about their lives. They feel so much pressure to conform and meet expectations. Their other teachers yell at them and shame them for being wrong. The foreign teachers are the only ones who encourage them or try to get to know them. I recently boycotted the crappy computer labs they had me teaching in on the 6th floor. I taught in their classrooms on the third floor instead. The other foreign teacher came in during break and said how nice it was to have me teaching across the hall from her because she could hear them laughing and sounding like they enjoyed learning. I hope my small amounts of encouragement help them.

8. Poor teaching materials and environment

I know no textbook is perfect... but these are exceptionally bad. All the foreign teachers are from the United States, but the textbooks all teach British English which means there are lots of things in there that I disagree with. The topics aren’t interesting. They’re the same thing they’ve been learning since 3rd grade but with more complex, technical vocabulary that native speakers wouldn’t casually drop into a normal conversation anyway. It just bad. Trust me. The building is also falling apart. The computers don’t work half the time. The software isn’t up to date. The chalk boards are so old you can’t see what you write on them anymore. Just not good for learning.

9. Poor teaching pedagogy

Another reason my students are stressed is because my teaching style is completely unknown to them. They’ve never been asked to analyze or explain how they know something. The other professors mainly expect them to memorize a passage and spit it out verbatim. They don’t have to understand what they’re reading or saying. They just have to be able to do it. There is an old quad on campus and in the courtyard, we call it the hive. Every student is out there whispering and reciting passages to themselves. The drone of their voices sounds exactly like bees. In my class, they can’t get by on memorization. I make it almost impossible to prepare for class. They have to be ready to use what they’ve learned and apply it in practical situations and discussions. This is naturally very stressful for them. They would do much better if I taught in an audio lingual style or grammar translation style like the other teachers. But, if the school wanted that they would have hired a Chinese national and asked for a foreign teacher.

10. Class schedules that focus on quantity not quality

I see my students once a week for 2 hours for 14 weeks. Think back to college.. you had class three times a week for 50 minutes, or twice a week for 75 minutes. Or grad school, I had class twice a week for 2 hours each time. The contact hours I have with my students are very limited. They want to get as many students in there taking as many classes as they can. They all get exposed to the foreign teachers and they cycle them in and out. There is no buy-in, no investment, and no way for me to get to know all of my students. I feel a lot of pressure to cram in as much as I can in the 28 hours of class time they get with me. It is hard to remember that they have 16 other hours of class a week, and that I’m not solely responsible for them learning English. It is just hard for me to imagine that they’re taking away anything from my class. If I didn't have these textbooks dictating the topics we could cover, I would cover much less and slow down and make sure each lesson was in-depth. Instead, I have to make judgement calls about how much time we can spend on each thing before moving on.

I don’t want you to see this list and think I am complaining. I am not. I enjoy my work greatly, and I feel very lucky to be working here at QuFu Normal University. My students are brilliant, and I appreciate them daily. However, these are the things I have to keep in mind when I am making lesson plans, working on curriculum, and deciding what to include in teacher training workshops. A lot of these difficulties stem from cultural differences and require me to adapt and change just as much as I am pushing my students to bend. I am becoming a more flexible, more capable, and more opinionated educator. I just hope my students are learning as much from me as I am learning from them and this teaching context.

#China #teaching #struggles #difficulties #tesol #esl #efl #tefl #tesl #ELprograms #english language fellow #fellow50 #challenges #qufu #shandong #teacher #classroom #pedagogy #Exchange Our World

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inkinghubris · 3 years

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May 11 Writing Prompt

In yesterday's writing prompt we covered the best way to utilize an idea notebook. Today I want to take it a step further and show you the best methods for note taking on a current project. Instead of the idea notebook, you can use various methods to keep your notes, thoughts and ideas organized and in tact.

How you take notes can make all the difference in your storytelling ability Let's get one thing out of the way right now. Are notes required for writing a novel or screenplay? No. But they should be. If you plan to write out a story, you need to be able to keep track of what you have already told, where the story is going and what is left to uncover. There are Many Ways to Take Notes Many writing software programs have built in note taking abilities. You will also find note taking apps for free download in your mobile store. Which ones do I recommend? None of them. Not that they aren't useful, but writing a story is a connection. You connect yourself to the reader, the story to the reader and yourself to the story. Back before computers and smartphones, many writers used pen and paper to write out their stories. A typewriter was used to put the final draft in a specific font and format for submission, but before that notebooks and loose leaf paper were used. My first novel and first screenplay were written out long-hand. There is a distinct connection to the story that can only be had by writing this way. Today, of course, almost every word is written on the computer. It is faster, easier and more organized. Personlly, I use note taking to stay physically connected to my stories, and it is what I recommend for everyone. And while I know that many of you will opt for the digital note taking version, you should still know how to hand write story notes. One example, was that recently I was without power for several days due to a hurricane. During the power outage I couldn't use the computer or work on my stories. However, I continuously had ideas and thoughts for writing them. Pulling out paper and pen allowed me to make the notes I needed without having to wait for power to come back on. Let's look at the writing prompt for today and see how we can utilize this basic writing tool for our own use.

May 11

Get something to write with and something to write on. Small paper is recommended. Think about the last scene you wrote and make 4 to 6 notes on what should happen next. You may have noticed I said small paper. This means things like Post-It notes (TM) or other small scraps of paper. Index cards work well, too. Why, though? Because paper is like a shopping cart. It is a psychological aspect and why many grocers and markets are doing away with the small, hand-held baskets. The larger your basket when you go shopping, the more you tend to buy. Psychologically we want to fill our carts, so even if we have a list to follow, we still see "room" to add more items. This is how a 4-item list turns into a $300 shopping trip. Note taking is the same thing. The more room you have to write notes, the less notes you will actually write. Instead your "note" will turn into a multi-page thing that makes the process even more difficult. So take your smaller paper and limit what you write on it. In this case, you want to write about things that should happen next based on teh scene or chapter you have already written. What are Some Things you Should Write? Well, if your character is leaving the house, they may need to grab a jacket. You might have mentioned the adverse weather outside. If a few chapters previous you put them in shorts and a tank top, the snow or rain going on outside may require something different. You may want to remember the time of day for continuity. Or how the character is getting from point A to point B. There are so many things you can use for notes here. Things about the scene itself, the character or even the plot. If you want to introduce a new character, for example, you can do that when the situation is right. If you want to put the new character in the shop when the MC is buying a pack of smokes, then the MC needs to leave their house. When writing these short notes, remember to think about the big things in your story that no one realizes are there. Things like timeline continuity, weather, time of day or night, locations, names, modes or transportation. It is a real scene break when your MC gets in their car to drive to the mall only to get off the bus when they get there. Use your notes to make sure all the "hidden" aspects of your story stay true throughout. Read the full article

#amwriting #daily #writingcommunity

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differentnutpeace · 3 years

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Coronavirus FAQs: What Should I Do With My Vaccine Card? Is Choir Practice OK Now?

Each week, we answer "frequently asked questions" about life during the coronavirus crisis. If you have a question you'd like us to consider for a future post, email us at [email protected] with the subject line: "Weekly Coronavirus Questions." หวย บอล เกมส์ คาสิโนออนไลน์

GOATS AND SODA

Coronavirus FAQs: Can I Drink Between Vaccine Doses? What Is 'Vaccine Efficacy'?

I've just had my second dose of the vaccine, and now I have a vaccine card. Um, what do I do with it?

That's a good question. The U.S. version bears this instruction: "Bring this vaccine record to every vaccination or medical visit."

In essence, it's proof that you've gotten the jab (or jabs for the two-dose options).

Beyond that? Yes, there are questions about what purpose it can serve — and how to safeguard it.

In the U.S., the card is a 3 by 4 inches. The document will have your name, birthdate and key information about your vaccine regimen: which brand you got, when you received your dose or doses, and where you were inoculated.

The idea of giving out cards to document a vaccination has been around since the 1930s, says Maureen Miller, an adjunct associate professor of epidemiology at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health.

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"As people colonized the world, there were illnesses that were endemic to certain areas," she says. "Using cards saw to it that those diseases could be monitored as individuals crossed borders, like the now internationally recognized yellow fever vaccine cards."

Indeed, the COVID-19 Vaccination Record Card is a valuable document. Dr. Amesh Adalja, a senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins University Center for Health Security, "urges people to keep [vaccine cards] safe." So-called vaccine passports will likely soon be needed for some international travel, he says — though the concept is still very much in the development stage. One idea is to digitize immunization records into easy-to-trace systems such as scannable bar codes. Until those systems get set up though, you'll likely need to carry your physical card for international travel — even though its size in the U.S., for example, isn't the most wallet-friendly.

The use of the vaccine card may stretch far past air travel, Miller says. You may need it to enter movie theaters, board trains, even sometimes as a condition of employment. In the U.K., for instance, government officials are considering asking individuals to present proof of vaccination to get access to public spaces such as pubs and sporting events — a provision that reportedly more than 70 lawmakers have announced they'll oppose.

As societies begin to reintegrate and have similar conversations, having a vaccine card will likely determine access to certain services. To this end, "people should be guarding vaccine cards very carefully," Miller says.

So what does that mean for you once you receive your vaccine card?

First things first. Miller says it's prudent to take pictures of both sides of your document as soon as you receive it or find a way to scan it, just so you have a personal record. That's what people often do with a driver's license or passport, she notes. While it wouldn't fly to present a phone scan as proof of vaccination, it's good to capture all the data just in case you lose your card.

(A quick tip for iPhone users is to use the built-in Notes app for a close-to-Xerox-looking clean photocopy.)

Miller also suggests laminating your card, as she did. That way, the card feels a bit less like a random scrap of paper and more like the real, official and important document it is. But some worry that lamination might preclude the ability to update a card with potential immunity "boosters" in the future. Adalja says thinking about "boosters" is a bit premature and urges individuals to do what works for them. And if you opt for lamination, you shouldn't have difficulty fulfilling that goal. Office supply stores such as Staples, Office Depot and OfficeMax have agreed to laminate, for free, your vaccine card if you visit one of their stores. Check to make sure the offer is still on before stopping by.

As to where you'd keep the card at home, Miller says she has hers in the folder she uses for medical insurance and health documents. A safe bet would be anywhere you store important records such as passports. Miller emphasizes it's probably better to keep it at home and not in a security deposit box in a bank.

And in the worst-case scenario, what if you lose your card?

"The physical document isn't the only record," Adalja says.

When you get vaccinated, that information enters your state's immunization registry, Adalja says – so no need to call up your primary care doctor or do any other logistical legwork to make it be part of your permanent health record. That process should happen automatically (although it couldn't hurt to call your primary care doctor just to make sure it did).

In the case of losing your card, your best bet is to hit up the pharmacy or clinic or site where you got your vaccine at and ask for a duplicate copy. This will be problematic if you were vaccinated at a local pop-up effort; in that case, Miller suggests contacting your state board of health. You should be able to get a duplicate, but perhaps not without a fair share of moving through bureaucracy, Adalja says.

Eventually, Adalja predicts, more "durable forms of vaccination status" — aka, records that don't just exist on a flimsy piece of cardstock — will emerge. But until then, it's just a matter of being extra careful.

My choir director says that the pandemic is ending soon and that face-to-face, in-person practice is expected to begin in May. Is it true that vaccinated people can safely sing together? Should people still be wearing masks?

Singing indoors is one of the riskiest things you can do during this pandemic — up there with screaming for your March Madness picks in a packed arena. When you sing or scream, you expel air forcefully, which generates lots of respiratory aerosols that can contain SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19.

We all remember that haunting episode from the early days of the pandemic in which 52 of 61 members at a choir rehearsal in Skagit County, Wash., got confirmed or probable cases of COVID-19 after a 2 1/2-hour practice. Three choir members were hospitalized, and two died.

But the vaccines are powerful tools. So, for advice, we tapped one of the co-authors of the International Coalition of Performing Arts Aerosol Study, University of Maryland mechanical engineering professor Jelena Srebric, and Dr. Jill Weatherhead, assistant professor of adult and pediatric infectious diseases at Baylor College of Medicine.

After Srebric had a good chuckle about the choir director's pronouncement that the pandemic is almost over (as much as we may wish, we're not quite there), she explained the study's most recent guidelines, released in December will hold true for a while — even with the additional protection from vaccines. Here's a summary:

Masks should be worn by choir members and anyone playing an instrument. (Cutting a slit in your mask with an X-Acto knife allows you to fit it over a wind instrument.)

Practice outdoors if possible. If indoors, the choir director should make sure there's a good air filtration system.

Singers should be at least 6 feet apart. Practice no more than 30 minutes at a time. The idea is to move away from plumes of air created from singing.

As vaccines become more widely available, Srebric suggests asking as many members to get them as soon as they're eligible.

"Vaccination reduces the risk [of infection] dramatically, especially for vaccinated people, but we still don't have a clear picture on what is going to happen with variants," Srebric explains. "So, it's very prudent to continue to be cautious."

That's why she suggests sticking to the above guidelines even once most of your choir is vaccinated. Instead of changing your habits when you get vaccinated, she suggests changing your thinking: "The vaccine gives you peace of mind," she says. "You can keep the same precaution measures but not worry as much as people used to worry."

Choirs could also wait to resume in-person practice — and definitely performances with audiences — until more people are vaccinated, Weatherhead points out. "Wait until the community transmission comes down. That is the safest plan."

But don't despair that you will have to follow these rules forever. Real-world studies suggest that vaccines may be efficacious against transmission from asymptomatic cases. "That was one of the biggest unknowns because the clinical trials didn't study that," she says.

And an observational study published in Nature showed that the small percentage of people who got infected after a vaccine tended to have much lower viral loads than unvaccinated people who got infected, providing further evidence that the ability to transmit the disease likely diminishes with vaccination.

As more people get vaccinated, choirs should be able to start gradually shifting their protocols, Srebric notes. For example, choirs could practice longer and shorten the breaks, she says.

And yes, all of this also applies to screaming at big concerts and sporting events. But feel free to cheer as much as you like for the UConn Huskies from the privacy of your couch on Friday night!

Will taking a CBD product before my shot affect its efficacy?

In short, avoiding CBD before a shot will probably be the safer approach here. CBD, which stands for cannabidiol, is a chemical component of cannabis. It's been known to have a relaxing and therapeutic effect and is sometimes used to manage pain.

According to Miller of Columbia's Mailman School of Public Health, there's "absolutely no research" that looks at the effect of CBD oil on COVID-19 vaccine efficacy in humans. So it's important to note upfront there's not much that can be said conclusively on the effects of CBD specifically.

That said, Miller points to updated Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines that advise against anti-inflammatories such as Ibuprofen and other painkillers before inoculation — unless those medications are already a part of people's typical medical regime. Miller notes CBD also happens to act as an anti-inflammation tool — though the CDC advisory did not specifically take note of it.

To gain immunity, she emphasizes, your body needs to build up an inflammatory response. So, she reasons, it might be better to be safe than sorry and stay away from using CBD before your shot – just to make sure you're getting your biggest bang for your buck with the vaccine. Unless, of course, CBD is already part of your usual medical routine, Miller says — in which case, you should continue business as usual.

Sheila Mulrooney Eldred is a freelance health journalist in Minneapolis. She's written about COVID-19 for many publications, including Medscape, Kaiser Health News, Science News for Students and The Washington Post. More at sheilaeldred.pressfolios.com. On Twitter: @milepostmedia

Pranav Baskar is a freelance journalist who regularly answers coronavirus FAQs for NPR.

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charlottebaldry26 · 3 years

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Rehearsal Blogs

Week One

When we got the assessment briefing, we all came up with topics we thought would uncover stories that needed to be told, in my own research I found that issues within the mi5 and secret services were often pushed under the rug, due to government censorship. The second idea I had was to get a testimony about the holocaust survivors and tell their story. We met up shortly after exploring our own ideas and compared notes. Lily has an interest in Japanese culture and learning the language, so she looked into the Hiroshima bombings. We all resonated with this idea since none of us had actually seen a performance about it, so decided to look into it further and see how many testimonies we could find. Once searching the internet, we found abundances of material and testimonies from all perspectives of the bombing. Therefore, we all decided to pick an angle to base our own testimony from. This was inspired by studying ‘The Laramie Project’ last year, where Kaufmann included all perspectives of the tragedy communicated through moment work: ‘sequencing a few Moments, to glimpse how Tectonic creates a play from individual theatrical Moments’. (Moment Work, 2021). We wanted to create ‘moments’ of our own testimonies so we went away and found our source material. Alex found material for a pilot who contributed in dropping 10,000lbs of atomic bomb onto the city of Hiroshima. Tony, as a doctor who witnessed the mushroom cloud, Lily as a child who experienced the bomb, and me as both Taeko Teramae and Kikue Shiota who both were in the midst of the bomb and managed to escape. By using all these viewpoints in the form of moments, we can effectively show all ‘sides’ and versions to this story. We then started to think about the things we had learnt that semester and revisited the ‘Come to where I’m from’ app and discussed how without seeing a visualisation of their performance we felt engaged and moved by only hearing their voice, for example, Zia Ahmed who had heavy subject matter to discuss (Islamophobia, racism etc) took us through a rollercoaster of emotions and engaged us just through his intonation and and the way he told the story, therefore, then we began to debate whether to have much physicalization during the monologues since the subject matter is so hard hitting we didn’t want to override it with movement because this could distract from the message of our piece and could come across as offensive if we used too many techniques. So, we decided to finish writing our script first and then see what feels most appropriate to include when we begin to block it. We started off the piece with a line we all felt resonated with us from our monologues, mine was ‘I began to choke on the consequent smoke- poisonous gas it seemed like, then vomited uncontrollably’. I chose this because it is so graphic and violent and foreshadows for the audience what will happen since we do not introduce that this is about the Hiroshima bombings, it is more implied at the start and then clarified later in the script, so by putting this at the start they are able to tell that something tragic will happen so they will bare that in mind when they hear alex’s monologue. Alex’s monologue is obviously from the pilots perspective so he talks in detail of exactly what had happened that day in such a plain and excited way that we decided to interject bits of his monologue with 1-2 sentences of our characters stories so the audience notice the juxtaposition of them and infer that Alex’s character, Paul Tibbets was the perpetrator of a dark crime. My lines when interjecting his monologue were ‘I used to love going down to the kyobashi river, it was a fun place as a child. Little did I know this would be a place to haunt me forever. Before the bomb, life was peaceful, nice family, good students, I’m a teacher. The atrocities I saw that day will never leave me.’ I feel putting the little interjections of 1-2 sentences in between Alex’s monologue was effective because it didn’t interrupt him completely and distract the audience from his monologue, but rather enabled the audience to get immersed in all perspectives of the story without being overwhelmed.

Week Two

We continued to explore writing and refining the rest of the script, once we finished Alex’s monologue we decided we wanted a physical routine so began to block this. We remembered the ‘Love Letters From Home’ performance and how their music used triggered such an emotive response that they didn’t need to add in dialogue between transitions and the music spoke for itself. We decided to incorporate this into our piece, so when the bomb had gone off we decided to show our reaction with our mics off and use eerie Japanese music in the background. We then began to play with camera angles and distancing ourselves from the camera. We put Tony right up close to the camera with just his eye looking around which seems invasive and ‘in your face’ for the audience to watch, but ultimately in that moment, our aim was to make the audience as uncomfortable as possible over a screen since when performing something live in person the atmosphere can contribute to the tension, but since we cannot do this anymore, we had to adapt and take advantage of the fact that the whole audience can see Tony’s eye up close on the screen which cannot happen in pieces of theatre the way it did on the screen. I was slightly further away but it was still a close up of my face, and Lily was the furthest away, this gave the audience a variety of visual viewpoints. At first we showed our initial reaction when we didn’t know what it was, we all had a light source and and showed us covering our eyes because the reality of it was that it was so blinding. Then comes the candle which we decided to include because candles can be a symbol for death, fire, and hope. So we all held candles up to the screen and then turned the cameras off. Then once we turn them on again we are showing our faces once we realise exactly what it was that we saw. This week we also decided to use origami cranes as a motif throughout the performance, since in Lily’s story she tells the audience how “Japanese folklore says that a crane can live for a thousand years, and a person who folds an origami crane for each year of a crane’s life will have their wish granted. The cranes became a symbol for the sick children of Hiroshima.” Since this was such a vital practice for the children of Hiroshima and their beacon of hope, we could not just include it at the end of Lily’s monologue, they had to play a part throughout the performance, so we started spending time figuring out where most appropriate to sue the crane as a motif. We started the piece with Lily making a crane for about 30 seconds just to introduce our whole performance with the crane so it resonated more throughout. The next time it should be shown is in Alex’s monologue and he will use the crane as a little plane, so when he is explaining his story about what way the plane turns etc, he will use a crane to mime this. In this sense it is used in a horrific way since the one thing the children saw as hope, Alex is miming destroying their lives with it. It is then seen in my monologue when I hold it throughout as like its a symbol of safety for me, I am recalling traumatic memories but it gives me a sense of solace to be able to speak about them, at the end of the monologue I burn the crane to symbolise how people lost everything in the fires, the things that you find comfort in and give you hope, just burnt and left as ash. It is then used in Tony’s monologue similarly to Alex’s where he mimes watching the plane, but he uses an actual origami paper plane, as opposed to the cranes that Alex, Lily and I used. Then obviously in Lily’s monologue the motif of the origami cranes are used throughout and she has some stuck on the wall behind her rounds off the motif in the best way because it gives the audience a whole ‘ backdrop’ of the motif and makes it clear why it has resonated throughout the whole piece.

Week Three

This week we began to play with more bits of physicalization since we were worried that our piece was too static. I thought we could make it very graphic to shock the audience, I remembered that if you pour cleansing water onto a cotton pad and blow through it, it would foam up and could symbolise foaming at the mouth, creating a hard hitting tableaux for the audience, we also decided to use transitions of scrunching up pieces of paper with facts and statistics on it and ‘passing’ it through the screen. However, when put into practice both of these had an undesired comical effect so decided to scrap it from the piece, we then had a chat with Silva and discussed whether our piece would be as effective if we didn’t use as many theatrical devices as originally intended. After a discussion we concluded that the most effective way to do their stories justice would be to not distract from the words we are saying because in this case, less is more in communicating the true archival material from the people of Hiroshima. We decided to keep in the placards where Alex and I hold up the time of 8:15 since it is a motif in Tony’s monologue and we feel like instead of distracting from what Tony is saying, it enhances it in this case. We also had a discussion with Silva where she mentioned that it will be worth making a disclaimer at the beginning of the piece stating that this is not our story, so we can remain respectful to the people of Hiroshima and their story, that we are simply retelling. So I spent a bit of time at the beginning of the script reworking the next so the disclaimer was clear. Then, we started having tech runs so I made a tech cue script with our chosen video and sound to add in to make it clearer so our tech run ran smoothly. At first in the tech run, we did have some issues with the sound being too loud and drowning out what we are saying, luckily when we had the tech run on the following day it had sorted itself out, we continued to run it through and rehearse and timed it. It was then when we realised the ending was a bit abrupt so we thought to round it off nicely, we would add a small paragraph, as ourselves and no longer as the people we were representing, I wrote a text saying “The threat of nuclear war still looms above our heads today, and science has evolved rapidly meaning the distraction and devastation levels can soar if this ever happens again. We don’t need these weapons, we need peace. We need to take responsibility and learn from the past. Put the weapons down.” I said this with the intention to show the audience that even though it is in the past and halfway across the world, it is relevant in today's society and it could very much happen here and today.

Week Four

Being the final week of rehearsal, we were mainly focussing on refining what we had already created as opposed to adding too much in. As we continued with the tech rehearsals we realised that the video wasn’t showing up on full screen and looked more effective if I showed the audience the video from my phone. We also decided to cut the music while Lily and I were talking since it was heavily distracted from what we were saying but kept it in Alex and Tony’s because we felt like it fit with theirs. We were going over our lines and doing timed dress runs day in and day out. I unfortunately had to return home to attend a funeral, so I spent some time adjusting to the change of space and finding replacements of stuff I physically couldn’t take from Bath, for example I couldn’t have the lamp under my face which looked really eerie in rehearsal and simply had to turn a light on.

Evaluation

As a whole, I would like to say I’m pleased with our performance, since most of our piece is constructed from Verbatim material and tells the story of people from Hiroshima successfully and definitely resonated with my peers with whom I spoke to after. Doing this piece has inspired me to believe in all forms of theatre being able to tell a story and convey a message, whether it is online or in person. There are a few things that now having seen the other performances I wish my group can improve on next time. In Lucy Coughlin’s group they had a torture scene and they left their mics on so we could hear the fear in their voices as they made a soundscape, but could also see their faces. When we did the montage when the bomb had gone off, looking back I see it more effective if we had perhaps made a soundscape which would’ve been an attack on the senses and emotions for the audience, just as the people of Hiroshima have experienced. I also did not have the same candle I was using in Bath and struggled to light it so in a last minute decision I had to hold up a lighter to the camera, I wasn’t sure if many people noticed but I think it had the same desired effect. I am really happy we cut out the transitions since it most definitely would’ve taken away from the grit of the piece, like in James’s group, their subject matter was also very hard hitting and they focussed on what they were saying and the way they staged it and it pulled off really well. I do wish we toyed with costume and our background slightly more since you could tell we were in our family/uni homes and I feel like it would’ve felt more authentic if it was refined with plain or appropriate backgrounds. All in all, I have much enjoyed working with verbatim material and really excited to continue working with it in the future and learning about people and telling their stories in really creative and abstract ways.

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ladytabletop · 7 years

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Hello!! I was the one who asked about where to find a group! I have a new question now, apologies if you've answered anything similar. So my friend and I haven't had any luck finding a grouo to join, so we've decided to start our own! I'm the one most interested in DMing out of our group, but here's the problem; I'm inexperienced. This would be my first *actual* game as a DM and I played one short session as a player once. That said: Any advice/tips/resources? ♡ Thank you!!

Hi there, so sorry about taking so long to answer this!

For your first game, there’s a couple important questions to ask yourself before you start. I will give advice under the assumption that you’ve already chosen the system you want to play.

First, how long of a game do you want to run?

This is important mainly if you’re running something you’ve written on your own. It won’t necessarily be neat and easy, like saying ‘We will play exactly ten sessions.’ But knowing whether you’re looking to run a very long running game vs. a self-contained short can help you the DM when writing plot points and the like.

Second, pre-written adventure or homebrew?

There are tons and tons of pre-written adventures for pretty much every system out there, whether they are published by the company that made the game or by enthusiastic players and GMs who put their own adventures out there in a published format. It’s worth noting that if you like something like Rise of the Runelords for Pathfinder but want to run it in DnD5, it isn’t too tough to adapt something from one system to another.

On the other hand, a homebrew plot can be really fulfilling! It requires a bit more work on your part, but it can be worth it. Keep in mind that you can start with a published adventure and veer into homebrew territory as you get more comfortable running things.

NOTE: a homebrew setting is a whole other beast, and here’s a post about that.

Also another beast: allowing homebrew in your games. If you’re going to do this, please please please talk with your players beforehand and make sure they know that balancing during the game may happen. Nobody likes to be nerfed, but if there’s homebrew that’s just outclassing everyone else, it has to be scaled back. Use your resources online, ask people to look over things you think might be over or underpowered.

Third, what style of game will this be?

Is it going to be political intrigue and espionage? A classic dungeon delving guild style? A Lord of the Rings-esque sweeping fantasy epic? A more modern fantasy fast-paced mystery? Seafarers and ship combat? A really dark game where things are serious, or a funny goofy romp?

All of these are great options, but be sure your players know a little bit about what type of game it will be so they can get on board! No one wants to bring a hardened vigilante elf barbarian with no stealth to a game that’s primarily social challenges and shadowy murders (actually now that I’ve said it, I do. but he would be thematically appropriate and not useless).

Now that those questions are answered, here’s a few more suggestions.

As a GM, it’s important to root for your player characters. If you’re the type of group that likes to play as GM vs. players, this campaign is deadly, that’s fine as long as that’s what everybody wants. But if not, you the GM need to challenge the characters without decimating them. Find out what their goals are and root for them in achieving them, but don’t make it easy! Help them have fulfilling character arcs and try to be familiar with their characters wants, flaws, past, etc. It’ll help you make things more personal in the plot, whether that be by making them run into an old foe or by helping them eventually trust people again, etc. Being familiar with the characters and what the players want for them will help you make the most satisfying game for everyone.

Remember that you’re a storyteller, but it’s not your story you’re telling. You can have plot points you’re attached to, NPCs you love, but ultimately, the story should be about the players. Let them shape it! Try to get them as involved in the heart of things as possible. Don’t make it seem like things can happen with just the NPCs, as though your characters are the bystanders. Let them be in the thick of the plot. This isn’t to say things won’t happen without them - they have to! But when things start really cooking, the PCs should be there, they should care about what’s happening, and they should be able to affect it to some degree.

Be flexible. Improv is a key skill for DMs. Not everyone is great at it, and that’s okay. That’s what online resources and prep time are for! But regardless of how good or not you are at making things up on the spot, you need to be flexible. Your players are going to change the way you think the plot will go. They’re going to surprise you. They’re going to (hopefully) have character arcs that change, and you need to adapt with them. You need to be ready for these things to happen, which honestly means being ready to throw out your prep and throw out the things you’ve worked on sometimes.

That being said, it’s important to do at least a little prep, especially if you’re running a plot heavy game and not a smash and grab dungeon crawl. This can be as simple as using index cards with bullet point NPCs, treasure, and monsters/encounters, or it can be as involved as writing out details about the setting and plot that you can read when it comes to the appropriate time and making huge complex maps and encounters.

Be consistent in your rulings. Sometimes the rules get debated, or you want a house rule at your table, or a spell is worded vaguely and there’s multiple interpretations, etc. In these instances, you get to say, ‘Hey, GM rules this.’ (I only recommend doing this after having heard arguments for why it could be ruled multiple ways). After you say that, stick to your guns! The rule stands, and it stands for everybody. Unless you really really think you were wrong later, in which case you should talk to your players and rectify things, you need to be consistent in the way you adhere to the rules so that no one feels cheated.

My last piece of advice for you is to always have open dialogue with your players. Get feedback on how they think the game is going. Get their predictions about the plot. Touch base about how their characters are feeling, what their goals are. Make it clear that if any players aren’t having fun/are having issues, they can come to you and you’ll do what you can to help. Just be open in your communication. And remember, everybody at the table should be having fun, including you.

Now that I’ve gotten through all that, here’s some resources I like to use for my games.

Donjon RPG Tools - this is my favorite of all time. Tons of random generators, from names to encounters to maps to treasure. There’s an initiative tracker, an xp calculator if you use experience points, and a dice roller. It’s really an all in one tool.

My resource tag has everything from inspirational art to interesting dungeon builds to how to incorporate linguistics into your games to answers to the question ‘How do I start a game?’ answered by other people. It’s really just an amalgam of collected resources.

I enjoy the Obsidian Portal campaign manager, and there are tons of others out there.

A lot of folks use the Same Page Tool to make sure all players and GM understand exactly what’s happening and what’s expected at the table.

I use the DnD5e Spellbook app (which of course is system specific, but super useful).

And other than that, I mainly just have pdfs of the system I’m using, a piece of scrap paper so I can note NPCs, locations, and plot points that the PCs encounter that may be relevant in coming sessions, notecards with stat blocks for enemies, a sheet to track PC ac, initiative, goals, and flaws. You’ll figure out the setup that works for you the longer you GM.

Good luck!!

#the lady answers #long post #that got a little out of hand

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angryschnauzer · 7 years

Text

Its Your Birthday Not Mine

A/N: Sorry, this is a day late but i hope you still like it. I decided to make a change from the usual Smutty fics i write and attempt to write something fluffy and sweet. You guys know this isn’t my forte so i hope its not as crap as i feel it is. And apologies for my crappy photo edit. EDIT: I’m sorry but i’ve taken the ‘read more’ cut out of this as due to the recent tumblr update it makes it unreadable on the mobile app. Just curse me as you have to scroll a little further to skip past it. Summary: Steve leaves you in charge of planning Bucky’s birthday party when they head off on a mission, leaving you to figure out how to show the one man in your life he means the world to you, even if you haven’t actually told him as such yet. Written as a sequel to ‘Something Beautiful’.

Warnings: None. A little bit of Angst and Fluff.

Masterlist

It’s Your Birthday Not Mine

Since that wintery day when you and Bucky had spent that relaxing afternoon together drawing - and the subsequent discovery by you that when he’d been told to draw something beautiful he’d drawn you – you had grown much closer to him. But apart from snuggling close on the couch during movie night and a few playful hugs in the kitchen whilst you were cooking you had yet to see his affections develop any further.

You made the conscious decision not to push him, to wait until he was ready as you would rather enjoy what you had than spoil it by moving too fast.

~*~

“But Steve!” you whined, doing your best to ignore the stern gaze he was giving you; “I’ll be fine, I can help... please...”

“No. You’re not coming. You broke your foot in four different places on the last mission and you’re still healing!”

You glanced down at the support boot you were still wearing on your right foot, two months after getting caught in a Hydra vehicle and being thrown out onto the side of the road when they discovered you. You’d been healing well – well enough to be able to hobble around on your foot and not rely on crutches all the time – but you still had another two months of enforced desk duties. And by desk duties you had taken that as doing anything and everything at the compound you possibly could, from cataloguing the weapons store to redecorating the living quarters to something a little less ‘Tony’ and a little more ‘home’.

It didn’t stop you however limping along after Steve as he readied himself for the team’s latest mission;

“Steve, please. I just want to make sure you all come back safe, it’s getting really close...”

Steve paused and let out a sigh before turning;

“That’s why I need you here. To plan things”

Suddenly you realised you’d been rumbled. You cared deeply for Bucky and with his 100th birthday rapidly approaching you were nervous that he’d go on one last dangerous mission and not return, not come back to celebrate his birthday. Not come back to you. You’d never admitted your feelings to him – or to anyone for that matter – but it just went to show how astute Steve was at picking up on the small signs.

“Can we hurry along a little; I’ve got the details in my office”

He set off at a quick pace with you hurriedly shuffling along behind him best you could before he stopped and turned, and before you knew it you were being hoisted over his shoulder in a fireman’s lift;

“Sorry Doll, but I do mean hurry...”

~*~

You waved the Quinjet off, the wind wiping your hair around your face as you leant on your crutch. You’d promised Steve you’d use them a little more, agreeing that by following the doctor’s orders you’d actually heal quicker. After all, you weren’t a super soldier.

Clutching the small folio of notes Steve had complied you hurried back into the building, eager to see what ideas he’d had. He’d tasked you with arranging a party for Bucky. No pressure there then...

Needless to say when you opened said folio and found just two small scraps of paper you were less than pleased. The first one said ‘needs to celebrate happy times’. The other had a number of diners and eateries in Brooklyn named, and when you’d googled them you found the majority had closed by the time WWII had ended, or simply couldn’t be found anymore. Sitting back in your chair you chewed on the end of your pen, trying to figure out what to do for the one man in your life that was the most important to you, even if he didn’t know that fact.

Hours later you had scribbled notes over the paper in front of you, decoration ideas, menu suggestions, even music choices with three playlists downloading as you sat back and admired your work;

“Ha! That’ll show you!”

“Show me what?”

Startled at another voice in the room than your own you leapt up, letting out a deep breath when you saw Scott un-shrink until he was standing in front of you;

“Oh, it’s you... umm nothing...”

He was never one to let something drop, so before you could hide your notes he was standing over you, reading aloud the list of things you needed to get;

“Hey, is this for Barnes’ 100th? You need any help?”

You went to refuse but realised it would actually be good to have someone around;

“Actually, yeah sure. There’s a load of things I need to get and I can’t order them online, can you drive me into the city?”

“Sure thing kiddo”

You cocked your eyebrow at him;

“Hey... there’s not THAT much of an age difference between us”

“No, you’re right Old Lady” he picked up your notes as you both made for the door; “But there is between you and Barnes’....” he saw your reaction; “Oh come on, your secret is safe with me”

~*~

Scott had been a godsend; he’d brainstormed ideas with you as you sat in the front of his old van during the slow drive into Brooklyn. He’d come up with new ideas, helped you work the kinks – metaphorically speaking – of the other ideas you hadn’t quite figured out. He’d even done all the runs back and forth from the van to the kitchen whilst you slowly moved around putting things away.

Just as you’d sat down with a fresh pot of coffee and had started to go through working out timings for all the things you wanted to cook for the meal your phone vibrated on the marble kitchen countertop making you jump. Checking the screen you smiled as you saw Steve’s brief text message informing you that they would be back in the early hours of the morning. They’d be given a good 8 hours mandatory down time to rest and sleep, but if you needed him to help he would skip the sleep and give you a hand. Quickly hitting reply you told him you had everything under control.

That night it took you a long time to finally fall asleep, your mind wandering between thoughts and desires, before switching to ‘what ifs’. What if the Quinjet crashed? What if they didn’t make it out of the rendezvous point? What if Bucky hated the birthday you had planned for him?

~*~

You were awake as dawn broke, showered and dressed in time to see the sunrise over the tree line that surrounded the compound. As you sipped your coffee you could see the silhouette of the Quinjet as it silently flew in, landing softly and the same amount of figures stepping out that had left. Letting out a deep sigh of relief you felt the lump well in your throat as your fears from the night before ebbed away. Knowing it would take the boys a couple of minute to store their weapons you moved around the kitchen making them cocoa, something you knew they liked to help them relax after missions.

When three weary faces appeared just as you were adding the marshmallows to the top of the chocolate drinks they all picked up when they saw you;

“Hey guys... good to see you back”

Each gave you a quick hug, none of them wanting to hang around too long, instead a shower and a soft bed was calling each of them. Sam’s gaze landed on the steaming mugs, leaning forwards to grab one until you stopped him;

“No, that one’s Bucky’s”

“Why’s it his?”

“Because it’s got three marshmallows”

“Why does he get an extra one?”

“Because it’s his birthday”

You replied with a grin, watching as Bucky leant around both Sam and Steve to take the drink, sipping at the hot liquid. They soon made their exit, exhaustion taking over any other need, but you were surprised that as Bucky passed you he quickly pressed his lips to your cheek;

“Thank you”

He murmured against your skin before he was gone, the heat from his body absent as fast as it had appeared. Instinctively you brought your hand to your cheek, touching the spot his lips had been, looking up just in time to see him smile at you from the doorway before he disappeared.

~*~

“Come on, it’s time to get ready”

Wanda’s thick accent made you smile; you’d worked all day on the meal for that evening, helping supervise Scott and Clint as they put the yellow, orange, and green paper streamers up. They hung from the centre of the ceiling before spreading out in a circle to the walls, making the place look like it was some sort of circus tent. Wanda had scoured the compound for the bright yellow daffodils that grew; vases of the scented blooms covered every windowsill and bookcase. You’d been doubtful about having flowers but after she had done a little research online she had proven to you that they would have been traditional early springtime flowers back in the 30’s and 40’s.

However she was now pulling you away from the stove, insisting that she and the others could help with the finishing touches, giving you the chance to shower and dress for the party.

Half an hour later you were clean and refreshed, drying your hair and thankful for the gentle natural curl that made it fall into soft waves. As you applied your makeup you glanced at the dress hanging on your closet door, nervous about wearing it. You had found it in a revival store after that time you and Bucky had grown close, a store that took vintage designs and remade them, and had deep down hoped you would wear it when he asked you on a date. But all these weeks later it hadn’t happened. It was however your only suitable thing to wear so as you finished the last of your eyeliner and waited for it to dry; you finally built up the courage to pull the floaty dress on. Checking your reflection in the mirror and satisfied with the result you slipped the soft flat ballet shoes on, relieved to be without your support boot for a while.

As you come out of your room you suddenly feel the air being sucked from your lungs when you see him. Bucky is standing in the centre of the room laughing with the others, holding the gift Sam had given him and genuinely thanking him for it;

“No no no, I love it! I used to have one just like it!”

He pulled the peaked hat onto his head just and he saw you, a huge grin on his face as he came over;

“What do you think?”

Bucky looked stunning, he wore a white button down shirt on under a dark gray vest, a lighter gray tie finished the look. With his sleeves rolled up you could see the smooth plates of his metal arm and the soft skin of his real one as he held his hands out as if presenting himself to you;

“You... you look amazing Bucky...”

You swallowed nervously, not sure whether he wanted a hug or if you were reading too much into it, instead you cleared your throat and hooked your thumb over your shoulder;

“I should really finish getting dinner ready”

“I’ll give you a hand!”

“Oh no, really, it’s your birthday...”

“Please?”

Rather than steaming ahead of you like Steve had Bucky walked at your side as you slowly made your way over to the kitchen, aware that you didn’t have your support boot on your foot.

Soon he was helping to pull the dishes out of the oven where they had been left to keep warm, and with each one he got more and more exited;

“...and are these Lima Beans? You’ve done them in a tomato sauce!”

“Yeah... I did some research about stuff you might have liked before... you know before you joined the army”

“Is there crispy bacon to go on top?” he asked excitedly, his question answered when he saw you pull a tray of it from under the broiler.

He watched as you got the rest of the things out; Pot Roast Brisket, Sausage Links, Rolled Toast with Mushrooms, an array of vegetables and a basket of freshly baked dinner rolls that Clint had brought up that day from the bakery near his farm. When everything was set onto the table you looked around the room, amazed at how things had come together so quickly. Scott had had the idea to pull in a round table from the conference room rather than the long narrow one that was usually there, saying that although it was Bucky’s party he probably wouldn’t want to be sat at the head of the table, he’d want everyone to be equal.

You stood back as everyone started to take a seat, not sure where to sit at first. You saw Steve take a seat one side of Bucky, giving his oldest friend a slap on the back as he handed him a small wrapped gift. As Bucky set it down he turned to you and patted the chair on his other side;

“Come on, take a seat Darlin’.”

~*~

The meal was a huge success, everyone eating way beyond their full point, and even when there was a clap of thunder outside and a few seconds later Thor walked in with a smile on his face there was still more than enough for him to join the party. You watched as the blond giant handed Bucky a small silver hip flask and told him to drink it in moderation.

“Hey Buck...” Steve piped up next to him; “Thor’s right, that stuff will give you the worst hangover”

“Even with the serum?”

“Uh-huh”

“Cool”

He took a sip and let out a low whistle;

“Jesus, it’s like O’Riley’s whiskey he used to make in that cellar beneath the Gelato parlour on 82nd Street, you remember that Stevie?”

“When it’s one of the few places where you’ve got Italians and Irish working together... yeah, I remember it Buck”

You sat back and watched as Steve and Bucky reminisced about the old times, pre-war, pre-worries, pre-Hydra. Finally as the dishes had long gone cold you quietly got up and started to clear the table, Wanda soon joining you in the kitchen as you covered the left over’s with cling wrap for any drunk or hung-over people to snack on the next morning. Between the two of you the dishwasher was soon running and you were pulling the desserts out of their storage containers.

“What’s this?”

Wanda pulled her nose up and poked a delicate finger at one bowl;

“Jellied Fruit. Basically mixed fruits set in Jell-O. It was a thing back then”

“It looks weird”

You looked into the bowl and had to agree with her, the sound of the pair of you laughing covering the soft footsteps that approached;

“What’s so funny ladies?”

At the sound of Bucky’s voice you spun around and immediately regretted it;

“Shit!”

He was catching you as you began to tumble, the movement had put too much pressure onto your foot and the pain that had shot up your leg caught you by surprise.

“Come on Darlin’, you take the weight off that foot, let me and Wanda do the rest”

“But... but it’s your party!”

As much as you protested as he swooped you up into his arms to carry you bridal style back to the table, you had to admit the feeling of being so close to him was something you’d dreamt of. The ‘I told you to rest it’ look you got from Steve however soon ruined the moment as he set you down, quickly heading back to the kitchen before returning with the huge tub of Gelato you had managed to get from just the place he and Steve had been talking about earlier. As he was excitedly telling you about how great the ice cream was the lights in the room went down and Wanda appeared at the doorway with the cake you’d baked, the candles lit as she walked into the room and everyone burst into a round – if out of tune – of Happy Birthday.

When everyone had their fill of sweet treats and Tony reappeared from his office with two bottles of Scotch that were so old that their labels had practically peeled off, the appropriate toasts were made and heckling that followed before he pulled his phone from his pocket;

“Right girls and boys, the Limo is here and the club is waiting for us”

People started to excitedly get ready, pull on jackets and coats as they made for the door, not noticing you remaining where you sat. You watched with a sad smile as Bucky and Steve left, laughing and joking about old times and new. As the room grew quiet you slowly made your way to your room, changing into an old oversized t-shirt that had ended up in your laundry somehow. You weren’t sure who the previous owner of it was but it hung loosely over your body and came down to your thighs so it must have been one of the bigger guys, Steve Sam or Bucky perhaps, before strapping your support boot into your aching foot.

Just as you glanced out of the window you saw the taillights of the Limo as it pulled out of the compound, heading towards the clubs in the city. Before you could dwell on the thoughts of missing out you heard a quiet cough at your doorway, turning slowly to see Bucky standing there watching you;

“Bucky! Why aren’t you going with them? It’s your birthday...”

He slowly walked across the room until he was standing in front of you;

“Yeah, it’s my birthday... and I never got my gift from you...”

“Oh, it’s over here...”

You went to move past him but he softly caught your wrist, pulling you flush with his chest;

“All I could ever want is a kiss...”

Your lips met and everything else was forgotten, your body softening in his arms as you sank into his embrace. After a few moments you wrapped your arms around his broad shoulders, the kiss deepening as he clung to you, before you finally had to break away for air, your chest heaving and a grin that mirrored his on your face;

“Wow...”

“Yeah...”

You chuckled; “If I knew that’s all you wanted I wouldn’t have bought you a gift”

His warm belly laugh filled the room, his eyes sparkling in the low light as he looked down at you;

“How about I fix us some cocoa, then perhaps I can get another kiss from you”

“Deal”

“Oh hey, can we have marshmallows on top?”

You laughed at him;

“Of course we can... it’s your birthday Bucky, not mine!”

#bucky barnes #bucky barnes x reader #bucky barnes fanfiction #bucky barnes x you #sebastian stan #angryschnauzer #its your birthday not mine

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crimsonblackrose · 4 years

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I’ve spent a lot of time waffling this year back and forth between traveling or not. On the one hand I’m heading home in March and I should be saving my money to help get me through until I find a job and have health insurance and try to figure out what it means to be an adult in America. (I’ve realized I’ve spent most of my independent adult life in South Korea and as well as most of my adult job experience in South Korea and it’s going to be a weird transition which I’ll discuss in some later post.)

A lot of that really concerns me, I’m leaving what is essentially financial stability and all these other things to go home to great unknowns and the idea of just staying in Korea and saving my money for a rainy day seems like the smart move. I also need to pack. I have 5 years worth of my adult life in South Korea that I need to go through. But maybe first I should watch “Tidying up with Marie Kondo?” (ah that’s procrastination at its finest right there)

But on the other hand I don’t know when I’ll be able to travel again after I’m in the States. It feels like I’m jumping feet first into cement and I’m not sure when I’ll be able to break free. I’m sure I’ll be able to travel within the continental United States, but branching outwards again seems like it’ll take awhile to work up to. And that’s what made me decide to go. The next step was where. I wanted to go to Hong Kong or New Zealand but both places seemed like it wasn’t the best time to go. And surprisingly France was fairly cheap for around when I could take vacation days. So I decided for the first time since moving to South Korea to leave Asia for a vacation and go, not to the States, but to Europe. I double checked a couple times that there weren’t any travel warnings and there were month old notices about the strikes but it seemed no one had updated those to say that things were unsafe. I downloaded Citymapper, purchased some travel wifi, and the Paris Pass, and prepped my plans which I then sent to my parents. Here’s the plan, edited a bit from what I sent my parents to be more accurately reflect my trip: Paris 2020.

A lot of my friends in South Korea are in a similar boat as me. A lot of them are planning to go home soon or are in the midst of moving, so many many of them are staying home this winter, or they’ve already made plans. I figured if I was going to go I had to go on my own.

I’ve traveled alone before. I’ve traveled all over Korea on my own, as well as Japan, Thailand, and Taiwan. I knew that one of my professors that took us to Prague would be in Paris around the same time so I made plans to meet up with her, but that was it. The other person I thought I knew in Paris actually wasn’t in Paris or even France at all. So I read some blogs and figured, as long as I looked like I knew what I’m doing, stayed busy, booked a hotel in a good area then I should’ve been fine. I also figured it’d be a good test run for moving back to the Chicago area. In Korea I can just leave my phone on a table and it’ll be there when I get back. There aren’t really pick pockets, so you can walk around with your bag open and more often than not be fine. There’s CCTV everywhere so if something happens you just have to pull footage, it deters a lot.

Even though it was technically going to be a 6 day trip it was actually only 3 full days in Paris. The cheapest trip I had an option for that I felt comfortable doing had an overnight layover in Osaka and I’d loose a day on my way back from Paris. So I tried to cram as much into those 3 days as possible. A lot changed from my original plan due to the days places were open, the changes in hours due to the strikes and my limited amount of time. I originally planned to spend my last day at Disney, but I just couldn’t bring myself to do it. I tried finding all the unique Parisian Disney things online to get myself hyped up and make a list of goals, only to find almost nothing that didn’t require a reservation months in advance. I couldn’t find blog posts or Instagram posts raving the unique Disney Parisian foods or snacks or souvenirs like they do for Tokyo Disney and Disney Sea. So I scrapped my plans to go. Which with how exhausted I was by the time Monday rolled around was probably for the best.

I was in Paris in early January while the strikes were happening. This will probably get posted several months later at which point I hope they’ve been resolved. Public transportation was still accessible however it was very limited. Depending on the train, the services were drastically cut or not running at all. This meant buses were crammed pack full of people, especially during rush hour times in the morning and evening.

It made getting around really difficult but not impossible. A lot of people I talked to mentioned how due to the strikes; Uber and taxi’s had hiked up their prices. I didn’t use Uber or taxi’s to get around and instead relied heavily on the app: Citymapper. I tried using Google maps only once to try and get to Versailles and it suggested I take a metro line that wasn’t working that day, which I only realized after buying the tickets and making my way to an empty platform.

The one thing I would note about Citymapper is to double check everything. If you can, look up the address then copy and paste it into the search, or make sure the name of the place is correct and in French. Because in English we called Versailles the “Palace of Versailles”, but when I typed that into my map it sent me to the wrong place around Viroflay. It suggested I take the big out of town train down to Viroflay, transfer on a mini little local tram, and then walk the rest of the way to a green looking area that was not in-fact Versailles. (Which is what led me to Google mapping it and end up with tickets going for a line that wasn’t running.)

The little grey you-are-here symbol on the left with the clock is the actual Palace of Versailles known in French as Château de Versailles while the other one to the upper right is where Citymapper originally tried to send me. They’re a good 40 minutes away from each other, 50 minutes if you try to walk it. Thankfully I could take the bus but I wasn’t sure if I needed exact change, which I didn’t have. The machines only took coins or a card so I was concerned the bus would be the same. Which meant I also had to hike around to find somewhere where I could break a bill and get 1.90 euros in change to pay for the bus to Versailles. I did eventually make it but it was frustrating how much time I lost.

It was however, the only time Citymapper let me down. It was pretty accurate the rest of the time, though the bus back to the airport did not come nearly as often as it said it would but I can’t hardly fault the app for that one. I was in the right spot and I was very early so I wasn’t too upset.

Generally getting around you can get a train pass. They have card passes like most cities that you can tap to get into the station or on the bus. Or you can get a little paper card that you feed into the reader every time you get on or go up to a turnstile.

Sortie means exit. Follow the signs to get out of train stations or anywhere else you might be.

Because I paid for 3 days of the Paris Pass it meant that I got 3 days of public transit access between zones 1-3 which sadly did not include Versailles. It is possible, but expensive, to get a pass that includes more zones. It included practically everything else in downtown Paris that was working. For everything else I bought on board (the bus generally) with exact change. For the airport Roissy bus I purchased my ticket down to Opera at the information center in the airport and back to the airport from Opera directly from the bus driver at the bus stop. It was about 13.90 euros which is more than Citymapper quoted, but it might be cheaper if you have a pass.

For every other bus it was about 1.90 in coins which I always made sure I had exact, then would take the ticket they gave me and fed it into the feeder. No one scanned to get out or used the readers to leave the buses or trains so I now I just have a large pile of tickets.

In case the reader doesn’t work you have to show the ticket you are using to the bus driver. Because this occasionally happens you need to write your name on the pass and the dates it’ll be used.

Nom: last name prénom: first name

Other popular ways of getting around which Citymapper included locations of were scooters and bikes. It was really nice to see the Strike safe options as well as what my options were.

Usually what I did was a combination of a bus and walking, a lot of walking.

Citymapper also have some fun Easter eggs.

Depending on the location I could play a mini game where I tried to slingshot myself (not actually myself) to the destination. And there was a Cheshire cat that tended to move around the map.

Before I left for Paris I tried to look up ways to stay safe. A lot of them reassured that you could in fact, as a woman travel safely in Paris on your own you just needed to look like you knew where you were going, be careful of pick pockets and be extra careful at night. A lot of touristy and not so touristy places also warned to be aware of pick pockets, even a small English friendly cafe I went to had signs up everywhere warning people of pick pockets.

There are a couple scams I read up about. One was people trying who ask if you dropped a piece of jewelry and someone else will root around in your bag while you talk to the first person. Or they will try to sell you the jewelry. Another similar one is to hand you something or start drawing your picture or try to give you something and then demand money.

I didn’t run into any of these. Instead I ran into “Petition Pick Pocket” a lot. Usually someone would ask me

“Do you speak English?” and then would go into a spiel about how they were collecting signatures to help some cause or another. It was usually handicapped people. To which the first time this happened as I was walking away from the Eiffel Tower I responded: “I don’t live here.”

To which the woman responded that it was an international thing. To which I said again, “I don’t live here.” and quickly walked across the street with one of the men who was a vendor selling Eiffel Tower souvenirs near the area who had thankfully called out to me that I could cross since there wasn’t a sign. Super grateful to him for giving me an out to the situation.

This is a common scam that gets used a lot in different countries. I’ve run into it in Seoul, near the church in Myeongdong, I just hadn’t realized what it was at the time. In that case it sort of made sense due to the location as the woman wanted to gather signatures to do something about abortions. But again, it’s really strange that she’d pick a non-Korean person to gather a signature from. Just like the one’s in Paris it doesn’t make sense.

Why only ask English speakers? If you want change made for your petition and for any governmental official to actually care it has to be done by locals. Almost no government or political thing I know of is totally chill with you coming up with a list of signatures from random people who don’t live in the area and who aren’t citizens.

If you just need random signatures that aren’t locals you could just do it yourself with random different names and trying to write differently. You don’t actually need to petition. But the whole point of petitioning is to get support from locals, not tourists/visitors.

They don’t explain fully what it’s for. The idea though is for it to be something that you’d be a horrible person to turn away from. Helping poor babies or children who need assistance. Usually something that will earn you all the dirty looks if you refuse. But how do I know exactly how it would help? If it’s not explained well but in a rush of words how can I be sure I’m not being tricked like people commonly are when people suggest ending women’s suffrage (their right to vote but it sounds like they’re suffering so sometimes people get tricked). If you run into other organizations then they’re more than happy to talk your ear off if you’ll stand still long enough to listen. But these don’t.

So how is it a scam and not just things that don’t make sense logically? Generally there’s about two ways it can go. But the beginning will be the same. A person with a clipboard (in all cases I ran into it was a woman) will ask “Do you speak English?” and then ask for you to sign a petition of some kind. Either when they manage to foist the clipboard and pen into your hands to sign they’ll take the time to root around in your purse or bag while you can’t see it because you’re attention has been directed to the clipboard, or they’ll ask for a donation and try to shame you into giving something because it’s for a good cause. Either way if you run into them it’s best not to converse and just walk away as fast as you can or pop into a shop.

I’m super grateful for the guy near the Eiffel Tower who I got to walk with. But the absolutely worst time I had with them was waiting for the Roissy airport bus. I waited for maybe 20 minutes with a growing amount of people around me also waiting for the bus and they came in droves every couple of minutes. Because I looked like I was alone they came up to me at least 5 times within that twenty minute period specifically and stopped. Most of the time if I just shook my head and didn’t look at them they’d go away, but I had one who gave me the dirtiest look when I refused to talk to her after she’d tapped my shoulder. I couldn’t go anywhere, I needed to take the bus to the airport. So I just held my stuff close and tried to make sure nothing was accessible. They finally left me alone when another actual tourist asked me if I spoke English and was going to the airport and started telling me the awful time she’d had trying to find the airport bus.

It seemed like they were only targeting women who were on their own.

This of course doesn’t mean don’t talk to strangers who ask if you speak English. It does mean to have your guard up though, especially if they’ve got a clipboard. In my case outside of the bus stop waiting for the airport more often then not people were lost and needing directions. But because people are use to the “do you speak English” being a lead to getting pick pocketed a lot of people weren’t getting helped. One guy near the Eiffel Tower asked if I knew anywhere to buy a jacket nearby because on the coldest windiest morning he was out as if he’d packed for a business meeting somewhere tropical rather than France in winter, and we both realized there was nothing nearby except one tourist spot selling sweaters. Also due to the strikes a lot of Parisans would ask me about when the bus was coming but due to my lack of French I’d lead with a sorry? Which usually they’d re-ask in English except one guy who went “sorry? Sorry?! Sorry!” as if he’d never heard such a ridiculous thing before in his life before leaving in a huff. And then there was the Puerto Rican mother who had had the worst luck with finding her way around because no one would answer her or stop to help her when she asked for help and who became my airport travel buddy. Thankfully after a lot of asking she did eventually get help but it was after finding non-Parisians who could speak Spanish or English. Sometimes I’d also just have concerned people with tourist maps walk up to me and show me the map and I’d confirm on my phone and point them in the right direction or in cafes when people realized there was no wifi and thus they couldn’t look up their directions as they had hoped.

Anyway just be very careful and make sure all your stuff is zipped up and you’re guarding it well and avoid people with clipboards asking if you speak English trying to collect your signature.

I don’t always write about how my flights to places went. I’ve had awful flight experiences and great experiences. There’s airlines I love and airlines I hate. And generally an airline named after the country it’s from are pretty decent. There is one that’s pretty awful that I hope I never fly again, but that’s besides the point. I took a couple different airlines to and from Paris. I took Korean air to Osaka, and KLM to Amsterdam and then out of Amsterdam. But my Air France trip from Osaka to Paris was magical.

I sat in a row with two women, one Japanese who spoke fluent English, and one Korean who was doing her best. I tried to help with small things like soup and snacks with the words I knew and the woman was delighted I knew some Korean. Lo and behold after some chatting she lives in the same city I live in in Korea and was flying with her daughter who spoke more English but was seated in a different row. On my left side was a French family of four with two small children. The small eldest boy kept getting lost in his wanderings of the aisle so I’d put out my hand and would point towards his row, to the point whenever he’d toddle over he’d first look up at me, confirm it was me, and then head into his row to his seat. It was quite cute. It was also a pretty stressed family since they had two small children who did not want to sit for a 10 hour+ flight and at least one of which kept jumping off to go into the aisle, where he nearly got crushed by the flight attendant with a trolley. (I awkwardly had to put my hand on the guys back because I didn’t know any other fast way to stop him from crushing the kid, but thankfully this was greatly appreciated since he hadn’t seen the child playing in the aisle.)

But the magic of the trip wasn’t just the strange community I felt in my area with small children in the aisle or being walked back and forth down the aisle followed by their parents, as a little girl did followed by her super tall multi-lingual French dad.

The magic resided near the bathrooms and in the fact no one seemed to care if you were up and out of your seat. On most flights there seems to be some annoyance to if you’re up and about. You’re constantly in someones way or in their bubble of space if you’re up. It’s only acceptable if you’re out of the way and waiting for the bathroom. But this Air France flight I was on did not care. No one batted an eye, no one complained, no flight attendant told anyone to remain in their seats or to go back, unless there was turbulence and it was unsafe. In fact the area around the bathrooms was made into what felt like, as a young Japanese boy said to us, a party.

Rather than go up and down the aisles multiple times offering water and snacks they set it up near the bathrooms as a self serve area, which some people knew and others didn’t. It took me awhile to get use to the idea. People stood around helping themselves to water, juice and soda and chatting with the people around them. Organically moving to adjust for new people or to let others pass or the flight attendants access their supplies. But there was never any pressure to return to our seats, something I doubted the Japanese boy ever did since every time I came back he was still there, chatting with someone new. About part way through the flight snacks were brought out and at first I thought it was the attendant preparing to walk them down the aisles and returned to my seat only to realize it was self serve. So what had been a big box of sandwiches and momiji manju, when I returned with my seat neighbor and her daughter was now just mars chocolates and ice cream. There was also self serve packets of soup and hot chocolate.

I really greatly enjoyed that flight. I liked getting to chat with other people on the flight who were extremely friendly. The family to my left even gave me a Japanese rolled up cookie part way through the flight. I’m sure to some people having the kids in the aisle and unable to sit still was annoying, especially for the people in front of them and behind them but sitting off to the side was totally fine and I had a very peaceful and fun flight and I hope to one day get to enjoy the magic of that self serve snack and drink section again.

When I was in junior high school and high school we had two options for languages. Spanish and French. Before we decided on one we had to take both for a 1/3rd of a semester. The majority of my grade took Spanish, but on the very first day I was determined that I would not take Spanish. Not because of a lack of interest in the language or a true love of French but because the teacher spoke in monotone without any inflection whatsoever and I feared I’d fall asleep in his class and fail. So I took French and I took it for the entirety of high school, becoming one of the few kids in Independent French which was like self-study where we read and translated books. You would think because I was in French club and in such high levels of French classes that I’d drop into Paris without any concern for the language. But I’ve been in South Korea for 5 years. And in college rather than continuing French I dabbled in other languages like Japanese and a short stint in ASL. All of this has made my French super rusty to the point I sat on the flight shaking my mental language piggy bank for the French I remembered. Bonjour (hello/good morning), Excusez-moi (excuse me), s’il vous plâit (please), au revoir (goodbye), ça va? (It’s okay?), Je m’appelle Lauren. (My name is Lauren) Je suis américaine. (I am an American) Parlez voux anglais? (Do you speak English?) merci beaucoup (thank you very much).

It was better than I feared. But still, on my flight there was a mini French course and I threw myself into that in the hopes of jogging my memory. I remembered more than I had expected when confronted with the games and quizzes. The little song we did for the months of the year was still there and I remembered about half of the days of the week. But when confronted with actual sentences while I did well with the tests and quizzes they didn’t stick. Which meant most of my interactions started with a French greeting, and then delved into my request in English or stumbling to read what it was I wanted to order, and then ending in a French thank you. Which is kind of disappointing. It makes me wonder how I would’ve fared if I’d gone on the French trip in high school. (

Though no one else signed up for the French trip while I was in high school so I don’t think it would’ve happened anyway.) But like most major cities there was a lot of English around and people who spoke English.

Reading blogs made it sound like you needed to announce loudly to every single person you saw Bonjour! or they’d instantly shut off and treat you with disdain. I found as long as I said bonjour first before stating what I wanted I was usually fine. I didn’t have to say bonjour to every staffer I possibly saw which was what one blog I read suggested, after all usually they were busy. I did however say it to the front desk of my hotel every morning and tried to remember to switch to Bonsoir whenever evening rolled around. But I also had wifi that worked 90% of my trip so I didn’t get lost and usually was in touristy areas so I could ask an information desk for help with whatever I was lost with. The only time I ran into “rude” Parisians was when they were super busy and I didn’t find it that rude. It was just more of a bored or quick tone. But I do agree with saying hello or good evening in French and a nice merci in there to help show some respect to the country you’re visiting.

I’m actually really glad I went to Paris this January. I had a really good, though exhausting time.

A Solo Trip to Paris I've spent a lot of time waffling this year back and forth between traveling or not. On the one hand I'm heading home in March and I should be saving my money to help get me through until I find a job and have health insurance and try to figure out what it means to be an adult in America.

#france #how to get around paris #paris #public transit #public transportation #scams to be wary of #solo travel #transportation passes #travel

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mrsteveecook · 6 years

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How to Focus When You’re Writing

Do you ever find yourself distracted when you’re writing?

I don’t think I’ve ever met a writer who could honestly answer “no” to that question!

Whether it’s Facebook, Twitter, checking the news headlines, browsing a few webcomics, answering emails, ordering that book from Amazon you’d forgotten about … there are so many distractions just a click away.

The good news is, there’s plenty you can do to help yourself to focus as you write.

I’ve split my suggestions into three different categories, so you can tackle whichever area you feel is holding you back the most (or whichever is easiest for you to change right now). They are:

How to make your writing environment work for you

What to do before you write

What to do while you’re writing

I’ve also included a bonus tip on something you can do after you write, to help you gradually focus better over time.

How to Make Your Writing Environment Work For You

#1: Get Away from Home

If you normally write at home, try writing in a local coffee shop (or library, etc) instead. This cuts out a ton of potential distractions … and a change of scene can make it much easier to be creative.

Some of my best, most focused, writing happens when I get away for an afternoon, evening and morning at a local hotel. There’s no laundry pile, no dishes, no kids, no TV, and the wifi there doesn’t work on my ailing laptop. I can write for hours!

Even if you can’t get away for very long, just an hour in a coffee shop might be enough to help you get past a creative block that you’ve been struggling with.

#2: Get Rid of Intrusive Noise

When I’m in the writing zone, I tune out pretty much everything (including my long-suffering husband). But getting into that zone in the first place can be tricky if there’s a lot of distracting noise going on.

In our house, “noise” is normally the kids playing / fighting / singing at the top of their lungs. Maybe that sounds all too familiar to you – or maybe the noise you’re trying to block out is construction work going on nearby, or your roommate watching yet another repeat of Friends. Whatever the noise, a pair of headphones will help (I like in-ear ones, because they’re cheap and act a bit like earplugs to muffle external noise).

It’s entirely up to you what you listen to: some writers like to focus with ambient sound from a site like Noisli.com; others like movie soundtracks; still others pick a particular artist, album or even song that fits with the mood of their work-in-progress. Do whatever works for you.

#3: Sit at a Desk or Table

If you normally write while sitting on the sofa, or even while lying in bed, try sitting at a table or desk instead – even if that means clearing some space or rearranging a room. You might find it makes a huge difference to your concentration levels.

As well as feeling more like a “work” space, a seat at a table or desk is likely to be better for your posture than hunching over with your laptop on your lap, or lying in bed with your laptop propped up on your knees. (If you do decide to stick with your sofa or bed, though, you might want to look into something like a laptop bed tray to make it easier to write there.)

What To Do Before You Write

#4: Make a Plan

Whatever you’re about to write, you need a plan. That might be a few words scribbled on a sticky note, or it might be a detailed document outlining your whole book. But whatever your plan looks like, it’s a vital tool for keeping you on track and focused.

If you begin writing without a plan, it’s all too easy to lose focus. You don’t know where you’re going next – and as soon as you come to the natural end of one train of thought, you’ll probably find yourself getting distracted by something that has nothing to do with your writing at all.

#5: Set a Goal for Your Writing Session

What do you want to achieve during your writing session? If you’re writing, say, a blog post, you might simply want to work through your plan – but if you’re working on part of a longer project, you may need to come up with a specific goal.

For instance, if you’re writing a novel, your goal might be “write the first 1,000 words of chapter 10” or “write the scene with Jo confronting Dwayne”.

If you find that setting goals can be daunting or off-putting rather than helpful, you might want to set a “minimum” goal and a “stretch” goal – that might be “write 200 words” as the minimum and “write 1,000 words” as your stretch goal. Even if you only achieve the minimum, you can still give yourself a pat on the back.

#6: Decide How Long You’ll Focus For

You don’t necessarily need to work with 100% focus for the whole of your writing session. You might decide to focus for 25 minutes, then take a 5 minute break. (Those particular time intervals are part of the Pomodoro technique, which you might find helpful.) Set a timer to keep you on track as you write.

While the timer is running, your job is to only write – you can’t check emails, go on Facebook, and so on. It might feel surprisingly hard at first to stay focused in this way, but you’ll soon find it becomes more natural.

If you’re fighting a long-entrenched distractibility habit, you might want to use an app like Freedom.to to help you – you can block specific websites, or even the whole internet, for a period of time.

What to Do While You Write

#7: Keep a “Distractions” Notebook to Hand

One simple tool that I find very helpful is a notebook, diary or even scrap of paper where I can jot down distractions. These are often things I need to remember to do (“Order Le Guin book” is on my list right now, because as I was drafting this post, I remembered that the science fiction book group I attend is meeting in a couple of weeks…)

You can use a distractions list not only for “to do” items, though, but also for impulses that crop up. Stuff like “see what’s new on xkcd” or “look up next season of Lucifer” can go on your list, too! Once you get to a break, you can delve into some of those distractions, guilt-free.

#8: Don’t Stop to Look Things Up

How often are you writing a blog post (or a scene of your novel, or a chapter of your book) – only to realise that you need to look up a name or a fact or a link?

And how often do you stop, look it up … and end up spending the next half an hour in an internet rabbit-hole?

I do this more often than I’d care to admit! But as much as possible, I try to not look things up when I’m writing. Instead, I put a [note to self] in square brackets in my draft, so I can come back and insert the name/fact/link/etc later on.

Here’s an example from the draft of this very post:

#9: Don’t Edit While You’re Writing

I know you’ve been told this one already, but it’s a piece of advice that always bears repeating: don’t edit while you’re writing.

Is it okay to occasionally backspace and fix a typo, or restart a sentence that somehow came out wrong? Sure. (Though some “don’t-edit” purists might disagree with me!) However, if you draft a paragraph, change three sentences, draft another paragraph, cut everything you’ve written so far and start again … you’re not going to get far.

If you change your mind about something as you’re writing, just pop the section you’re unsure about into italics. Make a quick note about what you’re thinking about changing (e.g. “remove John from this scene”) and then proceed as if you’d already made that change.

That way, you don’t lose momentum – and you don’t waste time editing something that you might later decide to change yet again.

What to Do After You Write

#10: Record How Your Writing Session Went

If you’ve never tried keeping a writing journal before, give it a go. You could have a document on your computer where you jot down how you got on, you could make an entry in your diary, you could use a notebook … whatever works for you.

Each time you finish a writing session, take a minute or two to note what went well and what didn’t quite work out. For instance, “started well but got distracted half-way by answering an email from Jenny” or “took ages to get going but really got into the flow after a few paragraphs”.

If you keep up your journal for a few weeks, you’ll find that you can spot patterns – and that you become more aware of what does (and doesn’t) work for you.

All writers can focus, and often, being distractible is simply a bad habit. How could you make your next writing session a great one? Pick one idea – or more! – from the list above, and let us know in the comments how you get on.

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Original post: How to Focus When You’re Writing from Daily Writing Tips https://ift.tt/2CMm2D5

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brandsmagazinepakistan-blog · 7 years

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Brands Magazine

http://monthlybrands.com.pk/digital-media-hacks-digital-media-freaks/

Digital media hacks by digital media freaks

If there’s a word that always comes up in digital media, it’s “complexity,” and that’s not just in the many ad tech companies on a certain slide. Simply executing daily tasks at agencies, publishers and tech providers is pretty difficult. Getting to “inbox zero” is seemingly impossible, and keeping on top of everything at times appears hopeless. We polled some top execs for their “hacks” that make their lives easier and more productive. Please add your own hacks in the comments.

IOS FROM ANYWHERE: RICHARD FRANKEL, PRESIDENT, ROCKET FUEL

My favorite digital media hack during the fast-and-furious last week of the quarter is Docusign. Anyone in the biz knows that, for a digital industry, we spend a lot of time scanning, printing and faxing around scraps of paper (insertion orders) to get deals done. Yuck! At Rocket Fuel, we’ve adopted Docusign to sign all documents and with a Web app, an iPad app and an iPhone app, I can pretty much sign contracts wherever I am. My second favorite is Gogo in fact, I’m writing and emailing this while flying cross country today! Now, if we could only figure out how AI could sign IOs for me ….

IDEAS EVERYWHERE: ERIC FRANCHI, CO-FOUNDER, UNDERTONE

I got in the habit of using the “tasks” tab in Outlook a long time ago to jot down notes specific to recurring meetings or projects that I was working on. The problem with that is that ideas and thoughts generally happen when I am not at my laptop. I would be constantly emailing myself with ideas or writing things down on a sticky pad. With the latest iOs and iCloud update, the “reminders” app syncs with Outlook’s tasks perfectly. Small hack, big help.

SURVIVING THE CC: AVI SAVAR, CHIEF CREATIVE OFFICER, BIG FUEL

One of the best things I ever did to help manage my extraordinary volume of emails is to create a rule that automatically moves all emails where my name appears in the CC (not the to field) into a separate “CC folder.” This eliminates tons of email clutter and allows me to focus on emails that are directed at me first rather than all the noise then once a day I scan my CC folder to make sure that I am looped into everything else and have not missed anything. This is one of several “rules” that helps me focus on what matters most – for example, I have rules that color internal emails gray and emails from clients red. I also use “smart folders” that show me emails in my inbox that are more than a week old, two weeks old, a month old, internal, external and so on. Lastly, I use a terrific service called OtherInbox that automatically organizes newsletters, web receipts, confirmations and pretty much anything else you need – and then sends you a daily digest for review. Happy emailing.

GO TO THE CLOUD: JEFF HASEN, CMO, HIPCRICKET:

Living in Seattle, I’m always looking for sunshine on a cloudy day (someone should write a song about that). My sunshine actually comes from the cloud. With two Macs, a PC, an iPad, and a smartphone, I’m invariably starting something on one piece of technology and picking it up on another – sometimes even more than one. Dropbox and Evernote are more important to me than an umbrella.

TAMING THE EMAIL MONSTER: DAVID BERKOWITZ, VP OF EMERGING MEDIA, 360I

One favorite service is Boomerang for Outlook. It allows me to get an email out of my main inbox and then return it at a later date. Often, I do this when I want to remind myself to follow up scheduling a meeting with someone, or I want to review something in greater detail once a deadline is completed. When used selectively, it then allows me to keep more time-sensitive messages in my inbox.

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akashamichelleblog · 7 years

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Where Do You Find Creative Ideas?

Ideas are seeds that need to grow. What you need is a process for collecting ideas and nurturing them until they’re ready.

Where do you find your ideas? It’s a common question that gets asked at some point by every creative person struggling with ideas. The thing is you don’t find ideas. Instead, you set up an environment for ideas to find you.

The more you do anything, the better you get at it. Creativity is no different. You have to exercise your creative muscles and train them. It won’t happen overnight, but if you keep at it, you will come up with more and better ideas.

Ideas are seeds that need to grow. They need time and care to become more than an idea. What you ultimately need is a process for collecting ideas and nurturing them until they’re ready.

Step 1: Set Up Your Collection Process

Finding ideas isn’t the problem. Ideas are everywhere. You have to train yourself to recognize which ideas are the ones you can turn into something worthwhile and that starts by setting up a collection process for any idea you have.

Ideas really are plentiful and you probably have more of them every day than you realize. One reason we think ideas are hard to find is because we let most of the ones we have drift away before we record them. The best ideas might come back to you, but do you want to take that chance? If you don’t record the idea the moment it comes to you, it may be lost to you forever.

Better is to set up a collection process. Have a single place where you keep any idea that comes to you; a swipe file of sorts. Where is up to you.

I like to store my ideas digitally and I’ve used a number of apps over the years. I tend to use note taking apps, though a database app (or something like Evernote would work well, too).

Any method that works for you is fine. You can collect your ideas in a notebook or even collect them all on scraps of paper that end up in a shoebox. The main thing is for all of your ideas to be collected in a single location.

Equally important is to have something with you at all times to record new ideas or add new thoughts to older ones. Odds are you have a smartphone with you wherever you go. If so, you can write your ideas. speak them, draw them, take pictures and video of them, or use any other form of input your phone allows.

Again, it doesn’t have to be digital. You might prefer to carry around a small notebook or sketchbook and write or draw your ideas with pen or pencil. You might have to try several forms of collection to find which one you like best.

You can have multiple places where you initially collect ideas when they come to you. You never know when you’ll have an idea and you should have a way to record any idea as quickly as possible. When you have more time you should move all your ideas into your central storage location, the sooner the better.

Ultimately there are two reasons to collect ideas. One is to store them for later use. The other is as a way to exercise and build your creative idea muscles.

Step 2: Generate Ideas to Exercise Your Creative Muscles

Recording every idea that comes to you is a good way to exercise your creative muscles. You practice being creative every time you come up with new ideas. The exercise part of idea collection is less concerned with any of the specific ideas and more concerned with helping you become better at recognizing ideas.

If you make it a habit to collect all you ideas, you’ll find yourself having more ideas more often and you’ll start noticing better and better ideas as you do. It’s practice and like everything else, the more you practice, the better you get.

Not too long ago I read an article by James Altucher with an exercise for generating ideas. His suggestion is to write at least 10 ideas every day, typically around a theme like “10 businesses I can start” or “10 ways I can promote a product.”

The article was business focused, but the themes are up to you. You can write “10 things a horizontal line communicates” or “10 characteristics of the color purple” instead of ideas specifically about starting new businesses.

Step 3: Nurture Your Ideas

As an exercise collecting all your ideas is great practice, but hopefully you want to do something with the ideas you’re collecting.

The second function of your idea storehouse is to provide a place where your ideas can be nurtured. Ideas become something through their execution. The idea is the seed and seeds need to be cared for before they become plants. Your ideas need time to grow as well.

Unless I’m pressed for time when I’m recording an idea, I’ll usually jot down some quick thoughts with it. I might write down what I was doing just before the idea came to me. I might brainstorm and see where the idea takes me. Sometimes I have an immediate goal in mind for the idea and I’ll write that down.

I prefer to spend at least five minutes writing down whatever comes to mind, though I’ve at times spent an hour or more fleshing out the idea the moment it comes to me.

As you continue to collect ideas and spend a few minutes adding notes to them, you’ll start to notice things during your day that will work with an idea in your collection. Record what you noticed and add it to your idea when you’re moving things to your central storehouse.

While ideas are everywhere, most aren’t very good. Most are best left as ideas in your collection. Unfortunately it’s hard to know which ideas are the good ones and which are the bad ones until you’ve attempted to turn the idea into something finished. It gets easier with practice, but you do need to work through some ideas to get that practice.

Some ideas simply take time. Time for the idea to mature or even time for you to be ready to turn it into something more. Maybe one idea needs to be combined with another or some are really multiple ideas and need to be separated before you can do something with them.

You’ll likely revisit your ideas multiple times before you ever do anything with them, which means you’re going to need a way to retrieve them from your collection.

Step 4: Organize Your Ideas for Better Retrieval

When your storehouse has only a handful of ideas you can easily find them again, but hopefully you’re going to fill your storehouse with new ideas daily and pretty soon you’re going to need a way to organize ideas so you can retrieve them.

Your collection becomes a well to draw from whenever you need an idea or want to pursue one. How you organize it is up to you and what your collection tool allows. I recommend organizing your ideas in some way, whether it’s a directory structure with folders inside folders or a system of tags.

You want something that lets you view groups of ideas in isolation from other groups. I find folders are good to keep things separate, though tags offer more flexibility in how you combine them and filter your results.

I try to use both systems and I say try, because it’s a lot of work to remember to place things in the right folder or add a few relevant tags to an idea when you first record it.

Your organization should change and evolve over time as well. One of the main reasons I switch collection apps at times is because the new one offers better methods for organizing and retrieving what’s collected in it.

It’s also a good opportunity to review your ideas and organization.

Step 5: Review Your Ideas and Your Collection System

Your ideas need time to grow. Your organizational system needs time to evolve. You’re going to revisit your storehouse often and I recommend regular reviews of your ideas, system, and organization.

The review is a good opportunity to look again at your ideas after a little time has passed so you can see them with fresh eyes. It’s easy to get locked into an idea, even a bad one, after you’ve put a little time and effort into it. A review with fresh eyes makes it easier to see the ideas that are better left for later and those that are ripe now.

Sometimes during a review I find ideas I’d forgotten about. Sometimes seeing two separate ideas I notice a connection between them. Sometimes just looking over idea after idea, fills me with new ideas to record and add to my collection.

During reviews I’ll add more notes to the ideas I revisit. It might be a thought that pops to mind and it might be an active brainstorming session for the purpose of adding notes.

Little by little I build up ideas this way so that when I’m ready to work on one, it’s already more than a simple idea.

Ideas are anywhere and everywhere

Where do you find your ideas? Anywhere and everywhere. The trick is not to focus or worry about the ideas themselves, but to focus on the process of collecting ideas in general.

Set up a system where you have something to record ideas with you at all times. Record ideas as they come to you and add a few notes as time allows. As soon as possible move your ideas into a central repository where all your ideas are stored.

Having a process for collecting and storing ideas is good practice for generating more ideas. You’ll find the more you keep the habit, the easier it is to come up with new ideas and the better your ideas will be.

Nurture ideas that weren’t born ready. Review the ideas you’ve collected and add to them, combine them with other ideas, or let them inspire you to come up with completely new ideas.

If you keep at it, in time you’ll discover the question to ask isn’t where do you find ideas, but how do you find time to work on all the ideas you have?

Source URL: Envato

#creative #creativity #ideas

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adamcairnsorg-blog · 7 years

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How To Take Notes That Will Make You Get More Done

Take Notes

If you haven't already done so, take a look at the first post in this series where I show you how to set up the apps I use in all my workflows.

In this post I'm going to show you how to take notes and have them always available at your finger tips, wherever you are.

We All Take Notes

We all find ourselves taking notes. I grew up taking notes in small notebooks. This system had some useful benefits.

Scrolling back to earlier notes was easy – providing they were in the same book and that you could read your writing.

You could write, draw and link notes together very easily.

A notebook doesn’t need a battery to operate.

It was comparatively cheap.

You could make a note using more or less any writing instrument.

There were some disadvantages too.

There was only one version of the book – if you lost it, all your notes were gone.

Security was non-existent – anyone could access them if they were lost.

Searching for words, dates and other metadata wasn’t straightforward.

Getting the content out and using it somewhere else was a chore.

The Taking Notes Workflow does include a process for handling paper based notes because from time to time you will be left with no alternative to paper and pen. The core component of the workflow though is based on electronic capture and storage because losing your notes is such a big downside of an analogue system.

When To Use This Workflow?

This Workflow should be used whenever the possibility arises that you want to make a note of what happens. That sounds self-evident doesn’t it?

But just a moment, when are the times you might need to take a note?

At a meeting.

During a presentation.

While reading a book.

After watching a film.

When hearing some interesting new music.

When you’ve been given directions.

Grabbing a quick note of someone’s contact details.

Noting down a particularly delicious menu choice at a restaurant.

You get the idea. We very frequently need to take notes. Ask yourself this question:

"Do you have a safe and reliable place where all these notes are stored, with clearly identifiable dates and times built in, and which you can search and look at whenever you want?"

To begin with, my notes were sprinkled across a whole universe of different places both analogue and electronic. Frustratingly the time when I really needed the information on a particular note was often the time when I couldn’t find the scrap of paper I’d jotted it down on. Or else I had to trawl through two, three or even four or five electronic locations to find it.

Try another question:

"If your note contains actionable information (check supplies in freezer, call Bob to check timings etc) will that task appear when and where you need it to take action on it?"

I frequently found myself forgetting to do things, which I has clearly intended to do – I’d made a note after all – but I had no reliable way of ensuring that all these tasks appeared when I needed them to. Aware that this was a problem I would occasionally transcribe actions into a folder that I would maintain on a bring-forward basis. Remembering which notes I’d taken and where I’d put them was a big problem with this approach and usually there was so much friction involved that I just couldn't trust it sufficiently.

So the ‘When’ of Taking Notes is a very frequent occurrence which is why it makes it into my list of Primary Workflows.

The Taking Notes Workflow

The Taking Notes Workflow is summarised in the flowchart. Let’s work our way through this stage by stage.

Analogue Or Digital?

The first decision you have to make is whether your note is going to be recorded in a physical place with a pen or pencil.

Analogue

If your choice is to write a note on a physical piece of paper, go right ahead.

You can still get your handwritten note into your paperless system. You might want to do this because it contains information that you need to take action on, or you might need it later for reference.

Follow these steps.

Open Evernote on your mobile device and press the add new note icon.

Tap the camera icon and your camera will then activate.

If you take a photo now the image will be stored in Evernote for you.

Now go to the note you have just created and quickly edit anything you need. For example you might want to say what it is about or make some checklists.

If you have made any checklists, tag the note with “taskclone”.

Finally decide whether you need to share it with anyone via email (or anything else) via the share icon (square with an up arrow through it).

Digital/Electronic

How To Use An Apple Pencil

If you’re an iPad Pro user you might be tempted to use your Apple Pencil to capture notes. If so then you will want to download Nebo.

Nebo offers the best solution for confirmed Apple Pencil users. It has a clear way of organising your files in a directory structure. It is also able to convert your pencil input into text – provided you write reasonably clearly.

Follow these steps.

Open Nebo and make your note.

Tap Settings (…) in top right corner and then tap on Convert All.

Make any corrections which haven’t been transposed correctly.

Tap Settings again and then Share As Text.

In the memo that appears, tap Evernote and your note will find its way into Evernote.

You can then share your note straight out of Nebo if needed.

What To Do On iOS

If you’re going to take a note on your mobile device you always start in Drafts. This is because Drafts provides such a flexible way of moving your short notes into whichever app is bested suited to the purpose you have in mind.

Using Drafts enables you to do everything which requires text entry on one app. This includes:

Text messages (SMS)

Tweets

Tasks

Notes.

I really encourage you to establish this as a habit because using a single app like this will develop your muscle memory and make capturing your thoughts, ideas. tasks and memories second nature.

Follow these steps when taking notes in Drafts.

Open Drafts – a new note is instantly available for you.

If you need to add to a previous note, they are all available for you behind the icon in the top left corner (page with a corner folded over).

Once finished decide if you want to send the note to Evernote and/or OmniFocus.

Tap the action button (top right) and a drop down menu will appear.

Select your app of choice and tap it.

Your note is now on its way.

This ability that Drafts has to quickly and seamlessly take action on your notes is why it makes so much sense to use it as your text input app for iOS.

Although all of your notes are kept in the cloud and on your device, there is no Drafts for OSX. If you have been following this workflow that shouldn’t be an issue because you’ve been sending your notes through to Evernote. There is an alternative strategy to get your notes synced to your MacBook which makes use of nvALT. This is a stripped down, super fast net taking app for OSX. There are complete instructions for connecting it with Drafts here.

What To Do When On OSX

The OSX workflow is hopefully pretty obvious.

Open Evernote.Write your note.

Add any checkboxes or calendar entries (prepend with “sch”).

Tag it with “taskclone”.

Share it via email or any other route by clicking on the Share button.

Fill in the drop down menu and click Share.

Using Siri

It's perfectly possible to combine dictation into Siri as part of your note taking workflow.

Here's what you need to do.

Visit the IFTTT (If This Then That) website and sign up. IFTTT is a service which links different applications together.

When you've done that navigate to this page and follow the instructions.

The next time you need to dictate a quick note it will capture it in Siri, place it in reminders, which IFTTT will automatically sweep up and out into Evernote.

Android

Drafts is not available on Android, so you will not be able to use Drafts as the ubiquitous text input mechanism.

My advice if you’re in that environment is to create a “Notes” Book in Evernote which you will use as your repository for all of your notes. You can take action on them by using an additional step within Evernote itself. The advice about using TaskClone to link Evernote with your task manager is still relevant.

Next Steps

Now that you've created your note taking workflow, the next step is to tame your email monster. Part 3 is my step by step guide to taming your email monster.

Question: What note taking workflow do you use?

#Note Taking #Guide

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