#Writing for self-discovery

[365momme]

12 Days of Christmas Personal Development Journal Prompts

Looking to reflect on your personal development and set goals for the upcoming year? Look no further! We’ve curated 12 days of Christmas-themed personal development journal prompts just for you. These prompts will guide you through gratitude, skill development, goal setting, self-care, overcoming limiting beliefs, and much more. Each day, you’ll explore different aspects of your life and discover…

[haleyincarnate]

Inspired by @a.subtle.space on Instagram ✨

[echoesoftheinfinite]

I lose myself just to find myself.

[thingswedontunbox]

[internalearthquake]

my ghosts within

In the midst of what seems mundane lies a hidden world

Ghosts surround me, accompanying my every step

The lost, the unmet, the real, the imagined

These translucent entities haunt and console me

Wispy figments shift in and out of awareness 

Subdued whispers, their presence felt but never seen 

What may seem ordinary masks profound challenges

I push aside my ghosts who yearn to be acknowledged

Fragile mind oscillates betwixt clarity and confusion

A perpetual struggle to live in the present 

The universe is littered with daily reminders

of what once was… 

of what could have been…

of what I have lost…

of what was never mine…

of what will never be…

Every hushed whisper, every reverberating echo

My ghosts represent these fragments of my narrative

An incomplete history of distortions and illusions

Leaves me feeling incomplete

So, who am I?

What may often be overlooked carries significance to me

Unanswered questions ignite chaos within my mind

I navigate an unsolvable labyrinth of mystery

External investigations cannot unveil these buried truths

Healing lies in reconciling with my ghosts within

Dialogue with them holds the key to my liberation,

Clearing away the misty fog that clouds my perception

By forgiving the past and accepting the unknown,

I can release my ghosts from my internal world

Empowered, I can forge my own narrative,

Finally discovering who I am

[findingpeaceinconnection-blog]

I discovered i was polyamorous twice.

The first time I was playing dnd with mates and we stopped a dual over a woman, by convincing them to be a throuple. Another player said yeah imagine it, wake up next to your love, kiss them good morning, and then turn to your other love and kiss them good morning too. I said yeah that sounds great, then had a crisis over how great it sounded. I spent a few days mulling it over and decided I wasn't poly. Because I would only be able to get married once, and if i fell in love twice that would hurt. I also didn't want to have to explain it to my family. So i wasn't.

Then i fell in love with the greatest man i've ever met. We grew and changed together, helped each other discover ourselves and what makes us happy. We learnt together we were poly. But just in the fun sexy way.

Then I fell in love again. I'm polyam in the romantic way too. But now i've fallen in love with someone who is monogamous. He wouldn't want to be in a polycule. So i just have to wait for this crush to pass.

I usually make a point that i'm writing for myself, but for once, I need to hear from my community. My polyam community is limited irl, any advice you can give would be appreciated.

[parmahamlarrie]

It's Not That I Don't Want You ~ 12.5k ~ Explicit

It begins with a benign comment during a night in watching a show with his lovely boyfriend, Louis, and leads Harry to a months long journey to understand himself better. Will Harry figure out what makes him feel so different from everyone else? And will he find the courage to tell his boyfriend? Or a character study into Ace Harry with the most supportive boyfriend, Louis.

Read on AO3 Here!

Part of @1daroaceficfest

[copperbadge]

Immediate Writer's Block

Had a comment on another post where I thought I'd probably need more space than the notes in which to respond, so:

constant-state-of-self-discovery Oh I get the envy I feel it right now how the fuck do you manage to write without impassable writers block after 5-9 sentences because I haven't fucking figured it out lol

I do have some advice on this!

I think most writers get blocked from time to time, it's normal and my general strategy is just to wait it out, but if you're frequently blocked after only writing a very little bit, I think the problem is one of two things: either you don't know what you want to achieve with the scene you're writing, or you don't know what should happen next within the scene to achieve that goal. If you frame "I'm blocked" as "I don't have an answer I need" then often you move from just sitting there, sweating and staring at a blank page, to thinking productively about how you're going to get where you're going. It's the difference between not knowing an answer and not knowing an answer but knowing where to look for it.

An invaluable piece of advice for this, which I think I picked up from someone who got it off a National Novel Writing Month messageboard, is "When in doubt, ninjas attack." It's not meant to be literal, you don't need to have ninjas or fight scenes just because you don't know what to do, but it helps to get the creativity flowing again. If you don't know what should happen next, or you know but you're having trouble actually writing the scene, it can be very helpful to induce a moment of uncertainty or surprise -- to have a metaphorical ninja attack. One time I did this literally -- the POV character was just on the road somewhere and I didn't know how to get them from a pastoral country road to their actual destination in an interesting way, so I had them get attacked by highway bandits and have to fight them off, which also allowed me to demonstrate that the character had significant unarmed combat skills. But it can also just be like, two characters who are having a boring conversation can be interrupted by a third person, even just a stranger asking for directions, or there can be, IDK, an explosion, or something goes missing, or etc.

Sometimes it also helps to leave it alone but keep it in your mind and go do something else -- listen to a podcast, take a walk, read a book, not because those things are distracting but because all our inputs eventually feed into our brain and come out as reactions. If you're thinking about your book while you're wandering around a park, something you see in the park might have an impact on it. If you've got YOUR story in mind while reading someone else's, you might be more inclined to look at what they're saying and see what you think of it, how it might play into your work.

And honestly, sometimes you just gotta go past it. I'm working on the next Shivadh novel right now and it opens basically with Simon the chef getting into a spat with his love-interest-to-be over some cheese. He want the cheese, she won't sell him the cheese, so they get off to a very contentious start. But I suck at writing conflict especially when it's basically "A character I like is being pompous and another character I want people to find likable is being stubborn and somewhat unpleasant". I've been stalled on it for a while. But I know where the scene ends up, like I do know what the goal is, so I just...skipped it and went on to writing a scene I like better, where they meet a second time and actually discover each others' identity and that they're about to be forced into the grownup equivalent of a school project. Once I've gotten dug deeper into the story I'll come back and write it, and by then I'll have the benefit of knowing the love interest a bit better.

So yeah -- I think a lot of breaking a writer's block, especially when you don't need rest but are just stumped about what to do, is to twist and look at it from another angle. It's not that you don't know what to write, or don't want to write what you know you have to -- it's that you don't have the correct answer to a question, or you need to leave that part alone to ferment and come back to it later. At least, for me.

[soulinkpoetry]

Are the decisions we make ours or are we influenced by our environment, our culture, our friends, our parents? Who are we if we decide to strip ourselves of all that? What’s deep down at the core?

.

.

[youssefguedira]

V, JoeNicky & Nile

V. An abandoned or empty place.

When Joe pulls the sheet off the couch it kicks up enough dust that it makes Nile sneeze. The couch underneath is old, wooden frame rotting, fabric stained and full of holes where moths have eaten away at it. 

“Sorry,” Joe says to Nile when she finally manages to get the sneezing under control. “Didn’t realise it was that bad.” He puts his hands on his hips and looks down at the couch. Nile looks it over.

“There’s no saving that,” she says, wiping at her eyes. She can heal from falling over ten stories, but she can’t get away from allergies.

Joe frowns. “I liked that couch.”

The house is older than anywhere else they’ve brought her, and has been abandoned for long enough that it’s falling apart. But through some trick of posing as their own sons, or something, Joe and Nicky still own it, even if there’s a giant hole in the roof and all the windows are broken. Why they’d decided to come back here, Nile doesn’t know, but it’s a nice enough area, and a good distraction from, well. Everything. Growing back a leg, she’s discovered, is not fun. 

From one of the other rooms – she thinks it’s the kitchen, she’s not actually sure where Nicky had wandered to – there’s the sound of something breaking and crashing to the ground, and a muffled curse. 

Joe makes a questioning noise in the vague direction of the kitchen. A few moments later, Nicky appears in the doorway, covered in dust. “I am okay,” he says. “But I think we will need to go out to eat tonight.”

“Nothing?” 

Nicky shakes his head. “Unless you want to start a fire and go hunt some rabbits.”

Joe grins. “Just like old times, right?”

Nile shakes her head firmly, which makes Nicky smile. She loves them, but there’s no way they’re doing that. 

“We can probably clear out enough space in here,” Joe says, gesturing to the floor. “Get the sleeping bags out of the car. Probably have to start a fire anyway, but…”

Nile looks around again while Joe says something to Nicky in Arabic that makes him laugh. The house is falling apart, sure, but it’s structurally stable, and the bones are all there. It could be something. They’ve got time to make it something. 

Nicky is the one who goes for pizza in the end – he doesn’t trust Nile and Joe to order it if left to their own devices – while they try to clear out a space in the living room. Eventually, though, after Nile has another sneezing fit, Joe suggests they just take the sleeping bags outside instead, which works out a lot better. He sets about starting a fire with practiced ease while Nile sets out the sleeping bags around it. They’re far enough away from civilisation that she can’t hear cars passing by, which is kind of surreal, and the stars are brighter than she’s ever seen them. 

When Nicky gets back, two boxes balanced on one arm and a bottle of wine in the other, he looks over their makeshift camp and laughs. “Just like old times, then?” he asks.

Joe grins. “Except we have pizza.”

“And actual sleeping bags,” Nile says.

“Ah, these modern inventions could never quite match the comfort of a pile of furs,” Joe says wistfully. Nile gives him a look. She’s ninety percent sure that one’s bullshit, but she can never quite tell with him. 

Nicky sets down the pizza boxes, and jogs back to the car to grab the pack of plastic wine glasses they’d bought before they got here. 

“We should’ve bought marshmallows,” Nile says. “Could have made s’mores.”

“Well, we’ll have to go to the hardware store tomorrow anyway,” Joe points out. “And I think it’ll be a little while before we can actually sleep in there.”

“Tomorrow, then?”

“Tomorrow,” Nicky agrees.

[histhoughtslately]

“Travel changes you. As you move through this life and this world you change things slightly, you leave marks behind, however small. And in return, life — and travel — leaves marks on you.”

- Anthony Bourdain

[haleyincarnate]

Inspired by @kerrylifecoach on Instagram

[echoesoftheinfinite]

I am a beast, a flame, an immensity.

[sl8tersstuff]

Every night I mourn you and who you were; who I was and who I will never be.

[r3n0-5]

Right now, there are people all over the world who are just like you. They're either lonely, they're missing somebody, they're depressed, they're hurt, they're scarred from the past, they're having personal issues no one knows about, they have secrets you wouldn't believe. They wish, they dream and they hope, and right now, they are sitting here reading these words, and I'm writing this for you so you don't feel alone anymore. Always remember, don't be depressed about the past, don't worry about the future, and just focus on today

[worldbuildingwanderlust]

Spiral into nothingness

Or perhaps into

Eternal bliss

Find the peace

That had been lost

In transition

Between states of

Consciousness