#edit: OH I HOPE I DONT SOUND MAD OR ANYTHING !!! I JUST WANTED TO RAMBLE !! <3 /LH

[solargeist]

I love that you went from the watchers being this mildly terrifying force that doesn’t realize they’re terrifying (and traumatizing Grian) side eyeing that one 3L comic you made about the watchers making it a “game” for Grian (still very much thinking about the “yaaaaay you won!”) to now Oh My Gosh A Tiny Being Can We Adopt Him pleasepleasepleasepleasepleasepleaseplease

ehehe i was trying to get my footing !! I think I have a grasp now on how I like writing them now ....

However !! The Watchers still very much traumatize Grian, even though they genuinely do love him, I've said that since the beginning, thats their babeyyyyyyyy Watcher, but still a Watcher nonetheless.

Aethers not exactly excused from this either, she loves him and cares abt him, but shes an angel, she just doesn't understand. She has an issue with..... Toxic positivity ? Shes not very confrontational and doesn't want to have hard conversations with him, its easier to hide things or just comfort him by rubbing his back or hair when hes upset. When Grian asks to visit Evo again early on, she already knows all the players have left, but lets him see for himself anyway. Its like when a kid begs to eat something like cocoa powder, not understanding how bitter it is, so you just let them. So its not a big deal to her, but is to Grian, its the horrifying realization that he is completely alone, all of his friends left, he feels abandoned and betrayed. All good things must come to an end though, she says, nothing lasts forever, except us ! haha !

Not to mention the purposeful sleep deprivation and isolation, the full control over what he eats, where he goes, what he does. Its not very fun being a kid, its hard and no one understands.

Aether didn't originally want to be a parent, nor was she exactly ready for that, so she just did a lot of things that were normal to her, what she went through or what other Watchers had told her. But ! She does care abt him, enough to bend the rules just a tinyyy bittttt sometimes bc ~technically shes allowed to since he's her kid, yes he can go home if he has a headache or eat fish if he asks for it wym.

Theres also Flora, his aunt, she has no interest in kids and sees Grian just as a Watcher in training, this means she's a lot harder on him, but bc he's her sister's kid she doesn't act on this all the time. She also projects her own issues on him, how can you survive or do anything in life if you're not strong ? Here fight this phantom creature you've literally never seen before. Thats as far as their relationship goes, she teaches him to fight. She pets his head sometimes anyway. (kind of like how parents will sometimes force their kids to play sports, or take extra classes, or get frustrated with you over math and you cry over disappointing them)

I don't think the Watchers are intentionally evil, but I don't think they're goofy dumb birds with baby fever either, they're complicated !! There something abt how people who love you can hurt you, and religion can try to save you and it'll doom you instead. (ok they can be a little bit dumb birds sometimes, but they're also righteous angels at the same time)

Its also kinda scary being 25 years old, and then being brought to some place you thought you had equal grounds on, but everyone is taller/stronger and treats you like a child or even a pet, that alone would have some side effects, i imagine.

They're very fun to write abt.

Grian also doesn't often get to see the sun.

[swampgallows]

like this shit is so long

Only once Jaina was back in her own rooms in Theramore, and her head had begun to cool off from the madness – indeed, wild hope, chilling fears, joy and a thousand other emotions spinning through her head, only one step from insanity – only then did she remember that she had forgot to ask one important question, and it froze the grin on her face.

Something so small but so important to the culture she grew up in – even stricter than normal for her, a woman of such a fine family line. Something so small, so ridiculous even, but not dismissible and it had haunted her only in its current form in peaceful times. There had been no time for it before, not when her life took plunges – I will be a mage, a scholar dedicated to study and magic to We may not be alive tomorrow and onwards through We are alive and building a new home.

She stared out of one of the window of her chambers, without really seeing anything. Unwittingly, one of her hands went to her stomach.

Only after the chaos she found herself the owner of her own throne, and with that, being a person who was expected to eventually produce an heir who could sit on that throne later on.

Before that, she had only been haunted by regret and bitterness, and the memory of sweet whispers, of fingertips and warmth that had turned colder than ice. Both of them young and foolish, knowing they were as good as betrothed – it would only be a few words away, the match was suitable even in a politician's eye – but duty called him, and magic her. And then he turned into the greatest evil to walk Azeroth, barring Archimonde and his ilk.

Bitterness and regret being mere personal torture, but with her current position the problem became a tangible… inconvenience to say the least. Before, she may have pushed it aside and felt that she would face it the day she had a suitable suitor.

And how long ago was it, young lady, that you could bear thinking of anyone but him touching you?

this shit is so fucking long and it doesn’t say anything new. there are three different paragraphs talking about “before” but it’s not for emphasis and it doesn’t provide any new information. if i were the editor, i would do this:

HAHAHA OH HOLY SHIT I GOT ON MY LAPTOP AND THIS WAS THE LAST THING ON MY CLIPBOARD HAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHA

anyway my edit would be like

Only once Jaina was back in her own rooms in Theramore, and her head had begun to cool off from the madness – indeed, wild hope, chilling fears, joy and a thousand other emotions spinning through her head, only one step from insanity – only then did she remember that she had forgot[en] to ask one important question[.] and it froze [T]he grin on her face [froze].

Something so small but so important to the culture she grew up in – even stricter than normal for her, a woman of such a fine family line. Something so small, so ridiculous even, but not dismissible and it had haunted her only in its current form in peaceful times. There had been no time for it before, not when her life took plunges – I will be a mage, a scholar dedicated to study and magic to We may not be alive tomorrow and onwards through We are alive and building a new home.

She [blankly] stared out of one of the window of her chambers, without really seeing anything. Unwittingly, one of her hands went to her stomach.

Only after the chaos she found herself the owner of her own throne, and with that, being a person who was expected to eventually produce an heir who could sit on that throne later on.

Before that, she had only been haunted by regret and bitterness, and the memory of sweet whispers, of fingertips and warmth that had turned colder than ice. Both of them young and foolish, knowing they were as good as betrothed – it would only be a few words away, the match was suitable even in a politician's eye – but duty called him, and magic her. And then he turned into the greatest evil to walk Azeroth, barring Archimonde and his ilk.

Bitterness and regret being mere personal torture, but with her current position the problem became a tangible… inconvenience[,] to say the least. Before, she may have pushed it aside and felt that she would face it the day she had a suitable suitor.

And how long ago was it, young lady, that you could bear thinking of anyone but him touching you?

like so much of this is just not contributing anything. it’s a fic, we already know who these characters are, and there was already a previous chapter before this detailing jaina’s situation and hyjal and everything else. all of it is really implicit that she forgot to ask thrall if he wanted kids, it doesn’t need the like three paragraphs of Jaina is a Human Female and Expected to Have Children. this isnt an alien species being introduced to us like most couplings in azeroth bring up children as a factor. 

i dunno like i know people write fic for fun but this shit is 100k and when there is this much unnecessary detail it’s hard to see the forest for the trees as it were, and it makes it a slog to get through. i also dont “speed read” because most of my reading has been academic where every single word counts, and part of me feels like it’s disrespectful to the author. like they put these words down to be read, and so i will read them, but that’s also the way i’ve been trained to read.  also since i spent most of my schooling reading stuff like shakespeare or canterbury tales or les miserables you have to stop like every five syllables to look shit up or derive some kind of analysis unless it’s a modern adaptation that doesnt require any “translation” necessarily.  

basically like. writing is fun but editing is important. more people will read your fic when it isn’t 30% filler. and ive complained about it before but like word count doesnt have any fucking bearing at all on the quality of writing. in fact, when i see ship fics that skyrocket to like 150k words in a handful of chapters im like dang bitch you cant write for shit!!! if you cant get across what you wanna say in that amount of words and youre STILL not done it means you gotta pare some shit down. 

it’s why i prefer writing over talking EVERY time because i KNOW i ramble irl. and in a casual setting like this, a blog post, i of course will ramble here too. but in writing??? writing that people read? everything you write should convey something and drive your story forward. every sentence you type is communicating something. if you get through the whole paragraph and all you can extract from it is “jaina realizes motherhood is a possibility again”, it needs to say something more. i mean this is all just my opinion but like it’s so important to the tone of your writing.

i remember when i was reading the shining, and early on in the story jack is being instructed in the boiler room. and the attendant or janitor or whatever you’d call him goes on for a HUGE block of text of all the mechanisms and step-by-step explains each and every facet of the machinery, how to use it, what it’s for. there aren’t even indents in the paragraph. and then it mentions off-handedly how jack was giving quick responses like “yup”, “uh-huh”, shit like that. i mean it’s been a few years since i read it so im paraphrasing. but that part of the book stood out to me because it was so immersive. the way it was written and the way the information was being relayed was specifically to bore the reader, to put them in jack’s position, and also maybe intimidate them a little bit. and of course it was foreshadowing, too, when later in the story jack is struggling with the boiler, and i actually went and flipped back to the instructions earlier in the book to review what jack was supposed to do. and then i thought, “boy, i bet jack wished he was me right now, because i have everything all written down!” 

but anyway, like. that’s good writing. that’s using the medium of text to its advantage to communicate on a meta-level how the audience should feel, and that we are all jack in that moment, being told a huge laundry list of shit we have to do—being paid to do, our sole responsibility on this job—and totally mentally checking out. i LOVE jaina, and i LOVE thrall, but the way this fic is written portrays them both as totally spaced out, completely unsympathetic characters. what i read above isn’t communicating jaina’s trauma to me; it sounds condescending, like she’s such an air-headed dim bulb that she forgot to ask her new husband if he wanted kids.

and the “proposal” was like... extremely awkward? i mean maybe that’s what the author is going for but thrall being basically like “uhh i guess? yeah i guess.” and then it says they talked for an hour but couldnt stay longer than that because they’re both leaders and couldn’t stay away too long. like... i feel like this is supposed to be a pretty important thing? marriage? it’s the setup for the whole fic and it’s played so... underwhelmingly. which i dont feel is intentional.

I KNOW it’s just a fic and i’m being very critical but it’s just like damn everybody bitches about blizzard’s “bad writing” but then nobody steps up to the plate. :\ i dunno how anybody spends so much time reading fanfiction when most of it is such a fucking chore to read. god i hope my story isnt like that.

[quincywillows]

hey maggie! i’ve been following you for so long and as my sophomore year of college is wrapping up soon (thank god, online school is the worst), i’ve found myself literally not doing a lot of enjoyable things that i would want to do or really creating/writing in time that i have away from homework/classes. i’m so curious as to how you created and did all of your writing for fun/fanfic things after already having to write so much for your major?

omg a long time follower... hello. hi my pal. so honored you’ve stuck around this long and my apologies that you’ve dealt with me for so long LOLLLL but happy to have ya! CONGRATULATIONS on finishing your sophomore year of college, especially in these crazy times. i really can’t imagine trying to do school productively in these circumstances, so i have a lot of respect for all y’all that are powering through -- hopefully you’ll get some sense of normalcy in the coming school year. i especially commend you, because sophomore year can be tough no matter where you go to school / what your major is (sophomore slump is a real thing). it was my hardest year of college by far, so mad props for doing the damn thing. you’re super powerful for making it and i’m proud of you!!! i hope you’re proud of yourself too.

this question... it’s a tough one. i hear ya. my first major piece of advice is let yourself rest and recharge if you need to rest and recharge. if your semester has just wrapped up, you might not feel the effects of that fully until a few days after you’re free of it. and it’s 100% okay to let your brain take a little break after being in school mode for so long. i totally get the instinct to feel like okay now that i’m free i have to take advantage of it as much as i can and jump right back into these things i love since i should have wanted to do them this whole time... but our brains are strange things. they need time and their own methods to process things, even in ways we don’t consciously realize we need, and sometimes a break is truly necessary. that means from everything that uses brain power, including those things we love so much. and i know it can feel guilt-inducing to just not do anything (like i said, i know that feeling all too well and am living with it Too Much at the moment), but if your brain needs the break, give it the break. don’t push yourself to write for fun if it ends up feeling stressful and not fun. so to start, try giving yourself a day or two with no expectations to write or be creative and just... relax. absorb some media for a change rather than crafting it (my go-to is always reading books when i’m not creating output these days). i would be willing to bet that if you let yourself breathe with no expectations for even a little while, you’ll start to feel your creative urges and instincts bounce back without even trying, just as you’re hanging out and vibing. that’s how it always goes with me, anyway!

once you get the recharge done and you’ve got some mental energy back, then the question remains -- how do we do creative things and stay motivated while we also have other stuff to focus on? i’ll be candid, for me, writing stuff for fun is the escape from writing stuff for work / school. like it keeps me creatively fresh on both fronts to be constantly playing around and working with different ideas, so i try to keep multiple projects going at one time for that exact reason. when i start to burn out on one concept, i jump into working on something else. (the only time this backfires is when everything is in an outline / brainstorm stage, like i am right now, which let me tell you is a whole other ballpark and my nightmare LMAO). but i think all this to say, part of it is just reframing how you look at the writing you do for fun. i dont think of it as stuff i’m doing On Top Of everything i’ve got going on, it takes equal importance and residency in my mind. they’re just different categories of output. in fact, i’m guilty more so of like working on the fun things when i’m supposed to be working on the Work work (hehe), but again, that’s another angle.

so then what are ways we can get inspired to jump back into the fun things, after reframing our mindset and after our recharge? for me, i have a lot of different things i do that keep writing fun for me. the main one -- and i cannot stress this enough -- is building a storytelling community of some kind where you can just have fun, bounce ideas around, and do writing in a very non-stressful environment. i’ve had friends like this since i was 11, and i owe all of them a life debt because they will never know how much they kept me going creatively. there’s just something very inspirational and creatively rich about having a group of people you feel safe to just throw ideas out to (and who you know actually enjoy listening to you ramble -- that one is crucial. i’ve had friends who i thought were those kind of people and then it ended up turning out pretty bad, and that can kill your creative buzz). for example, i would say 9/10 of the fun fanfic ideas i’ve written and shared started, in some shape or form, as me pitching it to my friends and getting to pop off about it and work out the bare bones with that test audience of sorts. plus, if you have writer friends, for example, this is something you can do for each other and not only build your creative friendship, but also support one another. that’s a key to the sprint method, and it’s how @ambitionsource gets written -- i don’t know if ambition would be almost through 3 seasons at this point if esther and i weren’t writing it together and constantly talking and chatting and brainstorming about it by feeding off each other’s enthusiasm. and in the real world, that’s basically what writing courses are for -- your peers and classmates are that community in that class. there’s something truly so invigorating about having that community, so if you can find that, i cannot recommend it enough.

but what can you do on your own? it’s not always easy to find that community, or if you don’t want to, and honestly sometimes its nice to just work creatively on your own with no interaction from others. for me, one thing i do is try to build the aesthetic around the project to get in the mood of it. for me, the biggest method to this is playlists. i’m a huge music junkie, so making a playlist (often times both vibes with lyrical musical and instrumental with movie scores) is like my immediate go-to when i need to tune in or flesh out a new idea and get in the zone. another thing i love doing that always gets me in the zone is doing character tests / alignments / etc. like personality quizzes are my shit, and i love doing it even more for characters. i’ll spend hours over time taking tests and assigning types and stuff just because not only is it damn fun, it really does flesh out character in ways you wouldn’t expect -- you have to step into their mind to answer questions and really think... like oh, how would x respond to y situation... and it’s really eye-opening sometimes! (hit me up if you want a list of the common personality tests i do for characters; i have a folder on my bookmarks bar lol). you can also try other creative things like making moodboards / pinterest boards, or making edits if that’s up your alley.

if all of that doesn’t seem to unblock your fatigue towards doing what you enjoy, my last piece of guidance -- and i know this sounds annoying, but bear with me -- is to just do it. even if you’re not Feeling It, do it anyway. for a little bit of time, bit by bit. that’s the whole conceit behind the sprint method, which takes writing and breaks it into bite-sized chunks. i’m a subscriber to the belief that writer’s block is a myth and isn’t real, and sometimes you really just have to push through your hesitation and do it. 9/10 times, when i do this, i find myself feeling so much more productive and happy and ready to write again once i just break that mental barrier. and whatever you do in that first breakthrough does not have to be brilliant, it’s just about getting back that energy and flexing those muscles -- especially if they’re rusty. 

hopefully some of this will be helpful to you as you try to get your rhythm back! let me know if you’re still feeling stuck and maybe we can narrow in on what might be causing the fatigue. best of luck, writing legend!