#how to learn how to write

[mournfulroses]

Katherine May, from Wintering: How I learned to Flourish when Life became Frozen 

[crumb-crumblet-s-crumbington]

you dont mean that

[nonebinary-leftbeef]

DEVASTATING the lyric you've been mishearing is better than the real one

[mebssann]

imagine you're living in the post apocalypse and your adopted dad still makes you do homework

[inkskinned]

i hate to say it because i'm neurodivergent and a chronic-pain-haver but like... sometimes stuff is going to be hard and that's okay.

it's okay if you don't understand something the first few times it's explained to you. it's okay if you have to google every word in a sentence. it's okay if you need to spend a few hours learning the context behind a complicated situation. it's okay if you need to read something, think about it, and then come back to re-read it.

i get it. giving up is easier, and we are all broken down and also broke as hell. nobody has the time, nobody has the fucking energy. that is how they win, though. that is why you feel this way. it is so much easier, and that is why you must resist the impetus to shut down. fight through the desire you've been taught to "tl;dr".

embrace when a book is confusing for you. accept not all media will be transparent and glittery and in the genre you love. question why you need everything to be lily-white and soft. i get it. i also sometimes choose the escapism, the fantasy-romance. there's no shame in that. but every day i still try to make myself think about something, to actually process and challenge myself. it is hard, often, because of my neurodivergence. but i fight that urge, because i think it's fucking important.

especially right now. the more they convince you not to think, the easier it will be to feed you misinformation. the more we accept a message without criticism, the more power they will have over that message. the more you choose convenience, the more they will make propaganda convenient to you.

[velvetwyrme]

aHhh okay so the discussions of Titan!Megatron on @callsign-relic's blog have fully. FULLY taken over my brain and ive been drawing stuff for it for like the last few days nonstop

the tl;dr of this is AU is pretty much "what if Megatron got turned into a titan/cityformer as a form of penance/imprisonment and now roams the empty wasteland of Cybertron forever" plus "IDW Megatron has really fucked up internals so... what if that, but as a City?"

and of course since he's a Titan, that also means he has a cityspeaker... or three. One per sub-AU thing. Theres 3 options. 3 flavours of AU.

i have so much art to make. but in the meantime, for more info! check out the #titan au tag on Relic's blog :]!! (also uhh potential ns//fw warning for the link shfjbdkd)

Hi. My battery is running out once again so design and art notes get chucked here instead of an image.

The cuffs and collar are hardwired into Megatron, so I made the lights the same colour as his biolights!

I imagine that on the tops of his shoulders there are solar panels, even if you can't see them here lol.

I really wanted to keep the swirly bits on Megatron's chest from IDW

Other art notes:

The second picture with the seekers is (loosely) inspired by a discussion about whether or not Megatron gets visitors or not. I thought about who would visit him and well... I think this is as close as Starscream realistically gets to visiting him.

Extra detail about that piece is that Thundercracker and Skywarp are keeping watch from above! Also drawing Megatron took me like 8 hours because I was struggling with his legs really badly kshffkbfkdsbdk,, the background went much faster, funnily enough.

Optimus specifically isn't wearing his Autobot badge any more.

This isn't relevant in this series of images, but Ultra Magnus's eye markings are only on the Magnus armour. His other two forms do not have them :] (... until he begins to discard the armour, that is.)

Megatron is roughly 3200m/2 miles tall. Technically he could have clouds around his knees, but I thought this looked a little bit cooler lol.

Also, height chart! Him big. I didn't even attempt to put a human for scale because that'd be. near impossible with this scale.

[crispyliza]

I've got you all figured out fanartists

[sleepgarden]

Pupa ✢ The writing reads:

Time envelops and keeps me Not awake / Not asleep In this chrysalis / In this shroud I am stillborn / I am buried alive Yet I change / I am changing / And I ache Held still

I started this over a year ago and came back to it periodically, but I decided to just finally finish it. It’s morphed, undone itself, and transformed many times in the process of illustrating it. Sincerely, I considered giving up on the piece. I am glad I didn’t despite its awkwardness; I admit that it doesn’t sit in the eye well. But somehow I feel that it suits the piece and what it means.

I am, if anything, relieved to have finished an illustration finally. It’s been nearly eight months since my last. Prints are available in my shop. (I also have mini prints for $5cad/$3.40usd!)

[cozylittleartblog]

Columbo and the Knight (1984)

put me in the universe where Columbo ran through the 1980s and had a crossover episode with Knight Rider. I think they deserved it, and I am not just saying that because they're my two favorite Old Shows. @telebeast wrote a little fanfic blurb about it and I HAD to visualize it into a comic (which is also the longest comic I have finished thus far at five pages...), so writing credit goes to them.

Autism W!

[daysofnights]

when sirius and james accidentally find out about regulus’ crush on james, sirius makes the mistake of assuming him and james are on the same page and tells him he trusts him to do the right thing (ie., let regulus down easy) james misinterprets this as sirius trusting him to never do anything that could hurt regulus and starts planning the wedding

[sergeant-angels-trashcan]

idk i just. i gotta say there is something so powerful about having two alpha male coded characters discussing their emotions on a rooftop while grappling with overt suicidality and having the most alpha of the two not only providing emotional support and words of affirmation but actively endorsing therapy. admitting that he goes and it helps. do you understand how insane that is. they really wrote jack abbot to be in the middle of a venn diagram of suicidal demographics and said we're not going to leave him there, we're going to make him be the one who is advocating for the mental health care of healthcare workers. Do you get this. he's a white male veteran between like 18-50 who undoubtedly has access to a firearm. he's disabled, he works in emergency medicine as an attending and we have no idea what kind of support system he has outside of work. like. that is a man i would be actively worried about in my workplace. that is a man who knows how to kill himself and make it stick. and he's talking about his therapist out in the open. the amount of stigma and internalized masculine ideals and military masculinity he has worked through. do you. do you understand. do you understand what an incredible character jack abbot is. i'm tearing up. robby is terrified someone will find out he has ptsd and panic attacks and jack is telling him it's okay. implying he has them too. it's okay because you came out and went right back in it. you were who we needed you to be, and it wasn't fair and it's okay to not be okay. it's okay to need help. jack. jack abbot said those things.

jack abbot you have my entire heart

[ileftmysoulinnorway]

HANDWRITING

INTERVIEW WITH THE VAMPIRE (2022–)

[aurrai]

learning how to write using the Input Hypothesis

Stephen Krashen's 'Input Hypothesis' came up regularly during my Second Language Acquisition classes at uni and I think it can be applied to learning to write stories as well.

What is it?

Basically it's a suggested way to learn languages based on your current level and the kind of material you use to study with, but I think it can be applied to anything you learn, such as writing. The key idea is comprehensible input—to learn by using material that is above your level but not so high as to be overwhelming. A comfortably higher level. Another key idea is the affective filter—you learn better when you're feeling confident and motivated and you don't learn well when you're feeling hopeless and uninspired.

Applying this theory to writing, you take your current level of writing skills and you try to find material that is above your level that you can learn from, and above all you make sure you're having fun while doing it.

So I guess the technique would be:

Learning comes from input. For a Writer, that input is reading.

The best kind of input material contains writing techniques that you don't know yet but that you could pick up easily enough given your current level.

Being confident and motivated requires you to check in on how you're feeling so if you're not enjoying the book you're reading, maybe have a think about putting it down for the time being and choosing a different one.

The sweet spot for learning is reading a story you enjoy that is just above your current level.

So how do you, Writer at home, know what kind of writing is just above your level and where to find that sweet spot story you'll enjoy? Good question. I'm not sure I have the answer. For myself, I used trial and error and eventually I kind of got a sense of what was at the right level for me. So for example, I find CAPTIVE PRINCE by C.S. Pacat is at a good level for me to learn from by myself, but when I was looking at SCHINDLER'S ARK by Thomas Keneally yesterday, I found it a bit hard to analyse and would probably need a more experienced person to help break it down for me. These are both stories I love and have read multiple times.

The Input Hypothesis also says it's better to acquire new skills through exposure (in a Writer's case, through reading stories) than through the teaching of forms (structure, techniques, etc). Overall, I agree, but I hope it doesn't downplay teaching too much. Teaching speeds up the learning process because you can get an initial awareness of what structures and writing techniques are possible. For example, I benefitted a lot from learning about the 3-Act structure because I didn't have to work it out for myself, I just jumped straight into looking for it and analysing the stories I was reading. How long would it have taken me to recognise it on my own? Probably ages, so I feel like I saved a lot of time by just studying it outright. Having said that though, I didn't really, truly understand what the 3-Act structure looked like until I was exposed to it through reading a lot of stories that used it. I don't think teaching is enough, and nor do I think studying forms is what a Writer should do a majority or even a lot of the time. I find I benefit from just a little bit of study (say, reading a writing blog that talks about a technique) and then spending the rest of my time reading so that I get exposure to how the forms are actually used by different Writers in their stories.

So I guess technique #2 would be:

spend the majority of your time reading so that you get exposure to a lot of different ways to tell stories.

spend a little time studying story structure and writing techniques so that you can start to recognise and analyse those forms in the stories you're reading.

Note: I don't know if I need to add this caveat here or if it's obvious already but it's okay to read stories without the pressure of thinking you need to learn something from them. I think that's the importance of monitoring how you're feeling—ideally you want to keep yourself at a state where you feel confident and motivated and sometimes that means reading things solely because you love the story's premise, or because you've read the story before and you want to experience it again, or just taking some time off and not reading at all for a little while. I've also seen writing advice that says the first time you read a story is for pleasure and the second time is for analysis. I think that's good advice to follow as well.

Wikipedia gives a further overview of Krashen's Input Hypothesis if you're curious and want to read more about it. Keep in mind it's a theory from second language acquisition, not creative writing.

[bardicbird]

a little siffrin comic about touch, violence, and oranges

[karos-4art]

me like heavy n sniper interactions... even tho they don't exist so i had to make myself one!!!

this is an idea from 2021 :D please enjoy!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

e x t r a s:

draft from 2021 - october 2024

PANEL REDRAW!!!!

[lazylittledragon]

ok someone please correct me if i'm wrong but am i weird for thinking those 'audiobooks don't count as reading' posts are ableist as fuck????