#my go-to technique for ideas is just

[loadednachosao3]

"I use AI for ideassssss" my brother in Christ let me introduce u to

other people

with human brains

that you can talk to

using the same device you're using AI on

at literally any time

because someone is always online somewhere

and people are always willing to help, even total strangers

subreddits

discord

bluesky

tumblr

that weird facebook writing group you're still in that you joined in 2011 and never interacted with

all this to say, every single time I spit something stupid out on here and ask for people to send in asks helping me refine it, I am using you as my own ChatGPT

thanks guys! :)

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Lan Wangji Goes To Lotus Pier AU: Part 1: Dread on Arrival

(Part 2)

[artstantpansies]

happy birthday once again, mr harrison

[silverior968]

I thought I'd try my hand at making an animatic except with traditional art while on vacation, so I chose this idea that's been stuck in my head for ages but isn't so good that I'd feel bad about making it messy [ft. TFP Skulduggery Pleasant AU, CW gore and blood]

Song: Berlin Without Return by Voxtrot

[noisytenant]

when you are afraid to say "no" to someone it can be helpful to ask what consequences you realistically think might occur, particularly focusing on "escalations" and defense against them.

if you are afraid to reject someone, you should ask, "what might they feel in response? how might they act on those feelings? and how might they escalate things in response to being challenged?"

this can help you identify people who legitimately respect your boundaries, relatively reasonable people with some challenging or unhealthy communication habits, and people who are overtly toxic, controlling, and abusive.

subconsciously many people with trauma backgrounds respond to conflicts with a generalized, abstract mortal terror. on an emotional level, there is a flattening where an annoyed tone or triggering phrase can feel as dangerous as a person swinging at you.

but most people, even abusive ones, have limits to what they are willing to do. disentangling your absolute worst fears from grounded predictions allows for solutions beyond automatic survival strategies.

once you estimate the lengths someone could go to assert their will over yours, you can reinforce your own stance, tactically disengage from the situation, and protect your body and personal property.

if you haven't considered potential escalations, then standing up for yourself can feel impossibly risky. but once you understand the playing field, you can mitigate a number of those risks into something manageable.

while we can never be certain of what could happen, life doesn't need to be a binary between "being a doormat" and "going for a home run with a hornet's nest".

and preventing even one instance of (re)victimization can allow you to take back some of the power from the people who have used it against you.

[the-dragon-hearted]

When proofreading (fanfiction) I recommend using ctrl+F to find what words you use most often. Then, add them to a list to look through every time you finish a chapter. I usually do this during the second run-through. After I've checked spelling and grammar and all that boring stuff.

FOR INSTANCE, my list consists of some of THESE SUCKERS:

In dialogue-heavy chapters:

ctrl+F "said"

ctrl+F "murmur"

ctrl+F "breathe"

ctrl+F "Asked"

ctrl+F "managed"

In fight scenes:

ctrl+F "raced"

ctrl+F "stumbled"

And the dreaded one I ALWAYS have to look up:

ctrl+F "eyes"

I cannot tell you how bad that last one is. SO BAD - I'm always describing what people's eyes are doing and I didn't even recognize it until recently. It was just something I fixated on because it described so much of a character. Now I have to go back and look for every "EYES" I can find and figure out a way to change it. And no I can't use orbs -

That and BREATHE. Do you know how often I have "he breathed" or "they breathed" or "breathed out -" LIKE WHY ARE THEY ALL BREATHING ALL THE DAMN TIME -

[neverendingford]

[snazum]

ah fuck it i'm asking to the void but, does anyone know how many hours/days the events of HLVRAI span over? I might have to rewatch the series for this info ToT I do know they mention going to bed at the end of streams, so 4 days? fuck man i'm rambling cause i can

[beneathsilverstars]

i know i was just complaining about stylizing loop's body but i figured that out and moved on and it turns out the head is so much harder 😭 i'm very happy with canon loop head and post-bodycraft loop head but the in-between phase is kicking my ASS and i can't just half-ass it bc figuring out the in-between head is the ENTIRE POINT of this WHOLE PROJECT....

i think part of the problem might be that unlike with the body, i do have an extremely clear idea of what is happening with the head physically and how it would look irl, it's just. a very difficult thing to draw. so i keep rejecting ideas that look good bc they're not my actual headcanon, but then also rejecting attempts to faithfully depict the headcanon bc they don't look good. head in my hands

[dazeymazey]

[ id: a comic featuring three object-head characters - Chip, who is tall & dark-skinned with a cardboard box head, Aloe, who is shorter and curvy with light brown skin & a lava lamp head, and Petra, who is tall and fat with brown skin and a cactus head. a golf ball is struck by a club, and lands straight into the water. the three of them stand in silence in the direction of the ball, Petra in the foreground with a wide-eyed expression. Aloe says "Wow. That's the seventh ball you've drowned." Petra scratches their face and says, "Seven, huh.. too bad that's not the name of the game." Aloe jokes "You'd be a pro by now." and Chip chimes in, signing "Totally unmatched." with a smile. Off-screen, Petra light-heartedly responds "Stooop!". end id ]

[oflgtfol]

“But no one actually ‘looks’ through [modern telescopes]. Margaret Huggins lamented the shift from gazing at the heavens to squinting at tiny patches of light. Now we’ve gone much, much further. In today’s astronomy, photons of light from the sky, along with the celestial secrets they contain, are picked up by electronic detectors, converted into digital data and crunched through impossibly complex equations by some of the most powerful computers on the planet. In 2016, bricklayer-turned-astronomer Gary Fildes described visiting Chile’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) in his best-selling book An Astronomer’s Tale. Incorporating four mirrors, each 27 feet wide, the VLT collects visible and infrared radiation and can distinguish points in the sky separated by less than a millionth of a degree. Here, at the forefront of today’s attempts to understand the stars, Fildes was struck by the sight of scientists hard at work in control rooms, eyes glued not to their telescopes but to banks of screens: ‘They didn’t look as if they had seen the real sky for days.’”

- The Human Cosmos: Civilization and the Stars by Jo Marchant

[dabblingreturns]

I could stop leaving links to relivent Wikipedia articles in the comment sections of you tube videos. But why would I? I'm giving the gift of knowlage this christmas

[theeverdream]

Hey maybe nobody needs to be held like that when they're already in cuffs, asshole.

(video)

[ourceliumnetwork]

hey just cause i'm thinking about it: if you're struggling with feeling like you don't art so good, watch other, better artists do their art and take note of what they're doing. my whole Technique has been altered by doing this more consistently over the past like year or so. also talk to your art friends i bet they know how to do the thing you've been struggling with and if they don't they might know where to look that you haven't already. anyway thanks for coming to my ted talk.

[bookishdiplodocus]

The Neurodivergent Writer’s Guide to Fun and Productivity

(Even when life beats you down)

Look, I’m a mom, I have ADHD, I’m a spoonie. To say that I don’t have heaps of energy to spare and I struggle with consistency is an understatement. For years, I tried to write consistently, but I couldn’t manage to keep up with habits I built and deadlines I set.

So fuck neurodivergent guides on building habits, fuck “eat the frog first”, fuck “it’s all in the grind”, and fuck “you just need time management”—here is how I manage to write often and a lot.

Focus on having fun, not on the outcome

This was the groundwork I had to lay before I could even start my streak. At an online writing conference, someone said: “If you push yourself and meet your goals, and you publish your book, but you haven’t enjoyed the process… What’s the point?” and hoo boy, that question hit me like a truck.

I was so caught up in the narrative of “You’ve got to show up for what’s important” and “Push through if you really want to get it done”. For a few years, I used to read all these productivity books about grinding your way to success, and along the way I started using the same language as they did. And I notice a lot of you do so, too.

But your brain doesn’t like to grind. No-one’s brain does, and especially no neurodivergent brain. If having to write gives you stress or if you put pressure on yourself for not writing (enough), your brain’s going to say: “Huh. Writing gives us stress, we’re going to try to avoid it in the future.”

So before I could even try to write regularly, I needed to teach my brain once again that writing is fun. I switched from countable goals like words or time to non-countable goals like “fun” and “flow”.

Rewire my brain: writing is fun and I’m good at it

I used everything I knew about neuroscience, psychology, and social sciences. These are some of the things I did before and during a writing session. Usually not all at once, and after a while I didn’t need these strategies anymore, although I sometimes go back to them when necessary.

I journalled all the negative thoughts I had around writing and try to reason them away, using arguments I knew in my heart were true. (The last part is the crux.) Imagine being supportive to a writer friend with crippling insecurities, only the friend is you.

Not setting any goals didn’t work for me—I still nurtured unwanted expectations. So I did set goals, but made them non-countable, like “have fun”, “get in the flow”, or “write”. Did I write? Yes. Success! Your brain doesn’t actually care about how high the goal is, it cares about meeting whatever goal you set.

I didn’t even track how many words I wrote. Not relevant.

I set an alarm for a short time (like 10 minutes) and forbade myself to exceed that time. The idea was that if I write until I run out of mojo, my brain learns that writing drains the mojo. If I write for 10 minutes and have fun, my brain learns that writing is fun and wants to do it again.

Reinforce the fact that writing makes you happy by rewarding your brain immediately afterwards. You know what works best for you: a walk, a golden sticker, chocolate, cuddle your dog, whatever makes you happy.

I conditioned myself to associate writing with specific stimuli: that album, that smell, that tea, that place. Any stimulus can work, so pick one you like. I consciously chose several stimuli so I could switch them up, and the conditioning stays active as long as I don’t muddle it with other associations.

Use a ritual to signal to your brain that Writing Time is about to begin to get into the zone easier and faster. I guess this is a kind of conditioning as well? Meditation, music, lighting a candle… Pick your stimulus and stick with it.

Specifically for rewiring my brain, I started a new WIP that had no emotional connotations attached to it, nor any pressure to get finished or, heaven forbid, meet quality norms. I don’t think these techniques above would have worked as well if I had applied them on writing my novel.

It wasn’t until I could confidently say I enjoyed writing again, that I could start building up a consistent habit. No more pushing myself.

I lowered my definition for success

When I say that nowadays I write every day, that’s literally it. I don’t set out to write 1,000 or 500 or 10 words every day (tried it, failed to keep up with it every time)—the only marker for success when it comes to my streak is to write at least one word, even on the days when my brain goes “naaahhh”. On those days, it suffices to send myself a text with a few keywords or a snippet. It’s not “success on a technicality (derogatory)”, because most of those snippets and ideas get used in actual stories later. And if they don’t, they don’t. It’s still writing. No writing is ever wasted.

A side note on high expectations, imposter syndrome, and perfectionism

Obviously, “Setting a ridiculously low goal” isn’t something I invented. I actually got it from those productivity books, only I never got it to work. I used to tell myself: “It’s okay if I don’t write for an hour, because my goal is to write for 20 minutes and if I happen to keep going for, say, an hour, that’s a bonus.” Right? So I set the goal for 20 minutes, wrote for 35 minutes, and instead of feeling like I exceeded my goal, I felt disappointed because apparently I was still hoping for the bonus scenario to happen. I didn’t know how to set a goal so low and believe it.

I think the trick to making it work this time lies more in the groundwork of training my brain to enjoy writing again than in the fact that my daily goal is ridiculously low. I believe I’m a writer, because I prove it to myself every day. Every success I hit reinforces the idea that I’m a writer. It’s an extra ward against imposter syndrome.

Knowing that I can still come up with a few lines of dialogue on the Really Bad Days—days when I struggle to brush my teeth, the day when I had a panic attack in the supermarket, or the day my kid got hit by a car—teaches me that I can write on the mere Bad-ish Days.

The more I do it, the more I do it

The irony is that setting a ridiculously low goal almost immediately led to writing more and more often. The most difficult step is to start a new habit. After just a few weeks, I noticed that I needed less time and energy to get into the zone. I no longer needed all the strategies I listed above.

Another perk I noticed, was an increased writing speed. After just a few months of writing every day, my average speed went from 600 words per hour to 1,500 wph, regularly exceeding 2,000 wph without any loss of quality.

Talking about quality: I could see myself becoming a better writer with every passing month. Writing better dialogue, interiority, chemistry, humour, descriptions, whatever: they all improved noticeably, and I wasn’t a bad writer to begin with.

The increased speed means I get more done with the same amount of energy spent. I used to write around 2,000-5,000 words per month, some months none at all. Nowadays I effortlessly write 30,000 words per month. I didn’t set out to write more, it’s just a nice perk.

Look, I’m not saying you should write every day if it doesn’t work for you. My point is: the more often you write, the easier it will be.

No pressure

Yes, I’m still working on my novel, but I’m not racing through it. I produce two or three chapters per month, and the rest of my time goes to short stories my brain keeps projecting on the inside of my eyelids when I’m trying to sleep. I might as well write them down, right?

These short stories started out as self-indulgence, and even now that I take them more seriously, they are still just for me. I don’t intend to ever publish them, no-one will ever read them, they can suck if they suck. The unintended consequence was that my short stories are some of my best writing, because there’s no pressure, it’s pure fun.

Does it make sense to spend, say, 90% of my output on stories no-one else will ever read? Wouldn’t it be better to spend all that creative energy and time on my novel? Well, yes. If you find the magic trick, let me know, because I haven’t found it yet. The short stories don’t cannibalize on the novel, because they require different mindsets. If I stopped writing the short stories, I wouldn’t produce more chapters. (I tried. Maybe in the future? Fingers crossed.)

Don’t wait for inspiration to hit

There’s a quote by Picasso: “Inspiration hits, but it has to find you working.” I strongly agree. Writing is not some mystical, muse-y gift, it’s a skill and inspiration does exist, but usually it’s brought on by doing the work. So just get started and inspiration will come to you.

Accountability and community

Having social factors in your toolbox is invaluable. I have an offline writing friend I take long walks with, I host a monthly writing club on Discord, and I have another group on Discord that holds me accountable every day. They all motivate me in different ways and it’s such a nice thing to share my successes with people who truly understand how hard it can be.

The productivity books taught me that if you want to make a big change in your life or attitude, surrounding yourself with people who already embody your ideal or your goal huuuugely helps. The fact that I have these productive people around me who also prioritize writing, makes it easier for me to stick to my own priorities.

Your toolbox

The idea is to have several techniques at your disposal to help you stay consistent. Don’t put all your eggs in one basket by focussing on just one technique. Keep all of them close, and if one stops working or doesn’t inspire you today, pivot and pick another one.

After a while, most “tools” run in the background once they are established. Things like surrounding myself with my writing friends, keeping up with my daily streak, and listening to the album I conditioned myself with don’t require any energy, and they still remain hugely beneficial.

Do you have any other techniques? I’d love to hear about them!

I hope this was useful. Happy writing!

[musiccomplete]

within the last year we've gotten

Low-Life Definitive edition (Jan '23)

Get The Message deluxe edition (Sep '23)

Substance NO Expanded edition (Nov '23)

The Other Two & You. remastered (May '24)

A reissue of Music For Pleasure (May '24)

Transmissions Season 2 (Announced this morning, Jun '24, release date unknown)

so like are we under new management or something... (the Monaco thing wouldn't be affected by that though)