#or stuck

[sassenach082]

Really love your whole story! And I love how we can see like small funny conversations after reading each chapter. I gotta know how you plan this all out. Do you plan it all out from the get-go, how much of an actual outline do you have for all of this? I'd really love to hear about your process!

Also good luck with chapter 18, I can feel that it is being a bitch to work with, carry on soldier🫡

Oh boy nonnie! If only I knew how to explain this in a way that doesn't make me sound like I'm completely and entirely out of my mind.

I'll try and explain it in a somewhat coherent fashion!

I have a doc that I use where I organize by chapter more or less what I want to do. It doesn't usually end up being that in the final draft but it helps me to get where I need to go by putting in the key scenes that link the narrative together.

A while ago I took a creative writing class and the teacher said something that stuck with me. "If you get stuck, just put in brackets of what you want to happen and keep going. Come back later!"

This ended up being really helpful! I don't do brackets but I'll put in something like this: / and then something cool happens with these characters regarding xyz! OR this character says:

this character says:

this character does this:

/ and I just keep going with whatever the scene is. It helps a lot! I also will frequently go back and re-read my own stuff while checking my outline, and my brain kind of makes connections of extra scenes I can add. Sometimes I get a wild hair and just go "oh this would be perfect" but I don't know how to write it or what I want to say, so I'll put in the placeholder to remind me even if I'm not ready to write it at the time.

This of course leads to an outline that is a hot-freaking-mess, but it works for me. I have an outline doc and I kind of just highlight as I go. Sometimes scenes I wanted don't fit in that chapter (I tend to have REALLY LONG chapters) so I'll just keep it where it is and go back and add it in later, or I'll move it into the box for the next chapter.

When I'm writing I tend to focus on one character at a time, since I do third person POVs mostly. So on chapters where it's two character POVs alternating, I usually do one character first and then check my outline to go back and plug in the rest of the stuff for the other character. It can get confusing/frustrating at times, and sometimes I go completely off my rails and do something entirely different (thanks brain) but knowing a general outline of what I'm doing really helps. Once I have a general outline I can go in and write the scenes as I get inspired to write them. I'm very much not a start at the beginning author considering I wrote this entire beast with the final scene completed first which I've had written almost a year now.

I hope that was coherent enough to understand! My google drive is a hot mess of documents called Untitled with numbers after them and then drabbles and a whole bunch of other stuff. Currently the i'll ride au outline doc is 15+ pages and has the series loosely mapped out with bullet points of what I want to happen.

My poor beta is the best for putting up with me!

[bookwyrminspiration]

god I would be UNSTOPPABLE if I was capable of consistently initiating tasks. just you wait. you'll be waiting a while but just you wait

[temporalteardrop]

bass makes a dollar. i make a dime. that's why i think about lesbian sex on company time

[cadaverkeys]

You guys rlly don't realise how much knowledge is still not committed to the internet. I find books all the time with stuff that is impossible to find through a search engine- most people do not put their magnum opus research online for free and the more niche a skill is the less likely you are to have people who will leak those books online. (Nevermind all the books written prior to the internet that have knowledge that is not considered "relevant" enough to digitise).

Whenever people say that we r growing up with all the world's knowledge at our fingertips...it's not necessarily true. Is the amount of knowledge online potentially infinite? Yes. Is it all knowledge? No. You will be surprised at the niche things you can discover at a local archive or library.

[lesbianralzarek]

"life doesnt get better, you just get stronger" does NOT include ages 11-17. life does in fact just get better from there. those years are dogshit. like, you do get stronger but its mostly just a factor of not being 11-17 anymore. positive thinking helps but it doesnt fix whatevers going on at 15, you have to brute force through that one raw

[doctorfreak]

last week i was sitting at a red light and was getting honked at SOOOOOOO MUCH and looked up and this guy was slamming the horn and the girl in the passenger seat was like trying to pull his arms away from the horn. then i remembered i have this bumper sticker

[i-am-l-ananas]

Using the CMYK colour model

[furiousfruitcakeee]

Pretty sure this meme had been done before, but this needs to get out of my draft!!!! also don't mind my handwriting i tried my best

[krembruleed]

beach episode?

[maxthesillyy]

[melpherno]

[drulalovescas]

Happy anniversary to those who celebrate

Three years?????? THREE YEARS????!!!!

[burquillos]

dumbass 4 dumbass, red and green dynamic duo strikes me again

[o-lanterns]

[ID: Simon sitting next to Prismo, "So... Why did you make Ice Queen like that?" Prismo asks "Like what. Cunty? ... Milfy?" Simon looks tired and doesn't know how to respond. end ID.]

[iwrotemrtambourineman]

my dealer: got some straight gas 🔥🤪 this strain is called “into the unknown”💀 it’ll have you making a pilgrimage in a place between our world and the next 💯☝️

me: yeah, whatever. I don’t feel shit.

five minutes later: bro I swear I saw the beast following us through these mysterious woods that I don’t remember entering

the highwayman: I’m the highwayman

[uncanny-tranny]

I think so many people are so deeply alienated from themselves that they have no clue how to exercise their free will and autonomy. For some, this alienation runs so deep that they are afraid of their own autonomy and humanity. It is completely understandable why one would have those feelings, but it can be worrisome.

I want to help others who feel this way, so here are small things I have done to exercise my free will:

Add "guilty pleasure" songs to playlists and actually listen to them (I have a ton of late 1990s-early 2000s music I listen to now proudly that I never listened to in the past out of shame)

Getting the décor item, bath set, bed spread, ect. in the patterns you like, even if it's "childish" (I got a dinosaur-themed wastebasket from the kids' décor section and I adore it)

Taking a new route to get to a place you go to often

Eat dessert first

Celebrate well, and often

Collect things that are "odd" or don't seem like an "acceptable" thing to collect (somebody on my "for you" page collects dandelion crayola crayons and it was so cool!!!!!!)

Incorporate one new piece in an outfit you wear frequently (e.g., a new chain, a necklace, ribbons, bracelets, ect.). Challenge yourself to add onto the outfits if you feel up for it.

Sing along to songs without worrying that you sound "good" or your intonation is completely accurate

Read a book from a genre you weren't allowed to read as a kid (comics, thrillers, mysteries, anything!)

Walk without having a specific destination or goal

Pick up a new craft without expecting yourself to master it or to ever be "good" enough. Get your hands messy.

I don't want to shame anybody for not feeling as though they have free will or that they are exempt from exercising it. However, I wanted to give ideas so that you might read this list and find your own ways to express your intrinsic autonomy and will. You deserve to be a person, to feel alive, not just living. That is what our lives are for.