Hi Mr. Gaiman! I'm A Big Fan Of Your Work, And Recently I've Been Thinking About Making My Own Comics.

Having a traumatic childhood means you cannot talk even objectively about your basic foundational experiences without it being "venting", even if you're not actually venting. You just straight up have a huge chunk of your life you can't talk about, full stop, without it being trauma dumping.

And it not being socially acceptable to talk about your own childhood is super alienating. Sometimes people want to know why, and any answer you can give them is going to be off putting.

It's to the point I get irritated when something I said is framed as venting when I'm literally just talking about my life experiences, doing my best to keep emotion out of it.

STOP! are you operating on an arbitrary set of terms and rules known only to you? have you created an ultimatum or specific if/then scenario for someone else without communicating it to them? have you considered making a decision and calculated all the consequences and potential reactions to those consequences and consequences for those reactions before you actually made the decision? it may be time to say some words out loud to another person!

idk if any young person needs to hear this but when you work at a job you absolutely can google anything you don’t know or ask someone for help. school has you conditioned to think you have to have everything memorized all the time but let me tell you. I am dumb as shit and I am great at my job because it’s not a test, it’s just work. the more resources you utilize the better.

Writing Tip #21

Every character is the main character of their own story. Write a scene from their perspective to flesh them out if needed.

{I’m posting a writing tip every day of NaNoWriMo}

I think this community as a whole needs to realize that QPRs as a concept get a million times better when you stop seeing them as something you need as an alternative or substitute to romance and instead as something you choose when you meet someone you genuinely really like. They are optional and you gotta stop seeing it as romance-lite when it's really friendship-premium

This FB post by Rebecca Solnit is the thing keeping me sane this morning,so I’m sharing it here in case it helps you all, too:

“They want you to feel powerless and to surrender and to let them trample everything and you are not going to let them. You are not giving up, and neither am I. The fact that we cannot save everything does not mean we cannot save anything and everything we can save is worth saving. You may need to grieve or scream or take time off, but you have a role no matter what, and right now good friends and good principles are worth gathering in. Remember what you love. Remember what loves you. Remember in this tide of hate what love is. The pain you feel is because of what you love.

The Wobblies used to say don't mourn, organize, but you can do both at once and you don't have to organize right away in this moment of furious mourning. You can be heartbroken or furious or both at once; you can scream in your car or on a cliff; you can also get up tomorrow and water the flowerpots and call someone who's upset and check your equipment for going onward.

A lot of us are going to come under direct attack, and a lot of us are going to resist by building solidarity and sanctuary. Gather up your resources, the metaphysical ones that are heart and soul and care, as well as the practical ones.

People kept the faith in the dictatorships of South America in the 1970s and 1980s, in the East Bloc countries and the USSR, women are protesting right now in Iran and people there are writing poetry. There is no alternative to persevering, and that does not require you to feel good. You can keep walking whether it's sunny or raining. Take care of yourself and remember that taking care of something else is an important part of taking care of yourself, because you are interwoven with the ten trillion things in this single garment of destiny that has been stained and torn, but is still being woven and mended and washed.”

finished the pants!!

I’m currently in an 80-person musical where the vast majority of the cast are children so last night we had an “invited dress” before opening night where the kids brought their favorite toys to sit and be our first “audience.”

I will see if I can source a good photo from the cast. An entire auditorium populated with squishmallows and SpongeBob and Bluey and one adult’s Supernatural dolls in the front row.