Writing Tips From Your Friendly Neighborhood Author Whos About To Get Published (yay Me!)

the great gatsby / kentucky route zero / koe no katachi / disco elysium / omori / night in the woods / homestuck / koe no katachi / l'étranger / disco elysium / firewatch / john dies at the end / everything everywhere all at once / the subtle art of not giving a f*ck

"Some things are too terrible to grasp at once. Other things - naked, sputtering, indelible in their horror - are too terrible to really grasp ever at all."

A Secret History, Donna Tart

To all the people who constantly zoned out and daydreamed as a kid and probably told off for it, who learnt how to cry silently before the age of ten and maybe stopped crying entirely, who used books as an escape method and would constantly daydream about running off to a fantasy world, who is most likely now a burnt-out neurodivergent who didn't get diagnosed early so they self-diagnosed instead, and who now wants to groan at the thought of having to wake up another day,

how's the childhood trauma, deep-rooted love hate relationship with your parents, lack of self-esteem and sense of self, and raging queerness doing? you good?

17 free and helpful things, that everyone can take advantage of

Dolly Parton's Imagination Library They send an age appropriate book once a month if you have a child younger than 5.

Project Gutenberg Lots of free classic books.

Library Genesis A great place to look for and download college/university textbooks for free, as well as other books.

Scihub Endless Free college books. (and peer-reviewed scientific publications that are otherwise hidden behind a paywall)

Khan Academy Free knowledge that you can use to clep out of university courses, or to simply invest your time in a worthwhile topic.

Openlearn UK’s Open University - free courses for all levels of study, samples of university materials, study skills and tie-ins to BBC documentaries. Everything under Creative Commons licence so you can use it as you see fit.

Duolingo The Green Owl of Languages. There are a few hundred that it teaches and the mobile app makes it easy to do anywhere while waiting (!warning! only good for Spanish, German, French, Dutch, Esperanto, and English. with anything else it gets very low-quality and short.).

Codecademy An awesome site to learn how to use some programming languages. Doesn't get into the really advanced stuff, but it's good for a start.

Photopea Completely free Photoshop clone that has all the basic features of Photoshop, using basically the same interface.

Gimp Another free version of Photoshop.

Unsplash Stock of free photos of just about anything, provided by the photographers themselves, to do with what you like.

Futureme You can write letters to yourself (or other people) in the future! You can also make notifications and reminders of a +doctors appointments or anything else important.

Heavens Above You can look up all the satellites flying over your house tonight, including the ISS, Hubble Space Telescope, those pesky Starlink satellites, and whatever else your heart desires, complete with star maps and precise timing. And there is an Android app, but unfortunately no iOS one last I checked. (For iOS you can use “Sputnik!” which is free and tells, when ISS and Hubble passes overhead.)

Night Sky Other astronomy app for iOS. If you hold your phone to the sky the app tells you what you're looking at (or point it at the ground for a view from the other side of the planet). Zoom in with two fingers and tons of deep space stuff is revealed.

Freecycle its literally people giving away stuff they don't need/want any more that they can't/don't care enough to sell.

Nexus Mods Has thousands of video game mods (for 1,509 PC games), made by independent content creators, available to download at no cost.

Archive The Archive aka Internet Archive is a non-profit library of millions of free books, movies, software, music, websites, and so much more... For example a lot of DOS games (classics like Prince of Persia, Oregon Trail, DOOM, Monkey island, Rayman, Turtles), directly playable through the browser.

My earlier list

More things to do

new beginnings and falling back into routine

its been a long time since i've used this blog, I made this blog last year in hopes that it will hold me more accountable to being productive and while I have been productive without the blog, I feel like it only adds to a bigger problem that I am only now becoming aware of. i do things for the sake of others to appear cool. i realize how incredibly embarrassing and juvenile that is to write out loud, but it is true. i want the attention of others because I feel like if I do cool things that will earn me friendship, and I need to stop doing this. i need to do things I enjoy, and allow myself the pleasure of being mediocre for things I am just starting to learn, and do things for myself instead of things for others. that was really a long winded way of me saying I'm getting back into old hobbies I quit because I didn't give myself enough time to be good at them, and I am going to continue doing my hobbies even though I realize I will never be as great as others. i will continue to try to improve because I like improving and not for the sake of others.

to keep myself motovatied, I will be doing a 30 day challenge for some of the hobbies I want to get back into. I feel like by the end of 30 days I will learn if I really like these hobbies, or I like how others made me feel when I said I could do these hobbies, anyway, I will be making myself post because its a good way for accountability and I loved the online community I met when blogging.

I will succeed. Not immediately. But definitely.

this summer i will learn italian and french and russian and run a marathon everyday and work for three months and get fifty new ear piercings and read every work of high literature ever created and watch every movie. but most importantly just chill and relax

look at this thang

[x]

"don't worry about it" i say while spending nights directing what I did to make you do that to me

I be like “yeah we cool” then never feel comfortable interacting with u again

when i say "romanticise the ordinary" i don't mean "hide all aspects of your life that do not fit under some kind of aesthetic" but rather "strive to find beauty in all the little things because i promise you, happiness can be found everywhere"