I Would Describe Myself As A “stay-at-home Dragon”

I find it personally offensive how many bad writers can get published so easily.

Posting this for the people who think that Tolkien's world-building was something complete and entire and finished before he started to write.

You always learn and discover your story and your world as you write. Sometimes you are just the first reader.

“She remembered who she was and the game changed.”

— Lalah Deliah

“A non-writing writer is a monster courting insanity.”

— Franz Kafka

The secret to adulting is this:

Learn how to reduce your resistance against the things you know you have to do.

You don’t have to like it or enjoy it. You just need to stop avoiding, delaying, or ignoring what you know to be in your best interest.

With repeated experience of the benefits, you will learn a new kind of appreciation for the practice we call “adulting.”

btw curating a beautiful environment is about honouring yourself. when you choose to surround yourself with things that are well-made, thoughtfully designed, and meaningful, you affirm that your daily experience matters. investing in quality over convenience sends a subconscious message of self-worth that is completely foundational to building a better life.

I hope you believe that you can still make a beautiful life for yourself even if you lost many years of it to grief, or darkness, depression, or a wound that wouldn't close.

Albert Camus, from a novel titled "The Fall," first published in 1956

― Albert Camus, Notebooks: 1935-1951

Mr Gaiman, I wonder if you can help me. I have so many story ideas but any time I try to work on one I get nowhere and immediately hit a wall. Do you have any idea what I could be doing wrong?

Perhaps you are expecting it to be easy. Walls are there to be climbed or knocked down or gone around. You don't have to stop just because it gets hard or you get stuck or you don't know what happens next. If you get stuck, figure out how to get unstuck. If it's not working, do what you have to do to get it working.

Take the story idea. Write down what you know about it. Write down the characters you know going into it. And then think about where your story starts (which is often not the place that the overall story begins) and whose eyes we are seeing it through and where and how you want to begin.

If you hit a wall, go forward, don't stop. Skip to the next scene where you know what happens. Write a bad version of a scene you can fix later. Do what needs doing to keep moving.