Writing About A Child Rapist Did Not Make Vladimir Nabokov A Child Rapist.

Sometimes you don’t make art that changes the world. 

Sometimes you make art that just makes someone’s shitty day a little bit easier to bear. 

And that? 

That’s damn good too.

favourite things about first drafts:

square brackets with notes to self mid-line like [does this make sense with worldbuilding?]

ah yes, Main Character and their closest friends, Unnamed Character A and Unnamed Character B.

bullshitting your way through something that you probably definitely need to research later

also square brackets to link up scenes. [scene transition idk] my beloved

the total freedom of word vomits

"I'll fix that later"

the moment when the world and characters start to gain a life of their own

pieces falling into place as you write that you were uncertain about before you started

the accomplishment of Made A Thing

All i wish for 2024 is every creator to start that project they’ve been thinking about, write those fics they have been planning, make messy art, and to have as little burnout as possible.

“Use your gifts and your talents to greatest possible effect while you can. Spread joy wherever possible. Laugh at jokes. Tell jokes. Make puns and bugger the embuggerances. Read books. Read my books. You might like them. You might find something else you like even more than them. Look for these things in life.

Question authority. Champion good causes. Speak out against injustice. Do not tolerate bullies or bigots or racists or anti-intellectuals or the narrow-minded. Use your education to challenge them. Broaden their perspectives. Make the world you interface with a happier place.

These are your choices. Choices you have been fortunate to have been given, so don’t waste them while you have them. Don’t look back in years to come and wish you had grasped a fleeting opportunity. Grasp it now with both hands, Live. Strive. Love.”

from A Little Advice for Life taken from ‘Terry Pratchett: from birth to death, a writer.’

—Sir Terry Pratchett; April 28, 1948 – March 12, 2015

One of the greatest compliments I've ever received is that I resemble Sam Vimes.

Mind how you go.

I like writing a lot…..

But when does it stop being soul sucking????

How can both be true??

(sigh) Easily. All the arts are full of apparent contradictions like this.

Re: writing, specifically: This work is a very particular kind of magic. And like all real magics, the use of it inevitably has a price.

"Soul-sucking" strikes me as a slightly harsh idiom for the payment of the Writing Price. But that's okay, because the idiom itself points at the remedy. And it's really simple! Just this:

Every time you sit down to write, you have to consciously work to do it well enough so that you grow some more soul.

(I mean, you don't think that souls run out when you use them, surely? Or can't regenerate over time? They can be surprisingly resilient... assuming you don't buy into the idea that they're limited to what you feel like you started out with, or what you've got at the moment.)

Repeatedly pouring your soul into your work is very much like bodybuilding. At first it hurts like hell. Then the body starts to adjust to the increased demands you're putting on it. After a while you look back and find you've blown way past the boundaries that you earlier thought were impassible.

When you start getting that soul-sucked feeling, it's just a sign that the workouts are having an effect. It's the equivalent of the lactic-acid ache after a session at the gym. But you still need to keep working at it to improve your results. If you find you need to take more rest time between writing bouts to replenish your reserves, fine: work out what your best refractory period seems to be, and adjust your workload to suit that as best you can. But at all costs, keep writing, at whatever interval works best. Over time, it does get easier.

Does it ever stop "sucking" / demanding that price?

Nope. Sorry! But you can learn over time to grow into those inevitable demands on your time, energy and commitment. Just keep reminding yourself: Nothing truly worth doing ever comes without a price tag. And the more you work at your craft, over time, the bigger the price tags you'll find you can afford without flinching.

...So get back in the gym. (And I hope this helps!)

Never have I felt so much like a protagonist

your protagonist doesn’t need to save the world. maybe they just need to save their plant collection, one dying ficus at a time.

i think ultimately you do really have to kill that part of your brain that vividly imagines how you would redo parts of your life.

Astronaut tweets

Tidying the desktop* and ran across this just sitting there. Might as well post it.

*I had no choice. There was no more space for icons. :)

Also: I think Aragorn gets a bad reputation now because so many lesser franchises have tried to imitate his archetype without understanding why he works. In the original movies he’s just a big gentle sad guy with a sword, who knows he’s not the real hero of the story and dedicates himself to supporting those gay little hobbits. The aragorn knockoffs are not his fault