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Lifestyle tips for witches

I see a lot of blog posts about tips for incorporating witchcraft into your daily life, and honestly, a lot of it is fluff and garbage. Here’s some actual tips that can honestly and actually improve your practice.

Meditate daily. It doesn’t have to be for long, 10 minutes is great. I find doing it right before bed really helps me get to sleep easier.

Read. If you read regularly, every once in a while instead of reading for pleasure read an occult text. In addition, I find even pleasure reading can help you improve visualization abilities.

Observe. Take a moment out of your day to just observe everything going on around you. Focus each of your senses and observe that moment in full clarity.

Daydream. Honestly. It helps with visualization. If you get really into it, let your brain go to autopilot and observe where it goes.

Make a sigil. You don’t even have to cast it right yet, save it for later. The process is easy and it takes a few minutes out of your day tops. When you forget what it means, cast it on some other day by your preferred method.

Automistic writing. It can be fun. Keep a journal of whatever you write down and see if you can pick out any symbolism or themes within it.

Divination. It’s easy as hell to do a simple divination daily. If you don’t have time to interpret it, record your results and go back later.

Take a moment when you wake up to dwell on your dreams. If you’re feeling particularly saucy, keep a dream journal.

Bathe. It’s not related to magick, but it’s relaxing and nobody likes a stinky occultist. No it won’t magically cleanse you, but it certainly will physically.

Keep track of the planetary days and hours. If the moment strikes you, do a little something in the hour and day of a planet you want to have more influence on you.

Do a daily banishing ritual. Either design one yourself, or choose one that resonates with you. Once practiced, a banishing ritual takes 10 minutes tops. Do it before bed or when you wake up.

These are all easy things, they don’t take much time or energy, and they go a long way towards helping improve your practice. Instead of taking your regular routine and pretending it’s already inherently magical, take the miniscule time and energy to fit a few of these into your day. It’s honestly not hard at all.

self-editing for fiction writers

Showing vs Telling

Do you have any narrative summary, or are you bouncing from scene to scene without pausing for breath?

Characterization & Exposition

What information do your readers need in order to understand your story? At what point in the story do they need to know it?

How are you getting this info across to your readers? Is it all at once through a writer-to-reader lecture?

If exposition comes out through dialogue, is it through dialogue your characters would actually speak even if your readers didn’t have to know the information? In other words, does the dialogue exist only to put the information across?

Point of View

Look at your descriptions. Can you tell how your viewpoint character feels about what you’re describing?

Proportion

Look at descriptions. Are the details you give the ones your viewpoint character would notice?

Reread your first fifty pages, paying attention to what you spend your time on. Are the characters you develop most fully important to the ending? Do you use the locations you develop in detail later in the story? Do any of the characters play a surprising role in the ending? Could readers guess this from the amount of time you spend on them?

Dialogue

Can you get rid of some of your speaker attributions entirely? Try replacing some with beats. 

How often have you paragrapher your dialogue?Try paragraphing a little more often. 

See How it Sounds

Read your dialogue aloud. At some point, read aloud every word you write.

Be on the lookout for places where you are tempted to change the wording. 

How well do your characters understand each other? Do they ever mislead on another? Any outright lies? 

Interior Monologue

First, how much interior monologue do you have? If you seem to have a lot, check to see whether some is actually dialogue description in disguise. Are you using interior monologue to show things that should be told?

Do you have thinker attributions you should get rid of (by  recasting into 3rd person, by setting the interior monologue off in its own paragraph or in italics, or by simply dropping the attribution)

Do your mechanics match your narrative distance?(Thinker attributions, italics, first person when your narrative is in third?)

Easy Beats

How many beats do you have? How often do you interrupt your dialogue?

What are your beats describing? Familiar every day actions, such as dialling a telephone or buying groceries? How often do you repeat a beat? Are your characters always looking out of windows or lighting cigarettes? 

Do your beats help illuminate your characters? Are they individual or general actions anyone might do under just about any circumstances?

Do your beats fit the rhythm of your dialogue? Read it aloud and find out

Breaking up is easy to do

Look for white space. How much is there? Do you have paragraphs that go on as much as a page in length? 

Do you have scenes with NO longer paragraphs? Remember what you’re after is the right balance. 

Have your characters made little speeches to one another? 

If you’re writing a novel, are all your scenes or chapters exactly the same length? -> brief scenes or chapters can give you more control over your story. They can add to your story’s tension. Longer chapters can give it a more leisurely feels. If scene or chapter length remains steady while the tension of the story varies considerably, your are passing up the chance to reinforce the tension. 

Once is usually enough

Reread your manuscript, keeping in mind what you are trying to do with each paragraph–what character point you’re trying to establish, what sort of mood you’re trying to create, what background you’re trying to suggest. In how many different ways are you accomplishing each of these ends?

If more than one way, try reading the passage without the weakest approach and see if it itsn’t more effective. 

How about on a chapter level? Do you have more than one chapter that accomplishes the same thing?

Is there a plot device or stylistic effect you are particularly pleased with? How often do you use it?

Keep on the lookout for unintentional word repeats. The more striking a word or phrase is, the more jarring it will be if repeated 

Sophistication 

How many -ing and as phrases do you write? The only ones that count are the ones that place a bit of action in a subordinate clause

How about -ly adverbs?

Do you have a lot of short sentences, both within your dialogue and within your description and narration? Try stringing some of them together with commas

Your fave magic babe is now available on my redbubble store as prints and other items ✨

Sigh so here’s the other story – my condition right now is chronic and crippling severe, and so far medical help has failed and other options aren’t covered by my insurance. I live in a very difficult home environment too, so being in bed all day is causing problems and I don’t think I can get better on my own. In short, everything is a catastrophe. 

I’m working on commissions from May but I am very slow, can barely function, so I need to see a doctor soon or I’m not sure I’m gonna be able to do art at all. No patreon, no game, no giveaway, no nothing. I am scared to death and have been holding it in inside and trying not to panic but I am.

In short, I…need help. 

I would be extremely grateful to anyone who buys my prints and merch, since I don’t have the luxury of taking on any more commissioned art, but I seriously do need to help my father afford my medical expenses. He’s trying his best and I’m scared he’s going to lose everything because of me.

I’m putting my ko-fi up here as well.  Donations are extremely appreciated!

I apologize, and thank you so much for hearing me out. You all have been so kind to me.

any computer people wanna explain how the hell this works

it wont let me do shit bc i apparently have 81 gigs of apps clogging my c drive, but my largest app is 0.4gb?????? its not system applications either because system is its own segment of storage. wadda hell are you talking about

My baby!!! I started reading Ms. Marvel in highschool I was maybe a couple years older than her canon age, but I still loved her so much and I still do. Kamala is what I hope my future kids will be like.

Ms. Marvel from the ‘Future Avengers’ anime. 

no dubs or subtitles are provided, but you can watch the episode here.

Ball gown, France, ca. 1865. Kobe Fashion Museum

on a list of dumb shit i know:

the grass in the original shrek movie is not grass. its hair. they used hair textures for the grass bc the actual grass for some reason in their computer modelling programs would not behave like grass so they used hair textures colored green.

Obscure Hero Essays?

Hi, I feel bad for my poor followers and my lack of posting. Some of you may not know I’m a HUGE superhero and comic book nerd. Ive been thinking about writing an essay about my all time fave obscure super hero Guy Gardner and how not only is he the best and most underutilized Green Lantern but there’s a ton of interesting angels and storylines not being utilitized.

Also, Tora aka Ice of DC Comics deserves to be written about beyond her relationship with Guy and her Best friend and potential love interest Fire. I want to do an essay on how Tora became a symbol of women fighting against stuffed in a refrigerator syndrome and how nodboy recognizes it.

Would anybody be interested in me writing it?

The BBC is releasing over 16,000 sound effects for free download

Happy Mag

The BBC is releasing over 16,000 sound effects for free download

The BBC have released their incredible, expansive library of bizarre and obscure sound effects, all available for free download.