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Sailor Viy posted:I used sff.onlinewritingworkshop for a while. It was pretty alright. REMEMBER SPONGE MONKEYS posted:Can we imply, from your use of the term “crittee” that one who gives is thus a “critter”?
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Oct 4, 2022 23:55
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r/fantasy IS useful for getting your book out there (back when I was indie I got a lot of value out of their kindle deal promotion threads) but like, integrating yourself in their community specifically to market doesn't feel workable to me, unless you actually enjoy hanging out there you're going to have a bad time and people can tell, folks who go in there just for promo have a really obvious vibe and down to get downvoted into oblivion it's also worth noting (from my time as an SEO jagoff, look I needed money ok) that reddit is one of the few places on the internet that can actively tank your google rating since it's one of the only big remaining "social bookmarking" sites, where people post links and others upvote/downvote – google knows if people are downvoting posts with your links in them and goes "this is bad and people don't want to see it" and your works slide right the gently caress off the front page
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Oct 6, 2022 06:02
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 For anyone having trouble naming a Thing without making it too clunky, too generic, or too modern.
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Oct 22, 2022 19:18
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One of my favorite recent fantasy novellas uses marks, I don’t know if obsessing that much over minor details instead of broader world building helps that much? That is, if it doesn’t actually figure into the story
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Oct 22, 2022 20:31
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Making new words for things is fun
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Oct 22, 2022 20:52
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more fantasy should use the groat. also sets you up to have funny goat/groat jokes
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Oct 22, 2022 21:06
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I needed a name for an ancient eldritch being in a recent manuscript and I ended up calling it a That.
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Oct 22, 2022 22:49
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𓏲𓊷𓆹𓆩˚𓂏˚𓆪𓆺𓊵 Gnarlyhotep - an extremely chill ancient eldritch being
Stuporstar fucked around with this message at 00:52 on Oct 23, 2022 |
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Oct 23, 2022 00:38
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change my name posted:One of my favorite recent fantasy novellas uses marks, I don’t know if obsessing that much over minor details instead of broader world building helps that much? That is, if it doesn’t actually figure into the story Details imply a lot about your world, and seemingly interchangeable words drag behind them a complex web of connotations. "Marks" sounds to me like it comes from an Early Modern, European, probably more "realistic" fantasy setting. "Gold pieces" invokes D&D or perhaps a fairy tale world. "Dollars" (in the context of a fantasy setting) might imply a world influenced by the Western genre. Individually, one of these choices might not do that much work, but a lot of them together add up to a richly characterised setting.
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Oct 23, 2022 09:37
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Create a setting where multiple countries use different derivations of the same root word that "dollar" is descended from, and they're all pronounced dollar, except the currency actually spelled dollar, which is unhelpfully pronounced thaler. Unfortunately only true doom numismatists will appreciate it.
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Oct 23, 2022 09:45
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I was watching House of the Dragon and one of the noble ladies has a pug on her lap and I was like, but that’s a Chinese breed that didn’t make its way west until after the Middle Ages!! It can be hard to escape the connotations of seemingly small details.
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Oct 23, 2022 16:34
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Stuporstar posted:Making new words for things is fun
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Oct 23, 2022 17:04
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Wungus posted:and you're going to have readers who get angry at you for calling your money "shinnars" because everyone knows money is dollars Oh poo poo in my fantasy novel series money is called sorbets in one land. gently caress, time to erase the files and start over. Maybe romance this time. Actually, they're called sorets but I'm leaving that autocorrect. When are my alpha readers all getting done? I've been promised end of the month but it's killing me waiting.
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Oct 23, 2022 17:22
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Runa posted:Create a setting where multiple countries use different derivations of the same root word that "dollar" is descended from, and they're all pronounced dollar, except the currency actually spelled dollar, which is unhelpfully pronounced thaler. Trumismatists? Doomismatists? Admiralty Flag posted:Oh poo poo in my fantasy novel series money is called sorbets in one land. gently caress, time to erase the files and start over. Maybe romance this time. Have some sorbet?
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Oct 23, 2022 18:20
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Admiralty Flag posted:Oh poo poo in my fantasy novel series money is called sorbets in one land. gently caress, time to erase the files and start over. Maybe romance this time. I’m reading Phillip K. Dick right now, and in this one he’s calling money “skins” because they’re literally handing each other truffle skins because they’re “the only substance that can’t be fabbed” and it’s stupid as hell and loving great Would it be non-fungible fungus then?
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Oct 23, 2022 23:50
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Hi everyone. I've finished the second draft of my novel and I'm looking for people to read it and give feedback. It's a fantasy novel, somewhere in between sword & sorcery and folkloric fantasy. The story is about a valley suffering a catastrophic flood caused by the god of rain, and a band of mercenaries trying to evacuate people while dealing with their own internal struggles. It is action-packed in parts, melancholy in others, and also (I hope) quite funny in places. Its biggest inspirations have been Gormenghast, The Black Company and Jack Vance's Lyonesse series. It's about 140,000 words long. If that sounds interesting to you, send me a PM here or on the Thunderdome Discord.
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Oct 27, 2022 01:42
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I might be down, I don’t have PMs, might meander to the discord when time permits finding it, etc.
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Oct 27, 2022 02:28
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Sailor Viy posted:I've finished the second draft of my novel and I'm looking for people to read it and give feedback. Me! Assuming you have some leeway on when you need feedback by...PM sent.
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Oct 27, 2022 06:08
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I'm happy to read it too, will PM you on the discord!
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Oct 27, 2022 09:12
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This is a pretty good watch, Zoe knows her stuff.
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Oct 27, 2022 21:34
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change my name posted:One of my favorite recent fantasy novellas uses marks, I don’t know if obsessing that much over minor details instead of broader world building helps that much? That is, if it doesn’t actually figure into the story Sailor Viy posted:Details imply a lot about your world, and seemingly interchangeable words drag behind them a complex web of connotations. "Marks" sounds to me like it comes from an Early Modern, European, probably more "realistic" fantasy setting. "Gold pieces" invokes D&D or perhaps a fairy tale world. "Dollars" (in the context of a fantasy setting) might imply a world influenced by the Western genre. Individually, one of these choices might not do that much work, but a lot of them together add up to a richly characterised setting. Funny, I used "Marks" in my story as the money for my English and German nations. I reasoned that it colloquially came out of "marks" in financial ledgers. My fantasy France country used Royales because they were one of the few absolutist monarchies left. I just wanted the term for money to sound like something someone would reasonably throw into a conversation without it sounding unusual. I didn't feel like getting too involved in creating new worlds, so I basically have analogues of different Western/Central/Eastern European cultures as well as Native American ones. With that, I guess that I should mention that I did Nanowrimo last year as the first real creative writing I've done in over ten years beyond some times where r/writingprompts had an interesting thread. I've DMed D&D campaigns through my teens and twenties but stopped during the COVID shutdowns, so I lost my creative outlet. Then while working alone in a huge factory, I got a brainworm for a story involving a bunch of characters and it grew out of control, so I inserted it into a campaign world that I'd written a lore bible for but never used. I posted a pre-Nanowrimo chapter on a writing subreddit and got generally positive feedback. One poster who turned out to be a fairly well-known fantasy writer who frequents writing advice and fantasy subreddits told me it was promising. They recommended I pull the sample from the sub and join their writing group. It sounded sketch at first, but I got into a voice chat with them and they gave me good feedback, so I pulled the sample down and got to milestoning the narrative. A few months later I had the finished first draft of a novel. Response from the writing group was full of helpful criticism, but I received a shocking amount of nice feedback. While the criticism was helpful and appreciated, I got a lot more useful advice when the readers would find something they liked and would encourage me to keep moving in that direction. Too often, I participate in the "honest and brutal criticism" groups who actually make me feel discouraged when all they do is nitpick and poo poo on anything. Also, I definitely feel that getting feedback in voice form over Discord is way better than written feedback. Pennsylvanian fucked around with this message at 01:23 on Nov 5, 2022 |
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Oct 27, 2022 23:01
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Pennsylvanian posted:My fantasy France country used Royales because they were one of the few absolutist monarchies left.
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Oct 27, 2022 23:06
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Admiralty Flag posted:I thought it was because of the metric system I'm having trouble yes anding this. I am beaten.
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Oct 27, 2022 23:39
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Admiralty Flag posted:I thought it was because of the metric system In Fantasy Brian they call them Pounds with Cheese
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Oct 28, 2022 00:14
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Is there a poetry writing thread somewhere? I have been dabbling in poetry lately, but I can't find any active SA threads on the topic at all.
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Oct 29, 2022 09:50
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SimonChris posted:Is there a poetry writing thread somewhere? I have been dabbling in poetry lately, but I can't find any active SA threads on the topic at all. There have been in the past, but they've long since fallen off CC's page 1 (and maybe even 2), which is kind of impressive. I'd absolutely share a link to the more bookmarked writing threads if someone wanted to OP a new poetry thread, though!
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Oct 29, 2022 10:05
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For anyone who is interested in NaNoWriMo: there's a new 2022 thread! https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=4016190
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Oct 30, 2022 21:49
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Hello fellow writing goons, I'm dropping in because I've started writing again after not writing anything of substance for over ten years and am excited to write and talk about writing again. About a week and a half ago, a story suddenly entered my head fully formed (on a high level, at least), like Athena or some poo poo. The muse that bit me must have been rabid because the compulsion to write is incredibly strong, like I've stopped playing video games, possibly broke my doomscrolling habit once and for all, been shirking chores, not been thinking about fixing my house that is literally falling apart, and have been contemplating playing hooky from work, all so I can write more. So in the last week and a half I've written over 16k words, plus several pages of handwritten notes and sketches and also a ton more stuff swirling around in my head. Is this sustainable or am I going to burn myself out? Has anyone else experienced being hit with a story like this and being afflicted by the opposite of writer's block and if so how did you harness it? To note, this isn't the Next Great American Novel or anything, just a dragon rider fantasy that's so far been hella fun to write, with lots of wouldn't-it-be-rad aspects I've been throwing in because why the gently caress not. It's very trope-indulgent, both in that I'm unabashedly playing into tropes I like and heavily subverting the ones I hate. It's not groundbreaking or particularly original, just fun and compelling and hopefully also good. Right now this manuscript is in a lovely first draft state and is not fit to be read by anybody - I'm extremely rusty and I've been writing so fast that my prose is complete poo poo and the worldbuilding and nitty gritty lower level details are like shifting sands and there is a ton of internal inconsistency, missing context, sloppy characterizations and dialogue, clumsy scene design, etc. - but in the future I might be interested in some alpha/beta readers. In the meantime, I would be more than happy to read/provide feedback for other fantasy works, so please hit me up.
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Nov 8, 2022 22:36
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Queen Victorian posted:So in the last week and a half I've written over 16k words, plus several pages of handwritten notes and sketches and also a ton more stuff swirling around in my head. Is this sustainable or am I going to burn myself out? Has anyone else experienced being hit with a story like this and being afflicted by the opposite of writer's block and if so how did you harness it? I’ve been through this, to the point where I even stopped sleeping for days at a time. And yes, in the end I burnt out badly. In my case it turned out to be undiagnosed ADD, of which hyperfocus is almost as much a problem as lack of focus. I start projects, burn out or get bored before I finish them, then start another, often jumping between one novel and another writing only the bits that interest me and being unable to connect them together. Getting on the right meds has started to help. I’m almost actually finished, as in final draft, one of the many novels I’ve been working on for the past ten years. I’m able to do what I couldn’t before, which was work on it continuously in sessions and still do the responsible adult poo poo every day. Not saying this is you, but if you find you dump the project after the initial excitement, wishing to attain the same high you got starting out, and it never comes, you’ll have to adjust to find a good balance of just writing the thing at a more sustainable pace at a slightly lower level of excitement. If you find that absolutely impossible, you might be ND in some way
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Nov 8, 2022 23:26
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Stuporstar posted:I’ve been through this, to the point where I even stopped sleeping for days at a time. And yes, in the end I burnt out badly. That is a good deal like me, actually. I have ADD, diagnosed and for the most part medicated. I am also medicated for seasonal depression. But honestly, the meds might make it worse because then I can sustain engagement with writing and the story a whole lot longer. However, a key difference is that new ideas for big projects that I actually feel compelled to execute happen to me exceedingly rarely, probably because the compulsion needs to be extremely strong to actually get me off my rear end. In the last ten years, I have written NOTHING. So it's not like I've been picking up stuff and then ditching it, I haven't been doing anything. And my interest in stuff is fickle, so I want to write as much as I can while I'm into it. With this new story it feels like I have a trifecta - a complete story complete with all the aspects I really like in a story (this is the major one), characters I enjoy writing quite a lot, and my current headspace/mental state aligns with the character and story for once (I have a much older perpetually unfinished and currently shelved fantasy project that I can't progress in because I can't get back into the depressed, angsty headspace I was in when I originally started writing it). But I hear you - the last thing I want to do is let the obsession get out of hand and burn out and toss the story aside. I guess a good sign is that I'm remembering and once again feeling all the passion and joy that writing brought me in the past when it was one of my few real escapes and joys before smartphones and ubiquitous internet connectivity came along and ruined my happiness, creativity, and productivity. I will try to work on this thing at a healthy pace and definitely not pull any all-nighters on account of it. I've started convincing myself that once I do a chore or submit my poo poo for work, then I can make some tea/pour a booze and go write for a couple hours, but not before. It's a good motivator. Also, first time I didn't get antsy at a symphony concert in a long time because I just sat back and worked out backstory in my head while floating around in the lovely music.
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Nov 9, 2022 01:21
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That’s seriously awesome. Like finding that writing high again so you can just flow, it’s the best feeling ever. And yeah, I’ve been really strict with my bedtime, because that’s often the first thing to go in a hyperfocus bender. I did the same thing, making sure important non-writing stuff got done before letting myself write. When I hit a slump in my interest, I have to switch to getting the writing done first thing in the morning instead, waking up earlier than usual, otherwise it gets lost in the day to day
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Nov 9, 2022 01:49
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Was feeling really anxious about these edits so I made some nice hot ginger tea and I put honey in it and then I poured it on my dick #amwriting
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Nov 9, 2022 02:07
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General Battuta posted:Was feeling really anxious about these edits so I made some nice hot ginger tea and I put honey in it and then I poured it on my dick #amwriting Huh, I never see these tweets when I search the hashtag. Clearly Twitter is failing.
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Nov 9, 2022 02:19
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General Battuta posted:Was feeling really anxious about these edits so I made some nice hot ginger tea and I put honey in it and then I poured it on my dick #amwriting drat congrats on your new job writing lonely island lyrics, you're a natural
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Nov 9, 2022 04:41
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Stuporstar posted:That’s seriously awesome. Like finding that writing high again so you can just flow, it’s the best feeling ever. Yeah, having found the high again is amazing. It had been so long I didn't know what I was missing anymore and kinda just stopped looking for it. I contemplated trying to revive my old project a few times but was never feeling it because of headspace mismatch, even during depressive episodes - what I experience nowadays is bland, listless sunlight deficiency and not melodramatic teenage angstfests that had the side effect of supercharging my creative passion. It seriously feels so good to be writing again. I don't think I realized how profoundly unfulfilled I was creatively and and how much I needed this. But now I have it so I'm running with it. And it being an entirely new project that I'm approaching with a new-to-me method (establishing story parameters and framework BEFORE setting the characters loose in it and also doing planning and even outlining) is really helping too. quote:And yeah, I’ve been really strict with my bedtime, because that’s often the first thing to go in a hyperfocus bender. I did the same thing, making sure important non-writing stuff got done before letting myself write. I'm terrible about bedtime discipline. And Google Docs is a blessing and a curse because I can work on this thing on any device, but I can work on it on any device, including my phone while in bed at 1 AM while pretending to sleep. Going in to the office (which is optional at my job) is proving to be helpful at establishing boundaries and separation, though, so I think I'll be doing that more regularly. I haven't yet experienced any slump in interest, just imposter syndrome (which might be elevated because I'm writing so fast that everything is coming out sloppy and lovely), but I've so far been able to counter it by reading a random passage from Eragon and then all of a sudden I feel way better about this project and my writing ability in general.
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Nov 9, 2022 23:24
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Queen Victorian posted:I'm terrible about bedtime discipline. And Google Docs is a blessing and a curse because I can work on this thing on any device, but I can work on it on any device, including my phone while in bed at 1 AM while pretending to sleep. Going in to the office (which is optional at my job) is proving to be helpful at establishing boundaries and separation, though, so I think I'll be doing that more regularly. One thing I found helps is having a separate file in a basic note-taking program where you can write down a quick idea in bed to “park” that thought so you’re not going over it in your head and keeping yourself up with it, but it won’t be your main doc and suck you in. quote:I haven't yet experienced any slump in interest, just imposter syndrome (which might be elevated because I'm writing so fast that everything is coming out sloppy and lovely), but I've so far been able to counter it by reading a random passage from Eragon and then all of a sudden I feel way better about this project and my writing ability in general. First draft is allowed to be lovely. That’s what revising is for
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Nov 9, 2022 23:58
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This post is comin' at ya with mod approval! I've written a few (mostly) true stories in GBS, and even self-published a book of them.. I miss the days of weird and wild stories in GBS, and wanted to bring a little of that back. And now, I have a new one going in GBS - Stealing History: A Heist Story A couple of goons collaborated with me for the cover and story art, so they share some of the blame  I've never read much of CC, but this time around I'd like for y'all to take a look and let me know what you think. I'm not a writer by any stretch of the imagination, but I think the stories are fun. Good dumb fun. I know there are many areas I need to work on - too much passive voice, overuse of certain words, etc. - but I think my style fits the subject matter well enough. Anyway, it'd be cool if you creatives could take a look and let me know what you think. Feel free to engage in silliness in the GBS thread, but for actual constructive criticism, please discuss that here instead.
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Nov 11, 2022 21:59
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I have a ton of what I believe to be legitimately interesting ideas and I have absolutely no idea how to translate them into the written word, let alone a narrative. This is something I used to be good at and I don’t know exactly how or when, I got in my own way, creatively. It’s incredibly frustrating and makes me feel like a fraud. The answer is drugs, right? I’m willing to skip over journaling and writing exercises and get right into drugs.
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Nov 15, 2022 04:16
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Marsupial Ape posted:I have a ton of what I believe to be legitimately interesting ideas and I have absolutely no idea how to translate them into the written word, let alone a narrative. This is something I used to be good at and I don’t know exactly how or when, I got in my own way, creatively. It’s incredibly frustrating and makes me feel like a fraud. Just start doing it however badly. Write your ideas down even as bullet points. Write the lovely version as a stepping stone to the good version.
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Nov 15, 2022 04:37
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HopperUK posted:Just start doing it however badly. Write your ideas down even as bullet points. Write the lovely version as a stepping stone to the good version. Good advice, but I would prefer drugs. Like all the other problems in my life, I am acutely aware how to fix this with actual effort. I just don’t want to. Or don’t know how to want it enough to make it happen. You don’t have to comment on that, I am just griping. What I am honestly interested in, though, is a thread or somewhere that’s an appropriate venue for workshopping ideas. I miss actual writing classes simply because outside perspectives valuable and motivating.
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Nov 15, 2022 05:50
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