Happy Early Winter Solstice @mako-doodles ! Thank you for inspiring me and always being there 💜 Wishing you the very best 💜
*chokes up and sobs*
He’s so wonderful, thank you. Honestly you’ve seen me through some dark days (and vice versa) and you stick around and frankly that is just ride and die loyalty to me💜💜💜
I can’t wait until you receive your present and I really hope it will make you happy!
(Like seriously, I’d love to see your reaction I’m so excited) ;D
Yesterday, I was trawling iTunes for a decent podcast about writing. After a while, I gave up, because 90% of them talked incessantly about “self-discipline,” “making writing a habit,” “getting your butt in the chair,” “getting yourself to write.” To me, that’s six flavors of fucked up.
Okay, yes—I see why we might want to “make writing a habit.” If we want to finish anything, we’ll have to write at least semi-regularly. In practical terms, I get it.
But maybe before we force our butts into chairs, we should ask why it’s so hard to “get” ourselves to write. We aren’t deranged; our brains say “I don’t want to do this” for a reason. We should take that reason seriously.
Most of us resist writing because it hurts and it’s hard. Well, you say, writing isn’t supposed to be easy—but there’s hard, and then there’s hard. For many of us, sitting down to write feels like being asked to solve a problem that is both urgent and unsolvable—“I have to, but it’s impossible, but I have to, but it’s impossible.” It feels fucking awful, so naturally we avoid it.
We can’t “make writing a habit,” then, until we make it less painful. Something we don’t just “get” ourselves to do.
The “make writing a habit” people are trying to do that, in their way. If you do something regularly, the theory goes, you stop dreading it with such special intensity because it just becomes a thing you do. But my god, if you’re still in that “dreading it” phase and someone tells you to “make writing a habit,” that sounds horrible.
So many of us already dismiss our own pain constantly. If we turn writing into another occasion for mute suffering, for numb and joyless endurance, we 1) will not write more, and 2) should not write more, because we should not intentionally hurt ourselves.
Seriously. If you want to write more, don’t ask, “how can I make myself write?” Ask, “why is writing so painful for me and how can I ease that pain?” Show some compassion for yourself. Forgive yourself for not being the person you wish you were and treat the person you are with some basic decency. Give yourself a fucking break for avoiding a thing that makes you feel awful.
Here’s what stops more people from writing than anything else: shame. That creeping, nagging sense of ‘should be,’ ‘should have been,’ and ‘if only I had…’ Shame lives in the body, it clenches our muscles when we sit at the keyboard, takes up valuable mental space with useless, repetitive conversations. Shame, and the resulting paralysis, are what happen when the whole world drills into you that you should be writing every day and you’re not.
The antidote, he says, is to treat yourself kindly:
For me, writing always begins with self-forgiveness. I don’t sit down and rush headlong into the blank page. I make coffee. I put on a song I like. I drink the coffee, listen to the song. I don’t write. Beginning with forgiveness revolutionizes the writing process, returns its being to a journey of creativity rather than an exercise in self-flagellation. I forgive myself for not sitting down to write sooner, for taking yesterday off, for living my life. That shame? I release it. My body unclenches; a new lightness takes over once that burden has floated off. There is room, now, for story, idea, life.
Writing has the potential to bring us so much joy. Why else would we wantto do it? But first we’ve got to unlearn the pain and dread and anxiety and shame attached to writing—not just so we can write more, but for our own sakes! Forget “making writing a habit”—how about “being less miserable”? That’s a worthy goal too!
Luckily, there are ways to do this. But before I get into them, please absorb this lesson: if you want to write, start by valuing your own well-being. Start by forgiving yourself. And listen to yourself when something hurts.
Show some compassion for yourself. Forgive yourself for not being the person you wish you were and treat the person you are with some basic decency. Give yourself a fucking break for avoiding a thing that makes you feel awful.
Honestly, “Forgive yourself for not being the person you wish you were and treat the person you are with some basic decency,” is one of the most powerful things I’ve ever read.
This also makes me think of The Pervocracy’s “little rat” post (it seems like the original blog is now gone, but there’s a reblog here) – the gist of which is basically that when we react to finally doing something we’ve been meaning to get done by beating up on ourselves for not doing it earlier (we sit down to write and feel swamped by shame because it’s been a long time, for example), we’re inadvertently teaching our brains to associate doing a positive thing with pain. And so our brains will shove us away from that thing even harder because we’ve learned that it hurts. We can disrupt that cycle by stepping back, noticing how we’re talking to ourselves, and being compassionate to ourselves instead.
Just wanted to respond to the Anon who sent me the multi-part message last night: I’m going to hold on to your asks, and I wanted to thank you. It was really kind of you to write and reassure me. It made me feel a lot better at a point when I was feeling pretty low and guilty, and I appreciate you. ❤
Wait what if Roddy gets all liquored up at whatever functional but slightly drab bar you know there is on The Exitus.
TC sits down beside him in the booth bc he’s concerned and wants to get him to his berth safely. TC definitely isn’t expecting Rodimus to swing his leg across his body and sit right down on his lap.
And… Start nuzzling his neck while making little breathy sounds.
It’s the best thing that’s ever happened in his entire life, under what might be the worst circumstances. Rodimus is drunk beyond reckoning.
He quickly realizes there is no safe place to put his hands. Those lips are smudging kisses across the edge of his jaw now, dangerously high. This needs to stop now.
“Rodimus,” he says softly, shifting away but finally allowing his arm to wrap around Rodimus’s waist. “I’m going to stand up now. Hold onto me.”
Drowsy mumble against his chestplate that sounds like a protest. He leans closer, curling in on himself to get closer to Rodimus.
Reblog if it’s okay for your followers
to leave you an ask telling you what the one thing is they remember
you for as a writer. Is it a scene or a detail or a specific line?
Is it something like style or characterization? Is it that one weird
kink they never thought they’d be into, but oh my god wow
self-discovery time?
Headcanon that in the new good future where Marty McFly never has his accident, he does become a famous musician, while still going on time travel adventures with Doc, and then when the internet comes along, people on forums and message boards start discovering and posting photos of people in the past who look eerily like famous rock star Marty McFly, and as time goes on, “Marty McFly is a time traveller” becomes one of the biggest and most long running memes on the internet.
When Doc finds out he freaks out and panicks and makes blog posts (because of COURSE Doc runs a blog) talking about how UTTERLY RIDICULOUS the idea of a time travelling rock star is, which the internet finds hilarious and only makes the meme spread more.
Marty meanwhile thinks the whole thing is the funniest thing ever and is just wheezing at every new forum or jokey article about it, and directly addresses the meme in interviews, bringing up this “crazy conspiracy” that people have, until eventually he can just say things like “well of course I am a time traveller” or “oh you like my hat? Thank you I got it in the 1910s”, and people just crack up, and Marty cracks up too because no-one realises that he’s not even lying.
When Marty starts doing this Doc’s blog posts get even more annoyed and passive aggressive, saying things like “even if time travel WAS possible, a SENSIBLE time traveller would KEEP OUT OF THE PUBLIC EYE and not just TELL EVERYONE LIVE ON TV”
Eventually a secondary meme starts up where people start joking “Doctor Emmett Brown is a time traveller himself and that’s why he’s so worked up about it” and Doc very nearly just deletes his blog and throws his computer in a skip.