Literally Wake Up Some Nights In A Cold Sweat Thinking About This

saying ao3 needs to censor certain content is like saying a museum can't have still life art that includes strawberries because you don't like them.

these are not real strawberries. you do not have to, and in fact cannot, eat them. no one with a strawberry allergy will be harmed by looking at them. no migrant workers were exploited in the picking of these strawberries. there were no questionable farming practices or negative environmental impacts from growing or transporting them.

because - and i cannot stress this enough - they are not real strawberries.

if you don't like strawberries, you don't have to look at the paintings. in fact, you can get a map of the museum that lists what works are in what rooms and just. not go in there. if you see one by mistake, you can look away. just keep walking. there's plenty of other stuff to see.

yes, real strawberries can cause real quantifiable harm to real people.

but again. these are not real strawberries.

you may have whatever feelings you like about strawberries, and so can i. you can draw and write about whatever fruit floats your boat, and so can i, even if that happens to be strawberries. and we can hang our art side by side in the same gallery, provided you understand that my strawberries are not about you (and your kumquats are, shocker, not about me) and that - and this is true - neither are real.

and when the fascists break down the doors and grab all the strawberry paintings and heap them in the street and set them on fire, please know that they are coming for your kumquats next.

so if you want a place where you can show off your beautiful kumquat art safely, you're gonna have to tolerate having some strawberries in the next room.

and that's okay. because the strawberries aren't real.

If you’re shrouded in writers block and desperately want to shoo it away to keep going with your WIP, it sometimes helps to delete the last few sentences/paragraph/scene and rewrite it. Sometimes you accidentally build dams in your creative stream and the only way around is to go back and break it down

Unrelated to writing:

I relate to this so much. I know what most common injuries feel like. Often times, the pain the person is feeling is the same or less than my normal levels.

It’s hard to not seem like an asshole sometimes, because the same person who thinks I’m being mean will literally leave me behind or make my life harder and say it’s no big deal.

And of course none of this is helped by me being black fem presenting. It’s like some people still believe those old studies that we don’t feel as much pain as other people. The second I let my face show how I feel, or heaven forbid I don’t sound pleasant and polite, I have too much attitude or I’m too angry. I’ve literally had people think I was trying to fight them when I was just gritting my teeth through pain they probably couldn’t handle.

Thanks for letting a bitter black bitch rant.

people assume that being physically disabled makes you more empathetic to the pain of others, but that’s not always the case.

for me, it feels unfair when others are in pain and don’t feel the need to hide that fact, because i have internalized the idea that i’m not allowed to talk about my own. it annoys me that, while most are typically understanding if a non disabled person doesn’t operate at their full capacity due to sickness or injury, disabled people are expected to function normally as if that isn’t our every day. as much as i want to feel solidarity towards a suffering person, it feels impossible not to be envious when their illness or ailment is temporary, but i will never, ever get a break from mine.

for obvious reasons i would never say any of directly to someone, because my pain doesn’t make theirs any less valid or real. still, i can’t help but feel that my disability has made me bitter and unkind, because i can’t help but compare my own experiences with theirs.

this is the reality of disability- it does not create perfect people. many of us are broken and struggle to connect with others because of our conditions, and that does not mean we are evil people

Nothing frustrates more than the realization that the world behind your eyes will never look back at you like a mirror from the page. But the frustration dissipates when you realize that if you fill the entire page so airtight with your world, then there would be no room for the reader.

Have I written in the past couple days? No. Are my daydreams going stupid? Hell yeah. When I have time to actually write it down will I still remember any of this lore? TBD

so it turns out they can’t die at the end of contemporary romance. I think I need to switch genres

Fanfiction Taught Me 90% of What I Know About Writing

That’s the gods honest truth. And I’m saying that as someone who has a literal college degree in writing.

I took SO MANY writing classes in college. All genres. Creative. Playwriting. Screenwriting. Editorial. Journalistic. Business. Technical. I’ve been writing since I could hold a pencil correctly, and really started to pursue it in 2nd grade when every teacher following gushed about my writing skills. I can confidently say I’ve been honing my craft for over two decades.

However, I didn’t really git gud at writing until I started really writing fanfiction. Like, joining a fandom and actively writing an ongoing fic for it.

Again, I’d taken years upon years of writing classes. I learned story structure, grammar, theming, POVs, tone, etc. all throughout school. I learned how to receive feedback and edit my work a little more down the road. I learned from professionals in the field. I worked with mentors.

However, none of that helped my skyrocket my skills like writing fanfiction did.

Fanfiction taught me how to actually write deep, nuanced, and compelling characters. I never once filled out a 200-question character sheet for any character I wrote on some silly school assignment. I never knew how to really know my characters until I was writing OCs for a fandom.

Fanfiction taught me the value of being concise. My schooling had drilled the concept of long, purple prose into me over time and in writing for a fandom for a children’s game, I unlearned that real quick.

Fanfiction really taught me the concept of “show, don’t tell.” I never really knew what a penchant I had for info dumping until somebody pointed out to me most of my headcanon’d lore drops happened in exposition and not in action.

Fanfiction taught me how to worldbuild. Eating the canon of my preferred fandom gave me a lot of time to strengthen my chops while I came up with my own answers to canon lore I hated.

Fanfiction taught me consistency. In school, I mostly wrote short stories. I hadn’t really bitten off a longer project until I started writing a longfic, and in doing so, I learned how to keep my characters, plot, and world consistent for a prolonged period of chapters.

Fanfiction gave me a close-knit community to consistently bounce my ideas off of, and give me feedback that actually served me in terms of bettering my skills and the story I was writing. Not just for the sake of meeting the measures of a grade or rubric given by a teacher.

I could go on and on, but tl;dr, I owe my current skillset and understanding of writing to writing fic. I wouldn’t be at the level I am without it. Honestly, I wouldn’t even be writing my current WIP without it.

So, to anyone who might have told you that fanfic is a waste of time, they are just objectively wrong. And if you’re reading this thinking for yourself that fanfic is a waste of time, well, you’re stupid and also objectively wrong :>

Fanfiction is valuable. Don’t underestimate it.

Don’t let creativity slip through your fingers.

If you have an idea, write it down. And don’t be afraid to explore the weird, the obscure, or the downright silly.

Even the most outlandish ideas can lead to something truly great and amazingly creative, so don’t hesitate to play around in the sandbox of your mind. You never know when a random idea will be the seed of something great.

Obviously I get inspiration from things I’ve read, but I am also inspired by my favorite movies, shows, anime and manga.

It’s bothersome when I feel like I can’t bring that up when I talk to other writers.

And there’s no inbetween

Going back to old writing is either just like:

1. “Who wrote this masterpiece?! It was ME?!”

2. “Who wrote this absolute shit? Oh fuck my life, that was me, wasn’t it?”