grieving brb

Sarah she/her - 26 - writeblr/sideblog - open to tag games - main @aestatismors

[imbrisvastatio]

Writeblr Re-Intro

Hi, my name is Sarah and this is my low effort writeblr. Main is @aestatismors therefore follows, likes, and asks will be from that account. Taking latin in high school is my whole personality.

I'm 25 and queer. I am here to find friends, read other's writing, and to learn to share my writing. I am open to tag games and asks! (I get behind, but I get there eventually lmao)

I write horror and fantasy mostly. My writing is usually dark and intended for adults. I love the weird and vague.

Information about wips under the read more;

Liar's Gate (tag wip^2) is high fantasy following three different people from three different places. A queen who abandons her kingdom and can explore her suppressed magic. A prince who refuses to be who his father wants, but his father has another plan in mind. And a woman who finds herself adopting a small girl after becoming a monster.

By The Hands (tag autumn wip) is about the way heartbreak and grief shapes actions. How love can hurt the people you meant to help. Everything is destructive and sometimes letting go is the answer. And sometimes holding on is instead. Large cast of characters and different timelines.

Shapeless (tag shapeless) is a segmented story following five characters as their worlds shatter in different ways. Death haunts them all but they aren't as powerless as they believed.*

House of Unrest (tag hou) is a written horror rpg that I gm on discord. Vol 1 is The Case of Abbigail Biggons. A young girl in Marrowstone goes missing on a hike with friends and everything is connected back to the Mirron Inn.*

Crest (tag crest) is a fantasy written ttrpg that I gm discord. Based off of d&d and pathfinder. Magic is outlawed and the gods are gone but there are plenty of secrets and history that unravel with them. And perhaps the gods are not quite god and magic isn't simply outlawed.

---

*Shapeless and House of Unrest take place in the same universe. Other snippets I share may also share that same universe.

[burr-ell]

YOU ARE A REGULAR GUY. YOU CAN HANDLE CRITIQUE. YOU ARE A REGULAR GUY. YOU CAN EMBRACE BEING TOLD YOU WERE WRONG. YOU ARE A REGULAR GUY. YOU CAN ACCOMPLISH UNPLEASANT TASKS. YOU ARE A REGULAR GUY. YOU CAN DELIVER DISAPPOINTING NEWS. YOU ARE A REGULAR GUY. YOU KNOW HOW TO BE DISAGREED WITH. YOU ARE A REGULAR GUY. YOU CAN BE CORRECTED. YOU ARE A REGULAR GUY. YOU CAN BE TOLD YOU MESSED UP. YOU ARE A REGULAR GUY. YOU ARE ABLE TO DO HARD THINGS.

[biocrafthero]

perceived skill

[kaiserouo]

ough

[imbrisvastatio]

lmao almost posted my current fixation on here and not my main

[daisywords]

sad when you go back to dismantle an earlier draft for parts and encounter a section that's both entirely obsolete and maybe one of the loveliest passages you've ever written

[writingdose]

the author’s barely disguised love, joy and passion that they have for the characters, writing and their stories

[writers-bane]

The thing is, writing is not just putting the Character in a situation. It's also putting myself, the writer, in a situation (having to write)

[ijustwannawritepls]

How to Write When You Don't Feel Like Yourself

There are going to be days (or weeks, or months) where you sit down to write and feel... disconnected. From your voice, from your characters, from your ideas. Like the person who used to write your stories just packed up and left.

They didn't. They're just tired. Here's how to keep writing anyway:

Lower the bar (Until it's on the floor) You are not here to write something brilliant. You are here to write something. A paragraph. A sentence. A single line of dialogue. Movement matters way more than quality.

Write around the story Don't force it. If you can't write the scene, try: ⋆ A character ramble / journal entry ⋆ A conversation that won't be included in the final draft ⋆ A list of things the character would never admit out loud ⋆ A messy summary of what should happen Engage with the story from a different angle.

Borrow a voice until yours comes back No, not with AI. Read something that feels close to what you want to write, or watch a scene that captures the tone, then write immediately after. Not to copy, to reignite your instincts.

Write the emotion, not the plot. What is your character feeling in this moment? What are they afraid of? What do they want but won't say? What's being kept from them? The emotion leads, the plot catches up later.

Stop trying to "feel like a writer" first. You don't write when you feel like a writer. You feel like a writer because you write.

You are still a writer, even on the days it feels distant. Especially then.

[naamahdarling]

If the problem is that you want to write and CAN write, but feel like what you are producing just suddenly sucks and is below your standards, keep writing anyway.

It isn't a problem with your writing. You're either:

1) tired or going through it somehow, or have recently been through something, and that can easily make you dissatisfied with what you are producing,

--OR!--

2) you are on the threshold of leveling up, or have done so, and the asshole editor side of your brain is interpreting the raised ceiling as "I suck, actually." You don't, and in six months you won't be able to find the parts you thought were bad writing.

All of this applies to all art.

[concerningwolves]

(in the same tone someone would say "I survived!" after a harrowing but nonetheless life-changing experience) I wrote! :]

[nineinchmales]

Did you know that um…. (remembers that words are very unnecessary, they can only do harm) …………

[charseraph]

[not drawing voice] I miss my character.

[coldgoldlazarus]

[not writing voice] I miss my character.

[savethelifeofmychild]

once i read everything on earth then i think ill be prepared to write

[tiredafel]

so. a meme from me. to show how ive been lately

[narcissistcookbook]

Do you have advice for being confident in the things you want to do, artistically? Your songs have such a strong narrative/message, but it feels hard sometimes to be confident about creative works when it feels like everything has 'been done' to some extent.

i didn't crawl out of the sewer and start making the stuff you know me for, it took me years to make work that felt truly like mine

i started writing as the Narcissist Cookbook in 2016 (roughly), and by that point i'd already made about 15-20 EPs & albums over twelve years under different names and with different sounds. some of it was good, some of it was bad enough to have me waking up in cold sweats thinking about it. some albums and EPs no-one heard but me. most of it was me awkwardly trying to find my voice by imitating counting crows, dashboard confessional, jimmy eat world, bright eyes, the hives, etc.

the truth is that you'll spend a long time imitating your heroes - it's the unique and interesting ways you screw that up that will eventually become the foundation of Your Voice™

general hints:

take big swings

be overly ambitious

be masturbatory and self-indulgent

be excited about making mistakes

draw inspiration from artists outside your medium - I'd rather see a painting trying to be a poem than a painting done by an artist who only liked paintings

burn it all down every now and then

learning to finish Things might be the most important skill you can pick up - finishing a Bad Thing is the only way you'll ever learn how to finish the Good Things when they come along

drugs don't make you creative, they just shut down the anti-Art - the part of you telling you you suck while you're making something. you can shut that part of you down sober, it just takes work

dig for the ideas that scare you - "i couldn't get away with that" and "i could never say that" are like the beep of a metal detector

what art do you wish existed that doesn't exist? make that

[narcissistcookbook]

what i'm trying to say is that you get confident by doing it, by fucking up in big and terrifying ways and surviving, and then doing it again and again

[theclonewriter-blog]

“This is your daily, friendly reminder to use commas instead of periods during the dialogue of your story,” she said with a smile.

[onewordtest]

“Unless you are following the dialogue with an action and not a dialogue tag.” He took a deep breath and sat back down after making the clarifying statement. 

[joehywheelah]

“However,” she added, shifting in her seat, “it’s appropriate to use a comma if there’s action in the middle of a sentence.”

[tenoko1]

“True.” She glanced at the others. “You can also end with a period if you include an action between two separate statements.”

[cj-amused]

Things I didn’t know

[prismatic-bell]

“And–” she waved a pen as though to underline her statement–“if you’re interrupting a sentence with an action, you need to type two hyphens to make an en-dash.”

[jawnwats-deactivated20160713]

You guys have no idea how many students in my advanced fiction workshop didn’t know any of this when writing their stories.

[notesoftruth]

Okay, but someone please explain question marks when followed by a dialogue tag. How do?

[flootzavut]

“The speech tag is still part of the previous sentence,” she explained, ‘so it isn’t capitalised.“

“What do you mean?” he asked. “But there’s a full stop as part of the question mark!”

She nodded gravely. “I know!” she said. “A lot of people find this confusing. But the speech tag belongs to the line of dialogue, it’s still part of the sentence, so it’s wrong to capitalise it.”

She reblogged the post again, because she had recently read far too many potentially enjoyable stories marred by poor dialogue punctuation.

[dechart]

I’ve only seen this post in screenshots till now..

[eddiestarchild]

NOICE. Can’t wait to use this

[magpiefngrl]

“There are two more ways"—she pointed to the blackboard—“to punctuate interruptions. One is with the em dashes outside the quotations marks to indicate continuous speech. The action occurs at the same time as speech. The other—” she sipped from a glass of water “—is em dashes within the quotation marks to indicate interrupted speech.”

[imbrisvastatio]

27k out of 37k rewritten of autumn wip

I wish I could say it's doing a lot better or I have a great idea about what I'm doing with it, but I almost entirely don't

I have some idea, more focus on Blair, more grief, more plot (earlier), but does any of it really matter or change anything? who knows

[wizardpostsdotorg]