To the writer who's struggling â I see you. I'm proud of you. Take a break if you need one. Writing is hard sometimes, but that does not mean you're failing. You are going to figure this out.
RMH

Product Placement
2025 on Tumblr: Trends That Defined the Year
Mike Driver
styofa doing anything
art blog(derogatory)
I'd rather be in outer space đ¸
trying on a metaphor
Lint Roller? I Barely Know Her
cherry valley forever

ellievsbear
No title available
Game of Thrones Daily
AnasAbdin
h
No title available
sheepfilms

JBB: An Artblog!
TVSTRANGERTHINGS
Misplaced Lens Cap

seen from Australia
seen from Bulgaria

seen from United States
seen from Malaysia

seen from Italy

seen from Germany
seen from United States

seen from France

seen from TĂźrkiye
seen from Poland

seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from United States

seen from United Kingdom

seen from Finland

seen from Spain

seen from Italy
seen from United States

seen from United States
seen from Germany
@maybeillwriteit
To the writer who's struggling â I see you. I'm proud of you. Take a break if you need one. Writing is hard sometimes, but that does not mean you're failing. You are going to figure this out.
What would your advice for just-starting-out young authors be?
I love new writers! Iâve never known a better way to escape my reality and live a thousand different lives.
I started writing when I was young, maybe 12 or 13 years old. I am now 25, and very much consider myself to be a child, but still, in my 10+ years of personal writing and classes, here are some of the best tips I can give anyone who is new to writing, regardless of age.
Read. Read. Read. Then read some more. The easiest and fastest way to learn how to write is by reading and studying how other people have written their stories. Study their balance of dialogue vs description vs action. Study the words they use and what theyâre choosing to describe. Study the scenes that make you feel something, or pull you to the story even more, and dissect it until you understand how to do it.
Daydream. At night, in the morning, before and after school, during school, during work. When people are trying to talk to you, just daydream. Image worlds with populated moons. Imagine worlds with multiple human-like species all living in the same area. Image a boy who goes home and cries to his adoptive family parents, and girls who practices knife throwing every night to prepare for the apocalypse that no one sees coming. Dream of everything and anything because thatâs how you keep and improve your creativity. Eventually you may even write something with it.
Write for yourself. Always start by writing what you enjoy, and love your characters and your stories. Everything about your first draft should be because you love the story, not what other people like. You will never please everyone, so start with yourself, and build a community with the ones who love your story as much as you do.
Do it on your own timeline. If you want to write a book in a month, edit the next and publish right after, do it. If you want to write the first five chapters of 8 books without finishing, do it. If, like me, you want to write your first novel at 18 years old, and 7 years later still not feel ready to publish, thatâs ok! You are not falling behind anyone else, you are exactly where you should be on your own path.
Practice. Your writing will improve with practice, thatâs how it works, itâs how it always works. No way to skip right to publishing a first draft and becoming famous for it. Practice and just keep writing, you will improve.
Challenge yourself. While you may love fantasy or romance, or maybe all your story ideas are too big for only one book and they all end up being seriesâ, you need to try new things. Write a mystery short story. Write poetry on how you feel. Write one page on how you could survive a zombie apocalypse as long as you have your coffee in the morning, it doesnât matter, just try new things. Trying new things is how I wrote this haiku: Take a deep inhale, Breathe fresh air into my lungs, I savorfreedom. Is it the greatest haiku ever? No, but it makes me happy, and reminds me that I can write, good or bad, and still be proud of myself.
Keep all your projects. Good or bad. Look back on them years later and think, yeah that was terrible, at least Iâm better now. Or maybe think, this wasnât as bad as I thought it was. Itâs a progressive journey. You can take your time. DONT EVER SHAME YOUR YOUNGER SELF FOR THEIR WORK. THEY TRIED THEIR HARDEST AND WROTE AS BEST THEY COULD. WE ARE PROUD OF OURSELVES, NOT EMBARRASSED OR SHAMED. Whether the work is from years ago or days go. Be kind to yourself, no one else owes you that.
Compare. Compare to popular novels, compare to your friends stories or to people online. Compare and see if your character are developed enough, or if your story makes sense, or if itâs relatable. When comparing however, keep in mind that your written style will be different than all others writers. Your first novel will not be the same as an authorâs 10th book that just went viral on TikTok. It takes practice and time. Compare for style, technique, structure and plot. Not for popularity, worth, importance, and donât feel down thinking that someone writing at a higher grade level makes them better, it doesnât.
Share your work. If you are embarrassed, use a pen name. Thatâs perfectly fine. Put your work out there and get feedback. Having one person saying your story is (negative criticism here) is going to happen, donât freak out. It doesnât mean your story is flawed and should be tossed. If most people are saying that, then maybe itâs time to revisit the story and plot. Getting feedback from people reading your story is important, you want to ask specific questions so you donât get generic answers. Get real reviews from real people, the mean voice in your head doesnât get a say.
Learn the difference between perfect and done. I know, I know. Perfectionists around the world just scoffed and thought âI would if I couldâ. Hereâs the thing, itâll never be perfect. A word wonât be right, you canât find the right way to convey an emotion, your choice of vocabulary isnât up to your standards, I get it. You want your work to be absolute perfection so that everyone loves it and no one can say a bad thing about it, but it doesnât work that way. Instead make it to âcompleteâ, then nitpick some details, then itâs done. Done is good, itâs where you want to be.
Self-publishing? Pay for a professional editor and a graphic designer. It makes a difference, I promise.
Thereâs lots of others, but I would say as a writer-starter-pack, these should get you started, then you will learn lessons all on your own, or find them as youâre writing later on. Truly, just have fun, and the rest will come with time.
Happy Writing!
Willow
fantasy character prompts
a potion maker who collects souls
a witch who runs an underground system at a high school
an actor who falls in love with their costar
the romantic falling out of love
the fighter with a soft spot for puppies
a doctor who heals by bottling nightmares and dreams
a supernatural doctor
a detective who runs a business on luck
the diehard romantic whose never found love
a botanist who cannot keep their magical plants alive
a witch who runs a makeup store
a siren with no voice
a librarian who guards the keys to the universe
a character made of shadows
the perfectionist slipping away
the young leader with a cracking nation
a pirate who canât steal for the life of them
the scholar who studies for hours to fall asleep during the test
a magician who only knows sleight of hand
an emotionless ruler and their five year old
Floating face down in a blank word document file, while not physically possible, is nevertheless a tangible authorial state.
back on my audio drama bullshit, planned out episodes, edits and the next story arc
After an attempt on their life, a monster hunter calls in a favor from a monster they let live.
yes i love my characters yes i want them to suffer next question
âbut you should be kinderââ no. struggles then cuddles
âbut why struggle when you can cuddleâ because it builds character samantha get with the program
but consider: struggles no cuddles
but what if there were some cuddles first and then only struggles
me: I finally finished my outline!1!! now I can start writing for real !!
the gaping plotholes in my outline:
if youâre afraid your idea is too similar to something else, i think thatâs a good thing! (the idea, not the fear) iâve never read/watched/listened to something i absolutely loved and hoped for less of something like it. i just wanted it to go on forever. if you can provide even a little bit of that again, i will love you forever. similar ideas are good, not bad. <3<3 write away you brilliant geniuses
Youâre immortal and have passed the âheroâ phase centuries ago. You enter a small corner shop one day to find it is owned by your millennia-old arch-nemesis. You really, really need milk though.
Iâm thinking back over all the writing advice I heard as a much younger writer and by far the advice that wasted my time the most was âyou have to immediately hook your reader and that makes your first page the most important part of your storyâ
i worked so hard on writing the perfect âhookâ meanwhile half of published writers have continued opening stories with the main character waking up, dreams, and all the things they tell you not to do this entire time, and the other half have been awkwardly shoving âexcitingâ scenes into the beginning of every story even when it doesnât fit
this is not to say that the âhookâ is not a real or important thing, but the only advice that matters about beginning a story is that you should begin the storyâŚwhere it begins.
like I canât count the number of stories Iâve read that have tried to put, like, an epic motorcycle chase or some shit with high stakes on the first page to âhookâ the reader, but it sucked because the motorcycle chase was ultimately irrelevant to the story the author was actually telling, however high the stakes.
identify the beginning and begin there, and thatâs literally it
âI canât count the number of stories Iâve read that have tried to put, like, an epic motorcycle chase or some shit with high stakes on the first page to âhookâ the readerâ
See, THAT is the core problem. Hooks got conflated with action. Every story DOES need a hook, but that hook doesnât have to be some big action scene. It just has to make your reader keep wanting to know more. Some of my favorite non-actiony hooks:
âYou can hear a miracle a long way after dark.â -All the Crooked Saints by Maggie Stiefvater. No action involved but it certainly catches your interest. HEARING miracles? How do you HEAR a miracle coming? Must know more. Must continue reading.
âA funny thing happens when you have nothing left to live for.â -The Final Six by Alexandra Monir. Why doesnât this character have anything left to live for? Whatâs funny about it?
âIâm as restless as the ghosts today.â -Ghost Wood Song by Erica Waters. Why are the ghosts restless? How does this narrator know about the ghosts?
âTwenty minutes northwest of Augusta, Georgia, in a suburb where youâre more likely to see someone praying in public than using their magic, Liv Honeycutt was trying to sell her diamond cross necklace at the King of Pawns pawnshop on Highway 104.â -The Facinators by Andrew Eliopulos. So much worldbuilding in just one sentence! Clearly itâs a modern world similar to our own, but thereâs magic? Must know more.
The job of a hook is to ask a question that your book promises to answer. Whatâs going on in this world? What are these characters doing? Whatâs about to go wrong? And you DO need that, in some form, or people will put your book down. However, at the same time, I think people kind of...forget to consider books as a whole in this conversation? Like, if I pick something up in the bookstore Iâm going to know what section Iâm in, Iâm going to have seen the cover, and Iâm going to have read at least some of the cover text before I ever open the book, which will set expectations before I ever get to the actual text/hook. Even with ebooks youâll likely know what category youâre in, have seen the cover, read some sort of summary, etc.
âIdentify the beginning and begin there.â
Yes but no. Do just start writing your story without worrying about the hook/the perfect beginning, but accept that itâll probably change. You likely wonât find the perfect beginning right out of the gate, so itâs okay if you donât quite know where to start. Just start somewhere and you can figure out if itâs the right spot later. Thatâs what editing is for!
A lit of people think that worldbuilding exists solely to make epic, sweeping fantasy worlds to quest across, but it can create smaller, softer, mundane worlds to inhabit too.
You can worldbuild a small village. You can worldbuild a bookshop. You can worldbuild a jail cell, or a wishing well, or a single-parent household.
Not every story wants a grand scope.
This is important.
Yes! You can world build in fanfiction too, especially if canonâs worldbuilding was unsatisfying or just too light for your taste.
You know what I would really want from my writing? Engagement. Discussions in the comments. Having people talk about what happens next and why these characters act this way, who is in the right and who is in the wrong. Connection.Â
Publishing and money, sure, one day when I invest in all the marketing and audience building, which seems pretty far away rn. Long time carrer and branding and bla bla bla.Â
Rn I crave readers and direct connection to readers. A platform to watch them, to communicate with them, to see them react. Published books get contact mostly through reviews (if they donât have giant fan pages on social media) and how many readers review? Publishing in magazines or with short stories is also so distant and one-time, you donât know who thought what.
Where am I supposed to go? What am I supposed to work on, to find the right platform or community, where people are thinking about the same issues and would enjoy my stories and engaging with them?Â
small details for fictional kisses
whispering ''kiss me'' to your lover
wrapping your arms around your lover's neck
kisses that travel from your lover's nose to their lips
breaking the kiss but instantly pressing your lips back together
intertwining your fingers
kisses that start out gentle but grows more passionate
forehead against forehead
running your fingers through your lover's hair
unbuttoning your lover's shirt, pressed against the wall
surprise kisses, in which your lover weren't prepared for it but responds immediately
a kiss in which, ''we're late for work but let's be later''
kisses shared under a waterfall
pulling your lover closer by the waistband
kissing under the stars
messy kisses, destroying furniture trying to reach the bed
a kiss that isn't meant to happen but it does anyway
sliding your hands down your lover's chest
grabbing your lover by the collar
''if we get caught kissing we're dead but let's risk it''
hand kisses
exploring each other's lips
smiling in-between kisses
now-or-never kisses
caressing your lover's cheek
good night kisses
''i was supposed to take a shower alone but sure, jump right in''
brushing your lips together, lingering for a moment
an accidental kiss between two exes
kisses in which, you've already said goodbye but can't help stealing another one
this might be our last kiss ever so let's make it last
kitchen counter make-outs
jumping into your lover's arms
soft kisses while cuddling in bed
i missed you kisses
a kiss that leave you breathless
stopping a kiss when it gets too heated
a kiss on the cheek turns into a kiss on the lips
trailing kisses from your lover's lips to their neck
''everything is going to be okay'' kisses
kisses that start of passionate but grows more delicate
pulling away from a kiss to look at each other, then smiling as you dive in for another kiss
wrapping your legs around your lover's body as they lift you
a goodbye kiss, but neither of you can quite let go
''we shouldn't do this'' but they do so, anyway
a swirling reunion kiss
''i've had a terrible day at work so just kiss me''
a kiss that lasts longer than it should
tending to your lover's wound, placing a kiss on top of their head, grateful they're still alive
spinning your lover into a kiss on the dance floor
kisses in which, i can't believe this is real, but i love you so much
baby iâve got half finished wips you couldnât even imagine
IN MY OWN HOUSE NONETHELESS!
When I was in school, one of my art teachers used to say âthis world needs more creators. Thereâs more than enough destroyers in the world today.â
Just a reminder, if you create anythingâart, writing, food, machines, ideas, equations, knits, tools, gardensâthe world needs you.
This makes me happy.
Happy creating, everyone
 Hey btw, another worldbuilding thing: You can, and actually should have weird and impractical cultural things. Theyâre not inherently unrealistic, for as long as you address the realistic consequences as well.
 Letâs say youâve got a city where thereâs tame white doves everywhere. Theyâre not pests, theyâre regarded as sacred, holy protectors of the city, and the whole city cares for them and feeds them like theyâre pets. Theyâre so tame because itâs a social taboo to hurt or scare one. Nice pretty doves :)
 Then someone points out that even if theyâre not seen as pests, doesnât having a completely unchecked feral pigeon population - that not only isnât being culled, but actively fed and cared for - mean that there would be bird shit absolutely all over the place?
 A part of you wants to say no, because these are your nice, pretty doves. To explain that thereâs a reason why theyâre not shitting all over the place, maybe theyâre super-intelligent and specifically bred and trained to not shit all over the place. The logistics of how, exactly, could anyone breed and train a flock of feral birds go unaddressed.
 An even worse solution would be to not have those birds, editing them out of the world. No, they spark joy, you canât just toss them out!
 Now, consider: Yes, yes they would, but the city also has an extensive public sanitation service thatâs occupied 90% of the time by cleaning bird shit off of everything. One of the most common last names in the area actually translates to âone who scrapes off dove shitâ, and itâs a highly respected occupation. And thanks to the sheer necessity of constantly regularly cleaning everything, the city enjoys a much higher standard of cleanliness, and less public health issues caused by poor public sanitation.
 The doves do protect the city. By shitting fucking everywhere.
While I absolutely love your idea, I just want to say that you can easily reduce public bird shitting from Pigeons by offering them comfortable lodgings where they can sleep and feed. Sure, you need to clean THOSE, but the pigeons shit a lot less all over town.
The Augsburg concept has one big pigeon house every 500m in which wild pigeons are fed, protected from weather and have nesting opportunities. Cities doing that have WAY less uncontrolled populations (since they can take out eggs if they feel they need reduce the population), way less shit AND a healthy population since itâs easier for veterinarians to notice and get to sick animals.
So Iâd say one can of course still keep your general ideaâŚâŚbut thereâs also those MASSIVE palace-like pidgeon houses and only the most worthy are allowed to enter and directly interact with the pigeons (feed them, heal them, clean their lodgings). One big entrance for the human servants (priests??) and millions of small holes for the pigeons.
In fact, one could potentially turn your idea around IN THE PIDGEONS FAVOR. So your world is like ours and most major cities have a big feral pigeon population. And most of those cities HATE the pigeons and try to fight them and stuff. And they think that pigeon worshipper town is frigging cuckoo. BUT when comparing, then pigeon worshipper town is ridiculously clean and beautiful. No bird shit everywhere, no ruined house facades and statues from erosion through bird poop. Pigeon haters go âhow tf are you so clean, you have birds EVERYWHERE???â and the worshippers shrug and show their little bird temples spread around town that keep their precious birdies AND their town pretty.
I think this is a really good example of how research can greatly improve your worldbuilding! You donât have to be perfectly accurate - it is fantasy after all - but the real world is so much more clever and beautiful than any of us know
advice thatâs stuck with me: you donât have to work inwards to justify a premise (e.g., âhow would it ever be plausible to use snakes as currencyâ) as long as you work outwards in interesting ways from that premise (e.g., âhow would a society that used snakes as currency look different? what would they use for wallets?â)
Wait, did you choose snakes specifically as a reference to that time when people literally used snakes as currency, or what is a random example?
Sorry, that time what