Barcelona Adventures

A year in Barcelona, studying a Master's degree in Creative Writing, but mostly trying to survive on my own. Here are my adventures, mistakes and lessons learnt... and probably a bit of rambling too. For more content check out my main.

[jxsminewrites]

reasons to not quit writing:

your writing is a skill, not an inborn talent (unless, yeah, maybe it is). not everyone can do what you do and love

everyone says they want to write a book. everyone has what it takes to write a book. not everyone does it anyway. you be the small percentage of success you read about

your writing will always seem brickshit horrible because you wrote and read it a million times

you love this writing thingy. quitting it will be like cutting off your fingers one by one.

someone out there will want to read what you wrote.

someone out there wants to know what is on your mind. 

someone out there appreciates your art. they will share it with their friends. they will share it with their loved ones. they will share it with their future self because maybe what you wrote saved them.

if you give up now, you know you will just come back to it again, whether it’s years from now, months, or next week. you love writing, that’s why you planted the seed of thought that you are going to write this book, and whether you come back to it or not, your unwritten stories will come back to you.

[rontology]

i started writing original fiction because of a comment i got on a house md fic i wrote when i was 12 years old. someone said “this is out of character, house and wilson would never act like this.” so i thought, “if i make my own characters, no one can ever tell me they’re out of character, because i decide,” and i started planning my first novel. now i’m 23 and i’ve written 4 novel-length works, i have a degree in publishing and i work at a literary magazine, largely because someone insulted my house fanfiction. follow your dreams.

[startledoctopus]

succeed out of spite

[rtgrl]

[be-happy-and-enjoy-the-life]

[windows5]

me, drinking juice at 1pm: breakfast

me, eating a bag of chips at 4pm: lunch

me, eating a flour tortilla with nothing on it at 10pm: dinner

[summoningspark]

me, cooking a three course meal at 2am: bedtime snack

[bannock-and-biopolitics-deactiv]

A lot of adulthood is shouting “AUGH MY LAUNDRY” hours after you put it in the washer/dryer and running to go fetch it

[curlicuecal]

oh shit my laundry

[mishafletcher]

reblog to save someone’s laundry

[nateswinehart]

You gotta have a plan…

[fuckblast]

i want to write the kind of short stories you read in english class that are on this weird level of surrealism that they still haunt you years down the road

[cwote]

Don’t compare yourself to others, you’re doing great :))

[jilliancares]

things writers can (probably) relate to

-making the facial expression your character’s making and trying to describe it

-writing entire scenes in your head as you shower and not remembering most of it by the time you get to your computer

-deciding you can’t do something you’ve been looking forward to until you write what you told yourself you were going to write, resulting in you laying in your bed doing nothing

-having two completely different ideas for your story to go in and both seem equally good but you can’t do both and you also can’t choose

-having docs with stories you know you’ll never finish but not deleting them anyway, even if they’re only a couple sentences long

-getting random bursts of productivity that could go towards homework or cleaning your room or writing and you know you’ll only be able to do one

-getting inspiration from the most random things

-writing at inopportune times because a perfect line or dialogue just popped into your head and you have to get it down before you forget it

-“what are you writing?” “……..a story”

- “what do you want to do when you grow up?” “uunnghnnggguughhhhh”

-reveling in the embarrassment you put your characters through

[unflavoredwaxedfloss20]

[angry-comics]

[introvertunites]

If you’re an introvert, follow us @introvertunites​

[nexya]

I love how humans have literally not changed throughout history like the graffiti from Pompeii has people from hundreds of years ago writing stuff like “Marcus is gay” “I fucked a girl here” “Julius your mum wishes she was with me” and leonardo da vinci’s assistants drew dicks in their notebooks just for the banter and mozart created a piece called “kiss my ass” so when people wish for ‘today’s generation’ to be like ‘how people used to’ then we’re already there buddy we’ve always been

[charlesoberonn]

The Hagia Sophia has inscriptions that were considered sacred for centuries until they were deciphered in the 70s to be Nordic runes saying “Halfdan wrote this”

[terminallydepraved]

my old english prof told us that theres a cave in Scandinavia where a viking gratified some runes like 14 feet up on the wall and when they finally reached it all it translated into was “this is very high”

[loremerchant]

Ancient Shitposting

Now on the History Channel

[self-critical-automaton]

‘People have literally just always been people’ is genuinely my favorite fact about the world

[skaletal-deactivated20190721]

“Times are bad. Children no longer obey their parents, and everyone is writing a book.” - Marcus Tullius Cicero, 106 BC - 43 BC

[super-star-destroyer]

Common dog names have literally not changed in 3,000 years.

[setheverman]

[cwote]

So what if you’re alone right now. Embrace it. Go get coffee alone. Shop alone. Drive alone. Watch movies alone. Get to know yourself. Nothing bad can come from riding whatever wave to self improvement you’re blessed with in the moment.

[cwote]

Let yourself make AND learn from your mistakes. 

[falsedetective]

9am saturday morning: “i’ve got the whole day, i’m gonna get so much done”

1pm saturday afternoon: still in my pajamas, on my 4th cup of coffee, deep in thought about generic subversion, censorship, and post-colonialism in 2000 animated gay romance “the road to el dorado”