#mangomaestro

[cailenbraern]

(rip for getting religious bot asks)

how did you get into knitting? I see all your gorgeous projects and I'm always curious how to start, I think it's such a cool art form!

also, do you have a favorite TAD song? I love hearing other people's music tastes

Hi! Thank you for taking the time to send an ask! I love you for it.

Various generations of my family tried and failed to teach me as a child. Despite my grandma, mum and sister trying to teach me, I just couldn't pick it up. They would show me and I would watch them and then I would try to copy them and it was a disaster all round. Skip ahead to my late teens/early twenties, I picked up a knitting magazine and they had written instructions with photos, and I read the instructions and I followed along and suddenly I could knit. I think the reason my family couldn't teach me was what I call the mirror effect. I was watching them do something from the opposite angle that I was attempting to do it, and so it wasn't making sense to me. Discovered double knitting about 12 or so years ago and it is my absolute favourite technique.

I have two favourite TAD songs and that's not me being greedy. I like to call them my head favourite and my heart favourite. A head favourite is a song that you recognise as being brilliant in its composition, melodies, harmonies, lyrics etc. And you think it deserves all of the awards.

A heart favourite is a song that speaks to you on a fundamental level, whether spiritually, emotionally or whatever. It's a song that reaches deep inside you and leaves you feeling seen.

My head favourite is Battle Cries. I genuinely think it's an amazingly written song and is absolutely perfect, which is why it was so wonderful to hear the utterly charming shambles it became at the Hay Festival gig.

My heart favourite is Farewell Wanderlust, and since I've waffled too much in this post already, you can read why in the linked post.

Post by @cailenbraern · 7 images

💬 0  🔁 4  ❤️ 24 · The clock has struck midnight here and it is now the 13th February, which means it's my birthday. Today I turn 35, and a

[48luckylester]

hello moot! hope you've been well, just wanted to ask- when you're writing, have you ever not been able to sit down a write a specific scene? and if so, how do you get past that/brainstorm around it?

-signed, a writer who has 3 drafts of the same scene and hates all of them

helloooooooooooooooo <3 i'm doing fine, fanks :3

it's funny that you ask me this because i've been there recently. i couldn't, for the love of me, write the beginning of the christmas fic that i'm currenly working on (and trying to finish right now). i also wrote it three times before getting it right. and i was really struggling to find the right way to do it until it finally came to me.

so, my humble advice would be: GET AWAY FROM IT... FOR A WHILE. i know that it's going to be frustrating at first because you want to get it done and all but when you're stuck, i just feel like we're just stubborn and that we eventually dig our own grave by just trying to force things so it's just making the whole thing worst. and when i'm stuck on a scene, i just stop right there. i think to myself: well i'm going nowhere, i'm stopping there for now and come back later.

by that i mean: instead of writing it and not liking it (although, sometimes, it's the case but i pretty much return on it and i'm like: eh, delete), i put it on paper. i try to put where i want to go with that scene on paper or to actually plan the rest of the story. i try to change my medium and trying to see where i'm actually going or is that scene necessary? how can i make that scene better? is it the direction where i want to go or there is another way to make it?

and sometimes, i also just skip this part and write another scene because most of the time, i have more ideas for a scene after that and not THAT one you know? or i simply go and write for another project if i have one, just to shake up my mind and forget about it.

so, that's how i cope with it.

for example, at the beginning of the christmas story, i really was pushing the narration too hard and i didn't like it and i didn't like where it was going so i changed things up more to my liking and it ended up being pretty decent, i'm happy with it now but it was really hard at first so i completely get it and i hope that it will help you, my friend <3