#which helped

[liarsblade]

I did a good job on the phone with the medical receptionist everyone clap.

[elumish]

I remembered that Storygraph will make graphics and such for your reading months (at least if you have a premium account) so I've been entertaining myself by having it generate reading calendars for some of my months, and honestly they're kind of funny.

I finished 58 new books in February (and, granted, some of them were a bit short) and still somehow have four days where I didn't finish a book.

[huddysconnie]

Um how did I just realize that Dylan is TEN YEARS OLDER than Hudson??? What the fuck. Like I always forget Hudson's actually a baby. My brain cannot comprehend their age gap 😭

i get u nonnie, i always forget me and hudson are basically the same age 😭 also dylan didn't age badly at all so the shock is understandable lmao

[pynkhues]

How are you doing with everyone living with you?

Yes, haha.

It's been really hard, I can't lie, but we've found something like a rhythm, which has helped. I do feel like I'm co-parenting still, which is something I have a really complex relationship with after being my brother's guardian when he was young, and having had fertility issues before making the decision to not become a parent myself, so there's kind of like - - been this part of looking after my nephews, particularly while my sister's working long hours on this American film, that's touching something I didn't realise was maybe still a little raw?

So that's been quite a lot to process myself, and as I was saying to a friend the other day, I think I would just like to get to a point where I'm able to stop raising other people's sons, but at least I'm getting a lot of good personal writing out of this particular bruise being pressed, haha.

Which isn't to say that I don't love my nephews or my sister, of course, and the boys are going so well at school and making friends and are genuinely the happiest I think I've ever seen them, and my sister's getting there too. She's still processing a lot of her trauma, and she's working crazy hours just to try and earn enough to get back on her feet, because as you probably inferred from my post, her ex stopped paying child support pretty much the moment he lost in court (despite him being on a six figure salary and sending both her [and me???] an email about how he's just bought a $1.5million house with his mistress-turned-wife). She pretty much crash landed at mine with the boys and nothing else, which were, of course, the only two things that mattered, but still. It's a lot, y'know? And I think she's found it all pretty humiliating in a way that's hard for me to help her navigate when we're in my rundown little place, because it's not exactly like I've ever earnt all that much either, and I think she feels her work has to take priority over mine right now because she's in a dire situation, but I also like - - don't really have a ton of savings, y'know?

So it's complicated, is the long and short of it, but we're figuring it out. She's tentatively booked another big film after the one that she's on which'll hopefully have slightly better hours, and after that she should have a bit of a nest egg to hopefully be able to move out. We were initially talking Christmas, which is still a possibility, but I think more realistically now will be the start of the new school year, which is the end of Jan. We're both not really sure what that looks like at the moment though, so there are still a lot of conversations to be had. We're getting there though, slowly but surely.

[kirby-the-gorb]

[bookshelf-in-progress]

I had a minor insight into my writing process. It seems that when it comes to developing a story with any kind of depth, my development process goes

Plot

Theme

Character

Usually, I have to start out with an image of something that happens, figure out a couple more plot beats that shape it into a story, and then develop the people who do the things that bring about those events. But I've just realized that theme is the important, almost unnoticed middle step. While I'm figuring out the What and the Who, the Why of the story is what tells me I'm choosing the right pieces. What lessons does this character need to learn? How do they change? What truth am I trying to tell from this story? Theme is the skeleton I have to hang all the other plot and character beats from if I want to have a coherent story, so Theme is what has to guide me in my writing choices.

[morgan-is-here]

Ashes B7 arson >:)

T[ID: A digital drawing of Ashes O’Reilly from the chest up. They are grinning and looking to the side. They wear a white shirt, a dark navy pinstripe waistcoat, grey tie, and grey hat wit ha red band. Their hair is red and over one shoulder. They a square of the same greys is behind them /End ID]

This was so hard Omg!! 1) Ashes can be very difficult to get right. 2) You picked one of the hardest expressions!! 3) There are not enough colours!! You bastard /j /lh

This is today's art style, tomorrow, who knows.