The Grey Lady Weeps

[the-grey-lady-weeps]

19 years ago my dad told me my Polly Pocket had to marry her boyfriend before they could live in the same dollhouse so they wouldn’t “give the appearance of sin.”

Today he told me he’s on chapter 9 of the romance novel I’ve written that has no less than 112 “fucks” in it.

[the-grey-lady-weeps]

Duality of writers

Me: this is everything you could possibly want to know about my current WIP, my characters, my plot, and my story as a whole please listen to me talk about it or I might combust Also me: *sees someone reading my story* NO PLEASE STOP

[moxleyrollins]

#the long awaited return of aj lee FRIDAY NIGHT SMACKDOWN | 09.05.25

[d-lanx]

14 years today since this kiss happened

[the-grey-lady-weeps]

Writing Advice (from a writer with multiple completed works and over 1,000,000 words on AO3 and Wattpad)

You can have whole writing sessions without putting down a single word. Stuck in traffic? Listen to a song that inspires you and plot out a scene. Doing the dishes? Talk out an argument between characters while you scrub. Watching a movie? Pay attention to what grabs you and ask yourself, "Can I use this anywhere in my story?"

Learn from other mediums. Pay attention to how artists put loving detail into the most important parts of their paintings but leave the unimportant things blurry. Listen to how musicians and lyricists set tone and mood using only what we can hear. Watch movies and notice how they structure their plots to keep you engaged. Notice how TV shows create long-term character arcs and pay off things set up years ago.

Learn from other genres. How do gothic writers set scenes? How do comedy writers create punchlines? How do romance writers create chemistry? Every genre has its areas it's known for. Study them.

You do actually have to write. Set a goal for yourself to write a little bit every day, even if it's garbage. Books aren't written in 10,000-word sessions. They're written 500, 250, or even just 50 words at a time. Websites like 4TheWords are amazing for this, but you can also find an accountability buddy and go from there.

PLOT. I'm sorry, pantsers, but you need SOMETHING. I recommend using the 5-act structure by asking yourself the following questions: - Where are we starting? - Where are we ending? - What will it take to get from the start to the end? (This should be your biggest turning point) - What will it take to get from the start to the primary turning point? (This will be your first turning point) - What will it take to get from your primary turning point to the end? (This is your tertiary turning point). If you can answer all these questions, congrats, you've got a start, a 3-point middle, and an end, which makes 5 acts.

If you've got writer's block, odds are the issues aren't with what you're writing; it's what you wrote to get there. You took a wrong turn somewhere and are just now realizing it. I recommend going back a scene or two and trying a different direction to see if that fixes any issues.

All your darlings must be employed. If you love a scene and don't want to cut it, that's fine. But that scene had better pull its weight and accomplish something in the grander storyline. Otherwise it's a freeloading darling, and as cute as they are, it's time to kill it.

Make a darling graveyard. Hate cutting a scene? Put it in a separate doc to come back to if you can use it elsewhere.

Give yourself an upload cushion. If you're going to upload chapters piece by piece instead of the whole work at once, wait to start uploading until you have a cushion of finished chapters. The math I recommend for calculating your cushion size is: how many chapters you want to upload at a time x 4. So 1 chapter per upload x 4 = a 4-chapter cushion. This way, if you get sick, busy, or the AO3 curse strikes, you've still got time to write and catch up.

WORDS ON THE PAGE ARE BETTER THAN WORDS IN YOUR HEAD. Will every writing session be good? No. Will you hate much of what you write? Probably. But can you do anything with imaginary words that float in your head while you stare at the blank page? NO! So write the darn words and go from there! No matter how bad they are, you'll still be in a better place than you would be without any writing at all.

Now, go forth and write!

[the-grey-lady-weeps]

Favorite details of my cover in no particular order:

The matching red details in their outfits

The hot-pink eyeliner Thea is wearing

Kendrix's eyebrow slit

Thea's belt (alluding to the champion belts of wrestlers)

Thea's red nail polish (the perfect color for hiding blood)

Kendrix's messy bun (he's so 2010s Tumblr coded)

The side-eye TM

The diamonds behind them looking like a wrestling ring and rope

Kendrix's demon tee

Thea's heels making her taller because Kendrix is MASSIVE

Getting to draw a plus-sized woman for my FMC

One of my favorite parts of starting a new story is getting to make the new cover! I love using my "Paint Bashing" technique to make the perfect depiction of my characters.

[fuckyeahnickburkhardt]

Hank is truly such an underrated, underappreciated character. Every single thing he says is so interesting! He knows he's hot shit but also is bashful when pretty women hit on him. He's so so brave but terrified of rats. He's been divorced four times but knows all these random facts because he got interested in his ex wives' hobbies and jobs and listened to them, like REALLY listened enough to absorb information and recall it years later. He waxes philosophical about a junkyard. He's loyal to a fault. He's a protector. He's so so SO observant and smart. And the show really builds him up as Nick's partner in the human world equal to how Monroe is Nick's partner in the Grimm world with such intention. He's so important! And Russell Hornsby plays him so well.

[the-grey-lady-weeps]

Writing an original story after writing fanfic

Me: The hard part about writing original works after writing fanfics is that you no longer have that initial buy-in from the readers for your characters. The readers don't already like everyone, so it's important to keep that in mind as you're introducing them.

Also me: what if I make my main character an absolute dick for the entirety of his first POV chapter after we already watched him make the other MC cry in her chapter?

[straight-outta-hobbiton]

All I’m saying is that Don Eppes clearly had an aptitude for music that probably could have been on par with Charlie’s mathematical ability and instead of digging into the fact that 1) Don apparently never forgot how to read music or play piano despite supposedly only taking lessons as a child and 2) saw a motherfucking musical scale in a pattern of bombs on a bridge that proved to be a super important clue for their ongoing case— a case which, I might add, relied on the idea that a former Cold War spy dug deep enough into the Eppes brothers’ background that he could personalize all of his clues for their specific knowledge and skillsets. 

Don was a genius, too. He just didn’t develop it the way Charlie did.

[darkshrimpemotions]

God I love the Don therapy sessions so much. I don't know who was like "let's put Action Guy in therapy and have him chew the scenery and discuss his deepest fears and insecurities while the action happens elsewhere" but they are a fucking genius.

Because Don Eppes is a fascinating person. He's the older brother who grew up in his younger brother's shadow. He's the sensitive, lonely kid who got less attention because his brother needed more.

He's the above-average smart kid who still felt like "the stupid one" because he grew up with a genius. He's the guy who feels replaceable because he lives with someone who's truly unique in a way most people just aren't.

He has so much going on in his head and says almost none of it. So those therapy scenes are a fucking gift, not to mention one of the few positive depictions of therapy really helping a "macho" character who insisted at first he didn't need to talk.

[numb3rstv]

[s-wordsmith]

Reason # 657 to like NUMB3RS: main character (male, thirties, head of an FBI team) goes to therapy. He initially rejects the idea, with a lot of toxic misconceptions about how he doesn't need it because he's not a basket case or whatever, but after conversations with a friend/colleague, his father, and his brother (the latter two at his prompting because the first one made him think) he literally wasted no time in showing up at the therapist's office to get started. The therapist is a recurring character over the next ~roughly season and a half. We see parts of the sessions. He talks to friends, family, significant others, and even the occasional new colleague about his therapy and things he's learned. He changes the way he operates. He explores his religion, which he's never been active in before. He listens. And the thing is, this character isn't a "basket case," he's not a bad character, he's a normal guy with a lot of stress in his life and some conflicting pressures and the conversation that gets him thinking about it in the first place essentially boils down to "even if you don't think it can help, it certainly can't hurt and you never know." Positive, real, vulnerable depiction of therapy and with a leading, very masculine male character (partially at the suggestion of the actor, by the way; shout out to Rob Morrow).

[bisexualmultifandommess]

LET THIS MAN BE SINGLE FOR A SECOND

[dylanobrienisbatman]

Numb3rs is one of my favourite shows. It's an FBI procedural, with math, on its surface, but underneath it is the story of two brothers who are hugely different in almost every single way starting to finally develop a relationship in their adulthood. After the death of their mother rocked their family, they basically had no relationship, but throughout the show they find a way to build a new relationship. They bond through being able to share the cases they work together and learning from each other. Especially at the beginning there are so many tentative, quiet moments where they just sit together in quiet silence and try to learn to be brothers again. It's a really lovely undertone to the show; quiet and unexpected, but very heartfelt and honest.

[theragamuffininitiative]

Thinking about therapy in fiction and this one episode of the early 2000s show, Numb3rs where Don is forced to go to therapy for reasons which are only tangentially important, and the show could have done the tired "put the character in therapy so we make them relive their trauma for views" or "character has therapy only to realize through outside forces that they don't need it" or worse, "horrible crackpot therapist abuses character and/or turns out to be a psychopath."

But they Didn't. And instead you get Don being Extremely Reluctant to be in therapy or deal with his (many) issues or any of that mushy garbage but he's up against A Real Pro of a counselor (impeccably played by Wendell Pierce) who just makes him talk and the pinnacle of this whole situation is that the main conversation lasts an entire episode (intercut with the rest of the characters handling that week's action, but in ways relevant to the conversation, like we're talking deep narrative parallelism here and Don is the freaking narrator) with Don becoming increasingly frustrated at having his thoughts and feelings pulled out of him when his team needs him at work, while making revelation after revelation about himself, until Pierce's character staidly declares, "You're not worried that your team will fall apart when you're not there, you're afraid that they won't." LIKE???!

AND THEN we have a Don who not only takes all this stuff he just worked out to heart, but He Isn't Magically Fixed And Fine and so he chooses to continue going to therapy long-term and it becomes part of his normal life in a casual, off-screen function, and you see him slowly blossom because of it AND THIS WAS NOT APPRECIATED ENOUGH BUT GOSH I LOVE THAT WHOLE JOURNEY.

[the-grey-lady-weeps]

As a therapist in training, the way the show handled Don getting therapy will always be the gold standard for me. The therapist handled it wonderfully, the show treated it respectfully, and we even got to see family therapy come in to play when Charlie joined him for that session. There’s many reasons why the show has remained one of my favorites for so long, and the therapy episodes are several of them!

[00srachel]

Numb3rs watch: 5x16

I love Colby so much 😭

[flamingwildflower]

Charlie: The best part of an oreo is the black cookie part, not the frosting. Deal with it

Larry: Darkness without light is an abyss, light without darkness is blinding. You cannot have a coin with one side

Don: Yo Socrates, it’s a fucking cookie