THE SNOTTED BRAT

a full-time dreamer

[allthingseurope]

Niedzica Castle, Poland (by Piotr)

[sunsetquotes]

We could have been happy. I know that, and it is perhaps the hardest thing to know.

Ally Condie (via sunsetquotes)

[sunsetquotes]

“You don’t know how little you matter until you’re all alone.”

— Frank Ocean

[sunsetquotes]

“All change is not growth, as all movement is not forward.”

— Ellen Glasgow

[sunsetquotes]

“Before you find your soul mate, you must first discover your soul.”

— Charles Glassman

[stupidpetface]

[40ouncesandamule]

Care bear stare but from a cat that is indifferent

[wordhaze]

“How long they choose to love you will never be your decision.”

— Drake

[a-secretkey]

simabossneko

[artandchocolate]

Jane Austen - "Sense and Sensibility"

[thoughtkick]

“Despite how open, peaceful, and loving you attempt to be, people can only meet you as deeply as they’ve met themselves.”

— Matt Kahn

[thesnottedbrat]

You know what love that unforgettable? First love.

[wordsnstuff]

So I’ve been in a slump for months and I’m not sure why. Every time I open up a word doc or even a notebook, I can’t get anything to come out. Any advice on how to get back into the stride of writing? I miss it...

I’ve been in a somewhat similar situation for years now… and writing is kind of my job. I guess I have to say that there’s no magic activity, exercise, or waiting period that will make inspiration show up. It’s a generated material, so you have to genuinely try to create it. Not just watching a movie that you like a lot or listening to the right music, you have to put your energy into turning that interest into motivation to create something new. 

There may be a point where you have an idea that you’re genuinely interested in writing, but when you sit down to put it on paper, you feel that pit in your stomach return. Hell, I have to write about 4,000 words today to catch up on my weekly word quota on one of my works in progress, and the thought almost makes me want to curl up in my bed and heave up a lung. 

That’s the way it works when you take creativity seriously or you see it as a part of your identity. Nothing is consistent, even passion, and giving it time can help but it usually doesn’t. The best advice I can offer is to force yourself to get something down. Literally anything. It can be what you did this morning, retelling an episode of Friends, describing the feeling of freezing water against your skin on a hot day, anything under the sun, just words. Then, you can give yourself room to find something you want to write. I’m assuming that you don’t have any looming deadlines, so consume a bunch of content that makes you feel feelings and then ask yourself questions about it to get the ball rolling. 

I find that fanfiction can help a lot when I’m in a slump because I don’t really have to think up a complex world or three-dimensional characters, and I can just vomit out whatever fantasy I want to place myself in, which gets the words flowing. (No shade to fic writers, y’all work hard, create complex story-lines, and are so generous and I know that you don’t vomit out your content.)

So, TLDR; You have to create your own inspiration if you rely on inspiration to write, try to get any words at all onto a page and then try your story again, and fanfiction solves most anything. 

Hope this helps!

–

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I’d also really appreciate it if you would check out my separate blog dedicated to my current work in progress. I also run writing sprints over on snapchat.

[dingdongyouarewrong]

you can explain why it’s important for aspiring authors to read published books and not just fanfiction without condescending to fanfiction authors/readers and implying it’s inherently of lesser quality

[dingdongyouarewrong]

like a lot of fanfiction is genuinely good and well-written! there’s some amazing work there! there is absolutely fanfiction out there that’s the same quality as well-written published works. being like ‘well, it’s cute, but it’s not real writing’ is just dismissive and frankly completely untrue. 

but, at the same time, there are a lot of reasons it’s important to also read published works, and those reasons aren’t just ‘it’s better’. for one, a lot of writing original fiction involves introducing one’s own characters and setting to an audience who knows nothing about the characters or worldbuilding, which is generally not something you’re going to learn how to do by only reading stories where you already know the world and characters. that doesn’t mean the work isn’t good; it just means it doesn’t teach all of the skills you’ll need to know when writing

[roach-works]

im a lifelong fanfic writer, but one thing fanfic won’t teach you is how to end a story. or how to structure one, really. fanfic is itself a continuation of a story, it’s a transformative work, and… it’s kind of rare for long, chaptered fic to actually be complete. it’s awesome when it is! but you do kind of get used to reading fanfic as a big nebulous cloud of what-ifs, and furthermores, and so ons, and etc.

published fiction pretty much always has to have a start, middle, and ending. you can’t really learn formal anatomy from fanfiction. you can learn a lot of creative stuff that published fiction rarely has the freedom to engage in–aus and remixes, for instance–but fanfic really isn’t where you’re going to be able to study structure and discipline.

[tsukithewolf]

Thank god. Finally some good fanfic vs. published story dialogue.

[mixelation]

Fanfiction is also usually published as the author writes it, which means authors are limited in their ability to retroactively change story elements (removing plot holes or subplots that go nowhere, or adding foreshadowing for an important event they decided they wanted 1/3 into their story, etc). This means stories overall are generally less “polished” than professionally published work. 

On a similar note, fic writers can “get away with” a lot more fluff that doesn’t move the story forward– ie, dedicating an entire chapter to characters cuddling, or spending a very long time explaining the economics system of a secret wizard world. This is a strength of fic because it’s often what people want to read– but it’s also something that usually hinges on the reader already being deeply invested in the characters and the world, which is a luxury you’re not going to get from a lot of original fiction.

[derinthescarletpescatarian]

Fanfiction isn’t necessarily better or worse than original fic, but it is a fundamentally different art. An aspiring fiction author reading only fanfic is like an aspiring fiction author reading only poetry; it’s great to enrich your skills by reading widely, but if you don’t read *the kind of art you are trying to make*, you won’t know how to make it.

[thesnottedbrat]

There she is, standing alone in the middle of the dark.

I never knew what she think of, nor what she wants.

I want to get to know her,

I want to get ahold of her,

... but she didnt even give a damn.

Honey, what should i do with you?

[sunsetquotes]

“All that is gold does not glitter. Not all those who wander are lost.”

— J.R.R. Tolkien

[sunsetquotes]

“The sad truth is that the truth is sad.”

— Lemony Snicket

[sunsetquotes]

“Love is so short, forgetting is so long.”

— Pablo Neruda