This conversation is funnier hearing just one half of it.

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Types Of Writer’s Block (And How To Fix Them)

1. High inspiration, low motivation. You have so many ideas to write, but you just don’t have the motivation to actually get them down, and even if you can make yourself start writing it you’ll often find yourself getting distracted or disengaged in favour of imagining everything playing out

Try just bullet pointing the ideas you have instead of writing them properly, especially if you won’t remember it afterwards if you don’t. At least you’ll have the ideas ready to use when you have the motivation later on

2. Low inspiration, high motivation. You’re all prepared, you’re so pumped to write, you open your document aaaaand… three hours later, that cursor is still blinking at the top of a blank page

RIP pantsers but this is where plotting wins out; refer back to your plans and figure out where to go from here. You can also use your bullet points from the last point if this is applicable

3. No inspiration, no motivation. You don’t have any ideas, you don’t feel like writing, all in all everything is just sucky when you think about it

Make a deal with yourself; usually when I’m feeling this way I can tell myself “Okay, just write anyway for ten minutes and after that, if you really want to stop, you can stop” and then once my ten minutes is up I’ve often found my flow. Just remember that, if you still don’t want to keep writing after your ten minutes is up, don’t keep writing anyway and break your deal - it’ll be harder to make deals with yourself in future if your brain knows you don’t honour them

4. Can’t bridge the gap. When you’re stuck on this one sentence/paragraph that you just don’t know how to progress through. Until you figure it out, productivity has slowed to a halt

Mark it up, bullet point what you want to happen here, then move on. A lot of people don’t know how to keep writing after skipping a part because they don’t know exactly what happened to lead up to this moment - but you have a general idea just like you do for everything else you’re writing, and that’s enough. Just keep it generic and know you can go back to edit later, at the same time as when you’re filling in the blank. It’ll give editing you a clear purpose, if nothing else

5. Perfectionism and self-doubt. You don’t think your writing is perfect first time, so you struggle to accept that it’s anything better than a total failure. Whether or not you’re aware of the fact that this is an unrealistic standard makes no difference

Perfection is stagnant. If you write the perfect story, which would require you to turn a good story into something objective rather than subjective, then after that you’d never write again, because nothing will ever meet that standard again. That or you would only ever write the same kind of stories over and over, never growing or developing as a writer. If you’re looking back on your writing and saying “This is so bad, I hate it”, that’s generally a good thing; it means you’ve grown and improved. Maybe your current writing isn’t bad, if just matched your skill level at the time, and since then you’re able to maintain a higher standard since you’ve learned more about your craft as time went on

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SPELLCASTER

hello beloveds ☺️

Fanfic writers are like crows. If you give them treats (comments) they will bring you shiny things (fanfic)

Post 6 sentences from a WIP and then tag 6 people.

tagged by @draculastarion

...

The small mirror she shares with Karlach is precariously leaning against the back of the wall, barely big enough to show her whole face. It’s enough to show the dark smudges around her peridot eyes, luminous against the pale, sun-deprived skin. Midnight hair hangs limp out of its braid, cascading down her back like a waterfall and tumbling over her shoulders. 

The straight-edge of her fringe bothers her. She’s done hiding. 

The first cut is wobbly, hesitant. The second is easier. The third, as precise as a surgeon’s hand.

Little by little, she pulls and cuts until her hair parts to the side and falls around her face. Some of it feathers around her chin, a few shorter strands brush her cheek and highlight the scar – the truth of the night she was abducted. Not saved.

------

Tagging: @scorcher-in and anyone else who wants to join in!

Chapters: 16/? Fandom: Baldur’s Gate (Video Games) Rating: Mature Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence Relationships: Shadowheart/Tav (Baldur’s Gate), Shadowheart (Baldur’s Gate)/Original Female Character(s), Minor or Background Relationship(s) Characters: Shadowheart (Baldur’s Gate), Tav (Baldur’s Gate), Astarion (Baldur’s Gate), Gale (Baldur’s Gate), Lae'zel (Baldur’s Gate), Wyll (Baldur’s Gate), Karlach (Baldur’s Gate), Baldur’s Gate 3 Ensemble Additional Tags: POV Shadowheart (Baldur’s Gate), Canon-Typical Violence, Slow Burn, religious trauma, Act 1 (Baldur’s Gate 3), Follows Shadowheart’s Story, Builds On Canon, Phobias, OC Tav, Character Study, Minor Drinking Summary:

Shadowheart serves her Lady faithfully. She does all she’s asked, wielding mace and magic with equal skill, her desire to become a Dark Justiciar burning in her breast. This mission should be simple: raid a githyanki outpost and steal their orb.

And then everything goes to the hells, leaving her stranded and alone on a mindflayer ship.

What follows is Shadowheart’s journey to complete her mission, solve the mysteries of her past, and find the truth of herself along the way.

[A Shadowheart-centric work that delves into her relationships, her motivations, her sense of self, and her faith.]

—

Chapter 16 is up! I’m finally done with Act 1~

Taking a break before I start posting Act 2, so now’s a good time to catch up :3

Chapters: 16/? Fandom: Baldur's Gate (Video Games) Rating: Mature Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence Relationships: Shadowheart/Tav (Baldur's Gate), Shadowheart (Baldur's Gate)/Original Female Character(s), Minor or Background Relationship(s) Characters: Shadowheart (Baldur's Gate), Tav (Baldur's Gate), Astarion (Baldur's Gate), Gale (Baldur's Gate), Lae'zel (Baldur's Gate), Wyll (Baldur's Gate), Karlach (Baldur's Gate), Baldur's Gate 3 Ensemble Additional Tags: POV Shadowheart (Baldur's Gate), Canon-Typical Violence, Slow Burn, religious trauma, Act 1 (Baldur's Gate 3), Follows Shadowheart's Story, Builds On Canon, Phobias, OC Tav, Character Study, Minor Drinking Summary:

Shadowheart serves her Lady faithfully. She does all she’s asked, wielding mace and magic with equal skill, her desire to become a Dark Justiciar burning in her breast. This mission should be simple: raid a githyanki outpost and steal their orb.

And then everything goes to the hells, leaving her stranded and alone on a mindflayer ship.

What follows is Shadowheart’s journey to complete her mission, solve the mysteries of her past, and find the truth of herself along the way.

[A Shadowheart-centric work that delves into her relationships, her motivations, her sense of self, and her faith.]

---

Chapter 16 is up! I’m finally done with Act 1~

Taking a break before I start posting Act 2, so now’s a good time to catch up :3

Have u heard about the flotillas departing now/soon for palestine

yes!!! i think everyone should learn about the freedom flotilla, which is setting sail for gaza very soon and needs to have eyes and ears on it, as israel has a long history of attacking, raiding and occaisonally killing humanitarian workers on aid ships to gaza, as they did in 2010 with the first freedom flotilla (because that's how long Gaza has been under siege)

here's an interview with journalist and lawyer dylan saba, who is setting sail on it and is a good person to follow to learn more about it:

and this is their website:

remember to follow and check #freedomflotilla on twitter in the coming days.

Chapters: 15/? Fandom: Baldur’s Gate (Video Games) Rating: Mature Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence Relationships: Shadowheart/Tav (Baldur’s Gate), Shadowheart (Baldur’s Gate)/Original Female Character(s), Minor or Background Relationship(s) Characters: Shadowheart (Baldur’s Gate), Tav (Baldur’s Gate), Astarion (Baldur’s Gate), Gale (Baldur’s Gate), Lae'zel (Baldur’s Gate), Wyll (Baldur’s Gate), Karlach (Baldur’s Gate), Baldur’s Gate 3 Ensemble Additional Tags: POV Shadowheart (Baldur’s Gate), Canon-Typical Violence, Slow Burn, religious trauma, Act 1 (Baldur’s Gate 3), Follows Shadowheart’s Story, Builds On Canon, Phobias, OC Tav, Character Study, Minor Drinking Summary:

Shadowheart serves her Lady faithfully. She does all she’s asked, wielding mace and magic with equal skill, her desire to become a Dark Justiciar burning in her breast. This mission should be simple: raid a githyanki outpost and steal their orb.

And then everything goes to the hells, leaving her stranded and alone on a mindflayer ship.

What follows is Shadowheart’s journey to complete her mission, solve the mysteries of her past, and find the truth of herself along the way.

[A Shadowheart-centric work that delves into her relationships, her motivations, her sense of self, and her faith.]

—

Chapter 15 up! One chapter left of Act 1, woo!

PSA: Don't use Open Office

I keep seeing people recommending Open Office as an alternative to Word, and uh... look, it is, technically, an open source alternative to Word. And it can do a lot of what Word can, genuinely! But it is also an abandoned project that hasn't been updated in nine years, and there's an active fork of it which is still receiving updates, and that fork is called LibreOffice, and it's fantastic.

Seriously, if you think that your choices are either "grit your teeth and pay Microsoft for a subscription" or "support free software but have a kind of subpar office suite experience", I guarantee that it's because you're working with outdated information, or outdated software. Most people I know who have used the latest version of LibreOffice prefer it to Word. I even know a handful of people who prefer it to Scrivener.

Open Office was the original project, and so it has the most name recognition, and as far as I can tell, that's really the only reason people are still recommending it. It's kind of like if people were saying "hey, the iPhone 14 isn't your only smart phone option!" but then were only ever recommending the Samsung Galaxy S5 as an alternative. LibreOffice is literally a version of the same exact program as Open Office that's just newer and better – please don't get locked into using a worse tool just because the updated version of the program has a different name!

Chapters: 15/? Fandom: Baldur's Gate (Video Games) Rating: Mature Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence Relationships: Shadowheart/Tav (Baldur's Gate), Shadowheart (Baldur's Gate)/Original Female Character(s), Minor or Background Relationship(s) Characters: Shadowheart (Baldur's Gate), Tav (Baldur's Gate), Astarion (Baldur's Gate), Gale (Baldur's Gate), Lae'zel (Baldur's Gate), Wyll (Baldur's Gate), Karlach (Baldur's Gate), Baldur's Gate 3 Ensemble Additional Tags: POV Shadowheart (Baldur's Gate), Canon-Typical Violence, Slow Burn, religious trauma, Act 1 (Baldur's Gate 3), Follows Shadowheart's Story, Builds On Canon, Phobias, OC Tav, Character Study, Minor Drinking Summary:

Shadowheart serves her Lady faithfully. She does all she’s asked, wielding mace and magic with equal skill, her desire to become a Dark Justiciar burning in her breast. This mission should be simple: raid a githyanki outpost and steal their orb.

And then everything goes to the hells, leaving her stranded and alone on a mindflayer ship.

What follows is Shadowheart’s journey to complete her mission, solve the mysteries of her past, and find the truth of herself along the way.

[A Shadowheart-centric work that delves into her relationships, her motivations, her sense of self, and her faith.]

---

Chapter 15 up! One chapter left of Act 1, woo!

Chapters: 14/? Fandom: Baldur’s Gate (Video Games) Rating: Mature Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence Relationships: Shadowheart/Tav (Baldur’s Gate), Shadowheart (Baldur’s Gate)/Original Female Character(s), Minor or Background Relationship(s) Characters: Shadowheart (Baldur’s Gate), Tav (Baldur’s Gate), Astarion (Baldur’s Gate), Gale (Baldur’s Gate), Lae'zel (Baldur’s Gate), Wyll (Baldur’s Gate), Karlach (Baldur’s Gate), Baldur’s Gate 3 Ensemble Additional Tags: POV Shadowheart (Baldur’s Gate), Canon-Typical Violence, Slow Burn, religious trauma, Act 1 (Baldur’s Gate 3), Follows Shadowheart’s Story, Builds On Canon, Phobias, OC Tav, Character Study, Minor Drinking Summary:

Shadowheart serves her Lady faithfully. She does all she’s asked, wielding mace and magic with equal skill, her desire to become a Dark Justiciar burning in her breast. This mission should be simple: raid a githyanki outpost and steal their orb.

And then everything goes to the hells, leaving her stranded and alone on a mindflayer ship.

What follows is Shadowheart’s journey to complete her mission, solve the mysteries of her past, and find the truth of herself along the way.

[A Shadowheart-centric work that delves into her relationships, her motivations, her sense of self, and her faith.]

—

Chap 14 up! I love Grymforge so much.