12/16/20 Had a dream about Edith and Fern in a modern setting, they kinda looked like how they were supposed to be, except Fern was covered in tattoos. Been a long while since I've been someone else in my dream, I was Edith. And I never dreamt about my original characters before. It wasn't so random either, I recently made an edit of them for myself. They felt an undeniable connection to each other, it was reassuring that I can write these characters to fall in love. Don't really remember anything about the dream though, haha

I think my writing is improving as I stop asking myself “is this good enough?” and start asking myself “is this honest? Is this true to me?”

“Good” is so arbitrary, but the harder I focus on being honest over being good I think the quality improves and connects more genuinely with people

There are so many things that we can't say, because they are too painful. We hope that the things we can say will soothe the rest, or appease it in some way. Stories are compensatory. The world is unfair, unjust, unknowable, out of control. When we tell a story we exercise control, but in such a way as to leave a gap, an opening. It is a version, but never the final one. And perhaps we hope that the silences will be heard by someone else, and the story can continue, can be retold. When we write we offer the silence as much as the story. Words are the part of silence that can be spoken.

Jeanette Winterson, Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?

Fucking this ^

i try to create things and write things but they never turn out as genuine as i want them to be? i try to open myself up to more emotion so inspiration can hopefully come to me more easily but idk i just think i am the kind of person who isn't able to feel very vividly at all

i think the more time you spend steeped in an emotion (especially when you are actively working with it or through it as you do in art) or with a particular project the more familiar–to you–it becomes. and the more familiar it becomes the more it takes on the feel of the ordinary, the hum-drum and lacklustre, the been-here-done-that etc. etc.,.it feels as though it becomes worn and old and i’m going to tell you, first of all: this is entirely, completely normal–second of all: this is not an indication of a lack of feeling.

no matter how vivid or striking something is to you on the outside, when you’re living with it day after day, it is just your normal and you don’t think of it in terms of the novelty it presents to someone else. the truth is that you’re never going to be an accurate judge of the sincerity of your own work because, essentially, you know too much about it, have seen too much of it and, more detrimentally, expect too much. you see what it isn’t more than what it is because you have countless ideas of what it could be informing the way you look at it, if that makes sense: what you’re seeing, really, and this only gets worse the more you look, is your own worries and insecurities that are drawing their own image over the thing itself, erasing it in the process.. 

no matter how critical and perceptive we try to be, you’ll never see anything you make with the outside perspective you have, and hope for, when seeing (and enjoying) what others have made and i think a key part of creating and enjoying what you create is accepting that first. that doesn’t mean you don’t push yourself to grow or improve, but you need to do so without submitting yourself to a standard that is literally impossible to achieve. it’s like, i don’t know, trying to paint the inside of your own skull or something.  

like…in art, things always go missing: this word is never the right word, this phrase is never the right phrase. you haven’t quite caught what you set out to catch. but we make art anyway. exactitude is impossible. that doesn’t make it insincere. i think sometimes the best way to see this is to just step away from what you’ve made–entirely. write what you write, work as much as you can until you feel there’s nothing more to add, and then–crucially– leave it. don’t keep examining it, don’t keep questioning it. let it sit on its own and while it does that you move on to something else and let your mind settle–repeat this over and over. and in the meantime: read, explore, learn, enjoy the world as it is, not with the hope or expectation of gleaning something from it. inspiration is great but it’s also a bit like a mythical creature in how it strikes–incredibly unpredictable. it isn’t always everything, and it isn’t always a lightning bolt moment either. sometimes it grows and establishes itself very slowly, often obliquely. and sometimes you don’t see it until it resurfaces again, out of the blue, months or even years later. if you train your eyes on being ‘inspired’, i.e., looking for whatever you think ‘inspiration’ will look or feel like, you sometimes end up missing a lot more. distance, if you want clarity, is everything.

 when you step away from your work and revisit what you’ve written after a few months, you’ll be surprised by how different it is–you can appreciate things in a way you couldn’t before because you’re not staring so hard at it that you lose the bigger picture. you also end up picking up on things that show you how you’ve grown and improved, that, again, are often impossible to see when you’re actually working. i think the more often you do this–allowing your mind and the work some time to breathe and exposing yourself to other things that have nothing to do with creating and writing directly–the easier it becomes to assess your own work somewhat more clearly, and less harshly, and the more you enjoy it.

to me, writing or really any sort of creating is always going to be a work in progress and i think we need to learn to accept and embrace that first. it is messy and bumpy and yes, sometimes it is downright bad, but that doesn’t mean none of that contributes along the way. the more you work (and it is serious, agonizing work), the more you forge some kind of path for yourself, and each new work is walking that path again and again, smoothing it out until it is less bumpy, less messy, until, eventually, it gets to a point where you aren’t worried about tripping over uneven terrain, or stumbling over hidden roots or whatever else may be there to catch you off guard. it’s familiar enough that some parts you now know instinctively and don’t need even need to think about, you just learn to enjoy the journey itself. to me, this counts for everything ♡

Katherine and Oliver - Family Aesthetic

Katherine and Emily - Family Aesthetic

Jonathan and Oliver - Family Aesthetic

Jonathan and Emily - Family Aesthetic

Marcus and Samuel - Family Aesthetic

Edith and Samuel - Family Aesthetic

Edith and Marcus - Family Aesthetic

Charlotte and Samuel - Family Aesthetic

Charlotte and Marcus - Family Aesthetic

Charlotte and Edith - Family Aesthetic

David and Samuel - Family Aesthetic

David and Marcus - Family Aesthetic

David and Edith - Family Aesthetic