I Found An Extremely Dope Disability Survival Guide For Those Who Are Homebound, Bedbound, In Need Of

Whenever I feel envious of other people's work, I try to remind myself that where I see beauty, they may be overwhelmed with insecurity. This just goes to show that the part of my writing I'm insecure about, how monotonous I can be, can blind me from seeing myself the way others see me.

My advice, if you're open to receiving it, is you cannot control your emotions, so they are not an indicator of how good of a person you are. Allow yourself to feel, but don't let envy or guilt dictate your life.

For what it's worth, I find your writing so interesting! The way that I've seen you talk about love and friendship is incredible, and I envy how expressive and cohesive your writing is. Keep feeling and keep going, my guy :)

Today, I felt envious.

I don't know how to explain the guilt that comes with feeling envy, it's maybe one of the worst emotions.

You see all these poets whose work is better than yours, whether it be better worded, better written, more meaningful, etc etc... and you think: "Why can't I write like that? What am I doing wrong?"

I've often felt the topics I write about are frivolous. Most of my poetry speaks of love, or friendship, or what small things mean to me. I am not writing of my pain.

I think this is something very common amongst poets. We kinda feel as though we must write of anguish, that you have to feel drained every time you finish writing a poem to actually have something be meaningful.

I've struggled with this a lot recently. Feelings of jealousy or envy, insecurity about my work, second thoughts on if writing is really worth it, all that stuff.

I don't really have advice to give about what to do when you feel this way, as I haven't figured it out myself.

As writers, tell me what you do when you feel this way, or just tell me about a time you've felt like this, or tell me of your insecurities about your work.

I think that once you've hurt someone enough times, you don't deserve to come back into their lives, apologizing for your actions over and over again. At some point, it stops being them and it starts being about you. At some point, you owe it to them to stay gone.

- @annetries-towrite

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Public service announcement.

Blue/purple lips and fingernails is a symptom of low oxygen in lighter skin tones.

In darker skin tones you're looking for grey or white lips and fingernails. Other places where this may be not evidence is the tongue and gums.

Figured since everyone gets taught what low oxygen looks like on lighter skin. Everyone should know what it looks like on dark skin too.

-fae

Saw this advice on Twitter today, and I think it's going to end up being useful for me. 🥹 Thought I'd share it with y'all, too.

By nurture, I think I will always crawl back, begging, bleeding, and pleading for someone to tend to the wounds they didn't make. By nature, I believe I deserved someone to be there in the first place.

- @annetries-towrite

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“When I first met her, I knew in a moment I would have to spend the next few days re-arranging my mind so there’d be room for her to stay.”

— Brian Andreas

If it doesn’t impact the rest of the story, you didn’t raise the stakes

              I recently went back to a chapter at the midpoint of my novel and changed a huge detail of it because I thought it didn’t raise the stakes enough as it was. Because of this change, I had to go through every single scene and chapter beyond that point and edit it to fit in and make sense. It was annoying, but that’s how I knew I achieved what I wanted to.

              Raised stakes change everything about a story.

              If your characters can continue on as they were, then you didn’t really raise the stakes at all. This heightened pressure or danger has to be heightened enough that their lives as they know them are different now.

              Consider this: at the midpoint, you introduce a mutated form of a monster your characters have been facing that’s more deadly and intelligent than its predecessor. It’s a super scary scene, but after that, your characters go back to their safe house to talk over how best to kill it.

              Suddenly, this new monster doesn’t feel as much of a threat. It’s just another element of the same threat they’ve already been facing.

              To properly use this element as a way to raise the stakes, it should take away something the characters rely on—safety, allies, powers, etc. Something they can’t get back, and don’t get back for the rest of the story. They now have to adapt to new circumstances, and things will never be as easy for them again.

              So maybe instead, they flee to their safe house only to discover that it’s no longer safe—the monster is smart enough to get through their hidden entrance and corner them. Now they’re stuck out in the open, taking turns keeping watch and slowly deteriorating to sleeplessness and stress.

              That’s a delicious steak.

Character Traits

An interesting trick I learned from scrolling through my Instagram feed (instead of writing) is to focus on the extremes of your character - the two ends on a character’s personality spectrum.

Take a perfectionist, for example. This person strives to be perfect all of the time, therefore, they work extremely hard. However, this person is so obsessed with being perfect that they can come off as condescending or controlling.

A character’s personality traits also depend heavily on the viewpoint at which you’re looking. Take an abusive parent. When the parent is at work, all of their co-workers may see them as a caring, respectful, and friendly person. To their child, they’re seen as uncivilized and a monster.

I’m not saying you have to use the “extremes” concept on every character. In fact, assigning only negative traits helps the reader identify who the antagonist (or villain) may be. However, giving a character both positive and negative traits helps humanize the character.

If you have any questions regarding character traits, or feel as though I’ve missed something, feel free to let me know!

Characters Types

Protagonist: 

The Protagonist is the main character of your story. They are the most mentioned, the one who drives the plot, the one the readers will be paying most of their attention to. Generally, there is only one, but there can be more than one protagonist in a story. 

Antagonist:  

The Antagonist is the character that goes against the Protagonist. An Antagonist doesn’t have to be a person, necessarily. It can be a group of people, society, nature, et cetera. They don’t even have to be evil, they just need to go against the Protagonist’s motives.  

Villain:

Both the Villain and the Antagonist are opponents of the Protagonist. Though, the main difference is the Villain has bad intentions. They are evil.

Dynamic Character:

A Dynamic Character is the person who undergoes a change throughout the story, whether it be good or bad. The character’s motives or morals are different than they were in the beginning. The change is normally permanent.

Flat or Static Character:

A Flat or Static Character is the opposite of a Dynamic Character, hardly experiencing any changes throughout the story, if at all. Generally, the reader doesn’t know much about this character. 

If you have any questions regarding character types, or feel as though I’ve missed something, feel free to let me know!

It is said that before you start looking for your soulmate you need to find yourself, but after you find yourself you don't need to look for them. You will be able to "recognize" your soulmate, because you are aware of your own needs, priorities, perspectives and desires. And a soulmate is not someone who completes you. Too many are looking for "another half" without realizing they are already complete. In reality, a soulmate is someone with whom you can share your whole being — all sides of you; someone to open your completeness to without the fear of not being understood.