Something I Wish I Had Realized Earlier: You Can Write Poems On The Same Subject More Than Once. You

How to Avoid Over-Thinking

1. When you feel bogged down and you can’t clear your mind, do something physical or get some exercise.

2. Set a time limit for your “thinking time” then make yourself move on to doing something else.

3. Interrupt the thinking process or distract yourself by diverting your attention onto something very different.

4. Stop discussing what concerns you with everyone you meet as you’ll just end up confused, and you won’t know what to do.

5. Accept that uncertainty is part of this life, and we don’t have all the facts, or know what’s further down the road.

6. Throw yourself into a project, a hobby or some work. That will force you to refocus on something else instead.

7. Let your mind go blank and just relax for a while. It will help you see more clearly when you start to think, next time.

derek hale is sent the ashy remains of his family by kate argent: derek mail

derek hale gets out of prison: derek bail

Bro, it's like 4PM in São Paulo right now and all the smoke made it look like it's already night...city of ashes indeed.

Jeff Goldblum’s priceless reaction to the potential Marvel / Sony split

Giant animatronic dinosaur outside bbc hq! Wow! Credits: BBC

I saw a post talking about how Terry Pratchett only wrote 400 words a day, how that goal helped him write literally dozens of books before he died. So I reduced my own daily word goal. I went down from 1,000 to 200. With that 800-word wall taken down, I’ve been writing more. “I won’t get on tumblr/watch TV/draw/read until I hit my word goal” used to be something I said as self-restraint. And when I inevitably couldn’t cough up four pages in one sitting, I felt like garbage, and the pleasurable hobbies I had planned on felt like I was cheating myself when I just gave up. Now it’s something I say because I just have to finish this scene, just have to round out this conversation, can’t stop now, because I’m enjoying myself, I’m having an amazing time writing. Something that hasn’t been true of my original works since middle school. 

And sometimes I think, “Well, two hundred is technically less than four hundred.” And I have to stop myself, because - I am writing half as much as Terry Pratchett. Terry fucking Pratchett, who not only published regularly up until his death, but published books that were consistently good. 

And this has also been an immense help as a writer with ADHD, because I don’t feel bad when I take a break from writing - two hundred words works up quick, after all. If I take a break at 150, I have a whole day to write 50 more words, and I’ve rarely written less than 200 words and not felt the need to keep writing because I need to tie up a loose end anyways. 

Yes, sometimes, I do not produce a single thing worth keeping in those two hundred words. But it’s much easier to edit two hundred words of bad writing than it is to edit no writing at all.