Ooo Can You Do Some Hc's Or A Fic Where Richie's Feeling Like Dead Weight To The Group, And Starts To

I want to love myself more this new year. I want to feel daisies growing in my bones. I want to clean the sadness inside the ocean in my head, and I want to breathe without hesitating. I want to think about the future more instead of suffocating in the past. I want to think about good things, not the bad things that can happen. I tend to drown myself in a million scenarios that could rip my skin apart, but I want to be more confident and think that I’m deserving of some never-ending glory. I want to love myself more this new year because I’m the only person who can truly make me the happiest, I just need to realize it.

- Alexa Evangelista, the book I’ll never finish writing

oh, i am finally old enough to know why my parents took so long to grab their coats. why they would ask us to get ready to go only to sit down for another round of coffee. what would i tell myself, at 10 years old? it’s okay. sit down with them too. take in the extra hour with your friend and her family. when you get home, write down every moment in your diary. one day you will be older and you will be waving goodbye to your best friend, and you will turn the key to start your beat up little car engine, and you will look back over your shoulder. her hair will be blowing in the wind and she will be beautiful and you will be, for a moment, struck by all of it. what you will feel is so wide and nameless that it will engulf you. and you will think of being 14 and kicking her under the table in math every time you wanted to whisper something behind the teacher’s back. you will think about how long the days felt, and how you could hold her hand whenever you wished, but you didn’t. and you will think about all of the people you could have lingered with. and you will wish, more than you have ever felt a wish, that the universe just gave you that - more time to linger. more time to say - i love you. i know i need to leave, but i don’t want to leave you. and when i go, i am leaving a piece of my heart that lingers too. 

one more round of coffee. the days are so short, and you are so lovely.

Writing a First Draft

I’ve seen a lot of advice posts that encourage writing a “bad” first draft, or saying that the point of the first draft isn’t to be “good” just to be done, but I have yet to see any examples of what that actually means (which is unfortunate because for a lot of first-time writers that may just mean that their best effort on a first draft isn’t “good enough”), so that’s what I’m here for! The ultimate advocate of ugly writing, babey! Let’s write some “bad” first drafts!!

Forewarning that this is going to be difficult for you perfectionists out there (same hat tho!!!), but really, if you’re looking to finish a first draft within a reasonable time frame (and not continue to rewrite the beginning 50 times to get there, only to be disappointed when the next scenes aren’t as “good” as the beginning), then this really is the way to go. Perfectionism comes in super handy in later drafts, but it’s a real burden in the first draft, and I really really relate to that. What I find that helps keep my perfectionism in check while I’m drafting is to keep a separate Word doc open (or a notebook and pen at hand) to jot down new ideas or things that have changed throughout the draft. Putting a page number down next to the notation will save your life as well. Your future self will thank you!

Okay, so let’s get into it! You have an idea, and you need to get that first draft out before you lose motivation or move on to a shiny new WIP idea. What’s that first draft going to look like?

Write the scenes you’re excited about first. If you’re someone who, like myself, needs to write things in chronological order, then write these scenes in chronological order - but! if you have the conclusion figured out, then write it now, yes, even before that one bit in the middle you’re not sure about. Is it likely that some details in these scenes will change as you keep writing different parts of the book? Yes! Do it anyway! Anything you write will be helpful for later drafts, so write those scenes!!! Plus, if you start with what you’re excited about, you’ll want to keep writing even after they’re finished, because your brain will just keep generating other super cool ideas for those in-between scenes. And yeah, there will definitely be filler scenes to write, but you can probably worry about those in the next draft.

If you’re on a roll, don’t worry about punctuation, grammar, or spelling. I mean it! If those red squiggles in Word bother you, turn them off (they’re really only semi-helpful for editing, and we’re not doing that right now). If you write faster and think better using “internet grammar” (minimal/excessive punctuation, no capitalization, weird spelling, etc.), then do that! If it helps you get words on the page, it’s worth doing.

If you’re not on a roll, try putting some space between what you’ve written and what you need to write. For me, that frequently means hitting enter (even mid-sentence if I suddenly get stuck), typing “monkey,” and then hitting enter again, as many times as it takes for my brain to reboot and remember what the hell I was going for. If that means I have a chain of 20 monkeys in the middle of a paragraph, so be it. They get to hang out there until I come back in draft two and delete them. 

I’ve also written “uhhhhhh” and “oh fuck now what” several times in a first draft. It happens. It’s easier to write in a way that mirrors your thought process, so just do what works. Use memes in your prose to keep it moving - it’ll make future you laugh when you go back through on draft two!

Don’t be afraid to change major pieces of plot - but don’t you dare go back and rewrite earlier pieces to match! Let’s say you’re at the end of act one and you revealed some tragic detail about your MC’s backstory, but now you’re in the middle of act two and you’ve realized that it no longer fits your idea of MC and you no longer want it to be true. Simply make a brief note of it and keep writing like that scene in act one never happened. Deleting, rewriting, and repurposing are all for later drafts! The goal on the first draft is literally just to reach the end - and it’s inevitable that you’ll find and change the story along the way.

Forget about foreshadowing. No matter how detailed of an outliner you are, the fact is that in the first draft you really don’t actually know what’s going to happen yet in your book (see point 5). So forget about trying to foreshadow. Spell out what’s happening plain as day - because the first draft is just one long exposition dump to aide you in future drafts. If you get halfway through and a sudden twist or weird piece of backstory jumps out at you, write it in as if you had foreshadowed, even though you haven’t yet. Make a note of it, and maybe even note where you could foreshadow this in the next few drafts, but keep moving forward. 

Changing perspectives is fine even if it goes against how you know you want your final draft to be. If you have a scene in mind that you know you need to include, but you have no idea how MC would react during it, but you know how your side character would react, write the scene from the side character’s perspective. You can think about MC’s POV in that scene later - again, the point is just to get it written, so if switching POVs gets you through the scene, do it.

Ultimately, this is what people mean when they say your first draft is going to be “ugly.” It’s going to be a little (or a lot) messy. But that’s okay. The struggle of the beginning writer is realizing that your first draft is not going to look like anything you’ve read before - because those are final drafts. And to the gifted writers who breezed through school (like I did) by submitting their first draft essays for grading - that’s not going to work here. Every time you rewrite a piece, it gets better. If you try to make your first draft perfect, you will just end up frustrated and disappointed at the time you wasted, because you’ll end up reworking 80% of it or more in the subsequent drafts. Your writing style will change and improve, and your knowledge will grow, and every time you revisit a draft, that will be reflected.

So write that ugly draft. Insert so many author’s notes mid-paragraph that you look like an early 2000s fanfic writer. Contradict previous scenes like you’re constructing the most elaborate Winchester Mystery House -esque draft the world has ever seen, complete with paragraphs that lead to nowhere and mysterious monkey chains cutting sentences in half. 

And then, in the second draft, make it look as though the first draft never happened.

we talk a lot about Shauna being ruthless and violent and resentful, and not to say she isn't those things but also--

Shauna, who risks burning alive to save Van.

Shauna, who pauses to comfort the reunited Tai & Van after the latter is found safe

Shauna, who consoles and looks after Javi all through season 1 while his older brother is busy being misogynistic and getting fucked

Shauna, who takes on the job of butcher despite not necessarily wanting or enjoying it and never complains or slacks off even when the task becomes traumatizing

Shauna, who tries to get Jackie to eat, to keep going, when everyone else has given up on her by that point.

Shauna, who has to be goaded, essentially given permission before she becomes violent

Shauna, who loved her baby in spite of the stress her pregnancy added to an already precarious situation, who spoke to him and cradled him and futily tried to keep him alive, who buried him away from the others to keep him safe in death

Shauna, who kept her daughter's favorite childhood toy in her car long after she'd outgrown it, to always keep a piece of her close by

Shauna, who sees Tai struggling and invites her to stay over, so that Tai won't be afraid to sleep

Shauna, who goes along with Jeff's boring, milqtoast furniture salesman fantasies because while she doesn't love him the way she did Jackie, she does care about him and wants to make him happy

Shauna, who was the only one of the group to show up to Misty's how to get away with murder seminar and thank Misty for going to the trouble

Shauna, who is soft-spoken where Jackie is loud, conciliatory where Jackie is pushy, helpful where Jackie is lackadaisical, proactive where Jackie sulks.

Shauna, who's not a perfect friend or mother or wife but who's still quietly one of the nicest, most empathetic of the Yellowjackets and yet because she got drafted into being the group's butcher, wrote bitchy journal entries, and did one fucked up thing behind her best friend's back (which she immediately regretted and agonized over) gets rebranded by fandom as caustic, overly-snarky and quick tempered when it takes her 10 episodes to get pissed off enough to raise her voice

Do you have any tips to stop cringing at/hating your own writing? Thanks!

yeah actually: write cringe shit on purpose

do you know what so fucking cringe? superheroes. most people irl associate them with five year old boys and gamer bros who like excluding people based on whether they know how many Robins there are. you MIGHT get lucky and have them associate you with shippers and fandom folks. when my brand new housemate said to me ‘oh so I hear you like superheroes?’ I felt my soul fucking evacuate my body.

anyway so I took my favourite cringe genre and made it more cringe. I stripped out most of the action and made it about melodrama. about romance. about three line prompts centred on feelings. and I filled a whole blog with it. thousands of prompts, tens of thousands of words of nothing but the most cringe-inducing, self-indulgent, emotional twaddle. I write it fast, on the fly--for most of this blog’s lifespan I was producing two prompts a day, and there was no time to edit out the yikes or the badly placed commas or the overwrought betrayal. I’ve written cancel-worthy smut prompts and twee little tooth-aching cuteness. I’ve written so much junk that no one in their right mind would show another living soul, and published it in front of more than EIGHT THOUSAND PEOPLE. 

it’s an inoculation process (get your flu shot, kids). if you write cringe shit on purpose, you mind a lot less when you write cringe shit by accident. in fact, sometimes you start to enjoy the cringe even in your serious work, because you start to recognise a fundamental truth: everything is cringe. purple prose is cringe. romances are cringe. redemption arcs are cringe. em dashes are cringe. superheroes are cringe. 

you will always be writing something cringe. always. even when you’re a bestselling author, you’ll write something and think ‘oh god that’s so fucking cringe’. the difference between you now and you in that future is that you in the future has written so much more cringe shit. you will be (semi) cringe immune. you have survived the cringe before and you will survive the cringe again. 

so keep writing. keep cringing too, but most importantly: just keep writing. it’s the only surefire cure. 

hope this helps!

legend says that if you go to a mirror and say “beep beep richie” three times richie tozier will appear behind you and make a slightly offensive joke about your mother

Season 1 finale:

“I love him. I probably always will. But lately that love just hurts.”

Season 2 finale:

Michael: “It’s a sad story me and Alex. I have to walk away so we can start a new one someday. It’s not our time.” Isobel: “But it will be.” Michael: “I think so.” 

If that’s not a glow up I don’t know what is. 

What have the protests accomplished?

5/26 4 officers fired for murdering George Floyd 5/27 Charges dropped for Kenneth Walker (Breonna Taylor’s boyfriend, who police accused of killing her) 5/28 University of Minnesota cancels contract with police 5/28 3rd precinct police station neutralized by protesters 5/28 Minneapolis transit union refuses to bring police officers to protests or transport arrested protesters 5/29 Activists commandeer Minneapolis hotel to provide shelter to homeless 5/29 Former officer Chauvin arrested and charged with murder 5/29 Louisville Mayor suspends “no-knock” warrants 5/30 US Embassies across Africa condemn police murder of George Floyd 5/30 Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison takes over prosecution of the murdering officer 5/30 Transport Workers Union refuses to help NYPD transport arrests protesters 5/30 Maryland lawmakers forming work group on police reform, accountability 5/31 2 abusive officers fired for pulling a couple out of their car and tasing them - Atlanta, GA 6/1 Minneapolis public schools end contract with police 6/1 Confederate monument removed after being toppled by protesters - Birmingham, AL 6/1 CA prosecutors launch campaign to stop DAs from accepting police union money 6/1 Tulsa Mayor agrees to not renew Live PD contract 6/1 Louisville police chief fired after shooting of David Mcatee 6/1 Congress begins bipartisan push to cut off police access to military gear 6/1 Atlanta announces plans to create a task force and public database to track police brutality in metro Atlanta area 6/2 Minneapolis AFL-CIO calls for resignation of police union president Bob Kroll, a vocal white supremest 6/2 Pittsburgh transit union announces refusal to transport police officers or arrest protesters 6/2 Racist ex-mayor Frank Rizzo statue removed in Philadelphia 6/2 6 abusive officers charged for violence against residents and protesters - Atlanta, GA 6/2 Civil rights investigation of Minneapolis Police Dept launched 6/2 San Francisco resolution to prevent law enforcement from hiring officers with history of misconduct 6/2 Survey indicates that 64% of those polled are sympathetic to protesters, 47% disapprove of police handling of the protests, and 54% think the burning down of the Minneapolis police precinct was fully or partially justified 6/2 Trenton NJ announces policing reforms 6/2 Minneapolis City Council members consider disbanding the police 6/2 Confederate statue removed from Alexandria, VA 6/3 Officer fired for tweets promoting violence against protesters - Denver, CO 6/3 Walker Art Center and the Minneapolis Institute of Art cut ties with the MPD 6/3 Chauvin charges upgraded to second degree murder, remaining 3 officers also charged and taken into custody 6/3 Richmond VA Mayor Stoney announces RPD reform measures: establish “Marcus” alert for folks experiencing mental health crises, establish independent Citizen Review Board, an ordinance to remove Confederate monuments, and implement racial equity study 6/3 County commissioners deny proposal for $23 million expansion of Fulton County jail 6/3 Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board unanimously votes to sever ties with MPD 6/3 Seattle withdraws request to end federal oversight/consent decree of police department 6/3 Breonna Taylor’s case reopened 6/3 Louisville police department (Breonna Taylor’s murderers) will now be under review from an outside agency, which will include review on training, bias-free policing and accountability 6/3 Colorado lawmakers introduce a police reform bill that includes body cam laws, repealing the “fleeing felon” statute, and banning chokeholds 6/3 Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti announces plans to reduce funding to police department by $150M and instead invest in minority communities 6/4 Virginia governor announces plans to remove Robert E. Lee statue from Richmond 6/4 Portland schools superintendent discontinues presence of armed police officers in schools 6/4 MBTA (Metro Boston) board orders that buses wont transport police to protests, or protesters to police 6/4 King County Labor Federation issues ultimatum to police unions: admit to and address racism in Seattle PD, or be removed 6/5 City of Minneapolis bans all chokeholds by police 6/5 Racist ex-mayor Hubbard statue removed - Dearborn, MI 6/5 NFL condemns racism and admits it should have listened to players’ protests 6/5 California Governor Gavin Newsom calls for statewide use-of-force standard made along with community leaders and ban on carotid holds 6/5 2 Buffalo officers suspended within a day of pushing 75 year old protester to the ground, and lying about it 6/5 2 NYPD officers suspended after videos of violence to protesters 6/5 The US Marines bans display of the Confederate flag 6/5 Dallas adopts a “duty to intervene” rule that requires officers to stop other cops who are engaging in excessive use of force 6/5 Dallas City Manager T.C. Broadnax releases an 11-point action plan for immediate police reforms 6/6 Statue of Confederate general Williams Carter Wickham torn down - Richmond, VA 6/6 2 Buffalo officers charged with second-degree assault for shoving elderly man 6/6 San Francisco Mayor London Breed announces effort to defund police and redirect funds to Black community 6/7 Frank Rizzo mural removed, to be replaced with new artwork - Philadelphia, PA 6/7 Minneapolis City Council members announce intent to disband the police department, invest in proven community-led public safety 6/7 Protesters in Bristol topple statue of slave trader Edward Colston, throw it in the river 6/7 NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio vows for the first time to cut funding for NYPD, redirect to social services 6/7 A Virginia police officer faces charges after using a stun gun on a black man 6/8 NY State Assembly passes the Eric Garner Anti-Chokehold Act 6/8 Democrats in Congress unveil a bill to rein in bias and excessive force in policing 6/8 Black lawmakers block a legislative session in Pennsylvania to demand action on police reform 6/8 France bans police use of chokeholds 6/8 Seattle council members join calls to defund police department 6/8 Boston reevaluates how it funds police department 6/8 Honolulu Police Commission nominees voice support for more transparency, reforms 6/8 Rights groups and Floyd’s family call for a UN inquiry into American policing and help with systemic police reform

No, it’s not enough, but this is only the beginning. Keep fighting!!!

(This list comes from Mara Ahmed’s blog post and was compiled by Fahd Ahmed; I added sources and new entries. Please reblog with further additions.)

i will steady your hand when you’re losing your grip

Pairing: Bill/Eddie

Rating: T

Word Count: 13,720

Additional Tags: Canon Compliant, High School, Childhood Trauma, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, Crying, Kissing, Sad Bill Denbrough, Bisexual Bill Denbrough, Gay Eddie Kaspbrak, Bad Parenting, Best Friends, Bullying, Period-Typical Homophobia, Hurt/Comfort, Blood And Injury, Growing Up Together, Non-Sexual Intimacy, Child Neglect, The World Is A Big Bad Scary Place But We’ll Survive It If We Love Each Other

“Okay,” Eddie says, slapping Bill on the back as they arrive at the end of Eddie’s driveway. “You gonna be okay going the last couple blocks by yourself?”

The question is routine by now, asked every single day since 1989. The answer is too, Bill waving away Eddie’s concern with a smile that crinkles his eyes. “Yeah, I’m good. You know m-m-m-me.”

That’s the problem, Eddie thinks, watching him go. I do know you.

Bill’s in a bad way and Eddie loves him through it.

Read @ AO3

Suffering from writer’s block? Why not develop your character a little bit more?