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Art Block

I got an art block and I thought to do something about it. We’re friends now! \o/

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From Neill Cameron’s Twitter:

I was working recently with a bunch of kids who kept tearing up their own drawings in frustration, so I did something I’ve not done before.

I talked honestly to a classroom full of children about how much I hate my own drawing.

Okay, not the full extent. These kids ain’t ready to hear that. But that I do.

They were kind of appalled, and horrified and fascinated, but anyway, they stopped tearing up their drawings.

As I attempted to explain it — and many of you reading this will know already — when you make a drawing, there are two versions of it.

There’s the version that exists in your head, and then there’s the version that ends up on paper.

And because you can see both versions, you can’t help but compare them, and feel frustrated by the difference.

But here’s the thing, and I think it’s easy to forget this: no-one else can see that first version.

They can’t judge against it. They can only see, and judge, the version that exists on paper.

And you know what, this sounds crazy, but they might actually like it for what it is. They might think it’s cool that you made it.

I mean, holy god, if you guys could see the version of Mega Robo Bros that exists in my head.

Your eyeballs would melt and your heart be burned away by sheer divine fire of amazingness.

But the differences between that version and what’s on the page are only visible to me, and shouldn’t — can’t — matter to anyone else.

If a draing goes a bit wrong, ah well. Look at it, learn, try and make the next one better.

Or, possibly even better: abandon false objective notions of quality altogether and just enjoy the process, the activity, of making a thing.

Not quite how I phrased it to the Year5s, but hopefully you get the idea.

IN SUMMARY: be kinder to your drawings, and yourselves. I know, it’s hard. But try.

(Though this was written by a visual artist, the advice is applicable across creative disciplines – be kind to yourselves and to your stories!)

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Quiet instant | ~EvidencE~

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"...even female writers will front-load their universes with males—I’ve been rereading Andre Norton right here at Tor.com, and she consistently defaults to male protagonists and male-dominated adventures. Her females are deliberately strong and subversive, but in speaking roles, they’re in the distinct minority. They’re also, almost without exception, not standard human women. Mostly they’re aliens. Maelen. Jaelithe. Half-Earthling, all-inept Kaththea. It’s a man’s universe, and women have to be downright alien to be seen or heard." Interestingly enough, I've absorbed enough of this invisible rule of writing that when I create casts that contain more than a couple of female characters who stand as equals with male characters, I start to feel this odd sense of guilt, like I'm being unrealistic and self-indulgent, as if it's the same as writing a serious historical fiction about colonial America and giving half my characters purple hair and teal eyes and long wizard robes purely because it felt right.

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Peak-A-Blue, Andy Lee

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Ambient sounds for writers

Find the right place to write your novel… 

Nature

Arctic ocean

Blizzard in village

Blizzard in pine forest

Blizzard from cave

Blizzard in road

Beach

Cave

Ocean storm

Ocean rocks with rain

River campfire

Forest in the morning

Forest at night

Forest creek

Rainforest creek

Rain on roof window

Rain on tarp tent

Rain on metal roof

Rain on window

Rain on pool

Rain on car at night

Seaside storm

Swamp at night

Sandstorm

Thunderstorm

Underwater

Wasteland

Winter creek

Winter wind

Winter wind in forest

Howling wind

Places

Barn with rain

Coffee shop

Restaurant with customers

Restaurant with few customers

Factory

Highway

Garden

Garden with pond and waterfall

Fireplace in log living room

Office 

Call center

Street market

Study room from victorian house with rain

Trailer with rain

Tent with rain

Jacuzzi with rain

Temple

Temple in afternoon

Server room

Fishing dock

Windmill

War

Fictional places

Chloe’s room (Life is Strange)

Blackwell dorm (Life is Strange)

Two Whales Diner (Life is Strange)

Star Wars apartment (Star Wars)

Star Wars penthouse (Star Wars)

Tatooine (Star Wars)

Coruscant with rain (Star Wars)

Yoda’s hut with rain ( Star Wars)

Luke’s home (Star Wars)

Death Star hangar (Star wars)

Blade Runner city (Blade Runner)

Askaban prison (Harry Potter)

Hogwarts library with rain (Harry Potter)

Ravenclaw tower (Harry Potter)

Hufflepuff common room (Harry Potter)

Slytherin common room (Harry Potter)

Gryffindor common room (Harry Potter)

Hagrid’s hut (Harry Potter)

Hobbit-hole house (The Hobbit)

Diamond City (Fallout 4)

Cloud City beach (Bioshock)

Founding Fathers Garden (Bioshock)

Things

Dishwasher

Washing machine

Fireplace

Transportation

Boat engine room

Cruising boat

Train ride

Train ride in the rain

Train station

Plane trip

Private jet cabin

Airplane cabin

Airport lobby

First class jet

Sailboat

Submarine

Historical

Fireplace in medieval tavern

Medieval town

Medieval docks

Medieval city

Pirate ship in tropical port

Ship on rough sea

Ship cabin

Ship sleeping quarter

Titanic first class dining room

Old west saloon

Sci-fi

Spaceship bedroom

Space station

Cyberpunk tearoom

Cyberpunk street with rain

Futuristic server room

Futuristic apartment with typing

Futuristic rooftop garden 

Steampunk balcony rain

Post-apocalyptic

Harbor with rain

City with rain

City ruins turned swamp

Rusty sewers

Train station

Lighthouse

Horror

Haunted mansion

Haunted road to tavern

Halloween

Stormy night

Asylum

Creepy forest

Cornfield

World

New York

Paris

Paris bistro

Tokyo street

Chinese hotel lobby

Asian street at nightfall

Asian night market

Cantonese restaurant

Coffee shop in Japan

Coffee shop in Paris

Coffee shop in Korea

British library

Trips, rides and walkings

Trondheim - Bodø

Amsterdam - Brussels

Glasgow - Edinburgh

Oxford - Marylebone

Seoul - Busan

Gangneung - Yeongju

Hiroshima

Tokyo metro

Osaka - Kyoto

Osaka - Kobe

London

São Paulo

Seoul

Tokyo

Bangkok

Ho Chi Minh (Saigon)

Alps

New York

Hong Kong

Taipei

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Mononoke forest, Yakushima island by Casey Yee

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Great list of awesome writing-related podcasts!

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me, the motherfucker with over 50 abandoned works in progress: i have another idea

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So I may have done a 15k day. At 27,490 by the end of Day 9, I am officially 174 words shy of my ... wait for it ... Day 29 word count from last year. I have been wanting to try doing a 25k day this year, since Day 30 for me last year (AHAHAHAHA ... seriously, me) was a 22.5k day. And it would be kinda funny, right, if I did a 15k day and almost matched my 2014 Day 29 word count, then immediately after did a 25k day and killed my single-day record AND passed 50k 20 days early? Not saying it's going to happen. But ... it would be funny, right? Maybe I'm the only one who thinks that. *cackle*

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Behind but ahead. I'm currently at 9,266 words, which is 4,067 words behind the recommended NaNo word count for today, but I'm still 7,884 words ahead of where I was at this point last year, so in comparison to last year, I'm doing decently. I'm also behind my tentative goal word count, since I'd have liked to be past 10k at this point, but I'll get there today unless I completely slack off. Really, today's hopeful-but-no-pressure goal is 15k, since I'd like to ramp up my dailies until I'm comfortably doing quite a few thousand words per day. It'd (maybe that should be "it'll") be interesting to see what happens to my end word count if I just write at a comfortable pace and don't let myself slack for too long or too consistently.

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Yesterday I managed to write 314 words (IIRC), which is more than I’ve written on the first day of quite a few years of NaNo. As it was in the midst of cleaning up, rearranging, and de-stressing after a Halloween party, that doesn’t seem half bad. Why is there no NaNo badge for writing despite life trying to get in the way? ;)

Also, I really should update the NaNo graphics on this tumblr. Nice when your participant badges are from three and four years ago.

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My first cup of coffee for NaNo 2015. (The cup, like my manuscript, needs cleaning up.)

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I think it is just possible that my sense of self may be coming back, and with it, my sense of being a writer. Maybe. We'll see.

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The chick who walked past must be a writer or an editor ... though now I wonder who wrote the guy's sign to begin with.

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...Right now I totally wish tumblr autosaved. There's probably some way to make it do that, actually, but I haven't spent enough time messing around with it to have that set up. Siiiiiiiigh. Guess I'll rewrite this post, then! Nothing better to do at three a.m., after all. Who sleeps these days?

In any case, I came across the idea of "reverse NaNoWriMo" today, which is kind of a misnomer, but it's basically an approach to NaNoWriMo that sets higher word count goals for the beginning of the month and lower ones for the end of the month, based on the idea that a lot of people are more motivated at the beginning of the month and lose steam as they go along.

When I read about it, I thought right off that that's not the way I work. And when I checked my records, lo and behold! I've never passed 25k on time, meaning on or before November 15. I didn't get past it until the 25th in 2004, and while OK, I passed it on the 18th last year (2012 — which I note for my own lazy self and not because I think anyone else reading this can't do math ;) ), I almost immediately afterward fell off the planet and didn't get past 27k until the 26th.

Also, there are some ... interesting apparent commonalities between the two years I reached 50k. The sample size is totally way too tiny for me to be sure these are real trends, but they're interesting anyway:

In both years, I skipped two out of the first six days after I started writing. In 2004 the skip occurs one day after I began, and in 2012 it occurs two days after I began. There are two writing days in between these non-writing days.

The next skip occurs right around the midpoint of the month. (It was November 14 and 15 in 2004 and November 16 in 2012.)

The next skip in writing occurs shortly after the midpoint skip. (It happened two days after the midpoint skip in 2004, and three days after the midpoint skip in 2012.) This skip is a string of consecutive non-writing days: five missed days in 2004 and six missed days in 2012.

The day on which I passed 50k has the highest daily word count of the month by several thousand words.

In other words, in years I've won, I tended to let other things take priority in the first week; putzed around for the first half of the month, with regular writing but low word counts; hiccuped in the middle of the month; attempted to get a second wind and failed; then wandered off completely for a while before deciding This Is Not How The Story Is Going To End and returning to write steadily for about a week, as the ramp-up to a record-smashingly triumphant final day.

...

I'm wondering now if this reflects a trend in my actual life. Hrrrrrm.

Either way, it doesn't look like I'm a really good candidate for reverse NaNoWriMo. More of a thirteenth hour kind of gal, it seems...