#I've basically been writing 1000 words per day

[kallypsowrites]

A Pride of Wolves update I still have only one COMPLETED chapter out of my five chapter goal. But I have written large fragments of all the other chapters because I write out of order lol. I've got like 11,000 words total so it's coming along!

[myownwholewildworld]

well, i decided to bite the bullet on this one! thank you to the lovelies @almostfoxglove and @gothcsz for the tags, and a special thanks to @jolapeno for this beautiful 2024 tootathon event! i think it's a pretty common theme between us lot, but seems like tooting ourselves is not our forte - at least not mine! i had been lurking in the shadows for a long while, but july came around and i said, why the hell not? so basically i'm a baby in the fandom, learning from the very best. i've been writing for almost two decades now, but mostly in spanish and on different platforms. i found myself looking for a creative outlet this summer and transitioning out of my online rpg era (foroactivo/jcink, i won't miss you). i am so glad i did, cause i found a home here 🥹 anyway enough yapping!

i have written over 170k words this year (probs a lot more if i take into account my rpg shenanigans) and at one point i've been very attached to everything i've written, so it's really hard to pick some favourites, but here we go!

per aspera ad astra (marcus acacius series) - this is one series i wasn't expecting to write as a fic this year as it was planned for something else, but here we are! i am just enjoying all the angst, it's like therapy lmao

the right kind of wrong (dbf!joel miller one shot) - look... the brain rot won and i gave in to the dbf trope. i loved writing it and seeing that other people enjoyed it too!

the way to a great wide somewhere (beast!din djarin one shot) - i just... idk 🫠 the moment i thought of this i knew i had to put it into words or i would quite literally die.

when the moon howls (javier peña one shot) - as i was rewatching narcos i had this itch i needed to scratch and the jolabrew + withcheese fall challenge gave me the perfect excuse to try my hand at writing Peña.

i regrettably have not been giffing as much as i would have liked to this year, but i promised myself i would pick this up in 2025 again! but here are my two favourite gifsets i've made.

tlou 1x03 - if you know me, you'll know that my favourite episode from tlou is 1x03 because i love bill and frank to fucking bits 😭 it broke me and it healed me in so many different ways.

pp press tour interview - when i watched this the first time i was like "yeah 1000% agree" because marcus acacius in that white armour is my fucking everything.

nothing of this would have happened if it wasn't for the people who stop by and read our stories, and for the writers who feed us amazing fics - writers and readers alike, god i love y'all. we all keep this amazing fandom alive. and i know there's been some rough lows this year, but here we still are!

i could go on and on tagging people who make me smile every fucking day but i'd be bound to miss someone and i could not forgive myself if i did that. so please, take this as my heartfelt thank you to every single one of you. i see you, i appreciate you, i love you. like for real.

some np tags for moots who might want to participate (and apologies if you already have!):

@joelmillerisapunk @joelslegalwhre @inept-the-magnificent @punkseyes @styleispunk @aurorawritestoescape @syd-djarin @katiexpunk @baronessvonglitter @orcasoul

[lord-squiggletits]

Speaking of transcribing dreams (and I was reminded of this by @jariktig 's tags in response to mine)

One of the best writing tips I can give is that you should literally just learn how to type faster. Now, there's all sorts of things with having different keyboard layouts (esp if you have non-English language layouts and would have to find tutorials for your specific language), but like

Guys

If you want to write more, it isn't just about dedicating more time towards writing, but also literally making it so that you can write MORE within the time you have set aside to write

I know a lot of people got by in school just doing one- or two-finger typing, and I used to be like that as well, but I can't stress enough that it's WORTH learning how to type the "proper way" on account of the sheer speed using all 10 fingers gives you while writing. I switched from only typing with a couple fingers to using QWERTY 10-finger typing while I was in school. It was a little inconvenient at first, but the fact that I was typing my notes meant that I was practicing my new typing technique a lot, and it eventually became second nature.

And it's so worth it guys. SO WORTH IT. My typing speed can approach 80 words per minute when I'm just transcribing conversations or typing what I see on a page or image. I've literally interviewed people and been able to transcribe nearly word for word the responses they gave me.

Writing is slower than transcription though, as you're not just typing what you see/hear but having to create original ideas and write them in prose form. Even so, my typing speed on a good day is somewhere between 30-33 WPM, or 1800-1980 words per hour. Obviously, writing rarely involves nonstop writing for an hour straight, but I can say that I've reached 1000 words in only about 30-40 minutes on average-good writing days.

Not only is it really good to be able to do my daily writing in as short as half an hour (life is busy, after all), it also means I can write and complete fic much faster! Depending on the exact kind of fic, a short PWP or oneshot can be 1-3k words long (~3 sessions to complete), a character-focused oneshot or longfic chapter update can be 4-8k (~4-8 sessions to complete), and so on. So basically, mathematically speaking, faster typing speed = more words per minute = more writing in less time = faster fic updates = able to write more and/or longer stories.

And yes-- I literally can type fast enough that a lot of the scenes I write are direct transcriptions from my daydreams to the screen exactly as I'm thinking about them. It's actually made me so much more productive to be able to tell myself "why don't you type it down while you daydream" and having my writing speed actually be able to keep up with my speed of thought.

[amadwinter]

Making of Monday - Tracking Word Counts

On Making of Monday, we share behind the scenes of one of our works past, present, or future. All the little things that would fit into a DVD bonus content section: cut scenes, outlines, director's writer's commentary, or basically any thing that didn't make it into the final version. Send me an ask if you're interested in knowing little details about any particular fic!

This week, I decided to show my word count spreadsheet that I've been meticulously using and crafting for coming up on two years now. It wasn't built in a day, and I'm almost constantly tweaking it to make it look nice and functional as I keep writing.

Uh, fair warning. This is not a very exciting post. Unless you like numbers and data, like I do.

For the sake of my own sanity, I started a new Excel document for the new year. This is my Summary page for the year 2024. I have pages created already for each month but hide them when it isn't that month. I'll show the Overview page next after I've explained what you're looking at.

So what you see here is my monthly and annual writing totals. This only takes into account new words written, although the start number at the top of each yearly column includes my running word count. Each month's number is automatically updated from the corresponding month's page, and added up in the total column.

On the side, I have fun projections. So if I wanted to write x number of words per year, not counting the words I have already written, I would need to write y number of words per month with an average of z number of words per day. It's not something I pay too much attention to, just for fun. Below that is a projection of if I write the NaNoWriMo daily count (1667 words per day) or 1000 words per day, how much that would add up to at the end of the year.

This is the Overview page from last year (2023) plus December 2022 which is when I switched over from my previous Google Sheets document. Additionally at the bottom you can see the different monthly pages that are not hidden (I color coded them because I was bored one day).

This page keeps track of my daily totals in the form of a color gradient, linked to the monthly pages to get the totals.

Solid Red = 0

Solid Yellow = 1000

Solid Green = 1667 (NaNoWriMo Daily; 50,000 words in a 30 day month)

Originally, the idea was to be able to look at it and see if there were time periods that I wasn't writing as well due to being busy for various reasons, so I could be able to predict in the future what conditions weren't great for writing. But an interesting side effect is it's also able to track my good days and my bad days for health reasons.

That random number you see on the right side is my highest daily word count. I was curious about it, but I couldn't figure out a way to make it look pretty and fit in with everything else.

This is my month page, divided by each individual project. Y is series or event with multiple fics involved, Z is one-shots, two-shots, or very short fics. The greyed out ones at the top are ones I'm not actively working on, the ones in green are fics that I am either actively working on or trying to work on.

Also at the top are the new words added each month (which is the cell used in other pages to keep track of the monthly number), the total words in all my documents, and the daily average for the month.

The color gradient at the top for each day follows the same pattern as before; Solid Red = 0, Solid Yellow = 1000, Solid Green = 1667+

I keep track of the word count for each chapter, add the total, subtract it from the previous day, and boom, that's my daily total. If there are times where I delete things, I throw it into a document called "Binned" to balance the numbers. That way, I never subtract from the amount of words I've written, only add.

While it may look like a very simple sheet, it is very messy with formulas, conditional formatting, etc. If I were more skilled at Excel, I could probably improve it even more, but at this point, there's very little maintenance needed to keep it going and I can focus on actually writing.

In theory.

[duhragonball]

The Punt Trick

I've been kind of inactive lately because I'm doing a writing project this month and I sort of fell behind on it. My morale was kind of low this past week, but I managed to turn things around this weekend by writing 5280 words, which is more than a quarter of the goal. Not too shabby, so I want to capture how I did it.

Historically, I've been able to write a lot more than 5k in a single day, but I can't do it consistently. It really depends on what I'm writing, and if it's something I already have laid out pretty well in my head, the words will flow. The problem I've been having in August 2023 is that my plot is well laid out, but I'm struggling to put down the words. I know what to do but I'm less clear on how to do it. So it's been slow going.

Basically, I made an hourly schedule for the rest of the month, detailing how many words I would write. I've tried stuff like that before, but the trick this time is that I made the wordcount assignments very small. I didn't think it would help very much, but it turned out to make a big difference.

For years, I would write numbers on a calendar, like "Oh, I'll write 2000 words on Tuesday, and then I'll do 2500 words on Thursday!" and then it'll be 11:48pm on Thursday and I'm 4000 words behind schedule for some reason.

I've tried making it more granular, but that would mean doing things like "At 6pm I'll write 1000 words, and then at 8pm I'll write another 1000 words! Easy!" But then it'll be 7:55pm and I won't have the first thousand done, which just demoralizes me further for the next thousand.

This time, I just decided "to hell with it" and assigned myself 500 words per hour. This turns out to be much more realistic. When I'm doing well, I can bang out 500 words in twenty minutes, but when I'm struggling (like this month), 500 words can take me... about an hour. Well, more like thirty minutes, which is great because if I procrasinate for half of the time alotted, I still have time to get the goal met.

And 500 is small enough that it's easy to overshoot. So chances are that I'll clear the goal with a little more than I needed, which makes the next hour easier to tackle, and so on.

And now that I've had this productive weekend, the schedule I've laid out for tomorrow will be even lighter. Monday I'm doing 250 words for each hour, which is probably too lax, but that just means I'll finish ahead of schedule. The important thing is that I'm not just vaguely declaring my intent to write 1500 words after I get home from work. Normally, I can do that pretty easily, but that confidence turns into procrastination, and I'll put it off until 10:30 at night, and then one thing leads to another and I blow it off completely. With this system, I have to start at 6pm, because it's not about getting 1500 by midnight, it's about getting 250 every hour for six hours.

This is something I really, really need to keep in mind for the future, because even when my writing goes well, I'll still run into spells where it doesn't, and this seems like an effective way to break the logjam. And it might also be handy for smaller projects, which I could break down into even smaller chunks, like 100 words, or even less.

I suppose what inspired me to try this was when I kept looking up at my word-counter and expecting to see some big numbers, and ending up with something dinky like "83" or "112". But with what I'm doing now, those are actually pretty good signs of progress. Chain a few of those together, and I can actually get somewhere.

I'm not sure if this would be helpful for others, but it definitely seems to be working for me, so if you're reading this and you find yourself stuck with your writing, give it a try.

[elix8r]

Some tips for writer’s block! :

first and the most important! take a break from writing. writing a story can become overwhelming at times, so taking breaks is a must for curing writer’s block

go on a walk!

read books (or if you don’t have time, go in a booktok deep dive to find some inspo!)

listen to music (you can get some character dynamics, scenarios, and even specific scene aesthetics through songs!)

watch movies that have similar plot lines to your story

make a list of everything (scenes, characters, aesthetics, etc.) you feel like adding in the story. it doesn’t necessarily have to be detailed or even organized, what’s important is that you have an idea of which path to take when writing!

find a pace and be consistent. whether you’re writing 10 words or 1000 words per day, being consistent is key to getting back to your rhythm!

brainstorming and going back to the basics is always helpful

rest, rest, and rest! let your mind relax, and soon everything will flow a lot smoother. you’ll be back on track eventually :)

i hope you find these helpful, and congrats on monkey bars’ success!! i could see how much you’ve grown as a writer and i’m very proud to be here since pink whitney days 🥹 love you lots 🫶🫶

OMG THANK YOU SO SO MUCH FOR THESE TIPS 😩🙏

these are so good like just reading it makes me realize how bad I've been with both consistency and taking breaks so i'm planning on being much more mindful of that and i'm already working on more details with my scenes that I've already planned out and it's helping so much like i already feel more creative and almost rejuvenated? like everyone's words and messages are so helpful seriously thank you

also thank you so much for your support! 🥹 you're too sweet and this just really makes me fall more in love with writing and this blog seriously everyone here is amazing! love you smm 💗 💗 💗 💗 💗

[skiyoosmi]

writing commissions: open!

yoohoo! it's marga here. for the past few months i've been pondering about whether to push through this but recent personal events had to be the one to decide for me as the country my parents are currently in went under lockdown (they're working abroad). my mother's jobs were halted which is why i wanted to be able to help them (at least to lessen the burden of expenses and bills, especially those that are related to me like school expenditures and such)

so here i am, announcing that i am officially opening my commissions to tend to your requests and that i have opened my own ko-fi page!! this will not change how the blog runs though! i will still continuously publish contents like before (e.g if fate permits updates, some random hc's, more smau's, drabbles, etc.). donations are very much welcome and appreciated but please do not feel forced to do so, make sure that if you do, it is only because you have extra in your pockets, okay?

this post is more directed to those who would want to support my passion in some other ways ^^

PRICE LIST & SCHEDULE

after scanning through different blogs for proper references, i have decided that for every 100 words, i will charge $1— with minimum of 300 words per request, maximum of 5000.

which means, for instance you requested:

⤷ 300 to 500 words - $3 to $5 - 2 to 5 days

⤷ 1000 to 1500 words - $10 to $15 - 8 to 15 days

⤷ 2000 to 2500 words - $20 to $25 - 15 to 25 days

.... so on and so forth

if i get carried away with my writing and exceed the word count requested, don't worry, no charge is added since that is my fault(?) anyway ;)

to summarize it up, the scheduling of commission posting varies depending on the word count and my schedule in school and personal life (esp. when there are emergencies).

you can ask for updates through the contact info i will provide below but please.... do not pressure me into finishing it immediately. asking is different from demanding— writing takes time and effort, remember that. i would appreciate it if you give me the time to make sure that my work is good and worth the payment.

should you want to cancel your commission or if i fail to finish it within a month, rest assured that i will be refunding you 50% of the payment given already (not full though because i would have written down something by then).

PAYMENT METHODS

preferred ones:

⤷ ko-fi

⤷ paypal

other options (if you're based in ph): do note that for this case, $1 = P50

⤷ paymaya

⤷ gcash

*most of these are my personal accounts so please don't be surprised if you're asked for my full name instead of just "marga" LOLLL i'll let you know the details anyway once we talk privately*

for requests exceeding $10, down payments are encouraged (preferably 30%-50% of the fee) for me to start writing, and!! make sure to complete the payment before i publish it. — unless... if you want to pay full already, then it's still up to you! :)

for requests below $10, full payments will be required as they are quite short and will not take that much of a long time to be written.

NOTE. i will only start writing once payment has been received.

DO NOT, however, make any payment until we have reached an agreement and have talked it out through private messages, i will contact you.

WHAT I WILL WRITE

⤷ fandoms

anime: haikyuu!!, jujutsu kaisen, kimetsu no yaiba, shingeki no kyojin, kuroko no basuke, free!, boku no hero academia, fairy tail (more to be added once i'm able to watch those on my list lololol)

others: genshin impact

⤷ genre

if you haven't noticed, most of my works mainly revolve around angst but i've decided to be open for all genres. smut will generally take longer time to write though seeing as i'm still new to it and i have absolutely no idea how to properly write it yet.

⤷ themes and tropes

pretty much open for all (reader inserts, ships, etc.) just make sure to be specific with it :)

WHAT I WILL NOT WRITE

anything that consists of heavy and dark nsfw content (i.e. pedophilia, incest, sexual harassment, violence, abuse, etc)— basically those that will make me uncomfortable, hence why i will let you know immediately if i don't want to write it.

CONTACT ME

should you want further clarifications or just have something to ask, you can contact me through:

⤷ tumblr dms

⤷ discord - skiyoosmi#6577

⤷ email - ryoummen@gmail.com

if you are interested in commissioning, please:

fill up this form

please do share & reblog this!

this is a pretty shameless request from me to you but even this simple action would surely help me a lot!

it's been almost a year since i've started this writing journey of mine and i am very thankful that i am able to share it with you guys, here's to more!

all the love,

marga

[mad-madam-m]

So I'm just curious, how do you get yourself to write? And do you use prompts and if you do where do you get them? I meant to use NaNo to get me to write but it took 4 days into November for me to realize November started so I failed lol. I've been meaning to start this original thing and it's just not...working.

First of all, anon, you could start writing RIGHT NOW (yes, with 10 days left in the month) and you would not fail NaNo. You might not hit 50k (although I know people who have hit 50k in that amount of time, or less), but you won’t fail. NaNoWriMo isn’t about hitting 50,000 words so much as it is about putting a stake in the ground and saying, “Here. Today. I will start writing the project I’ve always wanted to.” And doing it. Doesn’t matter what that project is—original novel, short stories, fic, poetry, revising something, a series of blog posts—NaNo is about just. Fucking. Doing it. And you still have time to Do It.

To answer your questions:

Do you use prompts and if you do, where do you get them?

For original stories, particularly novels, I usually don’t. For fic, particularly short fic I’m writing for events, I do. Tumblr has a wealth of writing prompts that range from “here’s a situation” to “here’s a line of dialogue GO,” and I tend to reblog them under the tags “fic prompts” or “writing prompts.” Honestly, most of them would work for either original fic or fanfic, so if you are a writer who likes to work from prompts, go forth and enjoy!

How do you get yourself to write?

That’s kind of a big question, and uh, the answer to it got long. Very long. (I said once that if you give me half a chance, I’ll talk about writing all the live-long day, and this answer is no exception.)

Different things motivate me for different projects, and as with all writing-related advice, YMMV, but here’s a few things that really help for getting myself to write:

1) Develop your story.

The current original story I’m working on, for example, I have not really had to struggle to get myself to write at all because 1) I’m stupid excited about it and 2) I have developed the hell out of it.

I’ve talked before about outlining my stuff here, so I won’t go too much into it again; suffice it to say that I have done about the same amount of development on my current original story that I had on ADA by the time I started writing. I started around the very end of September developing my characters and spent a good chunk of October working on setting, worldbuilding, plot, and finally my notecards.

Shockingly, having some idea of what’s happening and where I’m going is making this story easier to write.

Right? Like WHO’D HAVE THOUGHT.

Because of that, I’ve been excited about writing my story, so getting myself to write on it has been (comparatively) a cakewalk.

That’s not to say any of the writing is good (oh God no) or that there aren’t parts that need fixing, or that I haven’t been stuck. But it’s been stuck like “how do I describe seeing a tree-covered mountain in the middle of fall from the POV of someone who has never seen something like this” rather than “I have no fucking clue what happens next uh…”

The stories I struggle the most with writing are the ones that I’ve worked the least on developing. The stories that have been the easiest to write have been the ones I’ve spent at least a month doing prep work on before I ever start drafting.

2) Love your story.

Being in love with a story makes it a lot easier to write, at least for me. Because here’s the thing, ideas are easy.

If you’re a creative person, you’re going to end up with a file of story ideas—maybe prompts you liked, dialogue that stuck with you, one of those “humans are space orcs” tumblr posts that’s just really clicking in your brain—that will be longer than you could conceivably write if you had a hundred lifetimes. That’s okay! That’s great. But it means a lot of them are never going to get past the idea stage.

For me, the stories that get finished—the ones that not only get started but actually make it through the first draft and then three rounds of editing and revisions—are the ideas that I’ve been percolating on for months, if not longer. They’ve been cooking in the back of my brain while I’ve been doing other things, sorting themselves out, and most importantly: they will not let me go.

Coming up with ideas is easy. Finding an idea that will last and sustain a story and my interest for at least a year, if not longer? That’s harder.

Y’all know how much I’ve been talking about Tiger & Bunny over the past year? We’re talking that level of obsession with a story that I want to write, whether it’s fic or original. Sometimes it takes months or years for all the puzzle pieces to come together. Sometimes the whole thing will congeal within a few weeks, or there will be one crucial piece of story that will just make EVERYTHING come together, I will literally shout “OH MY FUCKING GOD” and that’s it, I’m off to the races. (In this particular case, it wasn’t anything I’d done in the first two weeks of poking at steampunk-y ideas; it was the realization that I could put a circus on an airship. The whole story just went WHOOSH after that.)

BUT. But. Sometimes you don’t have that. These stories are great and I love them and they remind me why I love writing so much (and if you’re writing something that’s gonna be 90k+, like I have a tendency to do, you need to be in love with it, IMO), but sometimes you’re in situations where you just have to get it done. In those cases:

3) Resort to bribery.

I’ve been poking at the third part of Alpha & Emissary, oh, basically since I posted the second part. My problem is that my fandom focus has been, shall we say, split for the past year. *coughs delicately, shoves Tiger & Bunny fics under the bed*

But here’s the thing: I hate having a published WIP on AO3 (it’s why I don’t publish long!fics until they’re completely drafted and mostly edited). I hate—HATE—having an unfinished series on AO3.

So that’s the rub: I have an unfinished series that I want to finish because I hate that it’s not finished. I also have a new fandom that is wresting my attention and inspiration away from said series. What’s a girl to do?

A girl tells herself she can’t write any more Tiger & Bunny fic until she finishes this one WIP, that’s what she does.

And it’s motivated me to sit my ass down and work on that WIP, because goddammit, I have a “but there was only one bed” TaiBani fic that I would really like to have up by New Year’s.

Your bribery will be different. Maybe you get to watch 1 episode of your favorite show per every 1k you write, or you get to try a new knitting project when you finish this short story. Maybe you binge-watch an entire season of your favorite anime if you exceed your NaNo goal. Or you write 50 words and get a cookie. The point is, find what works for you to get it done.

4) Figure out a minimum daily goal and stick with it.

For me, this was 500 words a day. 500 words. That’s it. That’s one 30-minute word sprint for me. That’s something I can do without stressing myself out.

Because of this point and point 3, I wrote more than 7000 words on a story I’d been stuck on for the better part of a year before I had to stop to work on NaNo stuff. Another 7k, and I’ll probably have it finished.

Your minimum word count will almost certainly be different. Maybe it’s 300 words a day, maybe it’s 1000. Hell, maybe it’s 100 words. Again, find what works for you, what you can write regularly without stressing yourself out.

Another important thing: If I didn’t hit 500 words, I didn’t beat myself up about it. Maybe I wrote 350. Or 220. Or just 93. The point is, did I write? Yes? Then I did good. I got myself a sentence or a paragraph closer to finishing. And it all adds up.

(And hey, you don’t have to write every day. I do, or I try to, because that’s what works for me. If it stresses you out to do so, then find another way to make it work.)

5) Deadlines, deadlines, deadlines.

This one’s hard because I can rarely keep a deadline that’s not set by an external source. If you tell me on December 20 that you need a story by December 22? Then on December 22, you’ll have a story, edited and ready to post. But when it comes to something I set for myself, the chances of a deadline working are 50/50.

That being said, it is something that helps me keep on track and even if I don’t finish something by a self-imposed deadline, it does get me writing.

6) Sprint with friends!

NaNo is really great for this because all your writer friends are coming out of the woodwork going I need to hit 5k by the end of today, will you sprint with me? Sometimes it just helps to have that kind of accountability. You all get together (I’ve used Discord, Google Hangouts, IRC, and Twitter DMs for this), set a timer, and write for 15 minutes or 20 minutes or 30 minutes. Then, when the time’s up, you post your word count, everybody congratulates everybody else, and then you take a break before doing the next one.

Sprints are the reason I’ve been able to make some pretty significant headway on my word counts, and few things get me writing like knowing I’m going to have to tell everybody in my group what my word count is in 30 minutes or less. >.>

Like I said earlier, YMMV on all of these. What works for me may work for you, or it might not. But if you aren’t sure, it’s worth giving it a shot.

Happy writing!

[not-poignant]

This might be a little personal but do you have any tips on how to deal with bad days? I've been struggling with depressive episodes lately being so tired I can't get shit done.

Hiya anon,

Depressive episodes area the worst. I don’t know if I have any real tips, since the thing that helped me most with my depressive episodes were an effective anti-depressant (and I struggled for like 20 years for one of those, since most anti-depressants are ineffective when I take them). And then therapy. And obviously both of those things aren’t actually possible to access for everyone. (And caveat that if you’re feeling suicidal in an actionable way, please call a helpline / hospital or similar, because you shouldn’t have to deal with that level of anguish alone and without professionals).

(Content warning for under the read more: aside from frank discussion of depression and suicidal ideation, I also mention self-harm briefly).

Otherwise... idk, I’ve actually been doing a Chronic Conditions management course lately, over the past few months. And it’s been pretty helpful when looking at the psychological effects of living with chronic illnesses (basically people who have chronic illnesses are way more likely to have anxiety and/or depression, but obviously trying to deal with either of those things when you have chronic illnesses in the first place is really hard).

One of the things I found really interesting, were the underarousal/overarousal cycle, which none of my doctors had ever taught me about before. Underarousal, which leads to depression and depressive episodes is a self fulfilling cycle. Meaning that, if you don’t gently do the opposite of ‘nothing’ you will eventually just get worse and worse. It doesn’t tend to just go away on its own.

However most people think the opposite of nothing is like... too much. Even if they plan for nice things, it’s still too much.

This course has been pretty clear that you have to start small, like... try and do a pleasurable thing a day. That pleasurable thing could be making a cup of tea. That’s it. Not like, writing a book, or making music, or whatever. Just...make some tea. Or coffee. Get up and boil a kettle and put some stuff in it and go lie down again and sip at it and focus on its warmth in your hands and the way it tastes and how it feels to know you did that for yourself. Just...try and do a pleasurable thing every day. It doesn’t even have to feel pleasurable in the moment, it just has to be something that you would have experienced as pleasurable pre-depression.

And if you’re feeling especially daring, try three pleasurable things a day. A whole three!

Anyway, this is just one method of a thousand, but what was most radical to me about it, was that these professors and so forth who are running the course made sure that in an underarousal/depressive cycle, the emphasis is on pleasurable activities and not just ‘activities’ (they do suggest light physical activity at some point, but reiterate over and over again that too many people tend to do too much too soon, and the most important thing is to start little, and to be as consistent as possible, and also patient with yourself when it’s not consistent and to keep trying).

The other thing they suggest is a list of pleasurable things for good days, and a list of pleasurable things for bad days (that shouldn’t have been as shocking to me as it is, but I’d never actually considered this before). So on good days, writing 1000 words, making a playlist, going for a walk, all things I can manage. On bad days, none of them are: but I can probably make a single cup of tea, I might be able to shower, and there’s a chance I can sit outside with an apple and eat it. And telling myself I’m doing these things to help myself feel better again, is actually way more helpful than just making myself a cup of tea mindlessly and not thinking about it.

I mean you don’t feel like doing anything, anon, I feel that, but you took the time to write this message. That’s a big deal. Tbh, it’s one of the things that would count as a valid ‘activity’ in this course. And it would count as a big thing, and not a small one.

As for me, idk, I have like... a vague list of things I like to do when I’m depressed, or things are bad. And also a list of things I try not to indulge. My list might not help you, but I do know that...trying to stick to a regular sleep schedule for me was important, because I have quite severe hypersomnia alternating with insomnia, meaning I can sleep a lot all the time, and then not at all, all the time. And it fucks me up. So now I try and wake up at 9.00am every morning regardless, and then nap once in the afternoon (my chronic illnesses won’t let me stay awake for a while day). Scheduling the nap helps because it gives me something to look forward to if I’m having a ‘tired day.’

Other things are like...trying to get out of my head a bit. I do some OBOD study (Druidry study) because researching about magic and nature sometimes gives me tiny bursts of energy that allow me to think ‘maybe life isn’t so bad’ (i.e. that’s what I do with that tiny burst of energy but sometimes that’s enough lol). I might do some art. I play Stardew Valley a lot - when I wore a Fitbit, that game was the only thing guaranteed to drop my heartrate down by about a consistent 15-20 beats per minute. So it relaxes me and still engages my brain.

Also, for me now, I’m...trying to become more zen about the fact that depression and illness take time. That fixing them is not about a single event you do that feels good, but about hundreds of those events over time. And about maintaining them during the good times. And that’s really hard. I got really close last year to doing some really stupid things to myself (and I already self-harm, so I’m not including that) and coming out of that sort of changed me and the way I think about myself, since I’d always identified strongly as like ‘a person with PTSD’ and that was the first time it was like no, I’m a person with PTSD who has major depressive episodes that need separate, emergency treatment.

Since then, I’ve kind of felt lucky to both a) be alive and b) keep trying to find small things to keep me going (and a year later, feel tentatively strong enough to start ‘scheduled’ work again). I now try and think of it this way: a bad day isn’t actually a bad thing. It’s a normal product of my illness. That’s all it is. I can attach the word ‘bad’ to it and somehow feel guilty I ‘didn’t do enough’ but that’s as absurd and irrational as a person with damaged lungs feeling guilty that their good days didn’t heal their damaged lungs. No, my brain will always be broken, to a point, even with chemical help. My ‘energy’ or ‘good mental health’ days will not heal my brain chemistry. So...now I call them ‘tired days’ or ‘sad days.’ Or I’m trying to, I forget all the time.

Tired days aren’t bad, they’re just there. The most important thing I can do is try not to let them run roughly over my routines, and destroy everything I’ve set up for myself to survive in the first place. So you know - a list of things I can maybe manage on tired days. A care plan. People I can contact (even though I probably won’t). Reminding myself gently that it says nothing about my worth as a person even as I feel I have no worth as a person, even that, itself, is just part of the ‘bad day.’ It’s a symptom of my illness. And then also putting in place a list of things to do for yourself on good days, and I don’t mean like ‘shopping’ or whatever (though those things are important) ->

I mean...if you don’t have energy to maintain your self-worth on the worst days, make a point of spending about 5-10 minutes maintaining your self-worth on the good days, when you have more energy to sustain it. On the good days, take some minutes here and there to look at your care plan, your support network, and see what you might be able to use on the worst days, and what you know you can’t. the worst time to be doing it - that’s the time when I already needed it there to lean on. Like, it will always help more to do that hard work mentally on the days when you have the energy to put things in place for yourself.

And those things might sound easy or simple to people who don’t have depressive episodes and find it easy to snap themselves out of it by like, idk, listening to a cheerful song or something, but anyone who has them knows how hard it is to put these things in place. And I have so much sympathy for that. I wish I could box up some energy and self-care and hope and give it to you anon. The only way I know through this is the slow and steady and not very linear way. Time has helped a lot, and a philosophy of ‘gentleness’ alongside ‘gentle structure.’ (I.e. my alarm in the morning to get me up, but also the gentleness to let myself sleep in 20 minutes).

But something I do know, that gives me hope, is that even with all of this going on, anon, you reached out to someone. You’re still trying on your bad days. You did at least one ‘activity’ that was designed to help you. And that is the very thing - with time, and accumulative effects - that will help you with your depressive episode. It just...unfortunately in the moment, doesn’t lift a person out of a bad day. I wish I did. I mean I really wish it did.

Yeah, I wish I had better answers? Ultimately depression is a whole lot of suffering and almost no energy to deal with that suffering, and I wouldn’t wish it on anyone. But I have faith in you, anon. *offers hugs and a blanket fort*