#and I have to queue a good luck post for early the morning of lol

[deluxewhump]

Sending good vibes!!!

Thank you 💙✨

[ckmstudies]

I posted 2,518 times in 2022

That's 2,518 more posts than 2021!

127 posts created (5%)

2,391 posts reblogged (95%)

Blogs I reblogged the most:

@gushuwa

@frenchiepal

@wecandoit

@notetaeker

@a-students-lifebuoy

I tagged 2,402 of my posts in 2022

Only 5% of my posts had no tags

#queue up - 2,082 posts

#study - 109 posts

#mine - 107 posts

#study motivation - 106 posts

#studyblr - 106 posts

#heydilli - 106 posts

#study inspiration - 104 posts

#college - 104 posts

#studying - 100 posts

#student - 98 posts

Longest Tag: 137 characters

#now all i have left to do is write my psych paper and make the final presentation then film myself giving the presentation and turn it in

My Top Posts in 2022:

#5

47/100

I know that if I start studying for Latin earlier in the week I would do better but we just move so fast that by the time I've learned something we've moved on. Today our quiz was on a video she emailed us on Wednesday night. I'm pretty sure I made a B but there's just no time to study for something like that that quickly.

Looking forward to the weekend but not looking forward to exams next week.

273 notes - Posted November 4, 2022

#4

Day 16/100

Made it to the coffee shop! I got a cold brew and a yogurt parfait and then got in over two hours of accounting work! After the coffee shop, I went and ran errands, watched two episodes of Russian Doll and two episodes of Criminal Minds, and ended the day by going to my college's football game. Sadly we lost by three but I enjoyed watching the game and getting to hang out with my friends :)

277 notes - Posted September 11, 2022

#3

24/100

I don't know if it's because I had two coffees today or if it's because I'm sick but I have been so dizzy all day. I hope I'm over this sickness soon. The good news is that my throat no longer hurts!!

Today I had social psychology and advanced accounting. In accounting I got my exam from last week back and ended up making a 102! It was the 2nd highest score in the class so I'm pretty darn happy about that. Tomorrow I have a Latin exam and so I went to a Latin study session and then obsessively wrote every possible way to write a noun or a verb over and over again for two hours in the hopes of having it memorized by tomorrow. Luckily going to the study session means I'll get five bonus points on the exam which gives me some wiggle room to make mistakes.

Here's another shot of my school's library. I love taking pictures of the library especially since my room and desk are a mess and I don't have the motivation to clean it lol. Maybe later this week I'll get it cleaned up. Hope everyone is having a good week so far!!

345 notes - Posted September 21, 2022

#2

51/100

Back in the library! I could not focus or stay awake while trying to study for my developmental psych exam tomorrow. So I called it quits after about an hour and decided I’d go to bed early and wake up early tomorrow. But we’ll see if that actually happens haha.

It’s officially cold. Last week we had highs of 85°F/29°C and now it’s 33°F/0°C and that’s just too drastically different. To the library tonight I wore sweat pants over my leggings as well as a tee shirt, a sweat shirt, and a jacket. If I had a hat I’d put that on too but alas. At least I’ll get to wear a sweater tomorrow!

Good luck to everyone this upcoming week :)

551 notes - Posted November 14, 2022

My #1 post of 2022

08/100

Another productive day! I went to the gym this morning for a light workout, went to both my classes, studied in the campus library for almost two hours, and then went to dinner with friends. I'm currently watching an episode of "The Sandman" and then it'll be back to studying. So overall, a very pleasant day!

826 notes - Posted August 30, 2022

Get your Tumblr 2022 Year in Review →

[the-prophet-lemonade]

do you have any advice on getting a story to be seen? i made an ao3 account not too long ago so no one has seen my fic at the moment but i was wondering if you had any tips on that, or would i just have to wait?

hello! i can’t claim to know what makes a fic popular as it’s 99% luck, but i can speak for the remaining 1% that has worked ~reasonably~ well for me in the past. 

i think there are three key elements to getting a fic “seen”: marketing, branding, and presentation, and they’re all very important. this post got very long, so please find everything under the cut! i hope it helps :-) 

i. marketing

fic marketing may seem a bit narcissistic if you haven’t done it before, but trust me on this: it’s the best way to attract readers and you deserve to promoted your story as something you worked hard upon!

drumming up hype for a fic is great. you can do this by posting on social media, providing sneak peaks on your twitter, involving yourself in the fandom community and discussing your wips with other fans, and just generally being excited about what you’re creating. engaging with other people’s writing is also a great method to help boost your own stats … get involved with reading other work and leaving comments for other people, because they will be more likely to return the favour! when someone comments on my fics, i often go and check out their profile and see what they’ve written, as it’s highly likely we enjoy the same things! 

making promos is one of my favourite ways to engage with people about fics. once i post a fic/new chapter to ao3, i also crosspost promo posts with links and graphics to my twitter and tumblr. you will need a good hook to get people interested, but also an eye-catching image that summarises the story pictorially can be a great asset (you don’t even need photoshop, just a nice moodboard will do!). when using images however, it’s always important to think how the image size will appear in tumblr’s dimensions and on your own blog … make sure it’s not stretched or the resolution too low, and create something with a good visual flow i.e. the title appears first, then the necessary information, then any teasers or extracts. you need to make your fic post stand out on someone else’s timeline, which may already be filled with a bunch of other fic posts, jostling for attention. make it neat, clean, informative, and professional.

make sure to use the tagging systems efficiently for your chosen social media platforms: only the first five tags count on a tumblr post, so choose them wisely (i.e. use the key fandom tags first and save your personal blog tags for after), and only two hashtags count on twitter before it’s marked as spam, so go for the ship tag!

creating your own fic tag on twitter can also be fun, and i’ve seen a lot more people doing it lately too. you can encourage people to tweet along with a specialised hashtag and then you can find their reaction and engage with them later, which once again expands your fandom circle and will increase engagement on tweets associated with your fic.  

another trick i’ve learned is utilising time zones and understanding the demographics of the audience you’re trying to reach. i am very careful to post my fics at certain times of day in order to reach key people e.g. i will try to hit either europeans or americans during the evening, as this is when most people are home from work and wanting to read fic. as a european myself, especially involved in fandoms with high levels of european fans, i usually post during the early evening for CET time zones i.e. 7 or 8 pm and i tend to find this works for me. 

with tumblr, i often delay my promo posts so that i post when it’s likely to get maximum interaction (you can see when your blog is most active using your tumblr analytics) … use your queue if need be! 

i also take care in reblogging/retweeting my promo posts at certain times of day too. i will usually bump the post just before i go to bed, so as to grab americans in their early evening, and then i will bump it again in the morning when i wake up, to catch australians and west coast americans still awake. i then usually keep bumping my promos once a day for two or three days on my social media to cast a wide enough net to catch as many people who might be interested, as not everyone checks their timeline every day and social media swallows up posts so quickly, especially tumblr which is not built for original content creators to do well (lol). i will usually bump a promo post 5 - 7 times before retiring it and this is a model that’s worked well for me in the past, especially for droplets, which would get 500+ notes per chapter!  if you’re anxious about this, know that most people will only see your post once or twice because tumblr moves fast and swallows posts up very quickly, and sometimes people need reminders to read if they decide to save things for later when they have more time

ii. branding

the benefits of branding mainly come from experience, so it’s a tricky thing to utilise if you haven’t published fic before … but there are still tricks worth trying! 

certain fic writers will attract readers to new fics just because their name is attached to it, and people know the sort of story they’re getting, they know how it’ll be written, the sort of tropes that will appear, that sort of thing. obviously, building up this sort of brand requires publishing a lot of work, and so it must be said that practice makes perfect: the more you write and publish, the more your fics will be seen and your audience will grow. people will regularly see your username in the tags on ao3 and be more inclined to click on you as someone who reliably produces good content. it’s important to remember that everyone starts from the same place and works hard to improve their craft; success doesn’t just come overnight (unless you’re in the right place at the right time) and any creator will tell you that compliments to their talent aren’t what matters, but instead, it’s compliments to their dedication and hard graft. 

another key thing about branding is how you present yourself online. the most important thing in my opinion is cohesion across your social media platforms e.g. having the same username on ao3 as you do on tumblr/twitter/wherever you promote your fic. having an easily navigatable blog with working hyperlinks and archiving of your fic work is also great. basically, building a clean interface for people to engage with your work is vital! having the same icon and username across all your social media makes it so much easier for readers to navigate between your fics and your promo posts … basically, the easier you can spell something out, the better

branding is mostly to do with how you advertise yourself, rather than the particular fic, although much of it overlaps. get your name out there by engaging with other writers and making friends and appreciating their work! this is often the best way to get inspired, plus you get to meet some amazing people. i recommend trying out for zines and big bangs and writing challenges, as these are good ways to show your work to already-established audiences. also, make yourself available by interacting with commentors or by opening up your inbox on tumblr to anons. try linking your social media and your inbox as hyperlinks in the authors note of your fic

iii. presentation

this is really fundamental and is often the main reason people will close out of your fic and not read to the end. people want to read fics that are easy to digest and have had care put into them. this includes a lot of things:

correct tagging i.e. are the tags coherent and not just rambling? are there appropriate trigger warnings in place? have you unnecessarily tagged every side pairing under the sun, rather than just the main relationship?

grammar and spelling. goes without saying … people are more likely to read things that look professional and have had care poured into their preparation. make sure you know how to use speech punctuation. revise how to use commas. avoid epithets (especially racially-aggravated ones). get yourself a beta if you’re worried, because betas are godsends!

paragraphing. so many people will close out of a fic if it isn’t correctly spaced. double spaced paragraphs look best on ao3 and i often won’t read a fic if the paragraphs are too long because it hurts my eyes to read. make sure you’re starting new speakers in new paragraphs. new ideas deserve new paragraphs. basically, every time the “camera” changes, you should be starting a new paragraph. not just a new line. 

summaries. i see so many fics on ao3 with summaries that are either apologising for being bad at summaries or apologising for a fic being bad/being a first fic, and like … stop this! own what you have written, no-one else will have written it the way you have and you should be proud of it. if you’re saying in your summary that it’s a bad fic, i’m not going to click on it as a reader. instead, utilise your summary to get people hooked … good hooks can be written a load of different ways, but the best ones i see often involved a snippet from the fic as a taster, and then a couple lines of blurb. get people excited! 

titles: i’m personally more likely to click on a fic where the title is either (a) correctly capitalised or (b) is clearly chosen for its aesthetic or meaning (i love long lower case titles with parentheses lol). choosing a memorable title is really helpful, especially one that can be shortened or abbreviated for social media (e.g. for hashtags)!

all this being said, traffic on ao3 is a crytpid at best and obeys little in the way of rhyme or reason. you can put blood, sweat and tears into marketing your fic, but sometimes, just being in the right place at the right time (writing for the right niche) is what does it, so being a fic writer requires a lot of patience. first and foremost, write for yourself. write what you want to read and enjoy doing it, because if you get sucked into obsessively checking stats, it’s only going to disappoint when you don’t achieve what you want to achieve. 

just keep persevering and keep writing and appreciating each and every person who takes time in interact with your fic and its promos … because ultimately, all it takes it that one reader to fall head over heels in love with your fic for everything to change. for now, just be proud of your work and keep writing!

[canaryatlaw]

So I’m currently sitting on a plane somewhere over the Atlantic Ocean, typing this in the notes section of my phone. It’s 9 pm Chicago time where we left, and 3 am London time where we’re going. We have about 3 and a half hours left, getting in at like 6:30 am. I took my pills like half an hour ago so hopefully I’ll start getting tired soon, I kinda have to pee but I’m at the window seat and Jess and the guy in the aisle seat are asleep and I don’t want to wake them up....we’ll see I guess. At best I’m only getting a couple hours of sleep, but it’s better than nothing for sure.

So, today has been pretty wild. My alarm went off at 9:20 am and I got up, had a message from Jess asking if it was time for her to come over and I said sure, and brushed my teeth, and Jess was there a few minutes later. The goal of the morning was to get BTS concert tickets, even though neither of us particularly like them this is what Jess wanted to do so that was fine with me. I ordered us breakfast which came shortly afterwards. The tickets were supposed to go on sale at 10 am, which was the same time I was supposed to start a quick phone interview. So we had both laptops opened up to each of our Ticketmaster’s accounts and in the “pre-queue.” The deal was that the people in the pre-queue when it starts get assigned a randomized place in line, and if you come in after you go to the end. So it became 10 am and both laptops reported 2,000+ people in front of us, so we weren’t going anywhere fast. A few minutes later I got my phone call and stepped away.

It was just supposed to be a quick phone screening and then they would talk to their hiring people about who they wanted to bring in for an in person interview. I articulated last night how I felt I had decent enough experience to sell myself for the position but didn’t think it would be realistic for me to get it. Well, the phone screening went really well, I talked about my experience and what kinda work I want to do and it was really good! Maybe like 15 minutes after it ended I got another call from them saying they wanted me to come in for an in person interview next week, so we scheduled that and I’m very excited! Apparently they think I’m qualified enough, which I will take lol. But yes, that taken care of, back to the BTS tickets.

Over an hour with nothing, about 11:10 it still says 2,000+ but my progress bar is getting towards the end and it eventually progresses to 80 people in front and then 1, and finally brought me to the massive blow up of the field where you had to pick your seats. Jess got in shortly afterwards. It was already very widely picked over, and there must’ve been a ton of people in there with us because every time we’d click on two seats together it would say they were already taken and make us try to find different ones, over and over again, and I’m talking to the point where there was like, 10 open spots in the entire giant football stadium. And like, we tried and tried and tried, but it just wasn’t happening. The good news is that Jess’ coworker that stans BTS was able to get two floor seat tickets and is willing to take Jess with her, so she’ll get to live out her BTS dreams after all (and me who literally knows one BTS song will be just fine).

So after all of that was figured out, I changed quickly and we walked over to Walgreens so Jess could print some pictures (I think like ones people sent her to have celebs sign?) and I wanted to get a tiny bottle of spiky hair gel and a small thing of acne cream to take with me, and ended up grabbing a few snacks for the plane since we didn’t buy the inflight meals that were $45 each, per meal (yeah, no thank you). Jess went home after that to pack, and I went home and got the last of my things together and picked over my snacks and candy collection for what I wanted to bring with us.

A little after 1 I got a message from Jess saying she was ready, so I grabbed all of my stuff, said goodbye to my cat, and called an Uber, which came and got me and then got Jess and took us to the airport. We were getting there super fucking early (flight was at 5) because international flights and airports and you know all of that good stuff. We checked in very easily, and security wasn’t bad at all, so we progressed to the gate fairly quickly. And then of course we had time to kill. So we just sat for a while and just chilled out before deciding to go see what our food options were, which had us go partially down the one end of the terminal before remembering we already did this the last time we were in this terminal (it’s the international flights one but also currently houses Frontier so we’d been there before) and there was nothing, so we went back to the main food court area and ended up with some Mediterranean food that was quite good.

Once we finished eating we went to our actual gate, which was swarmed with people from two flights in adjacent gates, so we ended up sitting on the floor. We got slightly delayed in boarding but they said we’d still probably take off the same time. As luck would have it, the other flight was also to London, although a different airport and airline, but I had to go and make sure we were in the right place, lol. Somehow Jess started sending memes to people in the near vicinity who had their airdrops on in their phones which resulted in a lot of laughter as other people started sending things back (or turning off their airdrop 😂) and things got increasingly ridiculous and we ended up getting identified by at least two iPhone users because we were constantly bursting into laughter. So that was a fun little distraction.

We were of course in the last boarding group, because we are cheap(tm) but eventually we got called and made it onto the airplane. There’s a USB port thankfully, meaning we can keep our phones charged and not relying on our portable batteries, which is very good. They also have a screen set up where you can watch movies and such, much like the plane I took to London in 2014 (and at least two flights we’ve had in the last year). I discovered quickly that I managed to not pack my earbuds, which I was very pissed about, but when they were doing the passenger announcements they said they had headsets available for purchase for like $3 along with blankets and like drinks and food stuff, so once we got into the air I ordered earbuds along with two cokes which were brought to us shortly afterwards, which I was very happy about since my plan up to that point to watch Crazy Rich Asians on subtitles was less than thrilling so far. So I got the earbuds and actually listened to the rest of the movie (Jess had started it like ten minutes before me, so she was slightly ahead) so I watched that and I really liked it a lot! A very well done movie, and I really loved how much it was infused with Asian culture and was truly an Asian story, not an attempted one made my white people. So I liked that a lot. Once we finished that we flipped through the available movies/tv shows but very few of them had captions (which Jess wanted since one of her ears still isn’t fully working and she won’t go to the goddamn doctor about) so we ended up starting to watch teen titans go to the movies, but it was pretty awful so we turned it off about 15 minutes in and decided not to just stick to our phones for now. I had to fish my adapter out of my bag to charge my phone and listen to music at the same time (though I think it stopped charging a few minutes ago??? Idk weird) and I spent a little bit proofreading some fanfic before starting to write this, and now I am here. I’ll probably try to go to sleep now, we’re exactly 3 hours out at this point. I’ll post this once we get on the ground at 6:30 am London time, which will still be fairly night time in the US. So that’s what I’m gonna do now. Goodnight babes. Happy weekend.

** so it’s 4:51 pm British time and it just occurred to me I never posted this, so here ya go.