#i know that there are planning tools and spreadsheets out there but i am very much a purist and prefer to make my own spreadsheets

[peasantdragons]

when you're trying to get the next generation of your breeding project figured out but your spreadsheet brain is exhausted so you just make pages of notes

[ninjagobythenumbers]

Ninjago Species by the Season

I made this chart upon @weirdcatbean's request. I also wanted to include allignment and centrality on this chart, but as you can see that would get pretty busy.

Here's the percentages.

Interestingly, it keeps a pretty consistent human:non-human ratio. The earlier seasons actually have less humans percentage wise, which I did not expect. However, I should note that this chart includes every single named character, so while yes there may be 36 humans in Seabound for instance, 19 of them are ensemble who were just there for Nya's funeral. I'll be making an improved version of this chart later that's a bit easier to read and includes some more relavant data points. Now, you may be wondering, why didn't I include what the chart looks like without the inclusion of ensemble from the beginning. I admit, normally I would. To explain why I didn't, I have to tell the story of how I came up with these numbers.

Methodology

While I could have just tallied up individual species season by season, I knew I would probably want to play with the data in other ways besides just this one chart. Thus, I undertook the massive endeavor of indexxing every Ninjago character by Name, Type, Allignment, Species, Gender, and Season. For instance, here's the pilot season.

You may be wondering what the New/Old column is all about. In order to include the full character breakdown for each season, I had to make new entries of each character every season. This created a lot of repeats, so to separate unique characters from repeats I noted whether character's were introduced with this season (new) or whether they were a repeat (old). This was also useful in that it allowed me to alter the criteria of a character with each season so I can accomadate for changes such as Cole turning into a ghost. Once I had compiled this data (839 entries and 292 unique characters), I attempted to use Google Sheets' pre-provided data analysis.

It was sort of useful, but it would only show the top 4 and bottom 4 frequencies and I couldn't copy and paste the data. It also was a bit fussy around filters. Thus, I did something a bit wonky where I filtered by season and just copy pasted the column into a different sheet.

I then used functions (ex: =COUNTIF(AC3:AC1002, "Skeleton")) to create my raw data table which you can view above. This process worked but it had a lot of problems. It was time consuming, didn't allow me to employ multiple filters, and, most importantly of all, it wasn't allowing me to use this data I had spent days compiling to its full extent. Thus, I decided to create a sort of search engine for Ninjago characters.

This search engine allows me to input criteria and recieve not only the total characters that fit the criteria, but a list of all of their entries. The fact it lists all of their entries may not sound that impressive, but trust, it is. (For me at least) Here's an example search of good, recurring Serpentine.

I am very excited about the potential of this tool. It's going to allow me to create a lot of great charts, including an improved Species by Season chart. For now though, I'm only uploading the original requested chart, because creating this tool has taken the better part of my day. I plan on sharing it, but I still need to work out a few kinks so you can look forward to that as well. I know I already said it, but I'm so, so excited about what I'll be able to make. Here's a preview to the search if you're interested. It also includes all my previous spreadsheets, but I'm still working out some formatting issues and stuff.

[actualtext]

Dec 10, 2022

Reflection 2

1. What is going on inside your head right now?

I feel really accomplished because I worked all night and was able to make like $400 which got me only $100 away from my goal. I worked so hard because I wanted to take Saturday off to spend at a friends birthday. I'm gonna try to make the last $100 on Sunday. :)

2. What negative emotion keeps cropping up the most lately?

I've been talking to friends about different things and have made a few realizations after being asked "have you mentioned this to your therapist?"

first, I think I have an issue pretending that things are okay when it comes to authority figures. I've done this since I can remember. I think it started when I was young and didn't want to stress my mom out. It went on even at doctors appointments where I would pretend my reflexes were perfect by purposely kicking my leg out when the doctor hit my knee with their tool. I got caught once and never did it again. Once I was in a study where I had to take medicine for diabetes and I didn't like the size of the medicine or how the medicine made me feel but instead of telling the doctors, I would flush them down the toilet and try really hard to control my blood sugar. I was 11 and didn't quite know how important the study was. Ultimately I came out with the truth because they called me out on my glucose log. I wanna think that I've been genuinely happy to meet with you (because I am genuinely excited to finally be able to talk to a therapist), but after reflecting, I'm worried I might be masking, we have only had three sessions so it might just be that it's too early, but this was a concern of mine.

second, I told my friend that I have felt like I'm stuck in the past. Not so much like on the outside but I feel like I got stuck where I was mentally as a young adult. I don't feel like my life is progressing like it should. Sometimes I feel angry that I didn't get to experience certain things that young people get to experience cause we were homeless. Other times I feel angry that I'm not as "grown" as I feel like I should be at my age. Like... why am I still wearing vans other than I like them, I'm used to them, and I can finally afford them as an independent person? I feel like they're very youthful. I worry I might be stuck dressing like a teenager or worse, reacting like one.

third, I'm angry that my aunt is unsure that I was sexually assaulted. I'm angry she's using her religious beliefs as a reason to be neutral. It hurts me so bad because I'm not asking her to take any specific actions, I just want her to genuinely understand why I'm feeling the way I am. I'm also envious that she doesn't understand what I'm going through. That she can go on planning for Christmas and I'm just kind of stuck in the same anxiety inducing position of having to tell her I'm not going to the family gathering if there's even a slight chance my cousin wj be there. A part of me doesn't want to go also because of the first part of "third". I don't feel loved like I used to because she doesn't believe me.

3. What has made you the happiest lately?

getting back on the grind, making money, being able to buy things for myself and for others cause i can. Having what I need right when I need it cause I can buy it in this capitalist society. Today specifically, I walked into a hot topic and bought my friend a $25 tshirt for her birthday without even having to check my account. Gosh dang, that felt nice and stress free and exciting.

4. The last time you felt this way, what did you do?

the last time I felt accomplished due to making the money I needed, I paid all my bills and created a spreadsheet of an avalanche debt payoff plan to give my self that nice feeling of being on top of things. Felt so good. I probably also bought my favorite dinner that whole week.

5. What holds you back the most from moving on from negative emotions?

I think just the fact that some things take time to resolve and they aren't being resolved quickly. For example the thing with my aunt. I don't know how to explain to her how I feel without attacking her for not believing me wholeheartedly. The other day I was driving a passenger to his house in Kyle tx, and we passed a street that was named the same as the street my cousin lives on. I shut my app off and went home cause I didn't feel good. So random triggers catching me off guard.

6. Which emotions are you trying to avoid right now? why?

im trying to avoid losing this motivation. I'm actually feeling somewhat okay (thanks to my excitement over my great work night), and I wish I could just get all my shit together. There's a pile of clothes on my floor, I'd like to start wrapping Xmas gifts, and basically figure my life out over night 😂😂😂. There's so much I wanna do and I just hope I feel this way tomorrow and the next day and so forth.

7. What is your inner critic telling you lately?

im a trauma dumper and shouldn't be as vocal about my struggles.

[mr-crawleigh]

I am a Tester. I set up conditions which are meant to encourage humans to exhibit various forms of sinful behavior. What's considered "sinful" varies depending on things like environment, culture, program version, and of course the nature of the unit being tested.

No one person is alike, of course. But I don't just test people. I also test conditions, components, and infrastructure of the material world in regards to its functionality towards moral choice. If there's something that's impeding the ability for humans to make a real moral choice in any given situation, my job is to check and see whether it's a natural product of material causality, or whether there's some kind of issue in the system itself.

I don't check everything myself, of course. I delegate a great deal. I'm not sure precisely how much, but the more tests I run, the more resources I seem to be able to requisition.

But yes, well... I use quite a few human tools, at any rate. And I encourage my team to do so if they find any useful, although the demons tend to do so more than --

Right, you did ask about demons and angels. The difference -- at least in my own universe -- is entirely professional.

All demons are technically angels, beings who serve the Will of God. The demons are those whose critical and incisive viewpoints led them to offer alternatives to many of the problem-solution flowcharts laid out in the Divine Plan. Their skillsets have been transferred to Testing and Correction, a later phase of the project.

Angels, who apparently did not voice the same concerns as a group, are still in Design and Construction to some extent. However, rather than creating a world from scratch, the majority of that department has moved to the Maintenance and Solutions phase. They take the bug reports and fix the bugs, essentially.

Well, demons in my world are rather keen on keeping up with humanity. They've embraced weapons and filekeeping techniques that have been invented entirely by humans, and often form little fanclubs around the like of Samuel Colt or Herman Hollerith. Which is not to say that their mindsets have necessarily kept up, but they do try.

On the other hand, angels tend to be traditionalists. Many of them were tasked with delivering tools such as the first sword or the first ploughshare to humans, and so they prefer to retain their more iconic tools such as the scythe or the torch. I believe I've talked a few into using spreadsheets, but they will still transfer their final data into great volumes by hand instead of just uploading everything to the Cloud. But the important thing is that the data gets there eventually.

I really don't believe that you need to be able to imagine yourself capable of change in order to change, though. I think that change comes when you decide to think in a different way. Whether you realize it or not, that changes you. It creates new pathways and new possibilities. You can change quite a lot and still remain yourself if you simply see change as opening yourself up to the possibility of choice -- you may choose to still do the same thing as yesterday, but you will see what you do in a different way now.

And that's when you know that you have changed yourself. Nothing is different around you, and yet you see it all differently than you remember seeing it.

I am an angel by specie, but a demon by profession. I was not reassigned, but chose to continue my usual duties despite the fact that the world had changed around me. I'm what We were Before.

However, I see the world -- and my colleagues -- in very much the same way as I did before. It's they who seem to believe themselves changed in ways I cannot entirely understand.

As far as one's imagination restraining oneself -- if one believes that the very actions of one's mind affect the material world around them in more than its ability to animate the body to carry out its will, one might be inclined to be more cautious in one's thoughts. Say, someone who believes they can affect the weather with their mood.

Many of my colleagues can.

@mr-crawleigh If you look under the passenger seat of your car, there’s a tin of cookies for Puck. Remember to be cautious with the fae, and polite.

After all, I could not save you if it became necessary.

[kbsd]

not sure if you’ve answered this before, but what’s your process look like when you make an amv? i’m just curious and in constant awe of ppl who can make videos like you do :)

hello all!!! i have answered this before and i have a vid help tag with other asks i’ve gotten about stuff like this! but i’ve gotten several more messages along these lines so i’m just going to answer a bunch of them together (under a cut since i love to ramble about editing lol). i do just wanna say i’m definitely not the authority on video editing and obv everyone has their own techniques!

edit: i just finished typing all this up and it’s SO long so sorry in advance LMAO god bless anyone who reads this entire thing

so i work in news tv and we have a very specific workflow for writing scripts, sourcing video, producing, and editing. i’ve just applied that to making amvs! for every video i make, i copy the song lyrics into a google doc and adjust them to match the song i’ve cut (i often will trim songs for time and/or content purposes). then i start planning! i’ll mark down what clip i want to use for each lyric next to that line, and any sound bites i want to use (with episode numbers!). i’ll color code between video and sound bites and lyrics, so my scripts end up looking something like this (for my honeybee amv):

doing the planning ahead of time makes everything much easier when it’s a video that spans the whole show or involves a lot of sourcing, like honeybee or sports analogies. that way when i get to the actual editing process, i already know what i’m going to do and have a game plan. for videos like happy ending or believe it or not, where i’m mainly just pulling from a few episodes, i can just plan it in my head as opposed to writing it all down, and produce as i edit. obviously i do make in-the-moment decisions while editing—sometimes a shot doesn’t work the way i thought it would, or i go where the video takes me—but planning ahead definitely helps. i know some people use spreadsheets as well, with columns for lyrics, video clips, and sound bites if applicable. once you find a system that works, it actually goes pretty quickly.

as for sourcing clips themselves/finding clips within episodes, i talked about that here and kind of here. the short version is that transcripts are a must, and the supernatural wiki is hugely helpful by cataloguing all the hugs, prayers, phone calls, etc. in the show. gifmakers that tag episode numbers on their posts are your friends. it gets easier the more video you make—that’s another huge reason i make the google docs for each video (even the ones i plan in my head, i end up going back and making a loose script with episode notes just for reference). if i can’t remember where something is but i know i used it in another video, i can easily reference past scripts!

i also cut all my videos in the same project in premiere pro, so i can flip between them easily. instead of checking a past script, i can just go to the video sequence itself and copy the clip i’m looking for! this was especially helpful when i match cut together the 5x18 and 4x22 wall slam shots for my bestie video, and then stole it from myself for honeybee hahaha. at any given time i have at least 8 sequences open:

because of the sheer volume of videos i make, it’s worth it for me to download the entire show—i have all 327 episodes in HD, plus deleted scenes. if you think you’re only going to make a few videos, i’d start with scene packs. you can usually just google “destiel [or whatever ship/character you’re looking for] scene packs” and there will be any number of ones you can download. if you need other specific scenes, you can always download/torrent individual episodes or screen record netflix (that’s what i did before i got HD download links). i’m happy to share my links if you DM, but be warned it’s a lot of disk space (about 500GB on my hard drive). someone also compiled every destiel scene, downloadable here.

having every episode already loaded in premiere for all my projects also makes it a lot easier to source clips. once i use a clip in a video, i’ll put a marker on the episode file, so that after a while i have most of the important scenes/lines marked to easily find them. to give you an idea, this is my episode file in premiere for 12x10 lily sunder has some regrets (markers at destiel scenes, the car fight, hot girl cas, etc.). markers are the green tabs along the bottom:

premiere also lets you color code and name markers, so ONE DAY i will go back and color code them all. the ones above are all the same color, but in a perfect world, i’d have a myraid—for destiel shots like hugs, touches, looks; for important pieces of dialogue; for action shots; etc. but for now this works ok for me, so that’s a project for another time!

between detailed scripts, one giant premiere project, markers, the wiki, and my own memory, i have so many points of reference that i can usually find any clip i need in about 2 minutes max. sound bites are often harder to start out, or tiny specific shots i haven’t used before, and that’s when i turn to tumblr gifsets or beloved mutuals to crowdsource. but if you’re as obsessive about marking/keeping neat scripts as i am, it gets easier and easier with every video you make. that’s part of why i’m able to cut videos together so quickly. (also i want to stress i do this for a living and have to produce/edit a new piece for my show every day so i’m used to it. and compared to constantly updating content/sources and news that changes every day, 327 highly documented episodes that never change are much easier to handle hahaha)

this is all great for me since i make so many videos and plan to continue doing so, but if you’re only making a few, this level of work isn’t worth it imo. really it’s all about developing a system that works for you. whatever you do with episodes/sourcing, though, i cannot recommend planning things out in a script ahead of time enough. 

everything i just mentioned is producing, though. for the editing process, i usually do it in this order:

music first. any parts i want to cut, i make sure it all sounds smooth

then soundbites. i usually try to weave them into the lyrics—i have characters talk in breaks between lines or instrumental sections as much as possible. i’ll sometimes go so far as looped/extending an intsrumental part to make room for the soundbite i want there lol. if i do have dialogue over a line, i do the sound mixing/levels at this point as well to make sure everything is audible/one doesn’t overpower the other. (also i always include the video that goes with these bites when i drop them in, and decide later if i want to show the character speaking or have other clips cover the dialogue)

once i have all the audio locked in, then i bring in all my other video clips. sometimes i edit completely chronologically, sometimes jumping from section to section—it depends on the song or how i’m feeling

double check sound mixing. i usually listen to my videos through a few times, with headphones and without to make sure it’ll sound good no matter how people watch it

once i have picture and audio lock, i go through and color correct my clips. i’m basic and just use lumetri color in premiere, and usually just play with brightness, saturation, temperature, and tint until i like it

render and export! :)

i always have several audio tracks, but i try to keep my video tracks condensed. i’ll drop clips on a V2 level, and edit a section there, and drop the whole chunk down to V1 so i know it’s finished. that way when i leave and come back i can know where i left off/what’s done/etc. to give you an idea, this is the timeline for my what the hell video:

i always render as H.264 with high bitrate, and make sure to check “render at maximum depth” and “use maximum render quality” for the best quality. i’m sorry, but i don’t know what the equivalent options are in final cut, imovie, kdenlive, etc. i post on youtube mostly so i don’t have to sacrifice quality, but usually just using a lower bitrate will get you under the tumblr file size limit and it’ll still look good.

as for the anon who asked about “polishing”: first of all, thank you!! second of all, it’s in the details. all of this is a matter of taste and my own insanity, but here are some little things i always try to do:

after i color correct, i blur out any credits from the starts of episodes. i use gaussian blur for this, but really any blur tool works

as much as possible, i avoid clips where we see a character’s mouth move but don’t hear the words. in tv/film we call it “lip flap” and i just think it looks messy. also i’m trained to avoid it at all costs at work hahaha. it’s more for serious videos that this matters a lot to me (e.g. i think i did a really good job eliminating lip flap in my happy ending amv)—for comedy videos i don’t sweat it as much

i put audio fades on the start and end of every single audio clip i use, even if i don’t think i need it, to make sure everything sounds smooth

i use markers for timing, especially in action-y videos like what the hell. i’ll put a marker on the clip i’m using at the exact moment a punch lands, and in the song on the beat. if i have the magnet/snap in timeline tool on i can just easily snap them together instead of having to spend time finagling it

this is such a small thing but i dip/cut to black for a tiny bit at the start and end of every video. this way if i post with tumblr video player, there’s black between the loops, and it gives you a beat before the video restarts. i do this even on videos i post on youtube, just because i think it looks nicer/more professional

this is 1,500 words so i’m going to stop myself before i pull something. if you have follow-up questions feel free to ask and i’ll continue to add them to the vid help tag, but any more questions about sourcing clips or my process in general i’ll just link this post going forward. anyone who made it this far, i am sending to a telepathic kiss. thank you for reading and happy editing!

[princip1914]

A few thoughts on writing longfic

I’ve had this post brewing for a while and I figured since today is a Friday I might as well let it out into the wild. 

First off, this is not writing advice. I don’t feel qualified to give writing advice. This is a few observations I’ve made over the course of trying to write something that feels, well, long. Fandom is full of excellent authors writing long chaptered fic, but I don’t see a lot of people talking about how they go about producing such fics. I remember feeling like long fic was really out of reach for me when I started writing again in the summer of 2019 after not writing for years and years and I wanted to talk a bit about how that changed for me. Of course, this post comes with all the caveats that there is no need to ever write long fic if you’re not feeling it. Some of my favorite authors write mostly or only oneshots! But, if you are interested, here’s my lengthy, self indulgent, and entirely personal take on ~the longfic process~ below the cut. 

First, to get this out of the way: long fic is anything that feels long or complicated to you, the author. “I’m working on my long fic” can mean that you’re branching out from microfiction to write something that’s 2k long, or it can mean you’ve got a multi-part 800k epic. There’s no objective measure of if something is “long fic,” Your own personal definitions can also change as you grow in confidence or change your focus as a writer (a little over a year ago when I finished Doubt Thou the Stars are Fire topping out at 31k, that felt very very long to me. Now it feels….still long, but not very very long.) 

Here are a few specific things that helped me write something long. I don’t know if they will be interesting for anyone else, but at the very least writing these down has been a fun way for me to reflect on my own process. 

Practice exercises. Ok, this is going to sound exceedingly obvious, but writing one shots prepares you for writing chaptered fic. Here’s what I mean more specifically: if you know you want to write (as a totally hypothetical example) a chaptered fic set in America in the summer that relies heavily on a nature metaphors, is written out of chronological order, and features a melancholy tone--it helps to write a few one shots like that before you embark on the Big Fic. Just like artists tend to do sketches before starting a big piece, it’s very helpful to write something small that gives you a feel for the ~vibe~ of what you’re trying to do in the long fic. It’s helpful for all the usual reasons--you get to know a specific version of the characters which helps plan out a character driven plot for the long fic--but it’s also helpful because you will learn if the tone and mood of the fic has enough staying power to capture your interest for the long haul. For instance, I have a few unfinished chaptered fics that have a humorous tone. I wish I had done more short humorous fics before starting them, because I would have realized that I don’t currently have the mental stamina to hold up a humorous tone for the length of a chaptered fic (hopefully that will change and I will finish Last Days some time this century!). 

Plan it out ahead of time. I used google sheets for The False and the Fair. I do not think God intended google sheets to be used for fiction, but that was not going to stop me. On a more serious note, I think the best tool for planning fiction is the one you’re the most comfortable with--the notes app in your phone, handwriting, word, google drive, sheets, chalk board, summoning circle, the blood of your enemies, etc. The reason I chose to use sheets is that I knew from the very beginning that I wanted certain things to happen at specific places in the story--for instance, I wanted the first kiss to happen at the end of the first third of the story and I wanted the “reveal” about the mine accident to happen at the end of the second third of the story. But, I didn’t know what was supposed to go in between those elements. A traditional outline for a story at this point in development might have looked like: 

Meet cute

Kiss

Reveal 

Ending 

But, what my brain needed was to preserve the blank spaces in between these story elements, and specifically to preserve the right amount of blank space between these story elements so that it didn’t end up, for instance, that the first kiss was halfway through rather than a third of the way through. In this way, I found google sheets an invaluable tool for pacing in the early parts of the planning process. I simply made 30 rows assuming 30 chapters, and started plugging in the elements I knew I wanted in the locations I wanted them. Then I filled in the blank spaces by asking myself “how do we get from X plot element to Y plot element in Z amount of chapters.” I’m not a mountain climber, but I’ve often thought about the first things that go into the spreadsheet in terms of mountain climbing terminology.  In climbing, a crux move, which can be anywhere along the route, is the most difficult move of the route: if you can’t do it, you can’t do the route. I think of the first things that go into the planning spreadsheet as the crux moves of the story, the most important pieces around which everything else turns. It was not an accident that those were also all the first scenes of the fic that I wrote; if I couldn’t do those scenes, I couldn’t do the story the way I planned it so I wanted to know early on if I needed to make changes.

Make changes if you have to: even though it helps to have things planned in advance, don’t resist the story if it tries to change on you while you’re writing it. Usually the feeling that you have to make changes stems from having a plot that is not entirely character driven. As you write the story, the characters reveal themselves and sometimes the plot has to change to change with the characters’ motivations. Here’s an area where fanfic writers have a leg up on everyone else: if you write fic, you already know the characters really well. That means, (in my experience anyway) it’s less likely that you’ll have a surprise character development which leads to a rethinking of the whole plot. Less likely, but not completely unlikely, unfortunately.

Lie to yourself: The False and the Fair was supposed to be 90k words. I thought that sounded reasonable, a little less than 3x the longest fic I had ever written. Now it's 161k and will probably top out a little over 170k. Ooops. But I never would have set out to write something that long. I wouldn’t have thought I could do it, even though anyone more experienced looking at my plans for the fic probably would have laughed at the idea I could cover all those plot points in 90k. Ignorance is bliss. Protect your ignorance.

Scrivener: Long fic for me means “fic that is long enough you can’t hold all the parts of it in your head at once.” That’s where Scrivener comes in (or another app if you’d rather, but I really like Scrivener for the ability to see the project either linearly or as condensed notecards). You can put together an organizational scaffold in Scrivener that allows you to move back and forth between the forest and the trees. So, for instance, you might be going for a jog and come up with the perfect line of dialogue for chapter 27 when you’re only up to chapter 5 in terms of writing progress. With Scrivener, you can go home, and put that dialogue in the “bucket”/index card/whatever for chapter 27 without compromising your ability to see chapter 5 clearly or muddying up your google doc. You can then use the fact that you’ve started writing bits and pieces of the later chapters in conjunction with the tool of lying to yourself that, actually, you’ve written a lot more of the fic than you realize and that when you get to chapter 27 it won’t be as hard as chapter 5 because you’ve put in the groundwork already. In my experience, this lie turns out to be true about 50% of the time, which is better than 0% of the time.

Digestible mini arcs: The False and the Fair was originally broken up into thirds. I thought it would be 90k and 30k was the longest I had written, so thirds seemed to make sense. Also, 3 is a nice, time honored storytelling number. I think it’s good to give yourself seemingly achievable milestones along the way to completion. These milestones (for me anyway) lined up well with the “crux moments” I’ve described. If you’re someone who likes to write out of order, writing your way to an already written milestone can feel like sailing to an island where you get to rest for a bit from the stormy seas before setting out for the next island in the archipelago.

“It's all part of the process”: I’m categorically incapable of describing things without resorting to running metaphors, and so I apologize in advance, but I am now going to do the insufferable thing of comparing writing a long fic to running a marathon. Here’s the thing with a marathon. You are not going to feel good every step of the way. We all know this. It’s a marathon, it’s supposed to hurt a little bit, especially at the end. In the same way you literally cannot write something novel length or even novella or long short story length without, at least at some point, feeling bad about yourself and your writing. But you also can’t run a marathon if the whole thing is agony, and for most people, it’s not--your meat sack shuffling along the course is subjected to the slings and arrows of all sorts of weird body chemistry that only happens when you push it to its limits. So, you’ll be in agony and then the endorphins will kick in for a while and you’ll be thinking “this isn’t nearly as bad as everyone said,” and then you’ll drink some water at a rest stop and feel like a God for half a mile before you crash and you’re in agony again until that one perfect song comes up on the playlist...and you get the idea. Writing something long, for me at least, is a bit like that. There are massive ups and downs. The key for me is to just understand it’s all part of the process, a necessary step on the way to the finish line. If the fic is 10 chapters long, at some point you have to write chapter 5. Just like you have to write chapter 5, at some point you also have to go through a bit of despair before reaching the end. It is unfortunately non-optional. In fact, despairing is something you can check off your list each time you’ve done it. Cut dialogue tags, check. Feel awful about my writing for thirty minutes, check. Write ending section, check. Often I feel that the stress and shame and fear that come with bad emotions while writing are worse than the bad emotions themselves. It really helps me to remember these emotions are all part of the process and nothing to worry about. If I didn’t have them, then I would worry! 

I certainly have plenty more to say about writing, but this ramble has gone on long enough. If you’re interested in any of this stuff, please feel free to send me an ask. 

I would also love to know more about everyone else’s writing processes, so feel free to pop into my ask box to talk about your own approach too! I am very interested in this stuff! 

[pateldevs]

Hi! I hope I'm not bothering you, but I love your mood board edits and was wondering if you could explain how you go about making/colouring them? I see lots of places to find gifs but turning them into a set is so hard. Thank you in advance!

hi! first of all thank you so much and second of all it’s not a bother at all! i am happy to give some of my own tips even if my explanation probably isn’t super helpful. i won’t give like a ps tutorial but below the cut (since i included example gifs, it’s VERY long) is my process for my latest jily aesthetic:

i keep track of all my ideas/sets in a spreadsheet (which i won’t show bc there’s a lot of info i’d have to blur/black out) but i always have a list of what scenes i need to gif/what gifs i’m editing and where i’m getting them from. i also include a couple extra ideas in case the gifs i have planned end up being too hard to color or don’t fit in the set. i’ve found it’s best/easiest to start w the list bc there is literally nothing worse than spending hours on a set and then not being able to complete it.

as for actually finding the material, i have a pretty healthy number of scene packs saved in my giffing folder, esp. for things i know i will gif frequently. most of the time i will peruse youtube, vimeo, and instagram for any aesthetic scenes. i also have a lot of gif packs saved specifically for the purpose of making mbs (usually i mix my own gifs w gif packs), if you msg me i’m happy to direct you to some gif packs i use regularly or you can check my #resources tag. a couple tips for finding material: 

always opt for download when possible, i used to screen record and the difference when i switched to downloading was astronomical. (it’s easy to lose quality and esp if you’re on mac, quicktime duplicates frames so either you have to manually delete those extras or you get sort of choppy gifs when you load them into ps.)

always use 1080p or better, 720p will work in a pinch for 268px or 177px gifs since you can make up some of that resolution loss with sharpening, but don’t go any lower than that, just love yourself. 

for pale sets, look for the right colors. i tend to look for scenes w high color contrast especially if it features poc so it’s easier to color without whitewashing, ie if the subject is a person then i look for light colored or blue/green/violet/white backgrounds. it’ll make your life wayyyyy easier. this also means if you’re making a set try to find scenes with already similar lighting bc you won’t have to work so hard to make it look cohesive.

here’s a quick rundown of what i do before coloring:

import all frames and save all the files in a folder together!!

play around with frame delay so all the gifs are moving at about the same speed, usually keep it between 0.03-0.05s

crop and resize gifs (i use 268x145 most of the time)

convert to timeline

when it comes to coloring it can be really hit or miss, i’ve recently gotten back into my groove but i was having sooo much trouble earlier this year. in general, don’t stress yourself out!! sometimes it’s easier to just find a new scene/gif (hence my list of extras!) than to try too hard to fit a gif into your set. i color all my gifs by scratch (ie no psds) but i tend to follow the same pattern, i’ll explain using these gifs/psd as an example since then i can also explain how to fix white-washing:

first off when you’re coloring gifs with poc always always always make a layer mask so you can compare the edited and unedited skin tones directly! i use the marquee tool to make a selection in the middle of the character’s face, select the folder of my adjustment layers, and hit ‘add vector mask’ (the third button from the left on the layers panel, it’s a white rectangle with a circle in it). 

i almost always begin by using hue/saturation layers to highlight and delete certain colors. here i highlighted red and raised the lightness on yellow by a lot since it’s a very yellow scene. then i use a combination of brightness/contrast, levels, and curves layers to brighten the scene. here’s what i have now:

i add a gradient map set to black/white, change the blending to exclusion, and lower the opacity to between 5-10% (depending on the scene) to lighten the contrast further:

then i add back a little depth with selective color in neutrals and blacks:

now i have two main goals: 1. add contrast between the background and the subject, and 2. brighten the scene into a pale gif. to do this, i use color balance to tweak the color of the background, taking out the yellows. this step works best if there’s at least some shade difference between your subject and background, otherwise isolating the two will be impossible. here’s what i have after adding color balance:

i use hue/saturation to selectively highlight the background color. in this case i chose to adjust magenta and used the color picker (the first eyedropper on the left) to identify the exact shade i wanted to lighten. now i have a fairly neutral background and a colorful subject, which gives a sort of pale effect:

and now i use a curves layer and a selective color (white) layer to brighten further:

before i go further, i start fixing white-washing. keep in mind that some variance is normal since you are naturally changing the lighting of the scene; this gif shows it rlly clearly bc of how yellow and dim the lighting is, so some lightening is to be expected. however, both because the vector mask shows a lot of whitening and because i’ve giffed dev patel before and have a general idea of what he looks like in this type of lighting, i know what needs to be fixed, so i go back in under the psd/adjustment layers with a combination of selective color (red and neutral) and hue/saturation layers to darken his skin again:

now that some more contrast has been added in, i can go back to working on the psd and use curves and selective color to play around with the background again:

i use another hue/saturation layer and a black/white gradient to tone down oversaturation:

usually i leave those layers on top, so if i want to make any adjustments (like lightening the background more), i go in under those two. in this case i tweaked the whites and reduced the contrast a little to get this:

again, you can see his skin tone has changed from the original, but variation is to be expected given how much brighter the room is, the fact that i took out a lot of yellow lighting, and the brightening effect of the computer screen in front of him. some other things to keep in mind when coloring:

when you add layers to correct white-washing, you’re likely to end up with overly red/orange skin tones (red-washing). this can be fixed by upping cyans in the reds, desaturating/darkening the reds, or adding b/w or desaturation later on.

when in doubt, it’s better to be darker than lighter (the issue with white-washing is that it promotes colorism, and there is nothing inherently wrong with a darker skin tone) but really. just put in the effort to color poc correctly.

when changing the lighting a lot it helps to look at pictures of the subject in natural/bright lighting, since you get a better idea of what their normal skin tone is. 

don’t try to squeeze all your selective color layers into one. you’ll get less grainy gifs if you separate them out and work one by one. 

TURN OFF NIGHT SHIFT/NIGHT MODE! yes i KNOW it’s bad for your eyes (especially if you’re like me and gif at night, when the lighting outside isn’t changing every 20 seconds) but your gifs will look VERY different under f.lux or night mode compared to daytime screens. especially if you’re giffing at different times of day, blue light filters can really change the way your coloring appears. best to keep it consistent.

my sharpening settings vary depending on what i’m giffing but in general i do two layers of smart sharpen (500% with radius between 0.2-0.4, 10% with radius at 10px) and then gaussian blur at 2.5px and adjust the opacity so it’s somewhere between 15-20%. i try to strike a balance between smoothing out the graininess from selective color, and sharpening details like clothes and hair. here’s what i ended up with for the gif above:

then i rinse and repeat for the rest of the gifs in the set! i tend to start with the gifs that i know will be hardest to color, which is usually the darker ones (coloring is limited by how much i can brighten the scene) and those that include poc (again, limited by how much i can brighten and adjust the scene’s lighting without white-washing). then i check set cohesion as i go, using those first few gifs as benchmarks. once i have all 8 (or 9 or 10) gifs, i play around with composition and try to balance and vary the subject, colors, and composition of gifs next to each other. i go back and make a couple of adjustments here and there according to what i observe and what i think might improve the overall appearance.

and that’s pretty much it! i hope this was helpful, if you have other questions feel free to message me and i’d be happy to help/troubleshoot. happy giffing!

[wisteria-lodge]

lion primary + badger secondary (bird model)

ie A HOUSE MATCH !!

Hellooo, I’m sorry for bothering you but I’ve found this blog and I absolutely love your character analysis and overall thought about the SHC system, and I could use some help?

I’ve known the system for a while now, since the old SHC tumblr times, and while understanding my current primary situation has been quite easy, I’m having A LOT of trouble with my secondary and it’s becoming a bit of a issue for me because the more I think about it, the more confused I become, to the point where it’s upsetting me a bit.

First thing first, my Primary is a very “standard” Lion, the whole “you feel if something is right or not and if you do something that’s not right to you you feel bad/ill/it’s wrong” is extremely me. I had some doubts about a Badger model, but I think it’s just that my personal ideals and values align a lot with a Badger worldview, since I grew in a very Badger society and family (very leftist, a lot of emphasis on equality and valuing and creating communities). Reading various description/interpretations of primary Lion always feels right, while reading primary Badger always makes me think “yeah, this is all good and nice, BUT…” so this was quite easy to sort out (no pun intended).

Are you me? So far... I could have written this. It’s possible I *might* be biased going forward. 

When it comes to secondaries, I see a lot of myself in Bird descriptions: I make spreadsheets for everything.

 Pretty Bird.

I am a crafter with an apparently endless supply of books and tutorials and supplies ready, and the enthusiasm to share them. 

That sounds more Badger. 

I am the mom friend 

Badger.

who always has what’s needed in their bag. 

Bird.

I am that one person you can count on knowing a funny or interesting anecdote about almost any topic, from the mundane to the truly obscure. Learning new things, about any topic, is literally one of my biggest pleasures in life. 

Bird [model?] Whichever one isn’t your secondary is a model you clearly love.

I take pride in all these things, but I honestly have trouble understanding if I like using them as tools because they help me with my ADHD and so I received a very strong positive enforcement using them and I kept the ones I like, or if I started doing them because they are what I like doing and coincidentally they help me managing my symptoms or better navigate the world in my day to day life.

Could be either, but modeling Bird because you’re neurodivergent is very much a thing.

Also, while I love planning, when it comes to making decisions I tend to gather all information and summarize it in a way that makes sense to me so I can visualize the issue in my mind as complete and detailed as possible, but the final decision tends to feel a bit… impulsive, to me?, there’s always A LOT of gut feeling involved, and when I don’t follow it usually it ends up being a wrong or subpar decision. I do need to gather all the available information about the issue/situation/item/people, but rather than making my decision by comparison, I use the information to make sure that I’m “seeing” the truth (or as close to it as it is possible) and then once I feel safe that I’m not overlooking anything important I just KNOW what is the correct decision.

That’s a Lion primary making a call. 

Could this simply be a very strong primary interfering with the decision-making, even when it’s not about ideals but more mundane things?

Decision making is always a primary thing. Mundane stuff included. Mundane stuff is important. 

On the other hand, I am an extremely hard working person (I am changing jobs right now because I feel like my old bosses are making more and more difficult for me to just do my job properly and without needing to cut corners, and it just feels wrong to me). 

Oh good lord. I am ready to sort you as a Badger secondary solely on the basis of THAT. 

People tell me I’m a very good listener and that I am especially good at helping others unravel their thoughts when they’re all confused and tangled because I ask the right questions. I seem to gain other people’s trust easily and often I get told gossip or secrets before others. 

Badger. Also DAMN but that’s relatable. I think you might house-match me. 

I got told several times by previous bosses that I should look into becoming a team leader because people like me and I make them get along better. 

Sounds like a Lion/Badger combo. 

People get attached to me very quickly and when I have problems the stream of folks asking if they can help or just checking in is always way more than I expect.

Isn’t it weird how that happens? 

This all sounds like Badger stuff, from the descriptions I read, but many of them are not things I actively enjoy doing, I just.. do them because it would be weird to do otherwise? Or it feels like they happen to me with no effort on my part.

Because they’re just you. It’s just who you are. 

I think they might be simply a result of me growing up in a society that values hard work and being kind to others, or just me being a likeable person

Not everyone finds this easy. Not even close. I have read so many testimonials written by people in Badger secondary households killing themselves trying to fit into this model. Wanting isn’t enough. Having examples around you isn’t enough. 

or maybe coping mechanisms I had to learn in order to “pass” as neurotypical but as I wrote the more think and read about Birds and Badgers and their differences, the more I get confused and frustrated.

Now I know I’m projecting, but all my neurotypical coping mechanisms come out of the Bird secondary toolbox. 

But it would make sense since I burned out badly in my teens from trying to always try to be perfect for my family, my friends, my teachers, society 

That sounds like a young Badger secondary, more than a young Bird secondary.

and when I finally found who I really wanted to be I resolved to never let anyone define what or how I should be ever again (hello there, Lion primary!)

I hear that. 

After a lifetime of beating myself up for not living up to the absurdly high expectations I set up for myself, I have decided that the only way to stay sane for me is to do the groundwork, be as prepared as I can

Bird

 put in the work I should

Badger

 but once I’m in the thick of it just… ride the wave. And now I got to the point where I have the confidence that I am smart enough to learn the basics of a new skill on the fly, if needed.

To me, this is so fundamentally, so spiritually Badger secondary. You don’t have tools. You are a tool. You made yourself into one. And that moment where you can just trust yourself to catch the world, absorb it into yourself, and become whatever it needs you to be... it’s ecstasy. 

I’d say that lack of time is my worst enemy, but due/thanks to the ADHD that’s not true most of the time, since lack of time is what enables me to get past the executive dysfunction in the first place, so I’ll say I have a love-hate relationship with it. Doing things just before a deadline is it’s own kind of high, after all (I’m not saying it’s healthy).

At the base of your soul, you’re not really a Bird prepper/planner. 

A practical example: I usually don’t like platforming games much, but I am LOVING Immortals: Fenyx Rising because in most situations, there is a “best” way to do things but you can also get creative by using different skills, using specific items, finding loopholes, or a combination of all of them.

Sounds like a Bird secondary having fun. [a fun model?]

When I fail a level/combat I don’t get frustrated because I know that I just have to try a few more times until I find the solution that feels right FOR ME, even if it’s not the most efficient ones. And when I do it feels great, even if I look a at guide afterwards and there’s a waaay easier solution! I usually feel a bit silly for not “seeing it” but also think something like “well, I think MY way is more fun!”

Oh yeah, a Bird secondary would not have that reaction. That is the sacred Badger consistency of method. How you do something matters equally as much as the final product. 

When I cook, I usually find a recipe I like and try it as written, then I make small adjustments to improve it, see how it turns out, and so on until I have a recipe that is MY recipe, one I really like and that I know well enough to use as a basis to be changed if needed, knowing exactly how the change will affect the end result. I think this is why I prefer baking to other kinds of cooking, since it’s much more akin to chemistry I feel like I have more control over what a change will do. 

On it’s own this could be a description of rapid-fire Bird. And you clearly have Bird, you have a lot of it. You love it. 

So I guess that what really matters to me is being able to do things my way so that I can enjoy the process and live up to my standards instead of external ones? 

But then you say something like this... it’s about the process... it’s about the method... it’s about something coming up to your own personal standards. And that’s so Badger. 

This ended up being very lengthy… I’ve tried shortening it but English isn’t my first language and I was afraid I might come across not clearly. 

Your English is perfect, and insanely clear. You’re clearer than I am. 

Thank you again for the blog, I especially like your DS9 characters’ analysis and I am low-key hoping for more :)

I’m particularly proud of those ones. I’d love to do more, but before that I would have to go back and re-watch the show, or at least key character episodes. I’m not going to sort from memory. That would be doing a show I love, and a number of extremely complex characters a disservice. And it wouldn’t be nearly as fun. 

(it’s that whole Badger integrity-of-method thing, you know how it goes.) 

[thischarmingand]

2, 8, 13, 22, 30 for the writing meme? 👀

2. If you had to give up your keyboard and write your stories exclusively by hand, could you do it? If you already write everything by hand, a) are you a wizard and b) pen or pencil?

Absolutely fucking not oh god. I don't write super fast, my handwriting breaks down quickly and my brain already moves a bit faster than I can type.

But when I do, pen, because I am left handed and I have never met a pencil I couldn't smudge.

8. If you had to write an entire story without either action or dialogue, which would you choose and how would it go?

I mostly write fiction podcasts sooooooo...

That being said if it had to be prose I would probably need it to be a really tight scenario where no one needs to do anything visually complicated that you can't just allude to in dialogue.

13. What is a subject matter that is incredibly difficult for you write about? What is easy?

Lol, I think none of my characters have... parents, really? I don't know if that's because it would be difficult or I'm just too gay to avoid doing family of choice stuff.

I would be at sea writing about religion from a place of belief - I've done it but it took so much research and it was not much fun on my end, though it came out well.

All of my writing is about the fear of change so that's easy I guess. I think I'm also pretty good at making characters want to kiss.

22. How organized are you with your writing? Describe to me your organization method, if it exists. What tools do you use? Notebooks? Binders? Apps? The Cloud?

Medium organized I'd say. I outline on paper (I have a commonplace notebook I use for everything which is not very organized because I discard outlines at the end of my first draft, and sometimes will have a backup digital one in GDcos as well) and then write in a script software - WriterDuet these days.

For Me and AU I had a spreadsheet of plot beats I wanted to hit and a calendar showing both the Selkirk TV airdates, dates over which episodes of Me and AU were taking place and other important events like the convention at the end of the season. My current thing is just a massive GDoc with a season outline and descriptions of all the regular and recurring characters, plus my neverending rewrite notes and plans for a theoretical season 2 that live in the comments bar.

I generally always know how a project will end when I start it, but there's usually a certain amount of writing into it I have to do and I always overestimate how much one episode can hold. *slaps hood of script* This baby can take so much less than you think.

30. Talk to me about the role dreams play in your writing life. Have you ever used material from your dreams in your writing? Have you ever written in a dream? Did you remember it when you woke up?

I have reasonably bad insomnia and until recently I only had stress dreams, so I think my answer here is mostly no, other than I know how to channel my anxiety into my writing pretty well, lol.

[mego42]

hi! a song inside the halls of the dark is an absolute masterpiece of plotting and pacing (and prob my fave fic I’ve read for the show so far), so for the ask a writer meme, I’d love to hear about your planning process(es). the idea of even plotting out something like that, let alone actually finishing it, just breaks my brain lol. do you do a lot of outlining? how much does the outcome end up looking like the ideas that sparked it?

adsfghgsj okay well first off, thank you! that is unspeakably flattering and i don’t know how to cope! my weird robot emotions are misfiring! but also, thank you for this question bc this is the kind of nerd shit i LIVE FOR and up until, idk, 5? 6? months ago my answer would’ve more or less been ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ but sometime in between now and then i leveled up how much of a nerd i am.

okay so, the short answer to your (first) question is yes, i do a lot of outlining though the scale of outline varies based on the complexity of the story. in song’s case, how i outline actually evolved significantly over the course of writing it (see that level up) and if i were to outline it today, it would look very different from what i originally started with.

the short answer to your second question is in song’s case, the original idea was a v short, almost fluffy stuck in a hotel room for a night one shot i daydreamed up while listening to a halsey song (is there somewhere, if you were wondering). obvs what it turned into was uh, v different.

digging into how i outline is going to get long, excessively nerdy and borderline terrifying so i’m hiding the rest of this under the cut, read at your own risk.

I preface everything here with a couple of reminders:

1. i am a crazy person who straight up does not know how to have hobbies like a normal person

2. i am actively trying to push myself and grow as a writer including developing new skills and training myself to practice certain habits bc at some point I would like to push myself out of the nest and try my hand at original fiction one day with a vague goal of maybe seeing if i could get it published. idk if i’ll ever actually do that BUT in the meantime, i do stuff like the nightmare that follows to myself

initial outline / what happens next list

okay so the most basic of my outlines (and how i originally outlined song) are p much just lists of what happens next. i do them as bullet lists bc my brain finds them less intimidating and i just start with one and then ask myself what happens next. sometimes the bullets are v vague, sometimes they get so specific i end up writing what becomes dialogue, i try not to think too hard about it, i just keep asking what happens next.

it’s really specifically about what happens next, not asking myself what i want to happen in the story, bc next implies the bullet before informs the one after, so you end up with an overall picture of what you want with a base level of causality built in. it also gives you room to surprise yourself (i think literally every what happens next outline i’ve done has had me going oh, okaaaaaay at some point).

sometimes, this is all you need. for trade my heart for honey, i started and stopped here bc at the end of the day, the skeleton for that fic is super basic: beth and rio attempt to play pool without tripping over their horrendous sexual tension. they fail. the end.

for your monster looks like mine, i did a version of the what happens next list, but i brought in some of my tricks from the pace structuring method i’ve been honing for the multi-chapter i’m currently planning. instead of mapping tentpole beats by story pace, i mapped tentpole beats for what points i wanted beth and rio to be scoring against each other and then mapped out the lead-up and fallout to connect the two and also what they were doing to each other physically at the same time so i could see how it all played together so the conversation supported the smut and vice versa. it was a TOTALLY normal approach to writing pwp. not over the top at all. 

song’s original outline was basically a SUPER long what happens next list and if i could go back in time i would slap myself upside the head like bitch you have no idea what you’re getting into and you are WAY TOO COCKY ABOUT IT, but it’s okay i learned.

the spreadsheet method

somewhere around when i was in the middle of i want to say ch 9 of song, @pynkhues posted about her outlining process including a super awesome spreadsheet she uses (i cannot for the life of me find the original post, forgive me but know that it was hers) and i immediately jacked a version of it to use as my own and oh my god it changed my whole life. 

iirc hers was a bit more in depth but since i was sort of baby-stepping into it, i stripped it down into the following and did a sheet for each of the remaining chapters (well, ch 10 and ch 11, ch 11 ended up getting wildly out of control so i split it in two and mushed the epilogue i’d been planning onto the end of it as a closing breakout scene:

plot

character

it’s a lot of repetition, tbh BUT once i started using it, i found the repetition was incredibly clarifying and by making myself take the time to go through each column and go through the same stuff over and over, it honed in on the strongest, most relevant bits of what i was planning and helped me see patterns and connections i maybe hadn’t been thinking of on the onset.

when i outlined swear i used this method and added a layer to my chapter overviews where i track the lies and corresponding truths worked into the chapter narratives (bc that’s a key theme of the story), and color-coded the beats that corresponded to the main plot vs individual character arcs vs foreshadowing so i’d have an at a glance visual reference to make sure nothing was getting lost and all of the characters (even minor ones) had stuff happening to them and didn’t just feel like cardboard cutouts coming in and out of the story as i needed them

pace structuring

these are all fine and dandy but one thing they’re missing is pacing! for song’s pacing, i will be real with you, i v much went a lot with my gut. i’ve spent most of my life consuming and paying a lot of attention to stories. i’m fascinated with how they come together and literally cannot shut off the part of my brain that likes to pick them apart to examine the pieces to see how they all fit together. as such, it’s left me with a p instinctive grasp for how a story should feel when it’s working which is fantastic when it is, but really useless when it isn’t bc i struggle to identify where and why sometimes so i can fix it.

for the buffyverse, once i started to realize (with no small amount of horror) the scope of what i wanted to write, i realized p quick i needed some kind of tool kit to help me figure out the arc and pacing bc this was going to be a lot closer to trying to plot a whole novel from the ground up (which is great bc one of the things i want to practice is pacing and plotting out novels from the ground up, hahaha)

i’ve been working with a two main docs (and neither of them are spreadsheets, yet, bc one thing the spreadsheet method taught me it’s that while i find them very soothing, my brain works in bullet lists so i’m starting with bullets and then i’m gonna strain it through a spreadsheet):

1. Thoughts:

just a doc where I word vomit out anything I’m thinking, I don’t worry about keeping it organized, I just throw whatever I’m thinking in there so it’s memorialized and I can sort through it later.

2. Act Timelines / Scene Breakdowns:

basically, i have a basic three-act story structure with tentpole story beats broken out by general ballpark percentages of how far into the story/act they should occur for the pacing to feel right. i use that as the framework i run my plot and character beats through and do it in a couple of passes:

high level: i go through and break out what’s happening in the story for each tentpole beat (what the specific story and plot focus is)

by character: i go through and fill in (at least) one sub-bullet beneath each plot tentpole beat with what’s happening with each main character in their individual subplot, how they got there, what their general feelings and mindset is, if they’re having any revelations, etc (one thing i fucked up with song is not making sure i had stuff going on for all of the characters, the plot was super focused on beth and while i generally knew what rio was doing and why, ruby and annie more or less floated in and out of the story at whim and i hate that, so i’m trying to be better about it going forward)

by relationship: now i go in and fill in a layer of bullllets with how the plot and character beats are shaping relationships and how they’re progressing through each tentpole beat

at this point i’ve got a pretty fleshed out outline hitting on plot, character and relationship development at least in broad, general terms. i can look at it like a map and see how characters are growing and changing throughout the story and look for areas where the plot is pushing the characters vs the other way around and places where it seems weak or poorly connected/supported and i tinker with that for awhile until i feel like it’s in good shape.

next step is applying the what happens next approach to the scene by scene breakdowns. i’m trying an experiment with this one where instead of breaking the fic into chapters first, i’m breaking it into scenes and working out the beats of them so they incorporate all of my outlined stuff and then i’m gonna go back and see where the chapter breaks look like they fall.

I’m like, 75% of the way through my scene breakdown for this particular fic and once I’m done with that, I’m going to take everything and plug it into the spreadsheet I worked with for the last couple of chapters of song and highlight/color code like I did for swear to make sure my chapter breakdowns align with everything I’m trying to do and I’m tracking all of my themes and details and setting things up to pay them off later.

so, you know, an absolutely normal amount of planning for a hobby i do entirely for funsies in my largely nonexistent spare time. 

(sorry this was i am assuming WAAY MORE INFORMATION than you ever wanted or needed to know but once i started i couldn’t stop)

(and seriously, thank you, am truly verklempt that you love song like that 💖)

bts fic writing q’s IF YOU DARE hahaha

[marcos744655]

Six Business Technologies Which Don’t Work

Train your team on telephone social manners. Sure, your customer support team knows all the stuff you need to know about your service and features. But are they polite and courteous when answering phone calls or clients can't help but comment on how rude your service desk team is very much? Recording the telephone calls is on the list of great to be able to ensure that your help desk team is acting like they really should. Invest within your outsourcing guidance. If you've never outsourced before, or you aren't sure what you could offload to someone else, play around. Invest a small amount money in outsourcing something limited. If you don't have anything small, make something way up. If it's admin, get you to definitely put each and every business cards into a spreadsheet or database, if you're looking for design work, find someone to design a logo, if it help desk services's proof reading, send than the short document with deliberate minor difficulties. You get the idea. 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With large gap between values of local currency and the foreign ones, you get the regarding financial leveraging when Network Load balancing clustering appears to hiring more effort. Aside from employing thrice the manpower you could easily get in town, you will not have to love the associated with materials and maintenance, the organization with who you outsource will already are mindful of the situation. Imagine when you use a help desk staff of your own: find to spend some bucks for that hiring, training, manpower compensation and benefits, materials, or maybe the repair of the functions. While in outsourcing the not-so important things, pause to look for get a pro service at a cut-throat affordability. Now, isn't that a great deal? This is really a financial payment, but the best method is always to offer reciprocal testimonials. If you expect a referrer to generate leads for you, something you should get the referrer not require that you do exactly the same for it help desk services? If you take away any mutual benefit for the referrer you remove them from the equation - what carry out you then using? A flat line, and flat lines in for good business are season thing. The air is getting dirtier. The seas are turning dark-colored. Clean drinking water is scarce during the course of places on earth and all of us have a responsibility to consume less energy. Network Load balancing clustering's the ethical moves. How much space does your site need, the best way to much space can the company offer? Rather than find a corporation outsourced it solutions that offers tiered plans so that you will be known to expand once your site gets larger. Your brochure will be your company's first impression with a person. Develop the brochure construction. Present a powerful image help bring business to enterprise. And, is certainly not what all of us are looking for? Other than rotting trees, preventive maintenance is an easier way to preserve these God given creatures. Sometimes cutting off branches will make its existence longer help make the tree healthier. With well maintained trees, it is safer to stay the same vicinity with. If it is not too late, these wonderful trees can be nursed. Only tree services companies can deal and you must inform him or her. Ask for appropriate tree programs to save the trees in your community. Forex trading signals online has quickly become one extremely utilized tools in the Forex trading world. The bulk of the best Forex signals services are selling like hotcakes, and are offering trial to help get started trading. Simple that there is a lot of junk out there that people tried to solely in order through Foreign exchange. Many of these "junky" trading systems simply don't make the cut. In addition don't include the a reimbursement guarantee, might unacceptable. Avoid Mistakes - Yes, there are computer programs that support keep your paperwork to get able to. That being said, mistakes can be made and they can be financially demanding. You can have peace of mind by having a professional who is educated and knowledgeable perform these roles. The IRS particularly dislikes mistakes and if you are ever audited, you are by you and your family. With a service, you could have their backing on the rare chance that they earn a shame.

[violetsystems]

personal

I’ve been able to sleep until six the last few days.  I’ve been on this miserable eight to four sleep schedule.  I ordered a silent vortex coffee grinder specifically to be less annoying in this regard.   Even if I could literally just grind the coffee the night before.  I also bought a rug cleaner for the first time in my life.  It’s amazing the things you don’t realize you need for a home let alone an office.  Last night I received an email from LinkedIn asking me to weigh in on a conversation about higher education.  The only public facing social networking site I really use actively I pay for.  They bought a service called Linda.com years ago.  It was probably the most important site to me for instructional videos.  These days it is included on the platform so I spend a fair amount of time keeping my job skills plausible.  I learned pretty hard the last six months that my professional network had all but evaporated.  A hard thing to face when you worked with your friends for over twenty years.  But people have to move on.  I sometimes make decisions that seem smarter in retrospect.  You could even mistake it for premonition but I just call it good judgement.  I made the decision to start the process of becoming a LLC.  It was pretty easy to do once you paid the four hundred dollars.  There’s services out there online that will do the legal part for you.  I chose VS consulting as the name which becomes real around mid December if the Secretary of State accepts it.  They asked me to cut the ribbon virtually.  I congratulated myself in silence but this is pretty much the first place I’ve shared the news with.  My mom didn’t quite understand what I had done and my dad is an accountant.  I haven’t told him yet either.  I got the idea seeing some of the people who still work at my old job starting their own side businesses.  Crazy to see people still employed having extra jobs in this economy.  But for the most part I don’t really compare my experience to anyone’s anymore.  So I just look forward.  There are a lot of ways I generate income.  Some of them aren’t very lucrative.  I released another ep Monday.  Three of my friends from across the world I never really talk to bought it immediately.  It makes sense because my music is how they know me.  So that’s how they keep up with me.  From there, Bandcamp revenue share Friday passed with little or no fanfare.  It still doesn’t change the fact I owe taxes on the income above a certain amount if I report it.  We all know how the rich hate paying those taxes.  And the whole world now knows that I work for a LLC on the premier professional social networking site.  It’s a win win for me because I can still look for a job but I appear employed.  It’s also a nice buffer in these times for your resume.  In retrospect, every article I read says the end of December is a perfect time to start your own business.  Mostly because January 1st allows you to start with a fresh balance sheet and good accounting.  So if anything my New Year’s resolution is to be cleaner and more concise about everything.  Even if the rest of society’s ethics and accountability gets muddier as COVID-19 and the election process drags on.  The only things I really have to worry about this next year are documenting my spending, opening up a business checking account, and deducting business expenses.  Sounds like a job to me.

There are tools you need for a job.  I bought a year long subscription to Creative Cloud.  I had it for free for years.  I worked in a visual communications department for ten years.  I saw the most amazing work every morning hung up outside my office.  It inspired me to learn about print making and screen printing.  I even owned Adobe stock at one point because I realized Microsoft Office wasn’t doing my resume much justice.  I shudder to think how many jokes were cracked by the Workday staff over my Chanel submission.  Truth is nobody called back for interviews at any of the places I applied.  And this doesn’t really stop me from keeping my eyes out for a position anywhere.  But if we are talking about generating income, I can do that all by myself.  I can also hire people and deduct more business expenses if I felt that was an option.  Which starts to get into the meat of why the job market and economy is so fucked up in America.  A lot of people didn’t fall in line on a balance sheet when COVID-19 came crashing down last February.  And when the fiscal year came time to start fresh, they thinned their liabilities.  Companies are now thinking in quarters rather than years at this point.  And small businesses like myself also have to think the same because I now owe the IRS money every three months.  The accounting side of it doesn’t really bore me.  I’ve done every IT role in the business pretty much over twenty years.  I guess that’s why LinkedIn calls on me to offer an opinion.  I’ve never had to be this hardcore about the finances.  Another great reason why I spend so much time in spreadsheets aside from writing on the internet.  It’s much easier to approach a professional consultant with twenty years of experience with an invoice than it is to tether them to your payroll with benefits.  I’m always having to think six months ahead myself.  This has an advantage to it insofar that I don’t often look back.  You pay your taxes and you move on.  There are many things I could do to generate income.  I could make a zine and sell it quarterly on bandcamp along with shirts.  I could post flyers around the neighborhood offering after christmas tech support.  I could scour the net for opportunities to audit galvanized IT departments.  I could do all this with more confidence if I could say I am employed.  I could also hire someone to help me.  But I could do none of this and deduct expenses without applying for a sole proprietorship.  And truth be told I already have to claim this for the New York Stock Exchange.  So if you had to put a label on what I do now it isn’t really that much different from any other business.  The state’s richest men started as LLCs.  They’re also the biggest pricks who pay the least taxes.  Trickle down economics is a funny concept.  Businesses offer jobs they deduct from their income therefore paying less to the pool.  This would be fine for small income generating businesses.  But Ken Griffin would say otherwise as he and other rich people benefit from this structure.  They say the American Dream is owning your own business.  So welcome to my personal nightmare.  I hope you don’t mind me taking the itemized deductions after how I’ve been treated.

I don’t actually know how it’s going to work out.  I just know I don’t want to appear unemployed while corporate America expects me to wink and make them more money.  There are investments that have worked out for me as volatile as they might be.  One Chinese company I invested in has made the CEO twelve times richer.  I own four hundred and twenty shares of that company in a brokerage.  My intent is to hold on to them for the long term possibly making someone richer at my own risk.  I could short the entire next year to my heart’s content.  My credit scores have gone through the roof.  Nobody has had any answers for me on what to do.  Nobody has coached me.  I read.  I think.  I come up with solutions to my problems.  And I put money in the right places.  That doesn’t mean anything is a sure thing.  Especially when my government finds it more advantageous to punish other countries while forgetting about it’s own people.  I am absolutely in the dark about everything.  Everything except running my own business in America.  I already have income I have to report over the next three years due the CARES act.  So that is income I will deduct.  This is how it works here in America.  You seize the means of production and you go to work.  If it seems backward for me, you wouldn’t know the half.  My life is so fucked up in terms of how hazy and confusing other people have made it.  People invaded my life on pretenses that I can’t even begin to explain.  And part of being a strong, responsible adult is engineering your way out of these problems.  And for the most part, I’ve engineered myself into a fort that overlooks the CTA train.  And a small portion of that fort can be written off as an office.  Which in some ways if you do the math makes rent and utilities cheaper in the long run.  I don’t make the rules.  This is how America works.  A LLC gets a tax id number.  It allows you better options for retirement savings with a SEP IRA.  You can apply for business accounts and waive taxes on business purchases.  Even the family dollar around the corner has a sign in the window reminding me I can apply for tax free status.  Maybe they’re mostly to blame for planting the idea in my head.  I’m the one who made the call to apply.  Nobody held my hand.  You could also get audited by the IRS.  And I’m sure the IRS would have to figure out how I got into this situation in the first place.  Maybe they’d offer me a job. There’s other fantasies in my life I could imagine happening more than that waking nightmare.  Like actually having money to retire.  I could be travelling around the world cleaning up the mess mark to market accounting has left on big business.  The scars on economies the rich have pock marked on the middle class.  Or I could just keep generating income and be my own boss here in my kitchen.  The one thing I do know is that is sexier to be confident enough to move ahead with your own plan slowly than to short a bunch of stocks disruptively and brag about it on the internet.  You could call it my three year plan.  Don’t ask me how bonds factor in that equation.  I’m not a spy.  What I am is a guy that is trying to be the solution and not the victim.  And that guy doesn’t ever want to be a burden on the people I love.  So that guy is going to keep doing what he does.  And I’m not going to lie that you inspire me to do so.  As sexy and confident as I’m born to be.  <3 Tim

[enterprisenetvalue]

The Way To Build Net Value Whereas Running A Enterprise

I’m additionally a lurker, come back once in a while to check in. four-5 yrs lurking, Have a spreadsheet that tracks again to 2007. Save at end of the yr and refresh with a new one which continues to track summaries back to 2007. Looks ahead too, including Social security calculations. One thing I like to do is take a look at investable assets as a proportion of internet price. But when you consider that almost all of your internet price is tied to investments, you would possibly must have these investments work a bit extra for you than the one Vanguard fund permits to satisfy your goals.

Most individuals are aware they must hold slightly cash saved for emergencies and not rent an condo that’s too expensive for his or her earnings level. They suppose that’s enough for monetary well being and that they don’t need to worry about their web price. But knowing and obeying these isolated financial pointers doesn’t make sure you’re making the most effective use of your cash. Your internet worth is to your monetary health what your important signs are to your bodily health. Just as your coronary heart fee and blood strain point out to you whether your physique is working well or not, your internet worth indicates whether your financial life is stable or not. And much like how a bodily body that’s unhealthy can’t deal with sickness, a monetary life that isn’t stable can’t climate unexpected bills.

For people, belongings embody money, savings accounts, property like properties and cars, funding accounts and different useful properties, similar to jewellery and antiques. It is pretty cool to see this data being shared for over A decade now. Interested in the way you monitor your web price together with actual property, collectible and different assets that aren’t held in accounts. Although, some of my pals on different FIRE blogs have found out the way to convert over IRAs and such where you possibly can still pull cash out with out penalty when you do them the immediately. How are you planning to retire early if the majority of your property are in retirement accounts that you can’t touch with out penalty until you Are fifty nine half? I am older now and face the problem that the bulk of my property are in such accounts. So everything does ultimately get calculated, but just at totally different times.

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Its fairly mind-boggling how tiny %s can compound into life altering amounts of money if you let it develop over the years. You can use this free fee analyzer tool to research your retirement accounts and work out when you’re paying any hidden charges. She also noted the importance of starting a retirement financial savings account as early as potential and paying yourself first. Developing wholesome cash habits will contain a interval of transition at first, however it'll turn into second nature very quickly.

As anyone with a pulse can tell you, pursuing cash is not the point of life. Money is just a software that permits us to benefit from our time on earth. You ought to care about your net worth as a result of your internet worth measures how well you’re making use of that tool. Net worth is the measure of an organization’s or individual’s precise worth, accounting for assets as well as debts. The internet worth of an organization or particular person is just their assets minus their liabilities, or the worth of the things they personal minus the amount of debt they've. One benefit of preserving at least a semi-common eye in your net value is assessing the asset allocation of your investments to verify they’re aligned together with your financial goals.

If an organization has positive earnings on its income statement on the finish of the year, it will increase its internet price in the type of retained earnings. On the opposite hand, adverse earnings will decrease internet worth. Paying out dividends can also decrease a company's internet worth.

I thought this was fantastic as a result of I all the time had financial savings and I was always capable of pay down my bank card debt. It was only after doing a year-finish monetary evaluate that I realized I spent a lot more cash than I thought due to bank card interest and the psychology of bank cards.

Shareholders are generally called stockholders and they are the owners of the company's equity. To arrive at an organization's web price, one must first calculate the present value of the corporate's property. Assets typically embody money, money equivalents, property, inventory, machinery and buildings. For a bank, belongings are loans it has made to other people. For a producing firm, the majority of its assets would possibly lie in property, supplies, crops and gear.

The quantity of property in spite of everything liabilities have been subtracted provides you a measure of the company's possession or worth. Net price and fairness basically mean the same thing, the value of the company. Sometimes web price known as shareholder's fairness, if the company is owned by shareholders.

List the current value of money in employer-sponsored retirement savings plans, together with the Thrift Savings Plan, and any 401, 457, SEP, Keogh or different plan . Add the worth of your IRAs and the cash give up worth of any annuities. Also add any value you have already vested in an outlined-profit pension plan . A company can increase its internet value by paying down liabilities or increasing property.

[mrsslrss]

2019.

Welcome to my annual accounting of things I loved, 2019 edition. 

I’m realizing the pattern here is to start this with a reflection of how I rang in the year but 2019 crept in pretty calmly: no big bugs to kill, no spontaneous sobs to a Sharon Van Etten song. On the first day of this year, I woke up and cleaned the house and, I don’t know, probably went to Big Bear and got a coffee and took a nap. Since it’s nearly the end of the decade, I could start there, but I couldn’t tell you where I was for New Year’s Eve, 2009; if I had to guess, I’d put myself at a friend’s house on the North Shore, drinking PBR with the guys and listening to pop-punk. That winter I was convinced I wouldn’t return to Poughkeepsie, I was so miserable, but when I did things started to fall into place.

I think my goal for this year was roughly something like, Just put your head down and do the work. When you are tempted to get fed up and wither from frustration or have a big ego about not getting what you want, just put your head down and do the work. I don’t know if I did that, exactly, if I really stuck to the goal, but every so often in a particularly challenging moment the goal would come into focus at the front of my mind and I’d sigh and acquiesce and nod at the work ahead of me. I got a lot done, I think; in this way I got a lot done. It was nice to be reminded about how the process can be the goal -- something I thought about a lot this year. Sometimes the goal looks like a result, but it’s really the habit I’m after.

I’d like to keep that up next year. 2019 was a year of cultivating; 2020, maybe, will be a year of action. Or maybe not! Maybe nothing flowers until 2021 or beyond. Or maybe I start tearing things up by the roots in 2020, who knows! 

So anyway. Here’s to 2019, and here’s a list (more or less alphabetized -- why not!) of ten things that helped me make it through.

annie’s homegrown birthday cake bunny grahams

My official snack of the year. Over the summer I was visiting MZ in Brooklyn and we got snacks at their neighborhood grocery store and I bought these, which are meant to celebrate the 30th anniversary of this snack company, taste like funfetti cake, and are definitely meant for/marketed to children. But anyway I ate the whole box and then sought them out at every Whole Foods in my vicinity (because I went online and WH is apparently basically the only place you can find them?) and started preaching the good word to anyone who was looking for a snack. By, like, September I had eaten so many of these that I could no longer stomach them, so I’ve been on a brief hiatus, but still: snack of the year.

keeping lists

I started this year with a big digital spreadsheet called “2019 things” where I intended to keep lists: all the new albums and songs that struck me, all the old albums and songs I got obsessed with, the places I wanted to travel in the year. I kept adding tabs: the books I finished, my financial priorities, stuff I wanted to make sure to read or watch. I was pretty diligent about updating them -- I wrote down every book I read, but definitely forgot to add a couple albums; I never made it to Philly this year. I started keeping gratitude lists (analog) towards the end of year, too, because in college a friend told me it helps rewire the brain away from pessimism, or something. 

meditation

Before this year, I’ve never had a serious relationship with meditation, but it always seemed like the kind of thing I would like. In mid-January I got struck by the urge to try it, so I did, and kept it up for a few days, and then I fell off, and then I got back on, and now, somehow, it’s been three-hundred-something days of it in a row. I have learned to find a quiet moment in a nice corner of my room before work, but also in a tent in the Catskills, in a guest room in Wales, in a hotel in Georgia, on a walk through Brooklyn, in my childhood bedroom. My life and brain don’t feel, like, enormously different or changed, but that’s good; it feels useful to keep showing up to something without expectation.

my siblings

Having a big family means every year is inevitably a big year for someone, but this was, somehow, a big year for all of my siblings. Mostly good things: health and healing, a wedding and a graduation, a license acquired and a course of study started and jobs well done. It doesn’t feel good to get into the hard stuff here, but there was a lot of that, too -- a lot of grueling bullshit overcome. After the wedding I almost texted everyone just to say how proud I was of all of them, but naturally I chickened out. But I really am proud!

navy blue

Longtime readers of, uh, *gestures wildly* whatever this is may recall that last year I claimed I only wore black but might be interested in navy blue? This year I determined that navy blue is so good: the color of the deep ocean, the night sky, my first Catholic school uniform. I bought navy jumpsuits, a sweatshirt, a scrunchie. I wore navy-adjacent eyeliner just in the corners of my eyes most days of July and August and September. I’m wearing a navy blue sweater right now. A good year for navy. 

“not” by big thief

My song of the year, which I knew from the first time I heard it. So much of this year (the news, the planet, global catastrophes, mass violence, etc. not to mention personal failures) felt hopeless and dreadful, but also so constant and exhausting that I wasn’t sure I could keep summoning anger, never mind do it in a useful way. I love this song because it is about abjection in the same way it isn’t about anything, about absence as presence, about not-knowing as knowing. It is desperate without being hopeless, explosive without being violent, or maybe: violent without being harmful. It’s about transcending language and different kinds of language and using whichever tools you have (Words are good enough). It’s about being swallowed whole by the everything-ness, a theme that came up in so much of the work I loved this year, the subject of an essay I’ll never write (lol). Music Twitter™ got into an argument about whether this band is good; I feel so sure of my love for this song (and most of what this band does) that I, for once, didn’t immediately assume I was a fool, or being had, just because someone disagrees with me. Instead it felt delicious and special to resonate with a thing that doesn’t resonate for everyone, a rare and generous experience for me. Imagine that.

pottery

At the beginning of the year I signed up for a ten-week session of pottery classes at a studio in Georgetown, and then when I told M, he wanted to join (by which I felt incredibly endeared). Then it became ten more weeks, then ten more, and since then we’ve gone nearly every Thursday night. Some things that are nice: learning to to make something with my hands, especially after staring at a screen all day; not being able to look at my phone or read the news for several hours (related: so many of the Democratic debates happened on Thursday nights!); having a standing weekly date with my favorite person. Nearly everyone in our lives got lumpy bowls, vases, etc. for Christmas this year, of which we are very proud.

“rooms on fire” by stevie nicks

This year, Stevie Nicks became the first woman be inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame twice and so Rolling Stone interviewed her about her fabulous career. In the interview, Rob Sheffield said his favorite song of hers is “Ooh My Love” from The Other Side of the Mirror, which is an album I had never listened to before, so I started listening and the first song just hooked me. It’s so dramatic and magical and moody! It’s right up there on the Apple Music-generated playlist of my most-played songs of the year.

stockholm

For several years one of my repeated resolutions was “go to Scandinavia.” Sweden has always been the big goal, but Oslo seemed possible for a minute, and in 2013 I did briefly entertain the idea of going to graduate school in Finland. (Imagine!) This year I got really fed up of having not really, you know, taken a proper vacation since starting my job, so I took a full week off after my sister’s wedding and planned a solo trip to Stockholm. Each day of my trip I woke up whenever I woke up and I explored a different island; I went for long runs, drank coffee, ate kardemummabullar, took the subway across town, saw a one-of-a-kind Viking ship. I burst into tears at the Moderna Museet, ate through a vegetarian tasting menu at the Fotografiska, had an extremely lovely spa experience. I read three books in a week. I loved every second of it.

wigs

I bought a big gaudy pink wig this spring in anticipation of seeing Sasha Velour’s one-woman show in New York -- or, I told myself I bought it for that reason, but I think I really just wanted the possibility of wearing a big gaudy pink wig at will. After the Sasha show, I wore it to see Robyn at The Anthem, and was delighted when, after I put a picture on Instagram, a handful of people in my life thought I had a) dyed my hair pastel pink and b) grew my hair ~half a foot over the weekend. (I wish!) I think I’ll wear it for our house’s beach-themed NYE party, too.

everything else 

frequent, long drives with M; songs about solidarity; the #saltypod; custom t-shirts; craving waffles; having an e-reader; the concept of “the archive”; choosing kindness; threatening to move to rural new england to work on a farm; being in love

[socially-inept-marketer]

7 Tips for Awesome Local SEO

Insert places and your issues are compounded.

Identifying the search engine optimization methods for automobile dealer promoting that most efficiently pull in neighborhood visitors is a shifting target.

Last year Google alone produced over 500 changes to the way they position and index a company site in their search engine, as well as their newest Hummingbird upgrade that basically rewrote their whole search engine they are on a collision-course to greatest that amount. So it’s highly likely that some site changes you might have made a few years back are now obsolete (if not entirely prohibited ), whereas new criteria and best practices for local SEO might be absent from the site in addition to your off-page resources such as social media and company listings.

Therefore, in the event that you’ve been thinking that your visibility appears to have crashed you are likely accurate.

However, where there’s difficulty — there’s chance, and if you aren’t content with the regional search engine results, here are 7 SEO tips that are certain to drive more neighborhood discovery to your small business — regardless of if you’ve got one or a number of places.

1. Keywords

The component forcing traffic isn’t the website’s region . Search engines don’t observe the components of your site. Nevertheless, it is sensible to focus as much care there as you can.

You may use a tool such as Google’s Keyword Planner to construct your plan. Download your list of keywords to Excel for additional filtering and editing on a regular basis — quarterly inspection works good but certainly no less than two times per year. I am a major supporter of audits for functionality KPIs, promotion and business analysis.

Position for a hundred key words that nobody is looking for is a waste of energy, determine keywords most likely to push the ideal kind of visitors to your business and build your website (and off-page activity) around people. You fueling your self.

For customers, I concentrate on approximately 35 key words & phrases Generally, and spend a few hours’ selections. Every strategy is exceptional for customers in precisely the business vertical.

SEO** TIP**: Filtering consequences of this Keyword Planner instrument by geographical regions (state, state, county, and town ) will exhibit the regional need for your key word entered in addition to project a feeling of how competitive it’s going to be for you to rank for people on search.

2. Keyword META & Mapping

Now that you have your strategy down let us put it to great use.

Looking in the key word list (Excel spreadsheet), you will likely observe you could group together similar key terms to form classes (I predict those silos).

Does your site have a webpage for every category? It ought to.

Your webpages must aim the facets of your enterprise — although you do not need tens of thousands of pages to your site. Your list of key words is your point.

Looking at your keyword list, be certain that the main keyword for a webpage is utilized as near the front of the opening paragraph of this site as possible and consider highlighting your key word in bold. Same holds for the administrative components of this site known as the META — that the part folks can’t view, but search engines may (not all site platforms allow using bold , do not freak out if yours does not ).

There are 3 components of META on a Site

Ensure each site page contains unique META components (all those three) and place your key keyword as near the front of your wordings as you finish these components.

META Keywords aren’t a ranking component, so use them sparingly — no longer than 10 words/phrases — and do not sell-the-shop by listing the most important keywords on your competitors to discover. Do however be sure to record your state, city, and zip code in addition to the conditions”automobile parts”,”Mopar components”, and”automobile body parts”.

Some of the most common search engine optimization mistakes for smaller companies I visit are META that’s not optimized or that’s not unique for every webpage.

3. SCHEMA

Tool for neighborhood advertising needs to do with having a very simple html code known as SCHEMA — also known as structured info or microformat — to identify and classify a number of the most essential info on your site to search engines, including your place and contact information.

Google, Bing, and Yahoo loosely accepts this code which makes it a must-have for every single small business.

Speaking of search engines, remember that Google is not the only choice worth courting. Facebook has also incorporated a search feature named Search Graph this season, as well as one-in-seven individuals in the world having a Facebook accounts which makes them (technically) the greatest search engine on earth.

SEO TIP: All these tools can enable you to finish & examine your code: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pQSVsHvpTTA 

Doing this will lower the total amount of html coding which search engines need to read since they load your webpage creating your page load quicker — and the rate a site page opens is a search engine optimization element which affects ranking. Quick is good.

Adding things such as your contact info here will make it simple for individuals to associate with you what page of the site they’re on. This is particularly true on cellular devices. Have multiple places — think about utilizing a split footer in which one side is to get the satellite or local company | another for the primary site.

As an extra plus, getting your contact information on each page may also raise neighborhood indexation of your site by search engines, which makes it much easier for local searchers to locate you.

5. I am not going too heavy into blogging and social networking, there has been much printed already on the subject, but suffice to say you have to be actively generating content (story telling).

Most small companies begin to sweat at the idea of composing blog & social networking articles, but here is a very simple strategy which will get your articles advertising roaring like a 440 Six Pack.

Collect 12 pictures (electronic ) that best exemplify your major keyword phrases and place

Cool vehicle part graphics and”title the component” quizzes make good articles

Describe who, what, when, where, why, or how about the picture

Make certain your keyword is in front of your name, description, and message.

Insert a connection back to the webpage of your site this key word goes to (Step 1.)

Utilize a scheduling app to automate those 12 articles to print after a month. You finally have one narrative to post each month. Wasn’t that simple?

Now produce over the subsequent six months and then add them and continue composing and adding. It is literally that simple.

My preference would be to get a separate to double a companies marketing stations. You might also have an onsite (site ) site to curate the articles from the off-site site, no injury there — only be sure to offer new blog articles a couple of days to populate search engines prior to re-publishing them.

SEO TIP: Sensible includes a content advertising tool which automatically selects the best time to organize your site and societal networking articles based on if your audience is the most likely to read . It might take a couple of months in order for it to find a fantastic read on your own followers & buddies, so hang in there — it works excellent. This tool also lets you set automatic re-posting, just make sure you write with an ever-greening tone so that your backup does not date and place a realistic end-date in to drama.

6. NAP Consistency —

Among the most significant local-SEO varies from 2012 to 2013 is that the significance of correctly formatted and proper small business contact info.

Any mention of a company’s name, its physical address, local telephone number, and site are known as a company citation. The components tied to a company location (title, address, telephone ) being called NAP. The pin-point accuracy of this dataset is essential for local advertising as it supplies search engines identification of your place and contact info. Sounds straightforward enough but almost 50% of small business have data or formatting errors within their citation NAP — their regional visibility on hunt is guaranteed to bring a hit for this.

Consider this company:The Mopar Parts Main St, Your City of bob

Thus the Mopar Parts of Bob received market share that was diluted . Not a fantastic thing in any way. There are 720 mixtures of companies NAP mistakes which could be produced out of the information.

Discovering and adjusting citation mistakes is not a glamorous job and it might take weeks to make any considerable progress, but at the big picture, adjusting your NAP information will pay massive dividends for your regional visibility.

Automation (support business or software application ) does not work well for citation or connection construction. Not only are you planning to make duplicate listings (not great ), but you can’t build as detailed a list using automation as you possibly could by hand (scanning ). And you may dismiss the”Your profile is 100% absolute” directives — which usually just means you’ve completed 100 percent of the mandatory minimal areas — there is typically a good deal more work to perform.

Search engine optimization is in the facts, and at a hyper-competitive marketplace like the automobile parts sector, the tiny details can make the gap between #1 position on the initial page and #11 standing on the second-page. If you’re thinking about subscribing to a nearby link building service such as Yext, know your listings will probably revert to the condition before you hired them if you cancel your operating arrangement, and you’re responsible for locating and correcting any copy listings their support generates. Businesses like sanp seo can also provide building services for local direcotries.

7. You’ve probably heard of the company review website”Yelp” and’ve likely heard both Google and Bing provide directory listings for companies, but did you understand that these inspection and company list sites can give your company a substantial increase in visibility?

The bulge happens in a few ways. All these directory and search engine listings include a credibility component to your company by verifying the consistency of your NAP (title, address, and telephone ) along with your keyword attention as removed from the story of the list. A number of these listings also include a”class” element farther classifying your small business. Additional info like your own hours of surgery, and the kinds of payment you take in may also be noticed and confirmed via these company listings (also known as backlinks since all of them have a link pointing back into your own company ). NAP verification raises confidence and at time, raise your visibility.

If citation link building building pains your mind, think of it like filling a hot air balloon, then it requires a great deal of atmosphere to find the balloon away from the floor and required regular action to help keep it afloat. If you quit hitting on the burners or run out of gas, the balloon return to earth. Now consider your advertising activities like one connection from a directory list, search engine, website, or societal websites article were the equal of a single cubic-foot of air. It might take some time before you began to understand your standing and visibility increase — but such as the balloon, after it removed, it is going to stay flying high provided that it’s tended to.

For example, it’s well-known that Google Maps supports information with YP.com along with other citation information suppliers, so be sure to only use the local telephone number enrolled to your physical place and don’t record a call-tracking number in your site or for any internet citations. In addition, don’t use scripts which reveal the local amount but conceal the call-tracking one, revealing a viewer different info than that which search engines see is known as cloaking — and it is a breach of search engine guidelines that if captured could make a hefty punishment from search businesses.

A directory list that is correctly optimized and formatted may appear on search engines if somebody is searching. If you had one of these elements appear with your site your marketplace share that is online would double!

Websites with greater PageRank — show in search.All united, focusing on those 7 components of neighborhood SEO will increase your visibility on search engines and drive more visitors to your site.

[menswearmusings]

Do Yourself a Favor and Get a Decent Tie Rack From Dapper Woodworks—A Free Product Review

I don’t wear a tie everyday, and I don’t have a ton of ties, but the storage solution I had for the roughly 20 ties I do have was annoying and lame. Buying a better tie rack just wasn’t a high priority for me, and thus, my ties hung on a roughly $12 hanging contraption from T.J. Maxx. It made me very, very sad.

My sad T.J.Maxx tie rack.

Enter Dapper Woodworks. The man behind the company, Justin Trewitt, has been at this for two years as a side job to help create some supplemental income for his family while simultaneously engaging his interests in woodworking and menswear. As with many business ideas, his started when he wanted a way to store his pocket squares, so he just made his own. He realized perhaps other men facing the same situation would be interested in such a product, and soon he was selling on Etsy. His product selections now include shoe horns, coat hooks, collar stay organizers, the aforementioned pocket square organizers and of course, tie racks.

Justin asked me whether I would like to have one of his custom-made tie racks in order to give my impressions and give an honest review of it (note my free product policy here. TL;DR I keep my opinions honest and don’t accept free stuff in exchange for positive coverage). I measured my closet, and since he does custom-sized racks in addition to the standard stock sizes, asked for a 20-inch rack, which he told me stores 37 ties—way more than I currently have, so I’ve got room to grow. Since it was a custom size, I got to choose the wood, peg metal and whether it had the optional top shelf. Ultimately, I picked walnut with brass pegs, with the top shelf included, which I figured might help a little bit with dust, but also provide a nice spot to store a couple belts, silk knots, collar stays and whatever else.

He set to work immediately, posting progress images on his Instagram. Within about a week, he’d finished it and was ready to s—oh no! He messaged me to say he’d accidentally made it 18 inches long, not 20. Being super apologetic, he remade the 20 inch one within a few days, and it was on its way to me.

For this type of product, it’s very simple to determine whether it’s great: Is it real hard wood, not composite? Yes. Is it sturdily constructed? Yes. Are the cuts on the wood smooth, without jagged edges? Yes. The joints are fitly joined together, the stain is even, the pegs are secure and perfectly spaced. And he’s also put the next level of fit and finish into the installation aspect. On the back are keyhole slots, just as you’d find on any professionally made wooden shelf. Included in the box is a mounting guide, but instead of a flimsy piece of paper, it’s a full-length piece of wood with holes drilled in it at the exact spacing of the keyholes. Leveling it is a breeze, the three-dimensional wood taking the uncertainty out of whether or not a piece of paper was perfectly flat against the wall.

You could probably find all of those aspects in a mass produced, ugly tie rack from Container Store for less money, just as you can also get a mass produced, cheap tie from The Tie Bar for less money than a Drake’s tie, and it’ll accomplish the utilitarian aspect of the product. But what DW is doing is vastly superior in almost every aspect: it’s much more aesthetically pleasing; you can choose from half a dozen beautiful wood grains and multiple peg styles; you know who is making it and that you’re supporting him provide for his family; and now, even better, he has begun donating a portion of every month’s sales to a nonprofit that provides education, food and medical care for children in need.

In all, it’s an excellent product befitting a fine tie collection, the pedigree of which is sterling.

That said, the price seemed really high to me, especially at first. The standard 18-inch wide tie rack starts at $140 without the shelf, and $190 with.

But, like, a single Drake’s tie is $150. On sale, you can maybe score it for $75.

This $200 tie rack holds 37 ties.

Given how sad and lame most tie storage solutions are, it’s an absolute no-brainer for someone who has a collection of beautiful ties, and who also would like to store their clothing in a way that isn’t sad. That is, if you’re trying to use wide-shouldered hangers, decent garment bags, and shoe trees in your shoes, a tie rack makes perfect sense.

My recommendation

Measure your own space and get a rack that makes sense. The 18-inch will likely fit most spaces and holds enough ties for most guys, I’d guess. I 100% recommend the top shelf. It keeps dust off the ties and is a useful spot to put things like his lapel pins or belts or artwork. I love the walnut finish, and the brass pegs make it feel masculine. Use code MM10 for 10% off.

So there’s my review: the solid hardwood Dapper Woodworks tie rack is an excellent product that gives me immense pleasure, and which exceeded my expectations in how easily Justin makes the mounting aspect. The quality is very high, being profesionally built and using materials I am confident putting my finely made ties on.

I temporarily installed the rack for the photoshoot below, because getting this rack actually inspired me to do a DIY renovation on my real closet, but I didn’t have time to get that finished before the deadline to publish this review.

I asked Justin a few questions about his background, the origin of Dapper Woodworks and what he plans next. You can check it out in full below.

GET 10% OFF YOUR DAPPER WOODWORKS ORDER USING CODE MM10!

(Help support this site! If you buy stuff through my links, your clicks and purchases earn me a commission from many of the retailers I feature, and it helps me sustain this site—as well as my menswear habit ;-)  Thanks!)

Menswear Musings: What do you do for your day job?

Justin Trewitt: I’ve been working for my family’s company for the past 5 1/2 years in Plano, Tx. We do financial planning for individuals and we also just started doing business brokerage so helping people buy and sell businesses. I started in customer service, but now I do a lot of behind the scenes preparation for client meetings. Basically lots of staring at a computer screen and Excel spreadsheets.

MM: How long have you been doing DW?

JW: I started Dapper Woodworks in November of 2017 so just over 2 years now. We had just decided for my wife to quit teaching to be a stay at home mom with our first son so I wanted to find a way to create a little extra income for our family.

MM: What got you started making these tie racks?

JW: Well I got into woodworking when my wife and I bought our house a few years ago. We didn’t have a lot of furniture so I just learned how to make some! I have also been into menswear after learning to dress better in college. When I began thinking of side hustles I decided that I wanted to combine my woodworking hobby with my passion for menswear, and that’s how Dapper Woodworks began. My first product was a pocket square rack that I made for myself out of cheap wood because I couldn’t find a good way to store my collection. I figured surely I wasn’t the only one with this problem so I made an Etsy store and put it up for sale. I knew I needed more products so I made a few tie racks out of some scrap wood and hardware. It took over a month before the first order, and then people began requesting custom sizes and woods and it’s just taken off from there!

MM: Have you had a big response?

JW: The response has been way bigger than I could have ever imagined! When I began I was going to be happy with a sale or two every month. We are 2 years in now, and I just counted that we’ve sent over 400 items all over the world which is just crazy to me! I think people really enjoy them because there aren’t any good options to display your ties or accessories in a beautiful way. When you invest a lot of money into your tie or pocket square collection you might as well display it on a rack that has the same level of craftsmanship. I believe people really enjoy the custom aspect because each product is unique and is made their specifications

MM: How big is your personal tie collection and what’re you favorite ties and why?

JW: I’m in the process of redoing my collection, and filling it with higher quality ties that reflect the quality of my products. I had a bunch of cheaper ties for my previous job that I got rid of so I still trying to fill my smallest rack that holds 21 ties. My first nice tie was my Kent Wang grenadine which I absolutely recommend to anyone starting a collection. The cool part about being in the menswear space is meeting other brands, and several tie makers that are running a side business like me. I’ve got a couple of really great grenadine and shantung ties from H.N. White in England. A beautiful brown cashmere tie from Oxford Rowe. Also this incredible 7 fold tie from Shawn Christopher who is the only brand I know that makes his own ties instead of having them manufactured.

MM: What’s the most gratifying thing about this business for you?

JW: Beside being able to provide for my family this business has helped pay for my wife and I to go on 2 mission trips to plant churches in Tanzania. We needed to raise all of our own funds, and had lots of other expenses such as doctors visits, vaccines, and passports and this business helped cover all extra expenses. Also we have just partnered with our friend’s ministry Twelve21, and a portion of each month’s sales will be going toward sponsoring a child that will provide an education, food, and medical care. It’s just been really neat to trust God through this whole process, and see where he has taken us!

MM: Any new products you’re working on that you 

JW: Besides the tie racks and pocket square racks, our shoe horns have been very popular this year. I’ve also introduced a few smaller items like our collar stay organizers and cedar blocks. But going into 2020 I’m hoping to add some new tools to the shop and start making some valet trays, and maybe some shoe racks. I’m always trying to think of new items that are menswear and woodworking related, and if you ever have any suggestions just let me know.

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