#theres nothing as liberating as writing after having consumed 1.5 beers and feeling like a gOD

[graffitibible]

Do you have any advice for writing or creating regularly? That’s hard for me and I’d like to get better at it.

it boils down to what works best for you personally tbh. i’ve got a system to write semi-regularly (or i did......restricted movement hours have kinda forced me to restructure that lol) and it works for me but that’s just how my brainyot works. i’m a routine-based creature so working writing into my routine was how i got myself to write semi-regularly. 

ive also had significant Brain Junk for most of my life and was gradually able to navigate how best to create in spite of that but im also like, medicated for it and the like so self-care was a factor. i couldnt create shit while i was too busy lying in a pool of my own filth having fits of paranoia about the nature of reality so i was hardly about to make myself try and create stuff when that wasnt even on my radar. 

i can share some of the things i do to keep myself writing though! like again this isn’t something that’s for sure gonna work for everybody cause everybodys wired differently but i hope some of it helps!

1. daily wordcount - i’ve mentioned this before but i have a daily wordcount that i do for my original fiction. i don’t apply the same standard to fic-writing because that risks making it an arbitrary barrier that puts too many numbers on my internal list. that being said, it’s very small. i make myself do 200 words per day. if that gets me going and writing more than that, awesome. if not, i still got a little bit done. 200 words is small, and it’s not overwhelming to catch up on if i miss a day. no matter how shitty im feeling i try to get in 200 words.

2. routine - since i’m a routine-based person by nature i basically found ways to finagle creative processes into all that. it’s not hard and fast because that kind of rigid structure makes me balk and i’m not that disciplined lol, but it’s usually something like “i have an hour-long lunch break at work and literally nothing else to do during it so i’ll write in that time period” or “i have thirty minutes of sitting by the stove making dinner so i’ll write until it’s ready”

3. momentum - or what my housemate fondly calls “The Juice.” if i have The Juice of inspiration i keep that going for as long as i can. if something’s not working for me i don’t scrap it or toss it right away. if i’m having trouble with a scene i make a note to myself and move on to a different one. example of this from my latest wip, which is part iv of mayhem

i hadnt worked out what was gonna go there and nothing was coming to me easy in the moment so i stuck the note there and kept going. my works are full of this shit. if i can’t think of a name or if there’s a statistic or a character i haven’t worked out yet i don’t wanna break my focus and momentum so i slap a note in the first draft and keep going. at a first draft stage the important thing is getting the words Out so it doesnt matter if theyre perfect. ill go back and fix them later, revise all i need to. first drafts dont need to be good, they just need to be there so i can spruce them up later.

on the flip side do not be like me and commit to this momentum so bad that you forget that you are a human being who needs to eat and consume liquids. i do that sometimes because of who i am as a person and it is a serious flaw of mine, do not be like this. sometimes getting some food in you is what you need to get The Juice flowing again and that sounds kinda gross and i am sorry

4. planning and hangups - this ones dependent on how you create. i forget where this analogy came from, but i’ve heard it said that some writers are architects who need a blueprint of where they’re going before they end up there and some writers are gardeners, who don’t need a set plan so much as they need to keep going. i’m definitely an architect - a lot of my works start out as bulletpoints of what scenes i wanna cover, what topics i wanna explore, etc. - though i have on occasion simply Written without any set destination, usually to force myself out of a creative slump. me being a big planner used to be one of the biggest barriers for me creatively because i’d spend hours agonizing over minute universe details and never start the dang story. this still happens from time to time. like heres what my organizational folder looks like wrt “pray for disaster”

that is not even all the files in there. why do i have two dictionaries. jesus. like i make these giant ass fuckin....tomes of stuff i like to keep track of, which i like to call “bibles” lol. except i could tell that getting too organized was gonna be an uphill battle with very little payoff so by the end i just made a “MISCELLANEOUS BULLSHIT” doc and for now i throw everything in there if it doesn’t fit into something like a dictionary or timeline

shit like this is why i like to just sit down and write without a clear destination in mind if i’m having writer’s block. that’s one of those things that goes hand in hand with the way i take advantage of my own momentum - if i reach a certain point where i’m just picking at details and not doing any writing i just go “ok motherfucker sit down and write shit. we will work out the details later.”

5. motivation - the ways i tend to motivate myself are weird so idk how true this is for anybody else but i’ve been writing for a pretty large part of my life. i went to college for english/creative writing and got a whole dang degree cause i still wanna make this my vocation somehow. one thing i cannot ever turn off is the writer part of my brain that’s going “oooh huh that’s not how i would’ve written that” in literally every piece of art i consume - tv, movies, books, songs, etc. sometimes that’s enough to inspire me into doing something on my own time. most of the time though if i’m feeling stumped i tend to crack open some of my personal favorite works, like books or fics that have really resonated with me, to fall in love with the art all over again. seeing the way different authors and artists do their craft helps me get in the zone of wanting to write more cause i get this nice feeling of “damn, these people really did those things with those words.....that’s fuckin amazing.....i wanna do that.” 

you do risk falling into the trap of “ugh i can’t write like them though” but that’s the beauty of writing. nobody can write the way anybody else does. ofc i can’t write like terry pratchett, only terry pratchett can write like terry pratchett, and if i compare myself to terry pratchett i’m only gonna get sad and mopey. but i can write in a way thats totally unique to me so i should not try to write like terry pratchett because that’s just impeding my own creative energy in the interest of trying to cookie-cut myself into someone else’s zone. only terry pratchett can write like terry pratchett but only i can write like zero graffitibible.

i hope that was helpful? like this is all stuff that works for me so no guarantee it’ll work for everyone else.

oh right and idk how many of yall are minors because let it be known that i do not condone underage drinking; i am an adult who occasionally will get crunk because i like to write drunk and edit sober. if you too are an adult who can legally consume alcohol feel free to write while buzzed because that is a nice way to write with zero fuckin inhibitions. i dont get blackout drunk or nothing just a little buzzed and sometimes what i write makes no sense but i am at times at my most productive at 2am while mildly buzzed. its a thing.

like again i’m not really an authority on this by any means - this is just what works for me. but if it works for you too, great!! find your zone and all that