So, you’ve read something that has resonated with you. It’s everything you’ve wanted in terms of characters, prose, plot and pace. It’s the best you’ve read in years. You reread your favourite lines. You have to take a break just to absorb every meticulously crafted line. You are in awe of how something so small can seem to take up so much space.
And in a perfect world, it would inspire you to go out and create. To work on that story that is languishing in your save files, to pick up that WIP you abandoned, to make you want to write something different and new and better.
Instead, it makes you feel inferior. The words are too good. You could never write like that. The characters are too perfect. You don’t have that insight. The story is too captivating. Your ideas are boring, cliche, plain. The insight is remarkable. You can barely string a thought together coherently.
Why even bother, you think.
Don’t fall into that trap. I have been there so many times. I have abandoned writing for years because of “why even bother”. I have let it destroy my confidence, only to patch it back up in a cheap imitation of what it once was, just to let it invade my thoughts again. I have questioned every thing I’ve written, every choice, every line, because why even bother if someone is so much better.
YOUR WRITING HAS MERIT. What you don’t realize is that it’s not in terms of better, but different. Different style, different story, different interpretation, different mind.
Someone out there will love the way you describe the night sky in poetry. Someone out there will love the way you describe the look on someone’s face when their heart breaks. Someone out there will love your idea, that strange one that seems impossible or already done, because it’s new and exciting or they love endless amounts of that same story. Someone out there will love your interpretation of that character, whether more gentle or bitter or broken or healed. Someone out there will love the words you write, the grandiose use of adverbs (my guilt) or the minimal scattering of dialogue. Someone out there will love your abundance or lack of something you saw in that story you so loved, the one that rendered you speechless and snuffed out your fire.
Someone out there will love your words. And you need to share them.
Speaking as a writer, no one sets out to create something to discourage others. No one wants to dominate their corner and be the only one there. No one wants to be alone in their craft. If they do, they are doing it for the wrong reasons. Speaking as a writer, I would never want you to read my writing and think, why bother.
I want you to think, why bother waiting?
Your story matters. Your writing matters. It’s beautiful and defined and gorgeous and a work in progress and growing and already there and insightful and mysterious: it all has merit.
Never stop. Never stop writing and practicing and doing and creating and learning and loving the words you weave.
You may think someone has done it more beautifully or better or too many times or never because who wants to read it?
They maybe have done all those things, but they lack one thing: they haven’t done it like you have.
Thank you, I needed this.
Tag: hugs for all
Other girls:
- so hot
- really strong and opinionated and brave
- always nice and supportive
- cool af, doing good things, smart
- awesome
Me:
- also pretty hot
- really strong and opinionated and brave
- always nice and supportive
- cool af, doing good things, smart
- also awesome. what the heck. turns out every girl is cool, including me?
- nice
Yesterday my dad told me something that I think maybe more people need to hear.
You’re allowed to just do things for fun.
He told me that in this modern society, especially the United States, we seem to have this attitude that we shouldn’t do something unless we’re aiming to be the best at it. If we can’t sing like Beyonce or Frank Sinatra or something there’s no point to singing. If we can’t make the next big breakthrough there’s no point in looking into mechanics and engineering.
But, he tells me, it took him a long time to figure out that life doesn’t have to be a race. If you want to take up the piano when you’re a teenager or later you’re not going to master it. You’re not going to be able to play to huge concert halls, but that also shouldn’t stop you. You can study a language out of curiosity and then drop the ball if you want. You can just get okay at something or even be terrible at it. You can drop it for days or years and then pick it up again and it doesn’t have to be a shameful thing.
I’m really glad he told me that because today I opened my sketchpad for the first time in months and just started drawing. And it looks terrible. But I don’t care. I don’t have the talent or patience or spacial awareness to get anywhere near good at drawing, but it’s fun. It helps me focus my mind and nobody has to see it.
And because of what he told me, I’m thinking maybe someday soon I will take up the bass guitar. And I won’t worry about how well I do, or how fast I learn, or that I haven’t played an instrument since sixth grade, or that I don’t have that much time to practice. I’m just gonna enjoy the experience. Maybe I’ll try swing dancing again and take a class because I’m not the best dancer but damn if it isn’t fun.
Yeah, you don’t have to be good at things. It’s not a requirement. Maybe that seems obvious but it had never occurred to me before. You’re allowed to just enjoy what you’re doing. For me, that feels like a life changing revelation. I don’t have to be good at something to like it. I don’t have to put 100% effort into everything I do. It’s kind of amazing.
the moon is proud of you
and so are the stars
and so is the sun
the aliens are watching you, a little confused about your life choices but are proud of you too
That comet’s judging you but that comet’s an asshole
Neil Gaiman on impostor syndrome.
Instead of asking myself “Is it true? Is it necessary? Is it kind?” before speaking or doing something controversial, I like to think “Would Carrie Fisher be proud of me? Would Oscar Wilde be proud of me? Would Mr. Rogers be proud of me?”
This is a great set of gates.
“What would Bob Ross think?”
what would mister rogers do?
You never know if someone needs this. Reblog this, even if its not your ‘blog type’. Just do it.
Yes, please reblog
Do it. Now.
i sat here and thought about reblogging this or not but then i realized how many people feel suicidal, and i have too its not dan and phil but i could honestly care less, bc i rather have someone not die then make sure i strictly stay to my ‘blog type’
Blog type doesn’t matter. Caring for people does.
Please, I care about each and every one of you!!🌷You’re amazing and I love you!!⚘
Take care of yourselves!
8yrs:
my head is hurting because i thought about my future for 0.3 seconds
you can get a headache from looking at something that bright
This is the most inspiring thing I’ve seen on tumblr.
Question for those of you who do the “lay-on-your-bed-and-imagine” thing: do you usually imagine yourself as a character, an OC, or yourself in a different situation?
I’ll start – I usually imagine some vague OC specifically created to fit some hyper-specific whump situation. I’ll often get hooked on one situation for a week or two.
Good question! I like to “write” a story in my head usually involving my current fav getting captured and needing to be rescued. Or he’s stuck in a perilous situation for awhile. (I say stuck because I usually fall asleep before he’s rescued and just add more whump to the situation the next night.) xD
Sometimes its fandom-related and I’m usually an OC. Sometimes it’s fandomless and entirely original content—like whump scenarios for my own characters.
I do this as I lay to sleep. I imagine myself as an OC (my face claim is Ashley Benson). I used to use the name Jessica for fake me, but now I use either my name or my nickname or no name at all. I imagine myself caring for whoever happens to be my favorite character at the moment. They’re usually heavily bruised and wounded and I either take care of them (bandage them up etc.), lay in bed with them with their head resting on my chest, or sit next to them and caress their cheek or hold their hand. And I always converse with them and ask them if they’re alright, if they need anything etc. And since I love bruises, their faces are always bruised. I like imagining gently kissing their bruised cheek.
Oh, and I also tend to write the situations I imagine into my fanfics (I write character x reader fics). Usually, after I write it down, I move on the a different fantasy.
Oh I do me. It’s all me, sometimes different versions of me, like AUs, but yeah, they’re all me.
Omg. Other people do this?
I know right
When I found out other people did the same thing I was so happy
I’ve never talked with anyone about this before. I’m shocked. Like, literally, shocked.
Me neither. I never told anyone. And then one day I saw a tumblr post (not this one) about this and I was in shock – happy shock, but shock. I haven’t “told” anyone else, like, people outside of tumblr, and I never would’ve said anyhing about it here, but it’s nice that someone had the courage to say it and make me feel less out of place in the world
The only reason I felt comfortable bringing this up is because I saw the same post you saw. I’m glad someone brought it up that once, so I knew it wasn’t just me.
When I was in middle school I used to pretend to be the whumpee and my crush was the one comforting me. The situations were always uber-specific, usually related to a battle injury of some kind? I still do similar things, though I’ve moved onto other people I know and who are important to me “comforting” me. Tbh, I’ve always been more into the hurt/comfort aspect of whump rather than the injury. I attribute it to the emotional distance received as a child from the rest of my family and friends. 😂😂
I literally can’t sleep unless I do this and I’ve been doing it since elementary/early middle school. I almost always “play” a whumped canon character. Who it is varies based on what media I’m consuming (right now its either MacGyver or Chandler from The Last Ship) and the specific whump tends to vary week to week depending on whatever scenario I have cooking.
Holy, jeepers. I have finally found my people.
Welcome to the club, friend!
I imagine an OC getting whumped, usually. On the rare occasions that I have a character from an actual show being whumped, it’s usually right after watching that person get whumped in a similar way. I’m usually the perpetrator of the whump, occasionally a support person, basically never the whumpee.
When I was a young teen, I did this a lot. I imagined I was one of the support staff for various canons – mechanics or medics for Star Wars/Star Trek, healers for various fantasy settings, trainers/coaching staff for sports teams, etc. It got quite detailed and there’s a bunch of never-published (terrible) OC and self-insert fic lurking somewhere on one of my drives. I kind of thought everyone did it?
Dear whoever is reading this: I wish you a life full of warmth and happiness and love. I hope you’re okay. And if you aren’t now, you will be.
Steel Phoenix Studios 