Scribbled Fiction

Not everyone can be good at drawing. I get that. For some of you, you can try to draw something and you end up with a cucumber? In a hat?? Not everyone has super artsy genes. SO HERE I AM AS YOUR ART FAIRY GODMOTHER TO ASSIST YOU. TODAY YOU SHALL DRAW CHARACTER ART. I'm going to give you several different techniques, from 'super beginner' to 'just ok at art' and everywhere in between, and you shall find the magic touch that will make you able to make character art. So have a seat, and I'll tell you what you can do! Level 1: Tracing over a picture If you are the most beginner-est of all beginners, fret not, I got u. Even if you feel that you don't have a drop of artistic talent, trust me, you can trace. Print up a picture that resembles the character you want to draw and make sure you print it big enough to be around the size you want your drawing. Place another piece of paper over the printed picture and slap both of them against a light surface so you can s...

Not to get too uptight about my people, but cashiering is hard. It's a minimum-wage, minimum-experience-required kind of job, but I would say that it's actually a lot harder than anyone is given credit for(at least if you're a good cashier and not just one of those ones who bag things and grunt at anyone who speaks to them). I mean, didn't most of the people we serve do some kind of service job at one point? If you went straight from school into some high-end office job, I'd really like to know how you got there. So what is your cashier doing for you that you don't even see? We're there. Yes, it's part of our job to show up, to be present and paying attention, but doing the same transaction over and over like a robot, repeating the same script, and serving tons of thankless people is an easy way to lose brain cells. Just appreciate our showing up today. You ought to know how hard it is to get out of bed in the morning in the first place without knowing y...

Look, we don't want to be stereotypes, but at the end of the day, are all writers not the same? We all live on coffee, we all daydream when we should probably be writing, and we, ahem, write . If you don't have at least four things from this list I owe you a donut. Every writer has: A hoard of pretty notebooks More pencils than you're ever likely to use An unnecessary amount of trivia on all your characters(that you're just waiting to use at a talk one day) A favorite writing spot A book on writing that you've just destroyed At least one character that is totally useless to the plot that you just can't bear to get rid of Snacks hiding somewhere A USB with all your novel files on it. Honestly, if you don't have one of these, get thee hence and back up your files, because you're going to regret not backing them up one of these days. Random junk all over your desk/usual writing space A notebook full of random notes like 'Bob gets kidnapped' or '...

Procrastination For me, procrastination can come from several sources: 1) I have too much to do and it makes me nervous, so I avoid the task altogether 2) I am currently uninterested in the scene I'm writing 3) I don't know where the scene is going 4) I'm afraid I won't do the scene justice A lot of the time, the real source of the problem is #2. I'll lose interest in the scene I'm writing, and therefore when I'm not writing I don't have the motivation to  write. I don't sit down to type with anticipation for the adventure ahead. And there's an easy way to fix that, which we'll get to in just a minute. But let's say that your main problem is not #2, but rather #1 or #3 or #4. So I'm going to address them all at once. The core of the problem What is making you procrastinate? What is the core of the problem? 1) You have too much to do in general and it makes you nervous, so you avoid the task altogether. The problem: You're overwhel...

It has been ages  since I uploaded a short story or something, so I am back!! (confession: I almost couldn't find the file to make the cover image for this post, which nearly ended in total disaster). Anyway, I whipped up some flash fiction for you, and here it is! I don't have a lot of time this morning before I have to go to work, so I don't have the time to make it into a pdf before uploading it. Therefore I'm just putting it straight into Blogger itself. Here's your reminder that this is my intellectual property, my characters, etc., etc., and while I don't actually think any of you would try to steal my work, I'm going to remind you that you can't copy and paste this story or anything, and you can't sell it as your own. Thanks! Spice                 Wick opened the spice cabinet, and his eyes roved over the wealth of jars inside. He felt like a peasant that had stumbled upon a dragon’s hoard. Humans had so many spices! How on earth could...

Yeah, I know the English language already has wayyyy more words in it than basically any other language, and that makes it really hard to learn for people who don't grow up speaking it, but there's still room for improvement! We can always add more words! I've noticed some gaps in the system and words that we really need to invent, like now. A word for dying of thirst We so need a word for this. If I'm dying of thirst, I shouldn't have to go to all the trouble to tell someone that I'm 'dying of dehydration' because I might not have enough hydration left to get all those syllables out. When I'm out of the house and I'm both hungry and thirsty I want to be able to say "I'm starving and ____." You get my point, right? Multiple ways to say 'i love you' This. Needs. To. Be. Fixed. Seriously, I need to be able to tell everyone that I care about them. I want one for friends, one for family, one for a lover, and I also want one for ...

I've been wanting to write a post about this phrase for a while because while it sounds cute in dialogue, it gets soooooo much better if you get down to the nitty-gritty of the individual definitions of the words. Am I probably reading too much into this phrase? Am I an overthinker and overanalyzer? Oh yeah. But I'm not going to let that stop me. First, let's look at the phrase itself. I want to be with you. I Want to be With You. Here's the thing: one can interpret this sentence in two different ways. This is what I love about English. Depending on where you put the inflection, the sentence can take very different forms. The first is this: I want to be with   you. To be with.  To go along with, to accompany, to walk alongside. Like Avril Levine, to say 'I'm with you' as in I am a couple with you, I arrive at a place and say 'I'm with him' because I have arrived with you, I am in a party with you, a group of two. I am with you. I am with  you. An...

I love love love the movie Black Panther, and I could probably watch it every week. I love the way they balance culture with innovation, and how T'challa himself is super cool but also very human, and I just love every character in the movie. It's just awesome. It deserved every award it received for its awesomeness. What I love especially(other than everything) are the girl characters . This is not about sexism or feminism or anything like that, but rather just about good writing . Girl characters have had a problem for a long time because normally there's only one girl in a whole book or because their personalities are flat and useless. But not in Black Panther! I talked about Cara Dune as being the perfect 'strong female character', now I'm going to bring up the most perfect female representation I've seen in film. *Mario voice* Lets-a go! Why are these characters awesome? They're all very different All people want to know that they're not being s...

So uh.... I'm still waiting for my job to open back up. I don't know when it will be, but being at home for two months is kind of weird. Now, don't get me wrong, I'm really going to miss my weekends and like... having a predictable schedule? But seriously, can I get back to work now? *shrugs* Let's start the May wrapup! Writing is going ok! I finally got back into a groove where I feel like editing is going pretty good, but this week I have to set up my plan to rewrite a scene that I already rewrote in the last draft , so *huffs* i'M fInE. No really. I just gotta swallow my ego and accept that I didn't rewrite it perfectly the first time. I also drafted another short story with Wick and Archer. I realized that I've kind of forgotten to create any content with them recently, which obviously no one is expecting from me, per se, but I'm enjoying creating small pieces of content to distract myself from how ambitious the main project is? So yeah I might w...