Scribbled Fiction

I've been debating for a little while about whether I should switch this blog over to a YouTube channel. This is for two reasons: I'm more used to YouTube than blogging, and I'm more used to YouTube than blogging. I've been working on YouTube on my own  channel  as well as several other channels for more than four and a half years now, and I'm comfortable on the platform by now. I can't help but feel like YouTube would work well for me. But on the other hand, if I switched over from blogging to YouTube, there would be two problems with that. #1: I work better with words than with talking out loud. I know this from the entire minutes of silence I've cut out of any video where I have to talk. Not only that, but if I have something to say, I'm better off writing it down and arranging the words I want the way I want than embarrassing myself fuddling it out aloud. #2. YouTube videos are time-consuming to make. Making high-quality YouTube content takes a...

Photo by Kaboompics .com from Pexels Apologies for my complete brain fart yesterday. I forgot to post this. My bad. Let's just continue as though I had posted this on Tuesday, shall we? We will now carry on. Should you write every day? Short answer: I think you should  write every day, but I don't think you have to write every day . You're welcome. Now that you're thoroughly confused, let me give you the long answer. I'm not saying I'm super consistent with my writing now, but I was more  inconsistent when I started out, okay? I would write however much I felt like, when  I felt like. (this post is off to a great start. look at all those overused italics.) Sometimes, I wouldn't write two sentences collectively for a week. Sometimes, and this was very rarely, I would write ten pages in one day. Yeah, big woop for the people who write 10k every day, but for me it's still a big deal. Eventually, I figured out I needed a rhythm if ...

Sure, this post might not make you feel better about your own writing doubts, but there's at least a 50% chance it won't make you feel any worse. So here we go. We all have this cycle between doubt and 'yay me!' going on in our heads. I don't know about you, but I think my brain spends a lot of time at the top and the bottom and less time in all the transition stages. I don't transition. I extreme-ify .Transitions are for people who transition. (btw, when you're done reading this, let me know in the comments which stage(s) you spend the most time stuck at. i really wanna know) Now let's go through the varying stages. 1. This is really good! I love it! 2. It's. . . it's not bad, I guess. sorry, but the abruptness of this gif makes me giggle. 3. It's okay. *slowly stops smiling* 4. Oh my gosh, this is awful. 5. Well, I guess it's not that bad. 6 It's actually kinda good. ...

I GOT A QUESTION! (couldn't find a stupid gif of that vine, so gkjdakjfdajkdfkjsdkjl;sdf) If it's so hard to learn to drive properly, how come eleven-year-olds in movies drive like pros the second they touch the steering wheel? Imma tell ya right now, it wouldn't work too well. Even if they could get away with it, it wouldn't be this: It would be a lot more like this: or even this: Earth to Echo  amused me the most because all four twelve-year-olds got into a car and automatically looked it up on WikiHow. I found it hilarious, because that's America for you. But the fact still remains that after they ran into a trash can the first time, they drove fine after that. I'm no expert, but I think you'd have to practice driving for like three days straight before you could pass for a good driver on the roads. Once you get up to speed, you can stay there all right, but starting and stopping is a nightmare when you're first learning. All the ...

Confession: I'm not even sure if my writing process counts as a good writing process or not. But it works for me, and if you hate it I never said you had to do it with me, so go suck a lemon, I guess. My process has come a long way since I started writing at eleven. Another confession: I didn't even know what plot was at that age, so.... yeah. But these days, writing has almost fallen into a nice consistent process for me. Keyword being almost. I haven't thought through how I'm going to arrange this, so I suppose I'll just go one step at a time. Ideas (The part where you get an idea and start thinking about it) Basically, I always have too many story ideas and snippets in a big red folder on my desk, and once the idea has stewed around in my brain enough and feels complete enough, then I pull it out of the tangled web of other ideas and start working on it. Under no circumstances  do start on a novel  right after I come up with the idea.  Any tim...

They're in space. Can I say duct tape? A real question I asked my sister a couple of months ago (to clarify, I was writing a sci-fi novel at the time). Because, I mean, this is a long time in the future. Would it even still be called duct tape? Her response: Of course my characters would have duct tape. After all, it's duct tape . Plus, if Drax suggested Scotch tape, which has only a quarter of the popularity duct tape has, they have duct tape in space. And I needed something for my characters to tape their ship back together with. But anyway. I saw a similar question in a Facebook group this week, and I keep thinking about it. I have a good bit to say on the subject, so I might as well dump everything here while it's still fresh in my mind. The question was posted in the Facebook group Your Write Dream (my favorite Facebook writing group, by the way). It was a pretty long question, so I've decided not to copy and paste, but the basic gist was: If you...

Photo by Lum3n.com from Pexels Apologies for all the posts on editing, but I am right in the middle of a third draft, and it's just... *prolonged bestial scream* Excuse me. Editing isn't as hard as it used to be for me, believe me. It used to be like pulling my literal hair out. It's a little easier now. But it's still not super easy. My second draft wasn't even complete before I realized it was going the wrong direction and I had to start over (thus the third draft). My absolute bane of editing, though, is rewriting. I'm fine rewriting something in a different way. I thrive like that. The first time I was editing something, I didn't even know it was editing. I was just like 'Ooh, what if I add  this  to it while I'm typing up the longhand pages?' And it was AWESOME. I still love doing this. It's so much easier to seamlessly add stuff in when you're typing it up because the flow is already in your brain. It's an  amazing ...