Blackcat-midnight-thatsme - Midnight

it is not an evil thing to look at yourself with kindness. your life was never meant to be a punishment

Eight Rules For Writing -- from a long ago piece I wrote for The Guardian.

1 Write.

2 Put one word after another. Find the right word, put it down.

3 Finish what you're writing. Whatever you have to do to finish it, finish it.

4 Put it aside. Read it pretending you've never read it before. Show it to friends whose opinion you respect and who like the kind of thing that this is.

5 Remember: when people tell you something's wrong or doesn't work for them, they are almost always right. When they tell you exactly what they think is wrong and how to fix it, they are almost always wrong.

6 Fix it. Remember that, sooner or later, before it ever reaches perfection, you will have to let it go and move on and start to write the next thing. Perfection is like chasing the horizon. Keep moving.

7 Laugh at your own jokes.

8 The main rule of writing is that if you do it with enough assurance and confidence, you're allowed to do whatever you like. (That may be a rule for life as well as for writing. But it's definitely true for writing.) So write your story as it needs to be written. Write it honestly, and tell it as best you can. I'm not sure that there are any other rules. Not ones that matter.

eventually you realize you don’t want to die. you just don’t want to live the life you’re living. and slowly you try to create a life you want to live. just gotta start there.

I need you guys to understand how important it is for us to hear and soak in this message.

I haven't been able to create anything not for work, or that I'm simply proud of, for over half a year. I am not able to write. Not able to paint. It breaks me everyday that I'm uninspired to do things which used to make me happy.

I just listened to this whole video in silence and then took a deep breath and broke down crying. There are tears in my eyes as I write this.

If you're once an artist, you're always an artist

As we step into 2022 a lot of us really need to hear this. The guilt of not being or doing enough, with the compulsion to monetize all things which make you happy- this is going to break us. We need to find joy again, and to learn to give ourselves the time, love and patience needed to create art once more.

IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT