My Dad Likes To Call The Stretches Of Time Where Youre Not Creatingdreaming Periods And Says That Theyre

my dad likes to call the stretches of time where you’re not creating “dreaming periods” and says that they’re meant to allow you to absorb all of the beauty, life, and inspiration from the things around you so that when you’re able to create again, you will have fanned your spark back into a flame. sometimes its hard to see those moments as anything but stagnation, but he always says that they’re natural and healthy and needed—things that should be embraced rather than feared.

Supernatural’s Legacy: The Trauma of Silence

Understanding the unique grief of Supernatural fans, and the power of stories to liberate and to punish. [Warning: spoilers for season fifteen of Supernatural]

guys, please please read this and share everywhere you can. we need to get this message out there. we need for people to understand that it’s more than “just a ship,” it’s seeing ourselves. our voices deserve to not only be heard, but to be spoken at all.

meme

i think a big thing that disconcerts adults about learning new skills is that learning as an adult means you are very aware of how bad you are at the beginning in a way children aren’t.

i picked up the saxophone when i was 11 and played until i was about 17. by the end of it i was first chair in our highest ensemble, a district honor band player, etc. but at the beginning – and this is important – i was bad. for the first year or so, i had no rhythm, i couldn’t make my tongue line up with my fingers, i was consistently sharp, etc. etc. other kids actually made fun of me for my lack of skill.

but 11 year old me didn’t care. 11 year old me practiced, but she also thought that being able to play the pink panther made her incredible (i shudder in retrospect). i mean, i was aware i wasn’t a master, but my skill level didn’t deter me from wailing out those notes in a way that i’m sure had my band director questioning his career decisions.

right now, i’m trying to pick up the guitar. it’s a very different instrument from the saxophone, and i struggle a lot with things like strumming patterns and barre chords. and sometimes i don’t want to play, because i know i’m bad at guitar. and sometimes i beat myself up when stumbling through a poor acoustic rendition of Everybody Wants to Rule the World because it’s not how i want it to sound. and it’s made even more frustrating because i can navigate the saxophone so smoothly.

but then i remember that i have to think like a kid. i might not be the best at guitar by any stretch of the imagination, but every little bit of progress is still progress. humility is a big part of learning, but if you treat a practice session like your own private concert, it becomes so much more fun, even if you’re bad like i am.  when you’re first picking up a skill, whether it be an instrument, or a language, or a fine art, no one is expecting you to be the yo yo ma of that thing. forget about how little you know about the skill and think instead about how much you have to learn – that’s fun! do your best!!

do you have any advice for writing fan fiction? anything in your experience that you've found difficult? especially for something longer. i haven't done much creative writing.

honestly neither have i! 99% of the time i’m writing like. academic papers lol and gruelling over how boring methods writing is. the last time (before the fics ive written recently) that i wrote fiction was for my senior year provincial english exam where i wrote a sterek fanfic but just changed the names lmfao. though i suppose some things carry over.

always read over what you wrote (or get a beta/editor!), your first draft is never your best.

and in that same vein, don’t aim for it to be perfect the first time. just get the first draft written.

plan! writing is a logical endeavor. when i write a theoretical background section of a research paper i think about the logical flow — what theory feeds into the other? what story am i telling there? same thing for fiction. map out each section, map out major plot points, and stick to it for the first draft. adjust after. as far as fic goes, i think it’s a realy good idea to complete at least a handful of chapters/the entire work before posting it, cause your vision changes when you have a bigger picture.

*also! your reader doesn’t know your setting/vision as well as you do. illustrate it for your reader. make drawings/descriptions of your settings for consistency too.

the toughest thing for me is dialogue haha cause i literally never have to write dialogue in academia. best advice for that is to say each line of dialogue outloud and see if it makes sense in your mouth. i do this with writing, too, especially when passages get verbose (i.e. purple prose) and jargon-y.

the last thing i can suggest is just keep things realistic. i think immersion into a story helps when pacing and interactions are realistic. my writing is far from perfect, but i hope this helps!!!

also any other fic writers pls feel free to add on in the replies

cas trying to figure out the best way to say goodbye to dean while professing his love for him at the same time: