Do You Ever Not Write For So Long That Youre Almost Afraid To? Like What If Im Dumb Now

do you ever not write for so long that you’re almost afraid to? like what if I’m dumb now

Okay listen I have another disability related thing that’s important!!

If you have any disabilities linked to tooth decay/erosion, through direct cause or secondary symptom, it is vital that you get one or both of the following items: Sensodyne toothpaste and enamel repair mouthwash

This includes health conditions such as acid reflux, diabetes, thyroid conditions, fibromyalgia, chronic pain & mental illnesses such as depression that create poor hygiene routines, sensory issue disorders like autism and ADHD, and any health condition that causes frequent vomiting / increased stomach acid, including eating disorders and migraines.

All of these disabilities will erode the enamel of your teeth, not only opening you up to cavities but making it very easy to chip your teeth from such simple things as biting the wrong way on the tines of a fork. (I’ve chipped my teeth at least 4 times this way).

The toothpaste on the left here (sensodyne pronamel) is gentle on your teeth, won’t cause painful sensations from any extreme mint flavor, and will even protect your gums if they’re sensitive from any of these conditions.

The mouthwash on the right (Crest enamel repair) will, as it says, repair your enamel — which is marvelous, because the technology to repair your enamel at all is relatively very new to society! — but it is most importantly non-alcoholic. Meaning that it works well as a once-a-day rinse without any of the burning sensations of antiseptics that typically discourage people with sensory issues from taking care of their teeth.

I know remembering to do these things every day can feel like a lot when you’re sick and exhausted, but I promise a collective three minutes out of every day is going to save you an incredible amount of pain and money in the future. If your teeth are susceptible enough to rot, you can actually die from infection. And as they say, with how little insurance actually covers dental —

Not brushing your teeth??

In THIS economy???

Hi do you mind if I ask how you deal with loss of creativity in writing? Lately, I’ve noticed that all my ideas nowadays are unoriginal and bland and I feel helpless about it. I finally have the motivation to write but no inspiration. Is there a way to improve creativity in my stories?

Guide: Filling Your Creative Well

Whether you’re an artist, singer/songwriter, sculptor, or writer, ideas don’t come out of thin air. If you put a pair of shoes, a sweater, a ziplock bag of clothespins, and a hat into a box, shove it into the garage and let it gather dust, you can’t expect to open it up in six months and find some amazing new thing. You can only get out of that box what you put into it, and our storytelling brains work the exact same way. If you’re not constantly feeding other stories and inspiration into your brain, you’ll never have new ideas to pull from when you write.

Thankfully, even if you’re in a rut or a tough place in life, there are a variety of accessible ways to feed new ideas into your creative well. Here are some things you can start doing to fill it back up again. But don’t expect a barrage of great ideas just because you took a walk or watched a movie. Filling up your creative well takes time, so start now and before you know it the ideas will begin to flow.

1. Consume Other Stories

read a variety of fiction, including novels in different genres, short stories and micro-fiction, poetry, essays, and fan-fiction.

read about myths, legends, folk tales, faerie tales, and ghost stories. See if you can find any that are relevant to your area or your ancestry.

watch a variety of different TV series and movies, leaning a little heavier on things that will inform what you write in some way.

watch documentaries on a variety of subjects. These can be found on TV, OnDemand, streaming, on YouTube/Vimeo, and at your local library.

stay up-to-date on local, state, national, and global current events. When a story strikes a chord with you, research it further.

take an interest in real life stories of total strangers. Look for interesting blogs and vlogs. Spend some time on pages like Humans of New York, Humankind Stories, The Dodo, or 60 Second Docs. Listen to podcasts like This American Life and Radio Lab.

play board games and video games, especially ones with a story or that allow some level of role playing.

go to a public place, sit on a bench, and discreetly observe the people around you. Don’t be a creeper, obviously, but see if you notice any interesting stories unfolding around you. If you see an interesting person, without staring at them, see if you can imagine who they are or what their life might be like.

2. See the World

Before you panic, this doesn’t have to mean traveling abroad. It doesn’t even mean you have to leave home…

if you can travel the world, by all means, do that! If you can’t, try planning out a trip you’d like to take someday. Figure out where you’d want to stay, where you’d eat, and what you’d see while you’re there. Then get online go to the web sites of those places, look at pictures, walk around on Google Street View. Look for video and video tours on YouTube.

if you can travel around your country, state, province, region, etc. Do that. And again, if you can’t, try planning a trip you’d like to take someday, then see how much of it you can experience from your computer screen.

try choosing a random location and go “walk around” via Google Street View. Click on photos. Sometimes there are walk around photo tours of places.

watch travel shows, travel documentaries, and travel movies. You can find them on TV, OnDemand, streaming, YouTube/Vimeo, and at your library.

see if your friends or family member have any travel books or travel-related coffee table books you can borrow to flip through. Or go to the bookstore or library to flip through some. If nothing else, think of interesting places, then do a Google Image Search to find photos of that place.

follow facebook pages, instagrams, and tumblr blogs dedicated to a particular place. If you have friends and family who are from different places, or have traveled to different places, ask them to tell you about it.

take a short road trip, or a “Sunday drive” as they used to be called. Be safe about it, of course, but just get in the car and explore some local roads you’ve never traveled before.

visit a nearby town you’ve never been to. If you can’t do that, find someplace in your town you’ve never seen. If nothing else, take a walk in your neighborhood and try to walk down a block you’ve never been down before. (Again, make sure you’re being safe about it.)

ask some friends or family members to go visit a local state park with you. Take a short hike or walk and enjoy that time in nature.

see if there are any interesting street festivals to attend in your town. Many towns do sidewalk art festivals, craft fairs, food truck rallies, carnivals, and seasonal or cultural events.

go spend a few hours walking around a local museum, botanical gardens, or other local attraction.

3. Learn About History

watch TV shows, documentaries, and movies about different historical figures, events, and time periods.

choose a person, event, or time period that interests you and research it thoroughly. Think about ways you can incorporate those ideas into whatever you write–no matter how far your usual genre may be from that event.

learn about the history of your town. See if your town has an historical society. Go to their web page. See if there are any interesting local sites to visit.

research your family tree. Ask family members about family history and see if they have interesting childhood memories to share. See if anyone knows interesting stories about parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents.

choose an historical figure or event that interests you, then try to re-imagine their life or that event in a different time period or setting. What if Henry VIII was the king of England now? How would that have played out differently? 

learn about daily life and survival in different time periods. Learn what people ate, how they passed the time, how they dressed, and what traditions and rules they lived by.

choose a subject matter like music, fashion, dance, or food, then research how they’ve changed through the ages.

4. Learn About the Future

think about an element of your daily life that either frustrates you or that you deeply rely on. Do some research to see how this thing is projected to change in the future? What advances are expected to be made? How might this thing be different in twenty or thirty years?

learn about the different ways people are planning for the future now. Cities that are implementing green technology, people that are finding interesting new ways to combat pollution or the effects of climate change, and organizations that are planning to colonize the ocean, space, or even other planets.

think of a notable person you’re interested now, like perhaps a pop star or a political figure, then imagine what their life would be like if they were alive in a futuristic city 100 years from now.

watch TV shows and documentaries about the future, or watch movies that take place in the future.

I think I’m going to make a list of recommended TV shows, movies, books, and other resources one of these days. I will eventually link that here. So if you come to this post as a re-blog, click on the original post to see if I’ve updated. Or you can look on my main site. I’ll try to have it up by the end of September 2018.

The way I personally stay true to the story I started down on is to give myself permission to not teach anyone anything. I’m not writing a manual. I’m not delivering bromides. I know that a lot of people do take enormous pleasure and relief in lines or phrases or ideas from stories that ring true to their own lives, but it’s important for me that I tell a story and that I’m not writing Chicken Soup for the Necromantic Soul. It is getting harder and harder again, especially for authors from marginalised places or backgrounds, to write works where the takeaway isn’t ‘this is to succour all my marginalised people’. For anyone on the female-identified axis this is especially hard because it seems to me that most books by anyone female-adjacent have an expectation that they will comfort the uncomfortable and discomfit the comfortable etc., whereas a guy can just tell an adventure story and be done with it. This ties in with an idea that I think <is prevalent> nowadays that good art is moral and bad art is immoral: i.e. if a story is bad it actually has to be because the lessons are bad, and if a story is good it must somehow be beautiful on the moral scale. We go looking for why the art we love is moral even if the art we love is a donut. I think this is the pressure of capitalism on time – that everything has to double or triple up in benefit compared to the time we take on it: if we’re prepared to waste eight hours on a book we had better be able to tot up at the end how that book was also feeding us in some way. That’s brand time we just used.

I am writing for my younger self and it would be disgusting of me to try to teach her anything.

Tamsyn Muir, Interview with Ciara Seccombe, 2/5/22

Don't you sometimes get an absolutely extrodinary, mind blowing, such an awesome idea for a story, but you just don't have enough skill level to pull it off?

- A Psalm for the Wild-Built, Becky Chambers // kagonekoshiro