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Teacher: Please give a warm welcome to Koji, our new exchange student. Koji: Hello everyone! Nice to meet you. Teacher: Koji, you can sit next to Tom, please.

Teacher: We have career day on thursday. Participation is mandatory. There will also be the opportunity to talk to a career counselor. Please make use of this offer if necessary.

Teacher: If there are no further questions, let's get started with our regular lessons.

in the evening

Maksym: So, how was your first day of school? Did anything exciting happen?

Nasja: We have a new classmate. He's an exchange student from Mt. Komorebi. And we have career day on thursday. Maybe I could…? Kasper: Nasja, not again. We've talked about this so many times.

Maksym: Alex will take over the company so that you can focus on marriage. Kasper: Exactly. No need to waste the best years of your life chasing a career you don't need anyways.

pose by @antiquatedsimmer!

I'm terrible at building but I love furnishing houses. So I usually hop on the gallery, place the house unfurnished and decorate it myself.

Sometimes I make slight adjustments to the build to better fit my needs, but I prefer to spend most of my time in buy mode rather than build mode.

📩 Simblr question of the day: Do you prefer to play in premade houses, build your own or get them off the Gallery/from other simmers?

answer in whatever way is most comfortable for you and feel free to share this SQOTD around, make sure to use the hashtag SQOTD and tag me in separate posts ~ 💛

This question was contributed by an anon ~ Thank you for submitting multiple questions ~ (this is question 3 of 9 from this specific anon)

Hello, I was wondering if you have any tips for how to start getting into writing?? I’ve always wanted to write the stories in my head down but I struggle with writing and am not very good in general haha. When I read your books I get so filled with inspiration but feel like it’s too late for me to start ( even though logically I know I’m still quite young, but being in my final year of university feels like I’m running on quicksand ).

When reading Falling Falling Stars for the first time, it was like being shown a new type of love, being shown that has changed me as a person, which is why I’m reaching out.

Thank you for your time and for sharing your wonderful stories.

Hi anon!

People can learn how to write - especially for themselves - at any age. In fact sometimes it's easier to start when you're a bit older, when you've read and experienced a lot more stories and have an idea of the kind of things you enjoy reading.

It's important mostly to just be patient and gentle with yourself. You don't have to sit down and write a contained story, free yourself from the idea that you have to write a chronological/sequential complete story when you get started.

Start with the things you want to see most. Say there's a show where you just want two characters to hook up. Write a page of that. Not even the reason why, just...start with what you're imagining.

At first it might not be exactly what you're hoping for. There will be lines you like, and dialogue you think 'oh yeah this is kind of what I wanted' etc. that's okay. Think of it like...when people start out in art, it's not what they imagined yet, but that doesn't mean it's bad! It's a 'sketch.' It's good to do lots of writing sketches too.

If you find you enjoy writing things that you've always imagined and wish you could read, practice other things too! You can look around your environment and write 'how would I describe where I'm sitting if I loved this place more than anywhere else in the world' and then write 'how would I describe where I'm sitting to an alien' or 'how would I describe how this place smells, or looks, or sounds (practice listening for the sounds outside too, it can be meditative!), or feels to the touch.'

You can do those 'sketches' anywhere - in cafes, in restaurants, on public transport, on your notes app at a friend's place, at a family dinner after everyone's eaten and you're just chilling.

And then often without thinking about it, you will use those skills to breathe more life into the things you want to see most in your writing. Instead of just a one page hook up, you might write four pages where you describe the bedroom, how things feel, what the 'mood' is etc.

All you need is an urge to see certain things in the world and wanting to write them down. Put down random lines of dialogue. If you imagine two characters arguing, or hugging, or making up, write down somewhere quickly: 'These two characters hugging' to inspire you later. Maybe something specific about it makes you happy. 'They're hugging but this one is grabbing the other one's jumper/sweater really tightly.'

Writing for me is a sequence of moments, and while I write chronologically / sequentially now, I didn't used to! I gave myself permission to write scenes because I found it freeing, because if nothing else, then I have a scene of something I always wanted to see in the world. Maybe I do nothing more than just read and enjoy it sometimes, well, that's what I wanted - to write something I wanted to see in the world!

Anyone can do that, anon, and age is seriously no barrier to that. Writing creatively is one of those things that, like wine, tends to age/get better with time, whether you're practicing it or not. Learning more about the world, other people, ourselves, and the things in it, reading more, watching more film and TV, that actually enriches our imaginative landscape, and that's what fuels writing (even if you don't have an 'imagination' in the classic sense).

Writing creatively isn't about writing 'books' - anyone can sit down and write a moment, and you can too. And if you don't like looking at a blank page, just put down a sentence. Even a sentence from another story that inspires you.

My favourite writing advice to defeat a blank page because it always makes me laugh is:

Write the worst sentence you possibly can. Like, go out of your way and make it bad and silly.

'What a dumb brown rug.'

There, you no longer have a blank page! And you can definitely write a better sentence than that!

'He hated that rug, the colour reminded him of mud, and it didn't suit the room at all.'

'He rubbed his shoes on the brown rug, locking his hands together, twisting his fingers and hoping no one noticed him.'

But you know, 'what a dumb brown rug' is fun too. :D

And ultimately, you just have to try and have some fun with it <333

𝕬 𝕻𝖆𝖗𝖙𝖞 𝖙𝖔 𝕯𝖎𝖊 𝕱𝖔𝖗… 𝕮𝕬𝕾 𝕮𝖍𝖆𝖑𝖑𝖊𝖓𝖌𝖊

Hello everyone, and Happy Spooky Season!

I have yet again crawled out of my cave to bring you this Halloween Themed CAS Challenge. This idea was inspired by @mickimagnum's Monster Mash Makeover Challenge. Of course, the rules are subjective. You don't have to make over townies if you don't want to, but these are mostly just fun Halloween themed prompts for CAS.

That being said, use the tag #LLPTDF to share your creations!

Happy Halloween! 🎃

@simblreenofficial