That Character Who Is So Diffusely Plagued With Dichotomous, Perfectionistic Thinking That They Self-villainize
that character who is so diffusely plagued with dichotomous, perfectionistic thinking that they self-villainize at their slightest screw up. they spiral into cynical madness at the slightest reminder of their imperfections. if I can't be a Saint, I have no choice but to become a devil.
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i think a particular feature i love about tumblr, as opposed to wattpad or ao3, is that you don't obsess over the stats that show you how many ppl have read your work but not liked it. personally, that feature of ao3 and wattpad puts a damper on my creativity. it makes me hyperfixate on numbers as opposed to enjoying the process.
tumblr offers me a space to just create. if ppl heart it or reblog, then great. if they choose to only read it, great, too. I won't know the ratio of reads:likes and this way I won't overthink about all the ppl that gave my stuff a chance, but walked away. i won't try to decipher the reasons for that walk away.
i literally just got my first kudos (ever) on my ao3 account and i'm in tears hahahaha
“You will never be able to experience everything. So, please, do poetical justice to your soul and simply experience yourself.”
— Albert Camus, “Notebooks”
a question to all the writers out there
How do you know when to stop writing (a piece, a scene, an exchange)?
Often times, I find myself rambling incessantly over the vivid details of a scene that abuse the storage of my mind and haphazardly call those rambles purple prose.
It's a weird conundrum to phase, this tension between there never being enough words in the English language to paint the picture in your head, and the way the perspective grows increasingly blurry the more words you add.
It feels so criminal to cut out pieces you carefully articulated, though it is often necessary for the sake of the pace and the word-count. I guess the issue originates from a deeply rooted desire for control - that has less to do with writing, more to do with the psychologically imbalanced battle-field that is my brain.
I should detach from the piece and allow the reader the liberty to perceive what is written as their individual lens is capable, rather than forcing my exact vision onto foreign eyes. Sure, this may lend itself to reader's loving my characters far less than I do (since I bear all the highly-detailed lore behind them); just as commonly, though, one could argue, that the readers will weave their own imagination and memories with the characters, using them as scaffolds, and creating (in co-creation with the author) something that by far exceeds the original vision.
-penned by j. m. medna (2024)
