The Best Way To Know Life Is To Love Many Things

The best way to know life is to love many things

Vincent van Gogh

sometimes i just sit and think about how nathan scott was wearing his engagement ring beneath his clothes even after his fall out with haley.

shatters me that he's fictional. i'd be down bad for real-life nathan scott and all his domesticity. so down for domesticity and monogamy with real-life nathan scott.

i don't wanna date. i want nathan scott, goddammit!

frowns

Practical Benefits of Creative Writing if You Need Some Motivation

Writing stories isn't just a hobby. It's a practice that sharpens so many skills. You'll use these skills all your life, so write that silly idea and let's start refining these talents that come from our work:

(Psst—this is where you should open that copy of your resume if you're also applying for jobs!)

Communication: You know how to use words to convey complex and simple ideas.

Emotional identification (for personal benefit, not so much standard careers): You'd be surprised how many people can't name or describe their emotions, much less make them something others can feel.

Thematic analyzation: You can find or create a common thread between wildly different people.

Community building: You can bring people together by making them feel things deeply.

Perspective shaping: You make others try on new perspectives through your characters and their challenge, which also points back to your communication skills.

Encouragement: You know how to make other people dream through your work.

Empathy: You remind readers they aren't alone in their experiences—we are all going through different versions of pain together.

Typing: Let's be real, every boss will think you're amazing if you can type with more than two fingers at a time (or with two fingers really fast!).

Time management: You're always finding ways to fit your writing into your schedule, even if it's only once a month.

Commitment: because that 100,000-word fanfic won't just appear on paper because you daydreamed about it.

Self-reliance: When you set a goal to write a story, you (mostly) finish it. All on your own!

A willingness to learn: Your editing and revising work keeps you open to growth opportunities, which is essential to being a good person/team member/employee.

Organization: Those folders with all your story ideas, character outlines, and plot arcs? That's a skill, my friend.

Creativity: You're in touch with your creative instincts, which brings vision to projects and team efforts that produce better results

On nights after a 12-hour shift I weigh whether I should commit to writing for a minimum of an hour before retiring to well-deserved rest or offering myself some grace and skipping the writing until I'm not so burnt out.

The right choice never seems clear, and so I toggle between the two choices during the time-span I could have used for writing.

Then it all feels like a waste.

-penned by j. m. medna (2024)

Reminder

There will never be a perfect time to write.

Never a perfect opportunity.

Never a perfect setting or ambience.

Never a perfect sentiment or mood.

You could wait, hopeful, for perfection to arrive and bless you, but you could be waiting your entire life. Think of all the half-written stories, half-developed characters that will be buried in your grave alongside you, just because you chose not to make the best of an imperfect circumstance.

Stop waiting.

Start. Now. Just write. Horribly, sloppily, tangentially.

Write for yourself. Write for someone in particular. Write for an imaginary, idealized audience. Write to commemorate a phase of your life, a friendship that's long since wilted, a parted loved one. Write for the beauty in life, the shimmering snail trails, the rustle of a falcon's feathers while in flight, the crescent moon.

Write for everything. Write for nothing. Write for no one. Write for the madness, for the hell of it. Write just because.

Just write.

Done is better than perfect, as they say.

Some details in life need a voice, however shaky and imperfect. Give these things a voice.

-penned by j. m. medna (2024)