I eat feelings... and everything else.

theatlantic:

6 Writing Tips From John Steinbeck

1. Abandon the idea that you are ever going to finish. Lose track of the 400 pages and write just one page for each day, it helps. Then when it gets finished, you are always surprised.

2. Write freely and as rapidly as possible and throw the whole thing on paper. Never correct or rewrite until the whole thing is down. Rewrite in process is usually found to be an excuse for not going on. It also interferes with flow and rhythm which can only come from a kind of unconscious association with the material.

3. Forget your generalized audience. In the first place, the nameless, faceless audience will scare you to death and in the second place, unlike the theater, it doesn’t exist. In writing, your audience is one single reader. I have found that sometimes it helps to pick out one person—a real person you know, or an imagined person and write to that one.

4. If a scene or a section gets the better of you and you still think you want it—bypass it and go on. When you have finished the whole you can come back to it and then you may find that the reason it gave trouble is because it didn’t belong there.

5. Beware of a scene that becomes too dear to you, dearer than the rest. It will usually be found that it is out of drawing.

6. If you are using dialogue—say it aloud as you write it. Only then will it have the sound of speech.

Read more. [Image: AP]

I LOVE him. And all of these things make perfect sense. # brilliant

Something I’ve been thinking about a lot lately is how women are portrayed or thought of as crazy or irrational or overly emotional, especially when it comes to relationships.  I think this mostly happens when dudes are being shady and they are trying to make women feel crazy and jealous so they can get away with being a piece of shit, but I have also noticed it in pop culture and women doing it to themselves or other women. The first thing that pops into my mind is Ross and Emily from Friends. Everyone, including myself, thought Emily was a crazy jealous bitch because she didn’t want Ross around Rachel after he said her name at their wedding. “She needs to let it go… blah blah blah” In retrospect, she wasn’t crazy, she was right. Ross had no business being friends with Rachel after that. Especially if he wanted to make his marriage work. Now some would say that Ross and Rachel were meant to be together. Well, I don’t really believe in soul mates, but I do believe in choices. And Ross could’ve been totally happy with Emily if he had wanted to, but instead we had to stick it out for five more mediocre seasons to watch him reunite with Rachel. I don’t really consider myself a jealous or insecure person, not to say that I haven’t been that way in the past, but through my travels and years I’ve learned my self worth. I’ve learned to love myself enough to allow myself to be with someone that loves me how I should be loved. I’ve also come to discover that when someone is jealous in a relationship it’s probably either because they have cause to be jealous or they are cheating themselves and taking out their guilt on their significant other. 

Women tearing other women down is a huge problem in general. Women saying another woman deserved to be raped, or abused, is just infuriating. But you hear about it all the time. Obviously these women have never been raped or beaten. And aren’t they lucky? So many of us have. And so many of us blame ourselves. At one point, I thought it was my own fault that my boyfriend hit me. I should’ve just shut up. Why did I keep yelling? I saw how mad he was getting… It just needs to stop. We need to stop.

kateoplis:

Calvin and Hobbes

EXACTLY!

Truth.