Dream of the Endless

gay sex won’t fix this. it’ll probably make this worse. that being said don’t you want to see how much worse it can get?

TOM STURRIDGE as Dream of the Endless in "Lost Hearts"

When you go to the store for "just one thing"

A porcelain figurine - one of a kind, handmade.

went to see if my late package maybe showed up without being scanned

but the post man yesterday said it would be here at ooooooooooone

is 9…………. post office closing time…….  no pkg……………………………………………………… >:C

well at least i can skip my post office visit tomorrow

i mean what did i expect really

a package?

too unrealistic

amazon sent me a replacement for my lost package and it “arrived” today

omg she recognized me immediately and got nervous with me while checking the system using my name

she was just as distraught as me when it turned up “arriving tomorrow” again but then she had another idea

mail is dumb

The mail lady saying “NO. I REFUSE to say it again” was more climactic than the Braveheart speech.

oh my gosh, op’s bio says “The package was a laptop” which gives SUCH a new perspective

hangry

stares furiously at me while purring to let me know he’s hungry but also a sweet boy who deserves treats

learning from the reblogs of that post that there's a lot of people out there under the impression that "kill your darlings" means "kill your characters" and that's the funniest possible interpretation of that phrase

since a couple people sent asks: it means you can't be precious about your own writing when the time comes to edit. sometimes you will write a really good scene, or a really good line, or a really good description. it will be your new favorite thing you've ever written. the kind of thing you want to post on tumblr attributed to "the book i haven't written yet" because it's just that good. but when the whole thing is done and you're reading it over, it just. it doesn't actually work. it stands out like a sore thumb. it fucks up the pacing, or maybe once you've really got a handle on characters you realize it's ooc. "kill your darlings" is about learning to delete those bits, even though they're really good, because they're making the work as a whole worse.

... but a lot of people i know don't actually delete them because it's 2023 and you can just cut and paste them into a different document titled "bits" until you write something where they'll fit. and sometimes it actually does fit in the work, but you tried to put it in the wrong place or in the mouth of the wrong character. but learning that you can put a lot of excellent paragraphs together to make a story that's worse than the sum of its parts is the important part.

It also goes hand in hand with the idea that if a given sentence isn't working, seriously consider this as a sign that you should delete the whole sentence, and move on. The tell is that you keep re-arranging it and fussing with it, it is slowing you up. Chop it, and free yourself.

You may have to fiddle a previous sentence because of this decision, but if you just had to change one word in the previous sentence to make up for the entire troublesome sentence you just deleted, then you know you did the right thing.

Writers have a lot of "darlings". They tend to get tunnel vision and lose their forward momentum by tinkering with something the reader wouldn't even miss if it was gone.

It is your right to say, "yes, this must be here," but asking if this sentence, or passage, or anything, is just another darling that needs to be killed is a practice that will serve you, and often.

Sometimes the darling is a certain way of writing that you associate with "your style", but it's not working for some reason. You must be willing to drop things that seem precious to you if they are not serving your work. They are not what is important about what you are trying to do, they just feel like it.

Anything that feels like a "darling" probably is. Question every darling, make it prove its worth to you, and to the reader. Ask: Is this paragraph load bearing, or am I just fond of it?

And yes, sometimes you know that a character must perish, or two characters must part, and you do not want it to happen, but the talent that brought you to this point knows that the story must happen. Take a breath, and kill your darlings.

But it is your right to say no, this character must live. It's the clunky sentence, the paragraph that kills the momentum, who must always die. The reader will forgive you when the character escapes doom a little too easily, but they will not forgive you when reading about it feels like a chore.

It's even more important when you aren't writing fiction at all, and there is some paragraph that only happened because you sweated for a week in the research mines, first. You are loath to throw away so much work condensed to a few sentences. But the document is getting long, the target audience will not have the patience for it, and you know this. Kill your darlings. At least put them on trial and ask them why they are so important, why the document cannot survive without them.

If you ever do hand your work to a proper editor, they will go to kill a lot of "darlings", it's their job as editor. They might want to axe entire chapters that you toiled over.

No creative work is ever lost. Even the entire chapter that is cut to make a better story was practice that made you a better writer, it was not truly lost. Perhaps it was just in the wrong novel, and its purpose lies elsewhere. But you must be willing to kill your darlings. If you do that when nobody is twisting your arm, then it will not be a shock to your heart when an editor must do their own work, to your work.

It is important to understand that every document that you have ever loved has had a machete taken to it, the editor's floor was covered in slaughtered darlings. You didn't even notice. In fact, that was why you liked it, why it all flowed so nicely for you as a reader. It is comparable to all the clay that ends up back in the bucket when the sculptor works. You, too, will have to take part in this tradition, so get comfy with it.

This stuff was what "kill your darlings" was always about.

finishing art is for wimps but here an evie

Tony Hawk’s Twitter is a gold mine honestly

We Stan this San Diego Man

this

C o m e d yy

Some recent gems:

And of course there’s

#where is race war tony hawk tweet thats my fav (via @laughingfish​)

I gotchu, bro:

i’m wheezgJmf stoP

Honestly every time this thread just makes me laugh. And new additions…excellent.

Tony Hawk’s Twitter is a gold mine honestly

We Stan this San Diego Man

this

C o m e d yy

Some recent gems:

And of course there’s

#where is race war tony hawk tweet thats my fav (via @laughingfish​)

I gotchu, bro:

i’m wheezgJmf stoP

Honestly every time this thread just makes me laugh. And new additions…excellent.

Just a heads up.

before you post, remember S.T.O.P.!!!!

*crouches to go into stealth*

the cracking of my knees alerts the guards, I am immediately killed

sometimes I wonder how we all survive and then I look at my best friends and I go “oh, I survive because I don’t want to leave you yet” and it makes sense. life is so hard a lot of the time, but I want one more bowl of pasta with you.

The Adventures of Fun Uncle Jaskier™ and his Pocket-Sized Princess™

Listen im just saying scribes 'prev tagging' their manuscripts is part of how we lost countless classical works but those who copied out the tags preserved fragments that r sometimes all we have so :// choose which side of history you want to be on

If youve got this tagged "prev tags" im sending a fleet of vikings to sack ur monastery btw

Bad News: Our boss locked the keys inside the building.

Good News: We didn’t have to wait around for a locksmith.

Bad News: My boss finds it very concerning that I know how to pick locks, and tried to unlock my Tragic Backstory™. I was too embarrassed to admit that the reason I learned was because, at thirteen, I figured that was the kind of skill that would impress cute girls.

Good News: A cute girl saw me do it.

Bad News: It was Maggie, and since she’s already seen me fall out of several trees, cry because I saw a fawn that was just too damn small, and knows I can ride a unicycle, she’ll never think I’m cool no matter what I do. It’s too late. She knows.

There are million dollar blockbuster movies that were less entertaining than the rollercoaster this post just took me on.