Weekend Showcase 28, December 22

Weekend Showcase!

Group Stuff!

First, and most importantly, remember that I'll be taking a break for the next two weeks. Persistent-Practice will be back on the 6th.

Next, since it's been three months since the last time--how am I doing? Any complaints? Any suggestions?

Stuff From Elsewhere!

An infographic about writer's block.

9 signs you may be living in a YA novel.

Why it takes me forever to update things.

I said I was going to write...

On unpacking description in your story.

50 cliched lines of dialogue.

Stuff from You!

First, a good thought from about this link.

I want to point out something that popped out at me in the psychology-of-writing thing: The blood-red curtains don't necessarily have to mean anything about the old lady; they can just as well mean something about the narrator.

Word choice is very important because it always reveals thoughts, even when you're not writing in first-person where every word is your narrator's direct thoughts. Narration should be pruned like dialogue--you should be able to think, "This character wouldn't use this turn of phrase," and write accordingly.

And gave this wonderful response to the articles I posted about writing while depressed/anxious:

This is so important. I think that at times depression and anxiety get glamorized for writers, to the point where it's expected that if you have one, it automatically makes you more creative or a better writer, or anything like that.

I've always found that to be, at least for me personally, complete and utter bullshit. But who wants to say that? Who wants to say, in a society which glamorizes all the utterly insane, suicidal artists and writers, that depression or anxiety completely saps any goals of writing and any ability to write when it hits the hardest?

It's as if it wasn't hard enough already, to be so anxious and quite possibly depressed (no official diagnosis on the latter) that everything from going to classes to even talking to people is a constant act of becoming so mentally exhausted by the hoops and the thoughts of what you did/could have done wrong, but you also have to deal with the fact that you can't live up, as a writer, to what society says this should do for you.

Because when it hits, I can't write. It's terrifying to write, it's too hard to write, and I just need to stop writing for a bit because the mere thought is one that makes me curl up in bed and cry my eyes out.

Fuck society's ideas. It's okay to take time for yourself away from it, without buying into the idea that writing is catharsis or those things make you creative or anything else like that, if how your depression or anxiety expresses itself makes it completely and utterly false.

And I'll just say what I said to her--everyone experiences anxiety and depression (and the entire emotional spectrum) differently and copes with their feelings in different ways. There are better and worse ways of coping, but it's all about finding what works for you.

That said, I would just like to mention that all of you are awesome and I would hug you all if I could. (Unless you don't like hugs. Then I don't know.) See you guys in 2014!