My Depression Is Slowly Being Replaced With Anxiety, My Nihilism With Fear Of Losing It All, I Experienced

Human sin and weakness is sooo funny because it's like. The deeper you are in it, the more desperate you are to keep anyone from seeing it and defining you by it. It's unbearable for someone to think of you as "the person with That Problem," and it feels more unbearable the uglier and more public That Problem is, so you scramble to hide (even when it's stupidly obvious you're hiding something, making you "person who Hides Things"), and you cut off relationships where you become too vulnerable (making you "person who Runs Away").

What's so funny is that you only actually get free of being "person with That Problem" (because that's who you are to yourself) when you stop fighting it and accept that you're in Christ, even with the problem. As soon as you can say "I do have That Problem, in fact I have Problems, but I can still be known and loved because who I am is in Jesus and not in myself," you've accomplished what you were after in the first place: being defined apart from the problem.

Writing Tips Masterlist

Last updated May 28, 2021.

World-Building

4 Tips for Writing Magic

Creating a Culture

Totalitarian Governments

Creating a Distinct World

Creating (Fictional) Medicine

Describing New Settings

Writing a War

Writing a War with Superheroes / Magic / Fantasy

70 Questions for World-Building

Creating Superstitions

49 Questions for Creating a Religion

The Tie Between Characters and World-Building

34 Questions for Creating a Government

36 Questions for Music in World-Building

Creating a New Species

42 Questions for Creating an Education System

An Introduction to Creating Fantasy Races

Characters

Developing Character Appearance

Developing Character Personality

Multilingual Characters

Creating a Wardrobe

How to Name Your Characters

Your Characters vs. Already-Established Characters

Effective Point-of-View Character

Writing an Impactful Death

Writing with Archetypes

Designing Your Characters

Mute Characters

Thinning Your Cast

Not Enough Characters?

84 Questions for Developing Plot and Character Roles

Sexuality without a Relationship

Consistent Personalities

Skills and Knowledge

Creating Conflict

Character Arcs

Sympathetic Characters

Name vs. Pronouns and When to Use Them

Creating Character Voice

Characters Who Are Learning Another Language

Character Fears

Finding Motivations

Creating Character Flaws

Emotionless Characters

Introducing Your Characters

List of Character Aesthetics

Relationships

Dynamic Relationships

Sibling Relationships

Believable Romance

Characters Who Don’t Know How to Relationship

Complementary Character Traits

Writing a Slow-Burn Romance

Characters Who Fall Out of Love

Groups of Characters

Making Compatible Characters

Emotions

Frustration

Grief

Fear

Planning & Plotting

Planning a Series

Writing an Outline

Tips for Writing Subplots

Non-Point-of-View Romantic Subplots

Avoiding Generic Plots

Planning and Pace

Plotting vs. Pantsing

The “Downer” Chapter

Changing Your Story’s Length

How to Start Your Story

Editing & Prose

Writing with Emotion

Controlling Pace with Detail

Steps of the Editing Phase

Descriptions in Context

Imagery

Dialogue

Showing vs. Telling

What is passive voice?

Reworking Moments of Exposition

Adverbs

When to Cut Your Content

Avoiding Cliches in Your Story

The Importance of Vocabulary

Writing Beginning Paragraphs

How to Establish Tone

Making Exposition Natural

Motivation

How to Balance Multiple Projects

How to Fall Back in Love with Your Story

Writing Every Day?

Sticking with Your Story

Getting (Back) Into the Writing Habit

Setting Realistic Goals

Shiny New Idea Syndrome

Positive Writing Mindset

Staying Motivated on Your Projects

Getting in “The Zone”

Keeping Writing Logs

Avoiding Burnout

Breaking Out of Writer’s Block

How to Deal with Not Achieving Your Goals

Scenes

Quick Decisions

Travel Scenes

Breakdown in the Shower

General Writing & Miscellaneous

The Joys of the First Draft

Injuries

Creating Suspense

Writing Poison

Prophecies

A Word to Young Writers

Making a Moodboard

Consuming with the Producer Mindset

For First-Time Writers

Building Your Writing Skill

Advice for Student Writers

How to Do Research

How to Maximize Your Writing Time

How to Make Your Book Look Like a Book

On Experimenting in Writing

When to Use Multiple Points of View

Building Theme

Becoming a Beta Reader

Background Music While Writing

Why Committing to a Project Can Be Stressful

Warm-Ups for Writers

Determining Your Story’s Genre

Why do we get stressed when we don’t write?

Writing Short Stories

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What do you do when the person you would call about it is the one who caused this pain?

On today’s episode of listening to astral projection music after midnight and feeling like I’m literally going to claw out of my skin with intense emotion, I am literally home alone in a foreign country and have to be awake in 4 and a half hours and the song is Malibu 1992 by coin <3 someone please help me I am in the grip of demonic forces

Hal Borland / M. Cumulus Life, Illuminations / Mary Quant / Unknown / Take a Load Off, Joanna Franklin Bell / Unknown / The Wild Marsh Four Seasons at Home in Montana, Rick Bass / July Moon, Louise Townsend Nicholl / VSCO: vxdb / The Months, Linda Pastan / Instagram: KJP / Lot, Bryan Washington / Tumblr: nobodysflower

Am I being unhinged? Mishinged even? Only time and the memory of a version of me that no longer exists could tell you

Another poor sport quitter toddler tantrum everyone, feeling real convicted right now

Mood of The Night

listen. that feeling where you have a cold or something and suddenly your nose is all plugged up and you have to breathe through your mouth all night? and then it dawns on you that you took your nose for granted this whole time. yeah that feeling. cursed

There is so much love and joy in my life right now!!! And it all comes with an expiration date!!! How can I brave this season knowing it will be gone in the blink of an eye? How can I be brave enough to give away my heart knowing I will all too soon pack my bags and have to leave it behind? To love is to lose and lose and lose, and there is no other version of this story, and this joy is a mountain top I am about to fall off of. Someone catch me, please.

I sit in a a hot car in a grocery store parking lot. The car is off to save gas, so the air conditioning is off too. I sweat out every drop of bittersweet tea I’ve drunk in the past week. The tea tastes bad today; the sugar granules haven’t dissolved. I enjoy it anyway. I consume my second bagel. Today I got contrasting flavor profiles, salty then sweet. A song that begins as a lullaby and ends in screams of terror plays on a loop. I did not intend the loop, but technology has a mind of its own, and higher powers than my own feeble will have decided this music bears repeating. I stare at asymmetrical rows of palm trees and contemplate the human condition. It is July again. I think I might be healing.