You’re going to make mistakes and say stupid things. You won’t always be in the right, and that’s okay. These mistakes only make you stronger. You will win and you will do good too.
You’re only human, so don’t expect more of yourself than is humanly possible
You’re only human, so don’t expect more of yourself than is humanly possible
I will literally never believe your 20s are meant to be the prime of your life. The years immediately following your adolescence? When you’re entrenched in the battlefields of un/learning, healing, and growing? Yeah right
when i was a teenager it felt very revolutionary to be cruel to myself. like some kind of slow passive protest against how much everything hurt. i starved myself of sleep and food and tenderness because it felt right. it felt sharp and angry and radical and i wanted to be those things. adulthood is the realisation that the world is already working to cut into you well before you learn how to do it yourself. caring for yourself and others is the real protest
So, here’s the thing. The “All For The Game” series books are not good books. They’re not. They’re not *technically* perfect nor correct. They cut corners, use a lot of exposition, and make up their own rules sometimes in the world building. And yet??? It’s the first book series to hold my full and constant attention and make me actually feel things in years.
I read an article the other day where the author called it “self-indulgent”. She was a fan of anime and fan fiction and those inspired her to write a novel just for the hell of it, just for fun. She wasn’t looking to promote, she wasn’t looking for praise. And you know what? I think that’s amazing.
If more books could be written self-indulgently - if more stories could be told sans the expectation for perfection and literary recognition, we’d probably have more truly fun and creative books to binge read. Cause that’s what the “AFTG” series was to me, it was fun. The rushed plot explanations gave more room for character development and interactions, and honestly? I loved that. It’s all I wanted and needed.
I saw a review liken the book series to a fan fiction. Which makes sense considering the author described it as being written to indulge herself. And how many of us use fan fiction to decompress? To escape into a story that’s not full of over-complicated metaphors or trying too hard to be respectable or perfect? But just trying to be interesting, fast-moving, and pampering? That’s why fan fictions are easier to read - why they’re more enjoyable to read.
I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with literarily perfect novels. I guess I’m just trying to say to those who write fan fictions now, who have original stories or characters that they’ve held onto for fear that their writing is not good enough - indulge yourself, write a story or book for YOU and no one else. And you just might end up brightening someone else’s day too!
it can be tempting to live your life like a prequel. to live as if you’re setting up your own story.and once you lose the weight, once you have the money, once you graduate school, once you’re in a real relationship, once, once, once. then finally, you’ll begin to live, and everything you do up until that point is some kind of half-life, some unimportant foreword you can skip. don’t do this. inhabit your life completely. sink fully into the wealth of your existence. the power to manifest is in the fearless owning of who you are, so that you can shape where you’re going.
The best writing teacher I ever had wasn’t the one who taught me grammar and spelling. He wasn’t the one who taught me outlining and paragraph structure, nor was he the one who taught me about themes, motifs, and symbolism.
He said, “Wiggle your pencil.
Put the tip of your pencil to the paper and keep the eraser end wiggling.
If you have nothing to write, write that: I have nothing to write, I have nothing to write, I have nothing to write, I have nothing to write, and eventually, by force of boredom, something else will come out.”
We would take 30 - 45 minutes every day to ‘wiggle our pencils’ in our wide-ruled notebooks, during which time, he was silent except to remind anyone who stopped to keep that pencil moving.
I finished not one but two novel-length stories that year. It was fifth grade.
Is it ok to mock teenagers for bad/mediocre writing & artwork?
Good. Then stop disparaging yourself for stuff you created in the past. You were and still are growing.
This also applies to embarrassing things you said and did. You’re the only person who remembers them, and you only remember them bc your brain decided it wanted to use those memories as a warning so that you could grow & change
honestly? starting to flip the canvas during the drawing process improved my art so much yeehaw
top 10 art tips from chaboy in no particular order:
1. canvas flipping good even if painful
2. draw whatever makes u happy. be self indulgent. draw nonsense that caters to only you personally
3. just fucking fake being able to draw things like hands and eventually you can actually do it without even thinking about it
4. take breaks when it doesn’t come out right
5. remember that you’re the god of this reality and can draw WHATEVER THE FUCK. be absolutely drunk with power. nobody can stop you. unless its like morally wrong like dont draw incest or whatever. incest is bad still
6. use references
7. originality is a myth and literally every artist started copying their style from something or someone, that’s how you develop your own style. everyone does it. people who make fun of kids for copying the styles of their favourite shows/artists can choke
The biggest scam your brain is telling you is that everybody else is human and allowed to make mistakes but that you yourself have to be perfect and flawless to deserve their company
