#NaNo writing | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

nanowrimo · 1 year

Text

4 Tips for Autistic Writers

Autistic writers can face unique challenges when it comes to writing. NaNo Participant Auden Halligan has tips to handle some of those challenges!

So, you’ve just sat down at your desk, all ready to work on your next chapter, but you just can’t seem to start. Something is itching at your brain, and no matter how hard you think, you can’t figure it out. For autistic writers, that itch might be even harder to get around when compounded with autistic inertia, introspection issues, and sensory processing disorder — even if we were super excited to get started, sometimes the stumbling blocks are enough to keep us from going anywhere at all.

Here are four tips to identify your struggles and work around them rather than against them as an autistic writer!

1. Schedule your writing time appropriately

While keeping a schedule can help you stave off unwanted change in your routine, the need to switch to another task when the clock strikes the hour sometimes feels like a monumental task, one that eventually becomes detrimental to your creative pursuits.

If switching tasks is the biggest hurdle to your writing, setting a designated writing time with no other plans around it could do the trick. Oftentimes, just one hour of time to transition from doing dishes to sitting down at your computer to write is exactly what you need to get past that point and find your writing headspace.

2. Make sure your sensory environment is right

Sometimes getting into that writing headspace is harder than normal, but you can’t put your finger on a reason. Chances are, you’re not quite ready until you have your sensory needs met and you can fully focus on your story.

Personally, I like to be on the couch with my water bottle, a playlist at just the right volume, and a comfortable jacket or hoodie on. For you, the ideal sensory space might involve a desk and a snack, a pet nearby, and a quiet room. For others, it could be outside or even at a library or coffee shop. Autistic people are all different and so are their sensory needs, so this one is super subjective — do what works best for you!

3. Take breaks often

Writing can be exhausting, and if you’re struggling to keep going, you might need to take a pause. If you’re like me and struggle with remembering to hydrate and eat once you’re deep in a task, use your break to get some water and a snack. If you’re having trouble staying focused, get up and move around and stim or go outside to give your brain a reset. If you feel like you’ve gotten some good progress done, however small, reward yourself — do something related to your special interest, dance with a pet, and celebrate your little (or big!) win!

The pomodoro method is a good way to keep yourself from working too long without a break, and if that doesn’t work for you, methods like the Eisenhower method with breaks interspersed and even simply inserting breaks into your scheduled writing time are just as valid.

4. Don’t be afraid to skip around

Another thing that often trips us autistic people up is needing to follow the story down its natural progression, from start to middle all the way to the finish. But inevitably, once we’ve gotten past the initial excitement of having the project started, we hit a stumbling block…and the project gets abandoned. I’ve left behind countless projects because I lost interest after hitting a scene I wasn’t excited for after just a few chapters.

To combat this, try writing out of order! Skip ahead to the scene directly after your stumbling block. You could also skip to the next scene your favorite character is in or even to the climax if it helps you move forward. If you’re having trouble putting your first words down, try writing a random scene in the middle of your story to get into the groove of writing your characters.

Alternately, if you can’t abide by the out of order method and really need to get your characters from Point A to Point B, try putting the scene you’re stuck on in brackets. For example:

[Character 1 and Character 2 fight over the decision to kick Character 3 off the team. 2 leaves in anger.]

It’s simple, efficient, and gets you out of that particular rut so you can keep moving toward that sweet, sweet conversation you’ve wanted to write since Day 1.

Now go forth and write, my friends!

Auden Halligan is a creator through and through. She’s been writing her entire life, but didn’t start participating in NaNoWriMo until 2017–right now she’s working on developing a TV series (or two!) and has several novels and short films in the drafting phase. Auden is currently a college student studying film production and hoping to minor in disability studies. You can find her on her very sparse Twitter at ink.and.spite. Photo by Lisa Fotios from Pexels

If you’re an autistic writer, check out the Pillow Fort in the NaNoWriMo forums! It’s a group for people who are neurodivergent, have disabilities, mental health concerns, or physical challenges that affect their lives.

#nanowrimo #camp nanowrimo #writing #autistic writers #writing advice #by nano guest #Auden Halligan #neurodivergent writers

5K notes · View notes

sourdough-seal · 6 months

Text

the creators of nanowrimo took one look at the dark wet month of November and were like she’s perfect the writers will love her

#writing #nanowrimo #November #nano 2023 #writers #writers on tumblr #writeblr #writing community #november 1

1K notes · View notes

todayontumblr · 6 months

Text

#today on tumblr #nanowrimo #writers of tumblr #writblr #nano 2023 #nanowrimo 2023 #national novel writing month #nanowrimo prep #nanowrimo tips #writerblr #writing community #writing prompt #writing inspiration #my writing #writing tips #creative writing #writeblr #writers on tumblr #writer

910 notes · View notes

camillenrose · 10 months

Text

I'd like to get more involved in the writeblr and artblr community, but am (sadly) a very shy individual. So please, if any of the following fits your wip's or your interests and you'd like to talk, interact with this post, so I can find you. <3

• a diverse cast (poc, lgbtqia+, disabled and/or mentally ill mc's)

• a love for redemption and/or corruption arcs

• slowburn romances/friendships/dynamics (I love the disliked to I trust you completely pipeline that takes years and years)

• philosophical themes

• dark fantasy/sci-fi wip's, or contemporary/historical stories that deal with the problems individuals/societies face

• a love for world building, especially when it comes to magic systems, religions and cultures

• complicated relationship webs and group dynamics

• morally ambiguous characters, character driven stories and/or character arcs that go deep into their psychology

• Bonus points if you illustrate your work, I love you, you can do it!!! (lets suffer together)

Also, everyone in general who wants to talk about writing/reading, scream about their oc's or would like to do some reading challenges together! 🌻

#writeblr #writerblr #artblr #writing #digital art #camp nano july 2023 #oc #worldbuilding #wip #new writeblr #goodreads #reading

1K notes · View notes

tlbodine · 6 months

Text

Stuck? Try junebugging.

I don't know who needs to hear this, but we're 5 days into nanowrimo so maybe this will be helpful.

Do you want the safety and surety of knowing what happens next in your story but can't stick to an outline? Does knowing in advance what will happen suck the joy out of discovery writing? Do you try to wing it through plots but get tangled in plot holes or have a story that runs out of steam because you can't figure out what went wrong? Are you at your most creative when you have a little bit of guidance? Do you tend to under-write? Do you get ideas in your head for random scenes and snippets that drop from the sky without context?

If any of these apply to you, junebugging a draft might be for you!

What Is Junebugging?

Since you're on Tumblr, you might already be familiar with the concept of junebugging as it relates to cleaning. If not -- I think the idea was first introduced to me by @jumpingjacktrash.

The basic idea is that you tackle cleaning by way of controlled chaos. You pick a specific area you want to focus on, like your kitchen sink, and then wander off to deal with other things as they occur to you, but always returning back to that area. You end up cleaning a little bit at a time in an order that may not make sense to an outsider but which keeps you from getting overwhelmed and discouraged.

How Does Junebugging Work in Writing?

OK, so that's great, but how does this work with writing? Well. In my case, the general idea is to jump between writing linearly, outlining, and writing out of order. It usually looks something like:

Start free-writing a scene, feeling my way through it and enjoying the discovery process.

Thinking, ok, now I have this scene, did anything need to happen to lead up to it? Do I need to go back and add some foreshadowing? Does this scene set anything up that needs to be paid off? And then jump forward/back to make those adjustments.

I'll usually have a bunch of disconnected ideas of ideas that have popped into my head, so I'll write those down in a list somewhere and then try to figure out what goes in between them and what order it goes in.

I'll write what I call "micro-scenes" which is where I'll just sketch out a few essential elements of what's going on without worrying too much about details, description, etc. -- just he did this, she said that, the setting was this, real bare-bones script. Then I can come back through and flesh out each of those microscenes into an actual scene later.

Got a story that has a complex structure? No problem. Write through each storyline one at a time and then chop them up and weave them together afterward. Write all the B plot scenes first then come back through to do A plot and C plot. Move the pieces around like legos. No one ever has to know.

This method works for me because I can't "decide" story elements in advance. I have never been able to just sit down and "figure out" what happens in a story beyond a couple steps ahead -- I have to discovery-write my way forward. But at the same time, that gets really daunting. So I zoom forward with micro-scenes, roughing out the beats in the most bare-bones way possible, then when I run out of clear vision for what happens next I backtrack, flesh out those scenes, build in connective tissue, etc. and by then I will probably find more inspiration to jump forward.

It's basically folding drafting, outlining, and revising all together into a single phase of writing, which is chaotic and goes against everything people teach you, but if it works? then it fuckin works.

Anyway, sorry for the jumbled-up post, I'm dashing this off quickly while I heat up a pizza and I'm about to dive back into my WIP -- but I hope this was a little helpful. If nothing else, take this as my blanket permission that it's 100% OK to jump around, write out of order, write messy, outline sometimes, pants sometimes, and do whatever else it takes just to get through the story. You've got this. Good luck.

#writing tips #nanowrimo #writing advice #nano 2023 #writeblr #writing community #plotting vs pantsing #junebugging

929 notes · View notes

rainymoodlet · 3 months

Text

there’s something minty going on in strangerville… ⚗️

#if anyone wants to write a detailed guide on taking gp shots i’m all down 🙃#ts4 #ts4 gameplay #ts4 screenshots #ts4 legacy #;actaea #;actaeag1 #sim: nimphidia #sim: nano #(robot kitty)#ts4 not so berry challenge #||#this house has taken me four days across like 18 hours fhfhf #i am in love with it absolutely omg #now i just gotta step back and take a break from it so i don’t immediately want to demolish it fhfhf #nimphidia is so cute she’s bubbly and bright and loves being colorful and mischievous #but she will also smile at you while she takes off your legs to study what you’d do if you had to crawl out of a collapsing building yknow?#just for the ~science~ of it all #and i love that about her fhfhf baby mad scientist in a frutiger aero world #she’s going to end up with specimens floating in tubes and a crush on a certain ferryman of souls so lets gooOOOO #i love you all i hope you’re doing well mwah 😘#another day off wasted to the sims brain bug fjfhfh #oh this is based off of monsanto’s house of tomorrow btw!!

491 notes · View notes

novlr · 5 months

Text

Cut out the boring bits

If you are bored when writing a scene, then chances are, that scene will be boring for readers.

If you find yourself bored, take a step back and analyse why. How can you improve it, and if you can’t, is it necessary for your plot?

689 notes · View notes

cuubism · 6 months

Text

a very silly story for you. johanna, dreamling's weird baby, and an accidental kidnapping (and subsequent rescue)

Johanna’s seen a lot of weird shit in her time. It comes with the territory. Magical shit also tends to be horrible shit which also tends to be weird shit. But even she is finding herself flummoxed by this one.

She’d broken into this flat prepared to perform an exorcism. Amateur occultist, planning to summon a demon? That’s what she’d heard, and yeah, that wasn’t going to go well. And it hadn’t—the guy was on fire when she arrived, so on fire that there was no way she could put it out or help him, though she had throne a blanket over him in a meager attempt. It was too late, though. He was charcoal in seconds.

That, while horrible, wasn’t even the weird part. The weird part was that there wasn’t even a demon, but there was a baby.

Sitting in the middle of the room, in a bird cage.

Johanna stares at it now, barely noticing the acrid smoke she’s still breathing in. Why the actual fuck is there a baby in a birdcage?

It doesn’t seem to be hurt at all. It’s just sitting there on a blanket at the bottom of the cage, clutching a little cat stuffed toy in its chubby fingers. But it’s in a birdcage. A bird cage.

Johanna goes to open the cage, of course she does—

And the moment she touches the latch she jumps back, shaking out her hand from the spark. Holy hell, that thing is warded to high heaven. That cage could probably keep a demon contained. Why is a baby warded like that? It’s just a human—

It.

It looks like a human baby.

Johanna circles the cage, more wary now. She should know better, should know that an occultist like that wouldn’t be carrying around a regular baby in a cage. Even if you’re a real sicko, you don’t need a cage to keep hold of a baby. It can’t even walk.

So it’s not a regular baby. Sure looks like one, though. Makes the hair on the back of her neck stand up, that does.

As Johanna looks more closely at the wards, the baby watches her with wide eyes, sucking on its thumb. It’s actually pretty cute. It’s even wearing a star-print onesie. The wards are hardcore, though. Nothing’s getting in, and certainly nothing is getting out.

“Either you’re some fucked up thing disguised as a baby,” she muses out loud, “or you’re an actual little baby fucked up thing, which means your fucked up nightmare mummy is going to come looking for you.”

The baby blurbles in agreement.

Either way, she can’t exactly take it to the authorities. Which means she’s going to have to take the baby home, at least for now.

“Fuck me,” Johanna says, and picks up the cage.

The baby is silent on the drive home—buckled awkwardly into the back seat of the car—and remains so as Johanna puts the cage down on the floor of her living room. It watches her with big eyes, sucking its thumb. It doesn’t seem particularly afraid, though Johanna can’t imagine being in a cage is very pleasant, even for a baby that probably doesn’t understand what’s going on anyway.

Or who knows, maybe it does. Jo doesn’t really know much about babies’ development trajectories.

“Right,” she says, looking at it with hands on her hips. “I’m not really looking to become a mum, so we’ll have to get you out of there and back where you belong. Fuck if I know where that is.”

The baby makes a gurgling sound that could be agreement or just gassiness.

Johanna gets out some chalk and starts to draw a containment array around the cage. “Sorry about this, little chap,” she says, “but I still don’t know what you are. Better safe than sorry, eh?”

The baby is silent, watching her.

Johanna finishes the containment circle, binding it off with a final rune. It’s not so mean of a ward as the cage had. Just enough to keep the baby from exploding with power once she does break the cage open. If that’s something it can even do.

She studies the ward. “Think I can pick this lock,” she says to herself. “Take me a sec, though. Don’t suppose you want a beer while you wait?” This to the baby. “I haven’t got any formula. Or are you old enough for baby food?”

The baby just sucks on its thumb. It really does seem quite sweet. Shame about secretly being a monstrosity in a cage, and all.

Johanna works on the ward, occasionally chatting out loud to the baby. It doesn’t reply, obviously, but it listens. Johanna is feeling more invested in getting it back to its parents the longer she sits with it. Even if it is some gross creature, it doesn’t deserve to be in a birdcage. It’s just a baby.

“Good trick we met each other, my friend,” she says as she finally unravels the last bit of the warding. “Doubt that guy had good plans for his captured baby.”

She clicks open the ward.

As soon as she does, the formerly placid baby starts screaming. And Johanna realizes that part of the ward’s function had been to stop it from crying for help.

“Mama!” the baby wails, tears pooling in its eyes, little fists scrunched tight around its plushy’s legs. “MammaaaaaaaAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!”

Its voice warbles outside the normal sound range and straight into her brain, ringing like a bell. She covers her ears, but it doesn’t help. Great, now the thing’s mother is going to show up and eat her. This is what she gets for trying not to be a total asshole for once. Should’ve opened the cage in the street and fled.

“Shhhhhh,” she tries to soothe the baby, “it’s okay—” But it’s too late. And Johanna isn’t a very soothing person anyway. It probably wouldn’t have worked, even if the room hadn’t been plunged into sudden darkness.

Johanna stumbles back, though she can see nothing. Thunder and static ripple through the air, cold wind tangles her hair. Jo claps her hands over her ears as the air pressure increases and increases and—

The baby squeals, and it sounds happy now, rather than afraid. “Mama!!”

A voice scraped from the utter depths of mental torment booms through her flat.

C O N S T A N T I N E

Ah, fuck.

“Morpheus,” she tries, because she does recognize that voice, unfortunately, “listen—”

A wall of sand knocks her backwards.

As it does, some light returns to the flat, and she can see Morpheus, looking markedly less pathetic than when she’d last encountered him, standing in the center of the living room, looking down at the baby. His eyes flash with otherworldly light. His sand rushes around him, scrapes through the binding circle she’d drawn like it’s nothing but chalk, dissolves the birdcage to nothing, plays with the baby’s curls and pools in the crevices of its onesie. Meanwhile, it flattens Johanna against the wall, wraps in winding strands of wind around her chest and squeezes.

The baby reaches for Morpheus, who kneels and picks it up. He says something to the baby, the words low and solemn but inaudible over the rushing sand, then holds it close to his chest.

Then his gaze turns to Johanna.He looks murderous. Johanna had thought he’d been pissed off about his sand. She hadn’t seen even a tenth of it.

“I guess you’re mama?” she says, past the sand squeezing around her chest. This really is just the kind of stupid thing that would happen to her.

Morpheus’s eyes are like black holes in his pale face. “Constantine,” he growls, with much of the same danger as before, though at lower volume. “I thought we had parted on neutral terms. More fool I. What grudge do you still hold against me?” The sand squeezes her tighter. “Speak quickly, for your time is limited.”

“There’s no grudge, I have nothing to—”

“Ransom, then?” says Morpheus, seeming, if possible, more angry. “You would compel favors from me by threatening a child?” He clutches the baby to his chest. It’s started chewing on the lapel of his coat. The whole picture would be kind of hilariously adorable if she weren’t on the verge of being torn apart by nightmares.

“I’m not responsible for this!” Johanna insists. “Consult your stalker encyclopedia of all minds if you have to. You really think I’m going around kidnapping infants?”

“I think,” says Morpheus, each syllable a new threat, “that you must explain why you had my daughter in a cage. NOW. And count yourself fortunate I have granted you the mercy of an explanation.”

“I literally just found her!” Johanna says. Doesn’t she deserve even a little bit of good faith? She did help with the sand and all. Morpheus’s eyes narrow as if he does not believe her. “Look. Caught wind of this amateur guy messing around with occult stuff. Thought he’d summoned a demon so I went to exorcise it. Found this baby instead.”

“And what of this man?” says Morpheus in a tone that suggests exactly what will soon become of him.

“He was practically dead by the time I got there. Burned alive.” She shudders. She still hasn’t figured out exactly what was going on there, if he’d meant to summon Morpheus’s baby in the first place—ill-advised choice, that—or if it was a spell gone wrong. “‘Fraid you’re too late to torment him.”

“Hmm,” rumbles Morpheus, with evident displeasure, but the sand finally releases Johanna and she sways, standing on her own feet again. Morpheus doesn’t apologize for throwing her against the wall. “You will show me where you found her.”

“Sure, mate,” Johanna says, sucking in a wheezing breath. “Might want to get your baby home first, though.”

Morpheus doesn’t get a chance to respond. Behind Johanna, the front door bursts open— bursts off its fucking hinges, goddammit, now she’ll have to get that fixed— and a man runs through. A very ordinary man, except that he’s carrying a sword. An actual, medieval-looking sword. And in a way that suggests he knows how to use it, too.

He looks almost as murderous as Morpheus, except that no one can quite match Morpheus’s shadows-and-cataclysm level of murder. Evidently, Johanna found the most radioactive baby in all the occult world. But at least it has people that care about it. That’s nice, she supposes.

As soon as he sees Morpheus with the baby across the room, he relaxes, sheathing the sword in a scabbard strapped to his back. “Ah, love. You found her.”

“Dadaaaaaa!!!!” yells the baby with its piercing voice, reaching for him. And the man smiles, striding past Johanna and taking the baby from Morpheus, leaning in to kiss Morpheus on the cheek as he does.

“Hob,” says Morpheus, with a little smile that finally breaks his stormy countenance. “Yes. She called for me when she was able.”

“Good lass,” says Hob, kissing the baby on the forehead, then looks warily at Johanna.

“Ms. Constantine is not responsible,” says Morpheus, and ‘Hob’—his partner? Coparent? Johanna’s not sure she even wants to know—relaxes further.

“Great. Glad we’ve established that. How the hell did you find my flat.” This she demands of Hob.

Hob reaches into the back of the baby’s onesie and plucks a small disc off the collar; he shows it to her with a little wave, then slips it in his pocket.

“Is that an AirTag?”

“We aren’t all plugged into the whole collective unconscious.” He taps the baby on the nose fondly, and she giggles, grabbing at his finger. “And you’re Dada’s little flight risk, aren’t you?”

Johanna sighs, finally flopping down on the couch now that it seems she’s unlikely to get swept away to nightmare-land. She definitely needs a beer after this. “You have a baby?” she says to Morpheus.

“Evidently,” he says flatly. So much for getting answers on that.

“Have we gone after the person who was responsible?” asks Hob. Johanna thinks he means it to come out mildly but it doesn’t, really.

“Already got set on fire, mate,” Jo tells him. “Found him like that.”

“Set on fire?” says Hob with a frown. “Was the rest of the room on fire?”

As a matter of fact, it wasn’t. Which is strange.

Silently, she shakes her head, and Hob turns back to the baby. Now he’s grinning. “Did the bad man wish for power?” he says, in a baby-talk voice, bouncing the baby in his arms. “Did he? And did my little Sparkle take that literally and turn him into a lightbulb?” As a conspiratorial aside to Johanna, he says, “She loves electricity.”

“Sparkle?” she says. “She’s a baby, not a My Little Pony.”

“That is a nickname,” says Morpheus, with a sideways glance at Hob that suggests he finds it questionable at best. “She is Wish.” He says this in the same way he might say I am Dream, rather than my name is Dream.

A moment later, Johanna learns where the nickname came from, as Wish giggles and taps at Hob’s face, sparks dancing around her fingertips. Sparkle. Jesus.

“She does not yet have a firm grasp on her abilities,” says Morpheus.

Wish. Half-Endless baby. Kidnapper set on fire. Jo thinks she gets it now. She shivers.

“You have sworn to show me where you found her,” Morpheus reminds her. Sworn. Does he have to be so dramatic?

Jo sighs, but heaves herself up from the couch. “Yep. Alright. So long as you promise to keep better track of that monkey’s paw baby of yours.”

Morpheus bristles, but Hob just chuckles. “This is the easy part. Wait ’til she gets better at flying.”

He doesn’t appear to be joking. “Don’t envy you,” Johanna says. Then grudgingly admits, “She is cute, though.”

Hob beams.

Morpheus is still fixated on her. Johanna can read the demand without him having to voice it. “What, you’re gonna bring the baby along on the revenge mission?” she asks.

They both just look at her. Neither moves to take Wish home.

“Figures,” Johanna says, with a sigh. This is what she gets for not choosing a more normal profession. She opens the front door and gestures them on. “Fine, then. Let’s go.”

#a silly nano project #my writing #the sandman #johanna constantine #dreamling #dream of the endless #hob gadling

529 notes · View notes