#omfg when you see a mistake after looking over the image 5 times and have already posted it >:(

[snickiebear]

yo nadia <3333 i'm bored in my online classes and u reblogged the questions thingy at the right time lmao, so get ready: 1, 4, 5, 9, 10, 17, 23, 24, 28, 30!!!, 34, 38, 39, 40 (the intimacy of being understood) (imma stop here lol) (also i'm sorry u're not feeling well, ily and hope u'll feel better soon!! <33333)

ELE ILY. (and thank you, i’m stayin home today cause,,, yeah. i appreciate you sm.) you’re the literal best, i adore you. 

1. How long ago did you start reading fanfiction? Writing fanfiction?

The first fanfiction i read was for The Lunar Chronicles when I was like 11?? and it was 100% on accident and it scarred me because it was a hardcore porn one with a period kink and i was like WHAT IS THIS??? OH MY GOD???? LMAOOOOO i didn’t pick it back up until i was 13-14 and really got into the Fairy Tail fandom. I still reread my favorites on ff.net cause i love them. 

As for writing, I wrote a horrible, terrible x-men fanfiction when I was twelve. (my friend still brings it up and REFUSES to delete it so it still gets comments and views, that shit HAUNTS ME ELE.) then tried again for Fairy Tail, posted like two chapters before taking it down cause i wasn’t really feeling it. And then I posted The Intimacy Of Being Understood and here we are. 

4. Link your three favorite fics right now.

OMGG okok 

@murd3rm1ttens ‘s The Problem How Time Works IF YOU HAVENT READ THIS YOU GUYS NEED TO HOP ON IT ASAP. MITTEN’S WRITING SO SO SO SO GOOD. SAKURA AND INO ARE TOTAL BADASSES. KAKASHI IS A SIMPPPP. ITS SO FUCKING GOOD. 

@mouseymightymarvellous ‘s We Were Screaming In Color (Only A Possibility) yes, yes I KNOW. i always point into mousey’s direction but i WILL always advocate that everyone reads her fics, they’re literally so beautiful???? i just happen to be rereading WWSIN rn 

@safelycapricious ‘s Shaking Up And Breaking Down series. I found this like?? idfk but i’ve been raving about it ever since. ALSO CHECK OUT THEIR FICS IN GENERAL. 

fuck i have more than three but also check out @ambivalens999 ‘s Masks

i do wanna make a fic rec thing where i just rav about my favs,,, might do that later or sum

5. What are your fanfic pet peeves? Do they have a huge effect on whether or not you decide to read something?

Omniscient third person. I don’t like it. Like I can understand that it can be a little hard to stay in one person’s perspective but, in my opinion, if you can, it shows how disciplined you are as a writer. Plus, i just get so confused when I go from A’s thoughts to suddenly what B is thinking about A. 

When writers use ‘ ‘ instead of “ “. When writers put thoughts in ‘ ‘ instead of just italicizing them. It’s small things but like they just bother me sO MUCH. most of the time i can ignore it and try to enjoy but other times i just dip. 

9. Tag 3 fic writers you think are underrated/unknown in the fandom/fanfiction community.

@espoir-et-reves !!!!! THEIR SHISAKU FICS ARE SO SO SO SO SO GOOD. And they have a warring states one going on THAT I AM SO OBSESSED WITH. 

@writer168 idk if they’re really “underrated” but THEY HAVE SUCH GREAT FICS ON AO3. Like theres an AU with sakura, kiba, and shino that i reread constantly because it just. is. so. fucking. GOOD. and they posted a new one that i’m YELLING about. 

@eggtoasties okay they only have 2 in the naruto fandom (one shisaku which is still ongoing) BUT THEIR WRITING STYLE IS SO NICE?? I ABSOLUTELY LOVE IT. I still go back and reread their shikasaku one cause UGH i can’t get enough. I love it. 

10. What’s your favorite fandom, pairing, or character to read fic for?

Fandoms: Naruto, Soul Eater, The Old Guard, ATLA

Parings: KakaSaku/ShikaSaku/ShiSaku/MultiSaku, SoMa, Joe X Nicky, Zukka

Character: SAKURA. I will read anything with Sakura as the main character and her being a fuckin badass or becoming a badass. I love her.

17. How obsessively do you sit and stare at your fic after you’ve just posted and wait for feedback?

aha.. haha.. well. I check my email like three times an hour. its the first thing i check in the mornings too. I’m literally a whore for praise and literally eat up feedback like its going out of style. I also reread a lot of my stuff because i make so many mistakes and spelling errors, or the spacing is weird oR SOMETHING. plus, literally any and all comments make my day, i go back and reread them cause they just make me feel so tingly and warm like “wow. this person enjoyed the fic/my writing enough to tell me. thats HUGE!”

23. What’s your absolute favorite trope to write?

Angry, feral, bloodied, morally gray women. They aren’t bad guys, they’re probably the good guy, but that doesn’t mean they cant be fucking raging at the world with raw knuckles and blood on their teeth. I just love an angry woman who struggles with her emotions and just has so much inner conflict but that doesn’t take away from her character or badassery, it adds to it. 

24. What’s a trope that you’d like to never hear about as long as you live, let alone write?

The fake dating or miscommunication troupe. LIKE GUYS JUST TALK. AND TELL EACH OTHER OMFG. the entire like obliviousness of “nah they dont like me” while the They holds their hand and kisses their cheek. MOFO WHAT. it makes me so impatient and like mad HAAHHAHA. its probably because i’m a pretty confrontational person so seeing stuff like that just “cmon bro, USE YO HEAD.”

28. How do you deal with writing pressure (ie: pressure to update, negative comments, deadlines, etc)?

I have yet to receive a negative comment! Which i was really surprised about tbh. As for deadlines or pressure to update, i just kind of do whatever. I do set goals, but i set them flexible enough that hey, if i can’t do it, that’s okay. 

I have a lot of mini goals, like “i want to write this chapter and get it done this week” and then the large goal is “FINISH BY END OF MAY” so i have time. 

Actually, now that I think on it, the entire pressure to update thing is probably why i’m waiting until I have all of OL&W written to post it weekly,, cause well. I wouldn’t wanna leave you guys waiting as I tried to write and work out the next chapters and stuff, you know?

30. Post a snippet from your current WIP without context - no more than 300 words.

AAAAAA YOU KNOW I LOVE THESE AHAHAHAH

Have you seen the way the dead dance, World Breaker? They roar, half mad and starving. Do you not wish, do you not hope to see them twist and bend and dance to your will?

Shikamaru snarls, looking behind his shoulders to where his Shadows lay. “Patience.” He spits. “Is of the essence, Things of Ancient. Know your place as the dark you are.”

34. How much of yourself and your life experiences do you put into your writing? What do you think your readers’ image of you is?

None of my experiences match up to anything I write tbh,,, probably the only thing that is me in my writing is maybe the emotional turmoil? I’m pretty emotionally and mentally mature because from a pretty young age i started forming my own opinions, started looking into the world around us and being like “dude what the fuck this is not what disney advertised”. Then i started talking (read: arguing and debating) with my dad about a lot of it. So, like emotions are kind of hard for me. Like i’m pretty good at controlling them or understanding them, but still. idk its hard to explain ig.

Like the weight of stress, the anger, the sadness. It’s kind of therapeutic to write. Cause i don’t know how to put those feelings to verbal words so writing them really helps. 

As for my readers’ image? Probably like some kind of hunched over figure typing away in the dark with a maniacal grin on their face. I honestly don’t know AHHAHAHA but it is fun to think about. I think they’d see me as someone with potential but a lot of room to grow and someone who is imperfect but in a charming way LMAOOOO

38. What does your writing process look like? How chaotic is it on a scale of 1 (very tame) to 10 (you can’t handle this kind of chaos)?

I’m gonna be real honest. Its probably like a 2. I’m a bit of a control freak so I almost always go in chronological order, my writing is pretty linear. Unless, i get bored and jump to one of my fav parts. It's pretty much i sit down, i open the doc, read over my notes and just start writing. 

It’s a little boring to explain AHAHAHA but once i get into the groove of things its really fucking great, I can like feel myself in the world, I can feel what i want the characters to, i love it. I catch myself mouthing the words as i type too, which i find hilarious.

39. What’s something about your writing that you pride yourself on?

I rather like how raw my writing is sometimes. Which might sound really vain, but i do like the way i word things or describe things. I love juxtaposition and repetition, or making a good ole circle back to some minute detail that wouldn’t stand out until i repeat it at the end and you’re like “omg” AHAHAHAHA.

Like those little poetic snippets or certain wording i just sit back and go “damn thats kinda good nadia! go you!’ HAHAHA  

40. How did you come up with the idea for The Intimacy Of Being Understood?

AAAAA this fic is like my first child, my pride and joy LMAO

so the idea initially came when i was reading some fic, idk if it was even naruto, but i was like “i don't like this, but i do like the rain symbolism.” And I knew i wanted to write something kind of slow paced, something a little sad and angsty, but would show KakaSaku slowly but surely falling in love.

Idk if you’ve noticed but a lot of my fics, the pairings don’t change each other dramatically. They accept each other as they are and then they grow with together. Like that acceptance is something i just love writing, its so subtle, it isn’t something you declare. Its simply “I am going to love you. I am going to love you despite your flaws and faults. I am going to love you unconditionally because I know you, I understand you, and there is nothing you could do to drive me away.” 

The fic kind of wrote itself after that first scene. I kept going back to the rain, go being ghosts, and resurrection, and the small epiphanies one gets. I wanted to focus on each character’s growth with each other. They didn’t find light in life because of each other, but with each other. And i think that’s my favorite thing about that fic. 

I wanted something raw and real and just something beautiful. I’m actually really proud of it tbh. Would i go back and rewrite/edit it? Oh of course! I’d do that with every single one of my fics, but i’m not gonna cause i think its in its rawest form right now. :))))

ask me shit plz

#silly things from silly friends

[topicprinter]

Note: /r/startups recommended I cross post this here. With Mod approval I am posting so you can experience the before and after.T-Minus 10 hours to my Kickstarter Launch, I have my launch checklist built, my emails prepared, ads ready to be enabled and friends and family ready to pledge. There is more I can do, but I no longer have the energy as I sit here waiting for the inevitable conclusion to a year’s worth of work.Within 36 hours we will all know if my efforts were worth it, or if I will fail. Here is how I created an outdoor backpacking product and prepared for my Kickstarter.The product is a new innovative backpacking pillow. Decision: focus on a key market, in this case, backpackers. When you see text like this, it is meant to highlight that I had a key decision to make. Sometimes I simply had to make make a choice sometimes I had evidence it is hard to know if it was right or now. In this case, I made the decision because the PackPillow can be used for travel, general hiking and even general day use ( I brought it to a pool party recently and someone asked to use it while laying near a pool). So why did I decide to focus so much on backpacking… well because experts always say one should focus on a key market. It was a hard decision but I made it and moved on.The first step was a prototype, and since it was a pillow, I could figure out how to sew it. As you can imagine I bought a $125 sewing machine and went to work. The first version sucked, but it was better than any pillow I ever used backpacking in my unbiased opinion. After about 4 prototypes I realized that I I was out of my league, so to upwork I went.I have used upwork in the past for my other failed business attempts. My approach is to reach out to as many people as possible with the skillset I need, choose the top 3 and give them all the same small project and decide which one produces the best results. Well, trying to find someone with outdoor gear design, tent design, or anything related to sewing was harder than expected. I found two people, paid them each $100 and the results were mixed. One of them produced a great Tech Spec (the file that goes to the manufacturer) and the other produced a good prototype. Neither of them produces both pieces that were good. Ugh, in the end, I went with the one that made the better Tech Spec. Total cost of first Tech Spec $560Decision: Manufacturer in China. I found a manufacturer, I went to Alibaba found manufacturers and choose the best one. If you want to know why I did not go with the US, it is simple… they suck. Seriously US manufacturing is horrible. They have terrible websites, they did not respond and they always said they could not make it. I reached out to over 100 US manufacturers over the past year, not a single one said they would work with me on getting it made. I only had to reach out to 10 manufacturers in China, and 9 of they said they could work with me.Each sample from the manufacturer of choice cost me about $100. Yes, it was frustrating that they would make simple mistakes and took longer than desired, but over time we have a solution and the end result is great. Total cost: $670Now let me switch to marketing, while I was producing the PackPillow I also worked on a website and advertising to see what results I could get. Decision: I use Wix and will sell with Shopify after the campaign. I started with Shopify simply because they are the gold standard when it comes to e-commerce and integrations. However, I was spending too much time designing my single page lead capture setup and decided to go with Wix as I could design much faster and move on. I am not an expert at web design but let me keep it simple for you. You don’t need to hire anyone so early in the process. If you suck at design, then just take one of the example layouts and change none of the designs. Don’t even change text size unless you have too.I started with Google ads and Facebook ads. Within 2 weeks Google blocked my ads because my website was not valuable enough. It did not have any product pictures and a lot of the design was kept hidden so I see why they did that. Facebook let me run ads for months, which was great! I would use stock images from the internet, makeup text and run the ads with a $5/day budget. After a few days, I could see how well the ad performed. I was really lucky as Facebook released Lead Ads about 6 months ago, which was perfect for my needs. I could capture leads for the email list, and the conversion rate was high because the info was pre-filled out for the person on Facebook, they just had to click submit. In the end, my average cost-per-lead on Facebook was about $1.30.This is one of the hard parts… to this day, I have no idea if this was a good idea or bad. I only knew it was a good price compared to what other company would pay. I had no idea how many of these people will buy and that is scary. Because in the end, I spent $2,000 on Facebook lead ads, to build my 1,800 person email list.Quick Tip: If you pay for Facebook ads using Zapier to sync the leads from Facebook to your email system is a must. I chose MailChimp for email.Decision: Spend half of my budget on marketing I have failed in my past businesses and there are always many reasons why, but I know my weakness is in selling and marketing. Some key advice: It is important to know what you are bad at and to focus on doing those activities the most. It is so easy to spend hours on website and product design, it is hard to spend 15 min selling.I hit the point where I had my first Prototype that was respectable. And one of my friends bought it from me for $20 (It cost me $100 for the sample.. but oh well). Decision: I chose to launch the Kickstarter in May of 2017 and made this decision about 4 months ago. What brilliant method did I use, well as many successful business people will say if you are not embarrassed by your first version when you launched too late… so I was already too late. I also launched in May because it is a good start to the backpacking season and I wanted to hit my market when they were planning trips and buying new gear for the season. One of the downfalls of my plan is that they will not actually get a PackPillow until after the season is over as I expect it to take 4 months to deliver.Setting a date was probably the best decision I ever made. I now had to think about how everything would work out. I built a reverse timeline to execute against and started working. I needed new samples so I can get pictures. I needed to make the PackPillow product video so I needed to make scripts, higher videographers, models, locations, OMFG was it a lot of work.Decision: I chose to spend $3,000 on a video and you can see the results here https://www.getpackpillow.com. I had a script built, reached out to several companies, and settled on one that showed me previous work that I liked and was low cost as possible. Warning, many companies will hold onto IP rights for their work, which I think is crazy. But for some reason, it is the law, so I highly recommend you avoid any company that uses that practice. I also hired local college students to be the models. Two key mistakes I made with the video. First, I did not ask what equipment they used, as a result, I got 1080p. In my opinion, if you are a video professional your equipment should be nothing less than 4k at this point. The other mistake was the model’s attire, I should have focused more on their attire.One more piece of advice, when you spend less on a video you need to do more. I spend a lot of time finding locations to film and I might have technically broken the law with one of my locations. It is hard to find a location I ended up using Airbnb and paid $120 for one of the locations.Building the Kickstarter page was a ton of work. Each image, each GIF, and each piece of text needed to be specially designed for Kickstarter, as Kickstarter has an odd 680-pixel width, and for a good look, you want it to fit just perfectly. Also, I hate GIFs, but they are needed to use some of the features of the PackPillow. If you don’t know already GIFs are always huge files, even you see on the Kickstarter page, are the lowest resolution as I could reasonably post and short as reasonably possible and each one is larger than 4 MB. That is too much for people to download on a web page.Advice: choose your images, and GIFs wisely as it will affect the page load time of your Kickstarter and will cause you to lose backers if the files are too large.Decision: Kickstarter rewards. This was hard, as most campaigns seem to have early bird discounts, stretch goals and, a $1 tier. I choose not to have those for several reasons. Stretch goals complicate the process to deliver on time. The PackPillow is 2 items, the pillow, and the strap. If I add a stretch goal to add color, then I now have 4 items to manage. Hopefully, you can see how this scales fast and is a good reason why many campaigns fail to deliver on time. I chose not to do early bird to product the perceived value of PackPillow.Friends and Family… One of the keys to a successful Kickstarter is to have a lot of traction on Day 1. To do that I begged friends and family to contribute on day one. Yes, it was awkward, but my wife and I called, asked for support and received many yeses and some nos.Well, that is the high-level approach I took, and you will witness the success or failure over the next couple days.Wish us luck!/r/Entrepreneur addition: Now that the campaign has hit the goal. The target goal was set as low as possible, so at 100% we will lose money. The hope is that a people and press will be more excited to write about a successful campaign.

#/r/entrepreneur #reddit

[topicprinter]

Medium Post with better formattingWith Mod approval I am posting before the Kickstarter so you can see the before and watch the results.T-Minus 10 hours to my Kickstarter Launch, I have my launch checklist built, my emails prepared, ads ready to be enabled and friends and family ready to pledge. There is more I can do, but I no longer have the energy as I sit here waiting for the inevitable conclusion to a year’s worth of work.Within 36 hours we will all know if my efforts were worth it, or if I will fail. Here is how I created an outdoor backpacking product and prepared for my Kickstarter.The product is a new innovative backpacking pillow. Decision: focus on a key market, in this case, backpackers. When you see text like this, it is meant to highlight that I had a key decision to make. Sometimes I simply had to make make a choice sometimes I had evidence it is hard to know if it was right or now. In this case, I made the decision because the PackPillow can be used for travel, general hiking and even general day use ( I brought it to a pool party recently and someone asked to use it while laying near a pool). So why did I decide to focus so much on backpacking… well because experts always say one should focus on a key market. It was a hard decision but I made it and moved on.The first step was a prototype, and since it was a pillow, I could figure out how to sew it. As you can imagine I bought a $125 sewing machine and went to work. The first version sucked, but it was better than any pillow I ever used backpacking in my unbiased opinion. After about 4 prototypes I realized that I I was out of my league, so to upwork I went.I have used upwork in the past for my other failed business attempts. My approach is to reach out to as many people as possible with the skillset I need, choose the top 3 and give them all the same small project and decide which one produces the best results. Well, trying to find someone with outdoor gear design, tent design, or anything related to sewing was harder than expected. I found two people, paid them each $100 and the results were mixed. One of them produced a great Tech Spec (the file that goes to the manufacturer) and the other produced a good prototype. Neither of them produces both pieces that were good. Ugh, in the end, I went with the one that made the better Tech Spec. Total cost of first Tech Spec $560Decision: Manufacturer in China. I found a manufacturer, I went to Alibaba found manufacturers and choose the best one. If you want to know why I did not go with the US, it is simple… they suck. Seriously US manufacturing is horrible. They have terrible websites, they did not respond and they always said they could not make it. I reached out to over 100 US manufacturers over the past year, not a single one said they would work with me on getting it made. I only had to reach out to 10 manufacturers in China, and 9 of they said they could work with me.Each sample from the manufacturer of choice cost me about $100. Yes, it was frustrating that they would make simple mistakes and took longer than desired, but over time we have a solution and the end result is great. Total cost: $670Now let me switch to marketing, while I was producing the PackPillow I also worked on a website and advertising to see what results I could get. Decision: I use Wix and will sell with Shopify after the campaign. I started with Shopify simply because they are the gold standard when it comes to e-commerce and integrations. However, I was spending too much time designing my single page lead capture setup and decided to go with Wix as I could design much faster and move on. I am not an expert at web design but let me keep it simple for you. You don’t need to hire anyone so early in the process. If you suck at design, then just take one of the example layouts and change none of the designs. Don’t even change text size unless you have too.I started with Google ads and Facebook ads. Within 2 weeks Google blocked my ads because my website was not valuable enough. It did not have any product pictures and a lot of the design was kept hidden so I see why they did that. Facebook let me run ads for months, which was great! I would use stock images from the internet, makeup text and run the ads with a $5/day budget. After a few days, I could see how well the ad performed. I was really lucky as Facebook released Lead Ads about 6 months ago, which was perfect for my needs. I could capture leads for the email list, and the conversion rate was high because the info was pre-filled out for the person on Facebook, they just had to click submit. In the end, my average cost-per-lead on Facebook was about $1.30.This is one of the hard parts… to this day, I have no idea if this was a good idea or bad. I only knew it was a good price compared to what other company would pay. I had no idea how many of these people will buy and that is scary. Because in the end, I spent $2,000 on Facebook lead ads, to build my 1,800 person email list.Quick Tip: If you pay for Facebook ads using Zapier to sync the leads from Facebook to your email system is a must. I chose MailChimp for email.Decision: Spend half of my budget on marketing I have failed in my past businesses and there are always many reasons why, but I know my weakness is in selling and marketing. Some key advice: It is important to know what you are bad at and to focus on doing those activities the most. It is so easy to spend hours on website and product design, it is hard to spend 15 min selling.I hit the point where I had my first Prototype that was respectable. And one of my friends bought it from me for $20 (It cost me $100 for the sample.. but oh well). Decision: I chose to launch the Kickstarter in May of 2017 and made this decision about 4 months ago. What brilliant method did I use, well as many successful business people will say if you are not embarrassed by your first version when you launched too late… so I was already too late. I also launched in May because it is a good start to the backpacking season and I wanted to hit my market when they were planning trips and buying new gear for the season. One of the downfalls of my plan is that they will not actually get a PackPillow until after the season is over as I expect it to take 4 months to deliver.Setting a date was probably the best decision I ever made. I now had to think about how everything would work out. I built a reverse timeline to execute against and started working. I needed new samples so I can get pictures. I needed to make the PackPillow product video so I needed to make scripts, higher videographers, models, locations, OMFG was it a lot of work.Decision: I chose to spend $3,000 on a video and you can see the results here https://www.getpackpillow.com. I had a script built, reached out to several companies, and settled on one that showed me previous work that I liked and was low cost as possible. Warning, many companies will hold onto IP rights for their work, which I think is crazy. But for some reason, it is the law, so I highly recommend you avoid any company that uses that practice. I also hired local college students to be the models. Two key mistakes I made with the video. First, I did not ask what equipment they used, as a result, I got 1080p. In my opinion, if you are a video professional your equipment should be nothing less than 4k at this point. The other mistake was the model’s attire, I should have focused more on their attire.One more piece of advice, when you spend less on a video you need to do more. I spend a lot of time finding locations to film and I might have technically broken the law with one of my locations. It is hard to find a location I ended up using Airbnb and paid $120 for one of the locations.Building the Kickstarter page was a ton of work. Each image, each GIF, and each piece of text needed to be specially designed for Kickstarter, as Kickstarter has an odd 680-pixel width, and for a good look, you want it to fit just perfectly. Also, I hate GIFs, but they are needed to use some of the features of the PackPillow. If you don’t know already GIFs are always huge files, even you see on the Kickstarter page, are the lowest resolution as I could reasonably post and short as reasonably possible and each one is larger than 4 MB. That is too much for people to download on a web page.Advice: choose your images, and GIFs wisely as it will affect the page load time of your Kickstarter and will cause you to lose backers if the files are too large.Decision: Kickstarter rewards. This was hard, as most campaigns seem to have early bird discounts, stretch goals and, a $1 tier. I choose not to have those for several reasons. Stretch goals complicate the process to deliver on time. The PackPillow is 2 items, the pillow, and the strap. If I add a stretch goal to add color, then I now have 4 items to manage. Hopefully, you can see how this scales fast and is a good reason why many campaigns fail to deliver on time. I chose not to do early bird to product the perceived value of PackPillow.Friends and Family… One of the keys to a successful Kickstarter is to have a lot of traction on Day 1. To do that I begged friends and family to contribute on day one. Yes, it was awkward, but my wife and I called, asked for support and received many yeses and some nos.Well, that is the high-level approach I took, and you will witness the success or failure over the next couple days.Wish us luck!

#/r/startups #reddit