developing your ocs is 50% waiting for bursts of divine inspiration like an oracle sleeping next the vapours seeping from fissures in the temple floor and 50% stalking them in your mind relentlessly like a persistence predator until they tire out enough for you to get close and scamper away with the bloody scraps of "eye colour: brown" and "dislikes: people who think they're funny" clutched in your mouth like a hunting trophy

Sometimes they sneak up behind you with a 2x4 while you're busy doing something else and that's going to leave some damage you're just not going to recover from.

Sometimes they whisper in your ear some fleeting revelation that's absolutely incredible, and it's always at a time when you're unable to record it anywhere, so you get to just watch it slip between your fingers like the water from your writers-blocked tears.

if you’re white and wanna write a poc character and feel awkward about it i implore you to ignore any twitblr stuff treating it as a massive ethical burden and instead come in more with the same mindset you’d have if you wanted to write about idk firefighters but didn’t know anything about firefighters so you do... research. Like fuck off with the weird kinda creepy calls for spiritual introspection you’re not writing about god damn space aliens you’re writing about humans and if you think you need more perspective of different life experiences just read?

If I were writing about firefighters I'd also, in addition to just reading about them, take advantage of Our Blessed Internet to ask actual firefighters about how shit works. I'd do the same for a minority I'm not a part of.

I remember when there was this LiveJournal community where you could just ask about anything you needed for your novel - medicine, professions, vehicles, how things function in country X - and people who knew something about that would answer.

We need to bring this back.

And apparently just this summer they DID bring it back - it's called Little Details and it's on Dreamwidth!!!!

Everyone should read their own fanfics recreationally tbh this shit fucking rules. It's like the author knows exactly what I like.

You know what, yeah! This is something I think we all need to do. Especially when we feel bad about our works or need inspiration again.

Going back to re-read something you wrote, but this time not under the microscope of trying to fine tune every word, every phrase until it's perfected.

Go back and read the whole thing as if you didn't write it. As if it was another peer or mutual who just happens to have the same idea you did (tbf we all share the same thoughts, just different vocabulary to go with it.)

You will find the parts of what you wrote that you might come to really love, and you might find stuff you wrote that you feel like you can improve upon.

I like to go back to some of my oldest writings and then look at my newest work or a current Work in Progress and see exactly that...progress.

Whether it's more in character dialogue, how you set up a scene, the timing of different actions, or even a change of genre entirely. You get to see the way you have developed and evolved your writing right before your very eyes.

And who knows? You might even find out that something from your old writing is magical, and works better for you so you can take those elements and add them or adapt the into your current style and create something even more spectacular!

Go back and read your stuff. Be it for fun, or to help rekindle your desire for it. And you may find that you always had that spark for writing, you just needed to read your own book and find the match inside it.

THIS ^^^

Couldn’t have said it better!! Just reread one of mine and was thrilled! 🤣

I loooooove Edgar Allan Poe!! And I re-wrote The Raven to be about Thin Mint Girl Scout cookies. 🤣

Good taste! 😜