So... I found this and now it keeps coming to mind. You hear about "life-changing writing advice" all the time and usually its really not—but honestly this is it man.

I'm going to try it.

I love the lawyer metaphor, because whenever I see “John knew that...” in prose writing I immediately think “how?  How does he know it?”  Interrogate your witnesses.  Cross-examine them.  Make them explain their reasoning.  It pays dividends.

All of this, but also feels/felt. My editor has forbidden me from using those and it’s forced me to stretch my skills.

This is your "show not tell" advice explained!

My brain: You have so many tight deadlines. So many things on your weekly schedule. So many important jobs. You have to get important work done!!!

My hands:

How to plan a long-term creative project for serial publication:

1. Make a firm decision about how big a single update is going to be, and estimate your sustainable update frequency based on that. This estimate should be based solely on your own demonstrated performance; you may anticipate that future productivity will exceed past productivity, but never make long-range plans on the assumption that future productivity will exceed past productivity. That is called the Planning Fallacy, and it will eat you alive.

2. Estimate how often you’re likely to miss updates. As a rough guideline, if you’re physically and mentally healthy and have no major commitments that would interfere with your ability to work on the project, figure that you’ll miss about 10% of your updates for various reasons. If you have health issues or frequent Real Life commitments, make it 20%. If 20% sounds low to you, you weren’t being honest with yourself about your sustainable update frequency; return to step 1 and re-assess.

3. Figure that you’ve got about two years before you lose interest in the project, gain some new commitment that will preclude continuing to work on it, or your art style evolves enough to make creative continuity impractical. If there’s some upcoming major life change that you’re able to anticipate – like, say, graduating from school – use either two years or that event as your soft deadline, whichever is less.

4. Use the figures from steps 1-3 to estimate how many updates you’re likely to be able to squeeze into this project, and write your outline/script based on that. You don’t need to wrap up every tiny little loose thread by that point, but ideally it needs to reach a point where you could stop and be satisfied with whatever conclusion has been reached. If you get there and you’re still enthusiastic about continuing, fantastic – return to step 1 and re-assess.

So, as a simple example: if you’re planning a webcomic, you figure you can reasonably manage about 1 page a week, and you’ve got a lot going on that’s likely to get in your way, that’s (2 years * 52 weeks/year * 1 update/week * 80% success rate on updates) = around 83 pages to work with, or about the length of a four-issue miniseries. What kind of story can you tell in 80-odd pages?

(Hint: it’s not a story that involves fifty-page combat scenes!)

Scrivener 3's name generator

fucking sucks.

Old one was more user friendly and if the names generated didn't work for your tastes, you could be more specific with your needs with the 'first name meaning' section. It allows you to narrow down your search more specifically. A name that ends with A, a name that starts with A, a name that has A somewhere in it, a name that means 'flower'... Need a name from somewhere specific in the world? It had it. It was a lifesaver when I didn't have internet for about two years.

Then you have this.

Confusing. Irritating. Lesser options for names. "Neurodivergent friendly" WHAT?! I'm beyond neurodivergent what the fuck is this? "Attempted alliteration??" "Double barrel surename???" I click 'generate name' and nothing pops up. It's confusing and doesn't make sense. Why change what was perfectly fine? Why would they do that?

The worst offender? It doesn't reset to default when I close out of the generator window. There's no 'reset to default button'.

Welp, looks like I'm going back to 20000-names and fantasynamegenerator. congratu-fucking-lations scrivener.

I still hate this.

I had to reinstall the old scrivener just to get a decent name generator.

That’s how bad the current one is.

Couple of sketchy commissions for @featheredbeardog: Sobek the water dragon and Captain Morgaine the leopard seal!

Scrivener 3's name generator

fucking sucks.

Old one was more user friendly and if the names generated didn't work for your tastes, you could be more specific with your needs with the 'first name meaning' section. It allows you to narrow down your search more specifically. A name that ends with A, a name that starts with A, a name that has A somewhere in it, a name that means 'flower'... Need a name from somewhere specific in the world? It had it. It was a lifesaver when I didn't have internet for about two years.

Then you have this.

Confusing. Irritating. Lesser options for names. "Neurodivergent friendly" WHAT?! I'm beyond neurodivergent what the fuck is this? "Attempted alliteration??" "Double barrel surename???" I click 'generate name' and nothing pops up. It's confusing and doesn't make sense. Why change what was perfectly fine? Why would they do that?

The worst offender? It doesn't reset to default when I close out of the generator window. There's no 'reset to default button'.

Welp, looks like I'm going back to 20000-names and fantasynamegenerator. congratu-fucking-lations scrivener.

I still hate this.

Scrivener 3's name generator

fucking sucks.

Old one was more user friendly and if the names generated didn't work for your tastes, you could be more specific with your needs with the 'first name meaning' section. It allows you to narrow down your search more specifically. A name that ends with A, a name that starts with A, a name that has A somewhere in it, a name that means 'flower'... Need a name from somewhere specific in the world? It had it. It was a lifesaver when I didn't have internet for about two years.

Then you have this.

Confusing. Irritating. Lesser options for names. "Neurodivergent friendly" WHAT?! I'm beyond neurodivergent what the fuck is this? "Attempted alliteration??" "Double barrel surename???" I click 'generate name' and nothing pops up. It's confusing and doesn't make sense. Why change what was perfectly fine? Why would they do that?

The worst offender? It doesn't reset to default when I close out of the generator window. There's no 'reset to default button'.

Welp, looks like I'm going back to 20000-names and fantasynamegenerator. congratu-fucking-lations scrivener.

Yay a few Art Fight art from today

Owners of these characters:

@/mumriktail (on artfight) & @featheredbeardog

the spooked penny is so IC for her

his name is Long Togepi

and he is baby

OC Wardrobe for my bud Feather.

Nikki’s day-to-day clothes tend to be grunge-inspired but she’s ultimately a pragmatic gal uninterested in fashion. Her main priority getting dressed is “can I comfortably walk my dog in this?”

i fucking love your commentary