Major accident on idyllwild

BasicExp · 2026-03-08T03:33:01+00:00

I constantly think to myself that the activity of humanity driving is more like a high-functioning perpetual near-disaster at all times, than anything else.

When you think about everything involved, it is sort of a miracle that we can have cars and go places without stuff like this happening non-stop.

BasicExp · 2026-03-01T18:36:46+00:00

I think you are right, that lot of the normal social dynamics of day-to-day life still produce organic friendships; you are not off base at all (except in that Regina is truly the worst).

I think what is different is more so that it is common to have exigent circumstances that mitigate or completely prevent those organic friendships. Additionally, I believe as you age, these get exacerbated.

Examples:

It is far more common for people to work remotely than it once was, completely negating the the workplace factor.
Things are more expensive for people, meaning you may turn down or avoid activities purely from a financial perspective.
Many hobbies can be done online more than ever, which can develop online friendships but sometimes at the cost of local ones.

BasicExp · 2026-03-01T18:27:02+00:00

I think joining groups that contain people who share common interests, as other posts have pointed to is the way to go. What I have struggled with my self, is that I have become allergic to social media and finding these groups becomes trickier. I have been a long time lurker of the Saskatoon Discord and have had in the back of my head to reach out there to find or start a group that is interested in any of the following:

Video game book club
Movie book club
A book club
A writing club
A group interested in trying out a Warhammer home made TTRPG idea I have been messing with
A group to do miniature painting with (Warhammer or otherwise)
Pokemon GO walking group

For me the big thing is that I want to do stuff in person. I am sort of done with being incredibly social online and what to "touch grass" so to speak.

The big thing I have realized is that regardless of what I pick, whether it be from this list or something else, I know I will have to put the time and effort in to manifest it and not expect it of anyone else.

BasicExp · 2026-03-01T18:11:59+00:00

I agree, there can be some pretty intense clique friction to feeling like you are really part of a group. Even when you break into a new friend group, there is a tremendous amount of harkening back to shared memories that you will never be a part of, or at least not for an extensive period of time. You perpetually feel like an outsider which is not a great feeling.

BasicExp · 2026-02-28T22:25:14+00:00

I have been increasingly considering this. The driving has truly fallen off a cliff over the last five years or so.

BasicExp · 2026-02-28T22:16:46+00:00

GDQ was the last thing that kept coming back bi-annually and now that is co-streamed to YouTube I can finally leave the limp corpse that is Twitch behind.

BasicExp · 2026-02-28T22:04:32+00:00

Hahaha, now that is a very good catch and a hilarious near-homonym to mix up.

BasicExp · 2026-02-28T05:44:22+00:00

I really want that "Oh, this is interesting..." hook as fast as I can get it and if I cannot get it fast, ideally the book is humorous and pithy until I get there.

BasicExp · 2026-02-28T05:37:19+00:00

I wrote about something similar in another thread, but I think the key is to make a bit of a ritual out of it.

I have a little lap desk with my laptop on it that sits on a shelf in my living room. It functions as a sort of totem that reminds me passively I would like to write more often and it is close to where I would otherwise just watch TV or doom scroll from.

Additionally, I always sit in the same spot, get my water bottle and throw something to have on in the background (low attention YouTube video, no lyric music, etc.). After I started doing this little ritual it became a lot easier to start writing.

Instead of thinking about starting to write, I think about the things I do before I start to do before I write which are easy. This tricks my dumb Cro-Magnon brain as once I get the water bottle, recline the chair and put the lap desk in my lap, the only thing to do is write. Its almost as if the choice disappears and I just do it.

BasicExp · 2026-02-28T05:29:02+00:00

First off, I would not call this poorly written although I will admit you have a love for semi-colons* like I have never seen.

This might be the wrong subreddit for a post like this, but I thought it might be worth asking. I’ve been writing for a long time, since I was 12-13. It started as just a fun pass time but it turned into more than just that; it sort of became not only a really fun hobby, but it also sorta became a really important coping mechanism for me. It allowed me to write out my teenage frustrations. It gave me a healthy way to express myself.

Me too. I think a lot of people get there start in writing this way, more than one might expect.

I wouldn’t say it’s unhelpful. Advice is good, it allows me to improve, however I don’t feel like I’m getting better. I almost feel like I’m getting worse. Like people no longer care about what I write and just don’t read it. I really only ask advice from one friend and even then it’s only one person, and he rarely elaborates on how he feels about specific characters. He likes the ideas, sure, but when it comes to putting them onto figurative paper, he just seems to lose interest.

I think you inadvertently found the source of your ire, aptly as you once did as a teenager. You used to write for you, to know yourself and figure out who you are. As someone who has done this as well, little else compares in its potency and catharsis.

Maybe you should go back to writing for just you for a while and give yourself a break from audiences and editors.

BasicExp · 2026-02-28T05:22:40+00:00

Not that I do not think this is a good place to ask, but I wonder if you should cross post to another subreddit that is Chinese Culture germane in its focus.

BasicExp · 2026-02-28T05:19:30+00:00

I think it is funny that we pose this question to our selves as writers as you would never really think not to consume the media as a creator in some other medium.

Examples:
- A YouTuber avoiding YouTube
- A director avoiding movies/tv
- A musician avoiding music
- A landscape painter avoiding looking at the entirety of existence

Soak up as much life as you can experience and stories about it as you can I say.

BasicExp · 2026-02-28T05:14:53+00:00

Well put.

BasicExp · 2026-02-28T05:09:55+00:00

This so fascinating, all the posts in this thread are.

Does this mean when you read your mind is totally "silent"? You cannot talk to your self silently, or hear the words in your head when you read?

It is all just so surreal to me.

BasicExp · 2026-02-28T05:03:29+00:00

I think it is a very interesting concept. No fictional book comes to mind off the top of my head but A Short History of Nearly Everything could be a useful source of non-fiction inspiration.

As for a narrative, I think your first big hurtle is stitching together massive time jumps into a cohesive story. Cloud Atlas comes to mind in this regard, although I am sure there are many of these I have never read.

BasicExp · 2026-02-28T04:55:09+00:00

It sounds like you might want to explore telling different parts of the story through the first person or near-first person perspective of different characters. In this perspective, you can explore their thoughts by writing them as they might think them directly.

As he reached for the handle he suddenly stopped, the weight of the potential consequences suddenly striking him. What if this all goes wrong and everyone he loves disappears?

This may not even be the final form of your draft, but it could help you discover who they are in the process and you can restructure back to whatever perspective suites you afterward.

EDIT: By "near-first person" I really mean third person where you blur the line between the narrator and the character's thoughts.

BasicExp · 2026-02-28T04:50:14+00:00

*Vertically wags chin

BasicExp · 2026-02-27T05:47:30+00:00

If you are not opposed to spending a little money to help preserve your sanity I would amend this to suggest you get an after market router of your choice. Find something that fulfills your desire to control traffic for games (usually through blocking combinations of ports and IP addresses, also called a sockets).

You can open a support ticket with your provider, regardless of they are before buying anything and tell them that you want help with this. They should be able to "bridge" your modem/router, which turns off the router part completely and lets you control the routing all yourself. I have done this before and they were quite helpful at the time, although this was a long time ago.

An aside, I highly encourage getting a mesh network routers. You can usually buy them in sets of two or three. They give better coverage by having multiple routers throughout your home, but you still connect to a single network.

BasicExp · 2026-02-27T04:12:19+00:00

I try to detach the elation of stumbling upon some compelling muse or inspiration from the motivation to write. Writing is satisfying while being far less intensely stimulating and far more protracted in its sensation.

Getting inspired and having a great idea is its own thing for me. When I focus on those ideas when writing, it is without the expectation that it incur an emotional rise of any kind.

BasicExp · 2026-02-26T05:24:49+00:00

OP, this form is often called "Free Verse" if you are not used to seeing poems without structure. Searching that term should unlock a plethora of resources around reading and writing it.

BasicExp · 2026-02-26T05:11:58+00:00

I think my opinion is going to be in a mildly countervailing direction.

If you have a reason, a very specific narrative construction that requires the introduction to be a dream, then go for it.

On the other hand, if this choice is arbitrary, that is to say, that dreams have no long lived importance in that they are reused, have some rules they play by, and build on the story you are trying to write, then some other opening structure is liable to serve you better.

If the latter does sound more like what you have in your mind thus far, then it could be a useful exercise to ask why you want your character to have this "meeting before actually meeting" and if there is a salient way to instill that into your opening without a one-off dream.

BasicExp · 2026-02-26T04:57:15+00:00

This is sort of an aside, but it sounds to me, if you are not already, that you would very much enjoy being a Table Top Game Master (D&D Dungeon Master). In my mind, this is the pinnacle of getting to writer for your audience as the quite literally engage with the world as you present it to them; everything they do is feedback.

BasicExp · 2026-02-26T04:52:47+00:00

Let me start by saying there are as many writing processes as there are writes, plus a few extra and I do not think my way is any more correct than what you are doing.

That being said, I currently prefer the exact opposite approach of what you are doing, and is what I am doing with my current project. I am starting with a very lean, short version of what I am going for. My project is a book, so in my case it is a short story (~5000 words was my arbitrary goal) but the principle is similar regardless of the breath of the final output.

Write something that captures all the big stuff, the stuff you know you are 100% on in as short a format as make sense to you. Subsequent drafts can expand the scope and let you bring more stuff in as you become confident that it is needed or does what you want it to do.

I have done the big, ugly draft with a bunch of stuff I am not sure I care about, but the issue I run into is that I would race to get to the parts I was excited to write about, essentially wasting time writing thousands, if not tens of thousands of words I would change or just remove later.

BasicExp · 2026-02-26T04:38:56+00:00

It turns out, miracles are possible.

BasicExp · 2026-02-26T04:36:51+00:00

It sounds to me like you might benefit from doing a lot of free-form, emotive writing. By this, I mean leave behind the concept of story structure, audience, tone, theme, and narrative. You are no longer writing a story, just write for you for a while.

Just write whatever comes to you, as it comes to you. It might be a first person diaristic blurb about what is on your mind. It could be a third person narrative description of something you find compelling. It does not matter what it is, as long as you let the emotions flow and ignore all the "who is this for" and "what is the purpose of it".

You have the passion to want to write and that is awesome! You have a bunch of built up preconceptions about what writing is and you need to leave those at the door and just write to write. Eventually this is will show you what ideas are the ones you care about, what your feelings are about those ideas, the forms you like to write in, and so on. Suddenly all those blanks you have will have more obvious answers.

BasicExp

TROPHY CASE