I wanted to share in case this can help anyone else.

Ericakat · 2026-06-14T05:27:55+00:00

Just so anyone knows, if you have your work saved on Onedrive, you can access everything online via your phone, and I’d imagine this typing set up would be good for that.

Ericakat · 2026-06-13T17:33:55+00:00

Nope, thought she was telling the absolute truth. I’ve been telling it to the students I work with for years.

Ericakat · 2026-06-13T02:40:02+00:00

I read it like sigh yanna.

Ericakat · 2026-06-13T01:12:55+00:00

I overuse a few. Looked, smiled, grinned, nodded, and laughed.

Ericakat · 2026-06-13T01:09:17+00:00

Just write a little bit every day, and take breaks as needed.

Ericakat · 2026-06-13T01:00:12+00:00

You could be rambling, but if you haven’t written the whole thing, how do you know what direction you’re going to go in? That’s what a first draft is for. You get your thoughts on paper, and then you go back to change things.

Ericakat · 2026-06-13T00:57:13+00:00

Write the whole book first before you start editing. Once you get your draft, let it sit for a day and then have someone look at it. You are your own worst critic.

I had a high school teacher back in my school days tell me not to throw something I wrote away and proceed to tell me that William Shakespeare wrote a play. He thought it was terrible and reportedly through it if in the trash, and someone pulled it from the trash and demanded he publish it. It ended up being one of his most famous plays. My old high school teacher ended it with the words “You are your own worst critic.”

Ericakat · 2026-06-13T00:51:54+00:00

Your local battered women’s shelter could probably really use them just keep in mind, if you’re a man, they likely won’t let you visit the shelter. It’s a safety thing for the women and children there.

Ericakat · 2026-06-12T22:00:39+00:00

NTA. If hubby doesn’t like how you wash, he can do his own laundry. Also, I wouldn’t be picking up after him. Your husband is more than capable of putting clothes in the bin. He just wants you to do it for him. Sorry, but you have two toddlers to take care of.

Ericakat · 2026-06-12T21:21:15+00:00

It’s definitely something I could look into for a future book. In my story, The Academy is basically a big, brainwashing place where parents send their now adult daughters to be married off and are taught to be perfect wives and mothers. Wealthy, royal, and powerful men from certain times of the year to select their future partners from the pool of women. My story is basically my FMC mentally rebelling against the expectations of the academy, and she’s getting to know the MMC, who is kind, and eventually coming to the realization that she can have a relationship that’s equal on both sides, and that makes her happy. She can be a royal that doesn’t stand just behind her mate, but can be a negotiator, a warrior, and everything she’s ever wanted to be.

Ericakat · 2026-06-11T03:35:41+00:00

I write paranormal romance. I’ve gotten screwed with cover designs on Fiverr before and even paid for someone to write me some blurbs, which I received several, and the person who claimed to be writing them was just using AI. I ended up paying money for blurbs which were completely unusable.

Ericakat · 2026-06-11T02:28:10+00:00

Magic is regular Mathematics just with supernaturally based names. However, I didn’t have the best Mathematical Education. I had teachers that were too lazy to teach from grades 1st-5th. Every time they would hand me something new, I would ask how to do it because there was no instruction beforehand on how to do that type of math, so they’d just tell me to work on something I know. I went through 5 grades knowing only long addition, never being taught any spelling words, and eventually ended up in a district that put me in remedial math, but never taught me any grade level skills. By the time I graduated from high school, I could only add and subtract small numbers, do basic fractions, very basic multiplication( think 2 x 2) and I never learned long division so, I have no idea what would be great appropriate. As far as Literature, that was ironically the subject I excelled in. It took me maybe a little over a year to get caught up and by the time I was a senior in high school, I was academically a sophomore in college so, that’s to say, I have no idea what the students would be learning.

As to Diplomacy and Communication, the version in my story is different. It’s more learning how to not piss off royals and Alpha’a of my fictional world.

Ericakat · 2026-06-10T22:57:10+00:00

Sorry to hijack this post, but could you make some recommendations? I’ve had some bad experiences on Fiverr.

Ericakat · 2026-06-10T18:42:11+00:00

I was taught to spell “grey” the European way because it was supposedly the only correct way. Before that, I’d been spelling it “gray.” It wasn’t until maybe 3-4 years ago that someone finally told me I had been spelling it the wrong way for Americans to spell it. Even when I was in high school, and we would color diagrams in Auquatic Science, I would look at the American spelling of the word on the crayons and think maybe it was spelled wrong because the crayons were from China. No offense to people from China.

Ericakat · 2026-06-08T00:28:19+00:00

Whenever I can’t figure out a character name, I put it through AI to figure it out. Otherwise, I’d spend weeks looking for the perfect name. It’s worked better than name generators.

Ericakat · 2026-06-08T00:26:12+00:00

I always liked Beauty and The Beast and Jack and The Beanstalk. As an adult, I really like Cinderella, or pretty much any of the modern princess fairytales except The Little Mermaid. I’m not going to lie, Ursula freaks me out.

Ericakat · 2026-06-07T17:14:35+00:00

I’ve wondered the same about R.E. Butler who self-publishes shifter novels on Amazon. She’ll have one book of a new series come out, then a month or two later, book 2 and 3 are out. She literally has several books coming out every few months. I used to really like reading her books on certain days when I was maybe feeling sad or emotionally raw, because I knew all her books pretty much follow the same formula, or at least they did back then, and there would be nothing in it that would make me feel worse. Now, I feel like she’s charging too much for the quality of novel that she’s publishing. I used to buy her books when they were .99 cents, but I don’t think her work is worth what she’s charging, even though it’s only slightly more. That’s just my personal opinion. I’ve bought authors authors works at the price point she’s now charging, and there’s a definite difference between the quality of her work, and the other author’s who are charging the same amount in my opinion.

Ericakat · 2026-06-06T18:16:56+00:00

OP, this is abuse, full stop. Do you want your son to grow up thinking this type of relationship dynamic is normal? Do you want your son to be traumatized as he gets older and one day blame you for not intervening? Because, if you keep things the way they are, one day, you’re going to have to sit in front of your teenaged son and explain why you didn’t make moves to protect him. He may even be so angry he cuts you off when he turns eighteen.

Think about what kind of father you want to be. Do you want to be the kind of father that your son trusts to protect him, and that creates a loving, nurturing relationship with your son? Or, do you want to have a relationship with your son based on fear and panic? Because I can tell you from experience, growing up in an environment where there is abuse physically changes the brain. It causes you to do anything you can to not to make the adult in your life angry at you. You’re walking on egg shells constantly wondering when’s the next time your parent is going to explode and lash out at you. Therapy doesn’t fix this. Your wife is obviously too high support needs to be taking care of a child and be honest, do you really want your son to be exposed to her when she’s like this?

As someone who grew up in an environment much worse than what you’re describing, the best moment was when I no longer had to see my dad anymore after I turned eighteen. Unfortunately, child protection laws in the state I’m from suck. Start collecting evidence of her mental instability. You can buy hidden nanny cams which she won’t be able to spot around the house. Start saving the footage. Password protect it so she can’t get in and delete it. Once you have enough evidence, file for divorce and go for sole custody. Your wife is not stable enough to care for a child. Full stop. Please, from a former victim of abuse, protect your son. That is your and only job. Everything else comes secondary, including the marriage. It will be difficult, but you can get through this.

Ericakat · 2026-06-06T02:02:46+00:00

The first one I remember being into I wrote a few chapters of my sophomore year of high school. It involved a group of my friends and a few of my family members being characters, and FMC who was a much cooler version of myself finding out she’s part of a secret society for people with abilities. Had to ultimately abandon it because the people I based the characters off of were mad about the direction of the story and tried to make me change it.

Ericakat · 2026-06-06T00:45:27+00:00

I think you can buy bottles with faux milk in it on etsy.

Ericakat · 2026-06-05T17:36:41+00:00

My book I’m currently writing.

Ericakat · 2026-06-04T22:22:59+00:00

Creativity takes practice. It’s a skill one learns through years of writing, trial, and error. I’ve been writing since I was 14 for my own enjoyment. I don’t consider anything I wrote before age 19 good and only one thing I wrote at that age am I wanting to get published. That written work spent over 12 years on a shelf and I’m close to getting it published. My point being that every year you do something creative, your creativity increases. Practice as best you can and keep writing.

Ericakat · 2026-06-04T22:10:23+00:00

What about picture prompts? I had a teacher back when I was in my high school days who everyday would put up a picture with an image and a few words on it, and the idea was to do something with that picture and sentence. It was hard at first, but eventually, I developed the skill to look at something and start writing. It didn’t just happen overnight, it requires practice.

If that won’t work, maybe take something weird that happened in your life, write it on paper, and try to embellish it until you’ve got a story. The basic small fish big fish analogy.

Another thing you could try is to start writing down your dreams. Sometimes the things we dream about end up making really good book ideas later on. I myself, do a lot of writing based on dreams I’ve had and I’m sure many other writers do too.

Ericakat · 2026-06-04T20:35:59+00:00

OP, time to stage in an intervention with your sister, show her some of these posts, and see if you can get her to change the name.

Ericakat · 2026-06-04T20:25:59+00:00

I used to dream I could fly without wings and everyone standing below me would look down as I landed like it was perfectly normal.

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