Hi!

Welcome to Rory Learns! I'm learning, and I'm sharing to process what I learn and keep myself accountable. I also want to keep this somewhat simple, so let's jump in.

Writing (and general productivity)

(If you're my locked-Twitter mutual, the following paragraphs might look familiar. But this is the extended newsletter version.)

I need to think out loud about July's Camp NaNoWriMo. I've set a goal, and it's a goal specifically made to address the problems with writing (and not writing) I've had over the past few years. But thinking out loud has utility beyond NaNo. I have a hard time parsing thoughts internally, and even the possibility that someone might see it helps shape what I want to say. But going formal is too stressful. This newsletter as a whole might be too formal and too much stress for me, in the long term.

It's tough. Whatever external thinking I do has to be informal and accessible enough that I get somewhere without shutting down, but it has to be formal enough that I can follow some line of coherence. All I ever want is to write down every impulsive thought that comes to mind. But forget anyone else keeping up; I often can't follow my own writing after the fact.

I can write rough drafts fast. The simple act of fingers to keys (or, less frequently, pencil/pen to paper) is something I've trained for since I was a kid. With NaNo specifically, I'm coming up on twenty years of November rough draft attempts, most of which cross the 50,000 word threshold. But plotting attempts fail, and editing attempts fail. I make plans and can't stick to them, or find them impossible to follow. I reread rough drafts, and I'm too overwhelmed and confused to understand them. It has long been my stance to find out what other writers' processes are, try different tactics, and see what works. For instance, "the words don't need to be good; they just need to exist" is common advice for rough drafts in my specific corners of English-language writers. It's an approach that has gotten word count, but it has never gotten me a book.

(The major exception to my lack of completed writing projects is, of course, fanfic. But the final products are usually still shorter and more vague than I would like...and I also haven't posted consistently in years.)

Just as important is that what little has worked often hurts my mental health. It's a lifelong problem in every area of personal productivity. Insulting myself to fuel my already-high levels of anxiety got me finished homework, but it didn't give me a healthy adulthood. And it's why I've abandoned the vast majority of my writing projects in the last five years or so.

I don't know how to do the things I want without hurting myself.

That's what I really need to learn. Not more writing theory. Not forcing myself to the finish line. Understanding what I need, and after that, understanding what I want to say.

Bearing all this in mind, my current goal for July 2021's Camp NaNo is to build ideas for November NaNo 2021. That gives me months to slowly working on whatever prewriting I decide to do. Ideally, i'll have an outline in November, but just knowing what I want without being too fried to write is, hopefully, a more realistic goal. It's also something I've never done before. Let's see if it works.

Lessons from others

Drawfee's Karina teaches art anatomy: I actually haven't watched this yet, but I love Drawfee's Drawclasses, and this one went live to non-patrons this week. I also highly rec Jacob's How-to-Practice Drawclass as a starting point, both for illustration and for learning in general.

12tone's How I'd Learn Music Theory (If I Had To Start Over): I so, so badly wanted this kind of knowledge when I learned there was more to Western music theory than I gained from my middle-school handbell classes. But I also could have really used Adam Neely's Music Theory and White Supremacy video. Turns out, using guidelines made by racist white academics specifically to study classical music doesn't really work for modern pop, hip-hop, and other contemporary genres. Who knew?

Emily D. Baker's Business Basics for Content Creators: If you follow me on locked Twitter, you might recognize Emily D. Baker as the legal commentator I linked earlier today. I don't rec her channel for everyone, but I personally need a better understanding of the US legal system as it stands today, and considering her channel covers a lot of what I read in pop-culture gossip circles, it's good overlap. This particular video is a good starting point for anyone who, like me, might want to ~create content (ugh, I hate that term) but finds a lot of the less-obvious business and legal rules around small online business hard to understand.

Happy studies!