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jsharrold.bsky.social
Writer, Fencer, Trying his best
91 posts 63 followers 26 following
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Posts 13 Comments 37

I can't say I'm sure what the root of my mental health problems is, but carrying around a box that all but exclusively tells me bad news probably isn't doing a ton to help.

submitted 26 days ago • 0 comments

We failed to stop fascism's rise. Now it's dancing about on the White House lawn. I don't know how to fix all this but I do know that the shit we've been doing won't get us out of this one. shatterzone.substack.com/p/we-failed-...

submitted 33 days ago • 185 comments

Nothing like discovering a big ol' typo right on the back cover blurb of your own book. Ah, well. One or two was bound to slip through. I'll be able to fix it in March. Until then, book? I never wrote a book. What're you talking about?

submitted 34 days ago • 0 comments

Here's a fun creative exercise I like to do: Take something mundane and describe it in the most flowery, dramatic, metaphorical language you can muster up. It's good practice for setting a scene, and it makes the world feel just that littlest bit more magical.

submitted 37 days ago • 1 comment

Just fulfilled a lifelong dream by picking up my first book at my local bookstore. Feeling all warm and fuzzy about it. Big thanks to @stephenking.bsky.social and a whole lotta dead guys for the endless inspiration. Can't wait to see where this story goes!

submitted 40 days ago • 1 comment

Not a week goes by where I don't think "Richard Proenneke had the right idea."

submitted 42 days ago • 0 comments

It's been a hot minute since I sat down for a painting project like this, but I think it's coming out alright so far.

submitted 47 days ago • 0 comments

Genuinely it feels like a decade-plus of online content revolving around harsh, often angry criticism of perceived flaws in media has made people afraid to create art for fear of doing it "wrong." Making bad art has been ludicrously built up to be near a sin rather than a necessity of art itself.

submitted 48 days ago • 1 comment

submitted 52 days ago • 0 comments

Some food for thought on metaphors and similes: When comparing something to something else, think of what connections are implied other than the surface-level aspects. Saying that someone's eyes are as black as night strikes entirely differently than saying they are black as oil. Aside from 1/2

submitted 52 days ago • 1 comment

Had the urge to draw the giant albino mutant penguins from the H.P. Lovecraft novella, AT THE MOUNTAINS OF MADNESS! It’s one of my favourites by him. I love the idea of explorers stumbling into an uncanny environment that is unknown and desolate, and piecing together a mystery.

submitted 54 days ago • 90 comments

I think a lot of writers fall into the trap of thinking of folklore creatures too similarly to the D&D monster manual. The myths of actual cultures often defy categorization as we think of it today. A being may be called a spirit, a fairy, an elf, or a demon and be very much all the same thing.

submitted 55 days ago • 1 comment

Hopefully this can ease some fantasy writer's mind out there: You don't need to have a whole world with millennia of history mapped out before you begin on your story, or even before you end it. It's okay to let your world form into being alongside your plot. The Hobbit was a bedtime story, ya know?

submitted 55 days ago • 0 comments