I'm sure our old stories all have that "beginner" quality to them, regardless of how old we were when we started writing.  And I still write childish stuff sometimes, like my pandaskunk stories - but that can be fun!

I do hope you all get to see the DNA tour this year.  I can't believe it was June 2019 that I saw the show, it was amazing! 

When I look back at old stories I cringe at how childish they are, considering I was probably in my early 30s when I discovered fanfics and started writing lol.  I like to think I've matured a bit now

I'm currently reading The Stand by Stephen King.  It took me a while to get into it as I only tend to read a few pages a night, and it's a massive book, but I'm enjoying it now.  It will probably take me ages to finish though lol

I've got a sample of The Final Girl, so will read that one once I'm done as it sounds like I'd like it.

Any updates on how the site work is going?  I'm still holding out hope that we may be able to post stories again here someday.

I say "meem."

How interesting. I pronounce it with the same a sound in bank.

Meme is the other word that people seem to pronounce different ways. I say meh-um but I know a lot of people who say mee-‘em. 🤷‍♀️

Happy belated birthday!! Hope it was a good one and that you got to do lots of celebrating.

I took today off work for my Dad's birthday.  Nice to start the day with some hot tea and not already be on the phone or my work computer.  .

Thanks Rose!

Here's another question that's semi-related to my last post:  How do you pronounce the word "angst"?

I had one of those "I was today years old when I learned..." moments a few weeks ago while I was listening to a podcast and heard someone use the word "angst."  They pronounced it "ah-ngst," and I thought, Is that how that word is pronounced??  I googled it, and sure as shit, the first pronunciation that came up was "ah-ngst."  Apparently, it's one of those words I have only read and never actually heard anyone say out loud.  I have always said it with the same A sound as in "rang."  But then I found a Reddit thread that offered three different pronunciations, so maybe it's one of those words with more than one accepted pronunciation? https://www.reddit.com/r/etymology/comments/mfjfwh/how_do_you_pronounce_angst/

To make matters weirder, as someone pointed out in that thread, it's a German word, which I think I knew.  I took German in high school, so if I saw the word "angst" in a sentence written in German and read it out loud, I probably would pronounce it "ah-ngst" instead of using the more American-sounding "ang" sound.  But I never thought to pronounce it that way when speaking/thinking in English.

So now I'm curious about how other pronounce it!

My earliest stuff is... quite something.   

Speaking of those embarrassing early stories we all have, here's a question for everyone:  What's something embarrassing you used to do in your writing that you don't do anymore?

I used to overuse the thesaurus on Microsoft Word.  During my purple prose phase that began with Broken, I discovered the thesaurus feature and used it to pick "juicier" words for my descriptions.  Sometimes I would end up with words I had never heard in context that didn't really work for what I was going for.  When I come across them now with an adult's vocabulary, I cringe so much.  I was just looking for a specific scene in BMS and found a sentence that describes sex as "not his most superlative love-making experience."  Superlative?? 🤦‍♀️

I still use the thesaurus on Google Docs sometimes when I'm trying to find the perfect word, but I will only pick words I'm actually familiar with and am pretty confident I'm using correctly.  Some of Google's thesaurus suggestions are pretty funny though!