Writer Mavridou has been running @authorinmyhead for 4 years now. The idea to start the page first came about when she was dealing with writer’s block—something that many of us have faced time and again.
“When I started the page, in 2019, I desperately needed inspiration myself,” she said that she was dealing with writer’s block and that nothing seemed interesting to her.
“I was searching for anything to give myself the spark to continue writing, to keep myself motivated. So I decided to gather all the content I could find in one place, like an inspirational portfolio.”
In the beginning, @authorinmyhead was mostly meant for Mavridou herself. However, she soon realized that she wasn’t the only one struggling with the lack of inspiration. “I kept searching and I kept posting, always making sure the original creator is credited with their username visible on the post, and it has already been four years of this.”
Mavridou revealed that her Instagram page wasn’t focused exclusively on Tumblr in the beginning. “When I started, I was a kid who had no idea how to blog. I was regularly posting memes and my page had no consistency,” she opened up to Bored Panda.
“Soon, I realized that Tumblr has pretty much everything you need. In my opinion, Tumblr is the best online community to express yourself, but at the same time, it's the hardest to find people to listen to you. So I combined the two: Tumblr and Instagram.”
We were interested to hear what advice Mavridou would give someone who’s just now starting to write stories or to work on a novel. Perseverance, according to her, is a vital skill to have.
“There will be a million things that make you feel like giving up. You should believe in your story and believe in yourself. See your story as your child: it came from you and it's your responsibility to help it grow and watch it bloom.”
According to the writer, many of her followers have reached out to her with their problems. The two most common issues that they face include perfectionism and a perceived lack of originality.
“They want the story to be perfect, and they edit and edit so much that they're never moving the plot forward, only staying at the same spot. Personally, what I recommend is don't edit your story until the first draft is completed,” she urged. And we agree. The ‘write now, edit later’ philosophy is a very practical one, in our experience, because it keeps up the momentum and helps with the flow.
“Maybe along the course of the story you’ll decide to change a major plot point, and then you'll have to go back to changing things you thought were perfected and spent hours on. Keep in mind this: all your first draft needs to do is exist, so create it,” Mavridou said.
Meanwhile, some writers also feel the pressure to be completely original. “They may feel like what they write has been written before. Maybe it has. But not by you. No one else can have your thoughts, no one else can feel what you feel. Keep writing, express yourself, and you'll be rewarded,” she told Bored Panda.
Writer and Bram Stoker Award-winning editor Doug Murano, the founder of Bad Hand Books, previously explained to Bored Panda that it’s important to consider the idea that the basic units of meaning might be sentences, not words.
"If you're a writer, that means vary up your sentence lengths and listen to the momentum you're creating. You can lull your reader into a groove with sentences that stretch on, describe setting, investigate a character's state of mind or follow action. Then add a punch at the end with a shorter sentence. It works,” he said.
Meanwhile, editing is a vital part of good writing. "New writers often believe more is more and, as a result, they'll start doing something I call 'tap-dancing in front of a burning building.' Essentially, this means you're drawing more attention to yourself as a writer than the picture you're trying to create because you lack restraint. Let the reader fill in some of the gaps in their own minds and resist the urge to toss descriptive and figurative language in every sentence,” Murano urged.
