Her tarot readings were reputed to be so accurate that several of her friends nervously refused to let her tell them their fortunes. After the family moved to Vermont in 1945, she never had fewer than six cats at a time. A friend of her elder daughter recalled a dinner when a grey cat jumped on Shirley’s shoulder and seemed to whisper in her ear, at which point she announced that the cat had told her a poem – which she then repeated. Joanne reported another light side to her witchcraft. She kept all the small kitchen tools crammed in one drawer. When she wanted one, she would slam the drawer shut, call out the desired utensil’s name, and open the drawer. According to Joanne, it would always be on top.
aka I kind of want to be Shirley Jackson when I grow up (via sansasnark)
on Shirley Jackson, from Ladies Laughing: Wit as Control in Contemporary American Women Writers by Barbara Levy
Morally grey: A character who does too much bad to be a good person, but does too much good to be a bad person.
Sympathetic villain: A character who is a bad person, but whose backstory/character arc makes you feel sorry for or sympathetic towards them.
Anti-hero: A character who does bad things to achieve a good goal.
Anti-villain: A character who does bad things to achieve a goal that they believe to be good, but is actually messed up.
Just plain annoying: A character who does bad things to achieve a bad goal but has one throwaway line about a hard childhood that is expected to put them into one of the aforementioned categories when in reality it just makes them annoying
Inspirationless: where you have the motivation but just can’t think of anything good to write.
Motivation Deprived: you have the idea, but just, don’t really wanna.
Pooped: Basically you have no ideas and don’t really feel like writing anyways.
Procrastination: Where you are SO PUMPED TO GET THIS THING DONE!! But, there’s that other thing, and, your show is on, and, you’ll just do it tomorrow.
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