She's Too Pretty to Burn

by Wendy Heard

I cut the film into strips and slipped them into a sheet of negative sleeves,

This is so wrong. You would have to wait for the negatives to dry, unless you ran them through a machine that labs have and any home darkroom is going to have to hang the strips to dry. And you dry them before you cut them. If you tried sleeving them while wet you would ruin them. Do your research people!

I used the tongs to pull the paper out of the developer, shake off the drips, and slip it into the fixer.

Again a little research would tell you that the proper steps for black and white darkroom chemicals are 1) developer 2) stop bath 3) fixer 4) wash.

pulled the photo out of the fixer and slid it into the stop bath.

Proper order is developer, stop bath, fixer, wash (water).

I rinsed the film off, cut it into strips, and held one up to the safelight to get a quick look.

You would simply hold the entire strip up, waiting until it dried before cutting into strips.