sometimes i write @babinawrites - Tumblr Blog

i cant figure out if youve answered this already so sorry if you already have but what was the process of finding a publisher like ?

it was hard! very hard! which isn’t meant to discourage anyone - if anything, it means that you shouldn’t let rejections bother you.

first off was finding an agent, which meant making a list of every literary agency I could find that accepted books in English (using sites like querytracker and manuscriptwishlist), and combing through them to see if they had any agents currently accepting queries in my genre. I had really shit luck with Canadian agencies, because they skew heavily toward literary fiction, and my book was genre fiction. but eventually, I had a list of 120 agents I stood a reasonably good chance with.

then, the applications! it’s good to do it in batches, because the occasional personalized rejection will give you something to work on. like I completely rewrote the 10 book pages I was submitting, and redid my query letter about fifteen times. I paid editors online to critique my query letter, I won a contest where the reward was commentary on my query letter…..that query letter was my magnum opus. I put everything into it, and it still kinda sucked. one thing I learned along the way is that people really don’t care about your social media following, UNLESS it’s on Twitter or TikTok. if you say “I have a blog on tumblr :)” people will just be like “I thought that site got shut down.”

anyway, after 70+ written rejections (and many more silent rejections), I got an acceptance! a literary agent was interested in representing my book - if I made some changes to it. so I did (added more romance and ‘cozy’ scenes), and sent it back to him, and then he began shopping it around to publishers.

it took about six months to find an interested publisher. we didn’t have great luck with Americans, but British publishers seemed to really click with the humour, and suddenly we had multiple places interested at once! we went with Titan Books (technically an indie, but with a distribution partnership with penguin), and then…….back into editing hell because the book still needed more romance.

from start to finish, it took four years from the book being written to it being released! it’s a lengthy frustrating process, and so many people give up because the constant rejection wears you down, but you just have to be incredibly stubborn and have a delusional level of belief in your own work.

good luck!

digitalkiddo

If you're writing anything involving cons, scams, heists, or morally questionable characters who are very good at lying, here are some free resources I've been using for research. Saving you the "why is this in my search history" anxiety.

1. The FBI's Famous Cases & Criminals archive (fbi.gov/history/famous-cases) has detailed breakdowns of real fraud cases, Ponzi schemes, and confidence operations. The language they use is clinical and precise, which is perfect for getting the procedural details right.

2. The FTC Consumer Sentinel Network publishes annual reports on the most common fraud tactics in the US. Great for understanding how modern scams actually work and what makes people fall for them.

3. The Smithsonian's American Art Museum has a free digital collection of forgery case studies. If your character forges documents or art, this is gold.

4. Court Listener (courtlistener.com) is a free legal database where you can read actual court transcripts from fraud trials. Want to know how a real con artist talks under oath? This is where you find out.

5. The Internet Archive's collection of old newspaper crime sections. Search for "confidence man" or "swindle" in papers from the 1920s through 1960s and you'll find incredible real stories that would feel too dramatic for fiction.

Bonus: The Psychology of Fraud section on the Association for Psychological Science website has accessible articles about why people trust, how deception works cognitively, and what makes someone a convincing liar. Essential reading if you want your con artist characters to feel psychologically real.

Reblog to save for later. Your WIP will thank you.

rainintheevening

Okay, we got a new one, boys.

fleshengine

Close enough welcome back Chekov's gun.

comma-souptra

Prev you can’t bury this in your own tags

justbreakonme

I also like the idea of showing something as a problem before it’s shown as a strength. Almost every character trait has two sides, and by showing the “bad” side first, it sets things up to not only make sense, but to also be very satisfying.

prophetic-writer

I'm sorry but I have one draft that I never finished but I laugh every time I see it

hellsquills

Writing Tip

Neither do i

jewfrogs

this is so mean but sometimes i see published writing and suddenly no longer feel insecure about my own writing ability. like well okay that got published so im guessing i dont have much to worry about

naamahdarling

I have a friend who is an editor, and gets submissions of mostly poetry and short stories.

I have had a glimpse into her slush pile, and let me tell you, the contents were unbelievable and immediately disabused me of the notion that reading through submissions is in any way glamorous. People have the nerve to submit unhinged paranoid ramblings, fetish porn, and a seemingly endless supply of poems about masturbation.

I no longer feel like my fiction is somehow an imposition on the people who read it. It may be forgettable, but at least it isn't typeset to look like sperm.

Do not be afraid to submit your work. Your competition is not only worse than you think, it's worse than you ever imagined.

silverhand

Do these three things to get to the top of the slush pile:

The place has a style sheet. Use it. They say they want your MS in 16.5 point Papyrus italic with 0.8 inch margins all around, guess what you're doing before you send it off? Save As, reformat, send it. In the absence of a specific guide: Courier 12 pt (Times New Roman if you must), double spaced, align left, tab 0.5 at each new paragraph.

Check the word count. Don't submit novellas to 2500 word short story venues. BTW, you format the MS in that old style above because the question isn't literal words. Courier 12pt double spaced gives you 250 words per page for typesetting purposes. 2500 words is 10 ms pages, 5000 is 20 pages, etc.

Don't send your romance to Analog or your war story to Harlequin. If it's a cross-genre story, be sure there's enough of what the publication is focused on to interest them, but breaking through is hard if that's not something they usually do.

That's basically what every single editors' panel at every con I've ever been to has boiled down to. And invariably, someone tries to get up and argue with them, not realizing it's not a discussion.

Bonus tip: Don't be in any way cute in your cover letter. Just the facts/Luke Skywalker's message to Jabba the Hut in ROTJ.

Enclosed/attached is my story <Title> for your publication <Magazine>. It is x (rounded to the nearest 500) words. I can be reached at <email> (that you check regularly and isn't likely to dump things into spam) and <phone>.

(If submitting a hard copy: The manuscript is disposable. A SASE is enclosed for your response./A SASE is included for return of the manuscript and your response.)

Thank you for your consideration.

If submitting a novella length piece or greater, a brief and complete summary is appropriate.

In the midst of an interstellar revolt against an evil galactic Empire, vital weapon plans fall into the hands of a farm boy on the edges of the galaxy. With the help of an aging warrior from the Old Republic, and a smuggler with a dark past and his imposing alien copilot, the four set out to deliver them to the rebel forces but are instead flung into a rescue mission to save the beautiful princess who stole the plans as worlds are destroyed by the might of the Empire's weapon, the Death Star.

Captured by the Death Star on route to deliver the plans, they manage to escape the base with the princess, the old warrior sacrificing himself to make this possible. As the Death Star approaches the rebel base, they use the captured plans to stage a desperate final stand. In a fierce space battle of single-pilot ships over the surface of the moon-sized weapon, the farm boy manages to make the critical shot with an unexpected assist from the smuggler, destroying it.

Never under any circumstance put a cliffhanger into a query letter summary. There is no faster way to get the entire MS binned than doing that.

Happy writing.

PS "Top of the slush pile" means into the top 25% of manuscripts received. Three quarters of the submissions don't take the trouble to do even those three basic steps.

Now, that still means 25/100 submissions or 250/1000 submissions, but it still improves your odds and forms the basis for starting a relationship with the publisher for the next piece you send them.

PPS This is obviously about prose. Poetry certainly has its own submission rules, and I know none of them. If you're writing poetry, find out what they are.

alonelystargazer

writing goals for 2026 ✨

to write

seventyeight-moose

unravelingwhy

my fave writing reminder

honestly, this phrase has been on my mind more times than i can count. i've kidnapped it, taken it as a hostage with no ransom money because i need it to live permanently in my head.

jesncin

my high school english teacher would often critique our literature analysis work by pointing out: "you're treating these characters like they're real people. They're not. They're characters". And it took me a long time to understand what he meant by that. Because I always thought "isn't that the point? That writers want to write characters to be so three dimensional that they act and feel like real people?" but that's not it.

Characters are tools a writer uses in service of a story. Of course characters can be written with depth to the point they feel real to us, but they exist in service of their narrative. Something real people aren't beholden to at all. When discussing characters, I think it's easy to accidentally see these characters as "real people" and not extensions of the author's beliefs. Tools for a narrative. Means of storytelling.

skribblegurl

some people think writers are so eloquent and good with words, but the reality is that we can sit there with our fingers on the keyboard going, “what’s the word for non-sunlight lighting? Like, fake lighting?” and for ten minutes, all our brain will supply is “unofficial”, and we know that’s not the right word, but it’s the only word we can come up with…until finally it’s like our face got smashed into a brick wall and we remember the word we want is “artificial”.

heywriters

I couldn't remember the word "doorknob" ten minutes ago.

bumblewyn

ok but the onelook thesaurus will save your life, i literally could not live without this website

breelandwalker

REBLOG TO SAVE A WRITER'S LIFE

myfairkatiecat

LIFE SAVED

REBLOGGING TO SAVE ANOTHER WRITERS LIFE

sirowsky

I use this every time I sit down to write. It's the best tool in the world and I would be lost without it!

random-questions-fairy

Oh my gosh. I just found this website that walks you though creating a believable society. It breaks each facet down into individual questions and makes it so simple! It seems really helpful for worldbuilding!

theredscreech

Heads up that this is a very extensive questionnaire and might be daunting to a lot of writers (myself included). That being said, it is also an amazing questionnaire and I will definitely be using it (or at the very least, some of it).

heroineimages

Bookmarking this…

backofthebookshelf

This inspired me to see if Patricia C. Wrede’s Worldbuilding Questions are still online, and not only are they, they’re on the exact same page I saw them on in 1998. Somewhere there’s a binder of the Word doc I made of all of them and the answers I filled in for Baby’s First Fantasy World

tsunflowers

the thing with romance for me is that you need to convince me through behavior and dialogue that the characters enjoy spending time with each other and seek each other out. even with enemies to lovers a foundation of mutual respect goes a long way. you can be like "he's the youngest ever general of the dragon slaying guild and I'm secretly a dragon, but he's the best swordsman I've ever fought and our sparring matches are the only thing that make me feel alive ever since my family was killed." if he implies something similar then bam, you have a reason for the two of them to hang out even though one of them knows it's dangerous. you can't be like "he's a dragon slayer and he's mean to me all the time but the flex of his arms when he swings his sword is just too sexy." it does not matter how many times you have your protagonist say "I shouldn't be drawn to him... but I am" if you never show a real moment of connection between them that draws them together

hacvek

reminder to worldbuilders: don't get caught up in things that aren't important to the story you're writing, like plot and characters! instead, try to focus on what readers actually care about: detailed plate tectonics

olyia-stories

@dragonpyre any chance you could elaborate on this

dragonpyre

I grew up learning about land formations. Seeing fictional maps that don’t follow the logic and science of them makes me upset

serinos-kitt

What are the most common sins you’ve seen relating to this? I wanna know

dragonpyre

Mordor.

Why is the mountain range square. How did the mountain range form. Why is there one singular volcano in the center. Why does it act like a composite volcano but have magma that acts like it’s from a shield. If it’s hotspot based volcanic activity why is there only one volcano.

And then the misty mountains!!!! Why isn’t there a rain shadow!! And why is there a FOREST where the rain shadow should be!!!!!!!!

serinos-kitt

So what is a rain shadow?

lethalbutterfly

Wind blows clouds in from the sea, but mountains are so tall the clouds can't get past 'em, so you get deserts on the windward side of mountain ranges because clouds can't get there to water the land, or do so only very rarely.

roach-works

this is because, as clouds are forced upwards by rising land, they cool and dump their rain. so the side of the mountain facing the ocean (or an inland sea, or a great lake) gets all the rain as the clouds are squeezed out, and the opposite side gets nothing.

my favorite thing is the american great lake snowbelts! so, the 'flow' of weather across north america, in very general terms, blows from the northwest on down south and east to the gulf of mexico.

so the wind is blowing from west to east, and in the winter it's a dryer wind than in the summer because it's colder. but after blowing across a great lake for a hundred miles, the wind is wet again. and that wet turns into snow. so for all of these lakes, the big cities are on the west side, not the east sides, because the east sides absolutely suck to live on.

the sole exception is buffalo, NY, which literally has to be there because, unfortunately, that's where all the important canal stuff between lake ontario and lake erie is happening.

also this always strikes me as cool, check out where cleveland is:

it's right at the edge of that snowbelt. and you see way more cities west of it than east, too.

beatrice-otter

#but again. mordor looks like that becaue sauron made it#and he's an ass

On a Watsonian level, sure.

On a Doylistic level, Mordor looks like that because plate tectonics was a fringe, ludicrous, laughable theory that nobody outside serious geology nerds had ever heard of until scientists proved seafloor spreading in the early 1960s. The first edition of the LotR trilogy was published in 54-55. We literally did not know that plate tectonics was real until almost a decade after the book was published, so obviously, it was not something Tolkien could have been considering as he made his maps.

I don't know enough meteorological history to know when white people figured out about rain shadows and added it to geology classes, or what would have been taught about volcanoes and such. But any education Tolkien got on the subject would have been in childhood/adolescence; his college education focused on the liberal arts, not the sciences, and his professional study was linguistics and the middle ages. So anything Medieval and earlier European authors wrote about he had a pretty good chance of knowing about. But not much exposure to modern science. So his science knowledge was probably limited to "what English schools taught at the turn of the 20th Century."

whetstonefires

I mean, it's true he didn't know about plate tectonics, but he did know what mountains look like, and that it's not normally That. And it wasn't his style to break that kind of norm without cause.

LotR has recurring themes of the reckless imposition of one's will on the natural world creating ugliness, an order you thought was inherently an improvement that in fact is inferior to what you have displaced. (Typified by reckless tree-felling; a reflection of the despoiling of the English countryside and the world by Progress.)

Mordor is a rectangle because Sauron is an asshole.

beatrice-otter

#the rain shadow thing otoh was undoubtedly total ignorance#but those mountains were made as the fortress of a demigod#too steeped in evil to understand beauty#it's *supposed* to look like something that Shouldn't Exist#like quite often this is something that happens in worldbuilding yes#things are arranged Wrong because a person doesn't grasp the underlying logic#but mordor is a bad example for the same reason it's an obvious one#it's So Very Wrong because it was designed to be wrong#to give you a bad feeling with how much it shouldn't look like that#if he just wanted it unapproachable on all sides it could've been in a caldera formation it didn't *need* corners#the corners were a choice#tolkien's job involved lots of looking at maps and things okay#meanwhile people whose lives revolved around the weather generally knew where the rain happened#long before it was formalized into 'rain shadow effect'#people not having The Science doesn't mean they don't have eyes and brains

cannibalcharon

Western Washington vs Eastern Washington is a good example of a rain shadows effects for fellow writers.

Western Washington:

Eastern Washington:

For fantasy writers, Washington is a really cool state to study because we have nearly every biome from alpine forests, desert, alpine desert, rainforest, riparian forests, wetlands, coastal, and so on. We have two main mountain ranges, the Olympics and the Cascades. We sit on three tectonic plates which give us said mountains (and earthquakes). Our ecology is really neat here.

mossbone

"I have depression." - character who has been through extensive therapy.

"I feel dead inside all the time and nothing helps!" - character who does like, regular introspective thinking and is aware of the concept of mental health.

"Leave me the fuck alone I'll be fine once I get over my stupid shit." - repressed character.

"It's fine I'm just having an Empty Time. What? Yeah, empty times, you know, when everything is like bzzzzzz in your brain and you don't shower for two weeks. Why, what do you call it?" - ooooughhh now we're talkin

ruffboi-mags

#this post is a jillion times better than all the posts that complaina bout therapyspeak #this one SHOWS the relationship between characterization and conceptualization #of depression #as an example of that relationship in general (via @rubynye)

ellipsus-writes

We’ve seen a number of writers sharing stories about suddenly losing access to their Google Docs today.

It’s still unclear what’s causing this, but if you’re concerned about big tech creeping in creative tools and spaces… you’re definitely not alone. (We’ve written about de-Googling and censorship before.)

You should be able to write freely—without fear of deletion, censorship, or extraction.

All writing should be safe. It should stay yours.

We want to help build a space where writers are in control:

Ownership of your work. No surveillance; no surprise removals.

Sync, share, and collab, without scraping or data-selling.

A writing tool that you know is safe, now and in the future.

Please stay informed. Back up your work. And don't be evil (👀 Google).

~ the Ellipsus Team xo

manorofshepard

I GOT A REPLY FROM ELLIPSUS, GUYS

So, I sent an email to Ellipsus asking them "are we going to be able to write our work, given uk laws means content is getting restricted and stuff, from the 25th?" essentially

I JUST got this reply

John from Ellipsus

Hi there, John the CEO. Short answer: we're not taking down any of our user's private / shared work. We actually have a lot of UK connections (including some attorneys!) and no one believes Ellipsus will be affected by this. As of today we're focused on building a writing tool vs. a social network / publisher. Sharing at Ellipsus' scale (e.g. to a few dozen people) shouldn't be a concern for the government. We do plan to do stronger publishing integrations in the future, which might require compliance with that law. But even then, we're focused on building applications with privacy focus and want to support free expression at all creative stages. Here are some things we wrote about the topic: https://ellipsus.com/blog/ellipsus-resistance-starts-with-words https://ellipsus.com/blog/content-in-the-age-of-discontent Let me know if that answers your questions—happy writing! John

Tag list as requested: @the-bar-sinister @evilwriter37 @fattybattysblog

I am so pleased by this response, personally. So shoutout to Ellipsus

thesilversun

Gdocs alternative - Ellipsus

You might well have see the post about Gdoc locking/deleting all peoples content (it's my last reblog)

If you are looking for an alternative, Ellipsus is an option.

Their website is here https://ellipsus.com if you want to look at it. Basically they are platform for writing and sharing/collaborating on writing. They are anti-AI and based in Germany.

The site is still in beta, so things are being worked on and added quite often. being able to highlight text in different colours is one of the latest additions.

This is what the main page looks like once you have a few writing projects running. You can order them by name, created or data last edited. This is folder level - so you can make a folder and have all the different parts inside.

This is how it looks inside a folder showing the documents - this is my Mysterious Lotus Casebook fic idea folder.

This is how a document looks when it is open. You can create different drafts of the same documents. The options are on the right to change format, font type/size, use a spell checker. You can invite people of collaborate or comment on your writing.

Just off the end of that list on the right is the share and export options. You can send people a link to view it, download it as a pdf or as text or as html or mark down. There is also an export to AO3 option.

The background colour theme isn't set, so you aren't stuck with the one I've shown you.

There is quite an active discord server as well if you want to talk to other people using it, find people to collaborate on writing with or raise any technical issues or suggest new functions.

seven-oomen

Question about how many people have used Ellipsus and what their experience is with it? - I know it's cross device

I usually use Scrivener myself. Does Ellipsus have a TTS? (Text to Speech). I've seen spell check and Dark mode.

I know you export things to Ao3. Can you also format Manuscripts with it?

35-sofia

Ellipsus is a smooth experience, and great for formatting in a non-pages format (Although is planned to add them).

It's great for organization (folders and subfolders) and sharing your drafts with beta readers, but has limited formating were there are no pages.

It doesn't have built-in TTS, but you can use external programs to select text and read it out loud. Has a lot of fonts, highlighting accessibility ones, such as Open Dyslexic or Atkinson Hyperlegible.

Spell check is just spell check, not grammar ones.

Darkmode in diferent shades!

You can export as PDF and Markdown, and also copy as HTML, Markdown, and Rich Text (But is on plans to get the .docx and others)

Also has built in templates for creating different scenarios or characters.

SUMMARY

No manuscript formatting yet, the team is open to suggestions, and all is pretty solid right now.

If you want to try, I would recommend getting there with the idea that this is not a text processor, is a creative writing app, so most of the things are simple and not hard to figure.

If you need help, give a message to the team or just tag me, I'll be happy to help!

seven-oomen

Thank you for your long answer, I personally found it severely lacking compared to Scrivener at this point in time.

There's no organisational tree (and thus lacking in easy one view organisation for me), no corkboard, no Internal TTS, no offline mode,. No option to add extra fonts as they don't have the one I write in.

All in all, doesn't hold a pen to Scrivener for long format works.

Also no built in Wordcount for projects. Just the document you're working in, which is weird to me.

Long story short, I'm sure it's great for people who write shorter works or come from Google Docs.

I find it lacking on all fronts because I'm used to Scrivener.

multishipperpirateking

SO! I agree with all your points - I write longer/multi-chapter works on Scrivener still, even though I'm a total convert (and sorta employee - I'm one of the discord mods) for Ellipsus. From what I know from a few chats with the founders (mostly about 6 months ago when I was part of a general feedback group, so YYMV), this isn't designed to be a total Scrivener replacement - hecc, several of the main team use Scrivener still. It's supposed to be a Gdocs replacement. It's about a blank page that you can stick your draft in and share with someone for editing/beta reading/typo checking purposes, and then having a conversation about your draft in real-time.

That said, many of the things on your list (Offline Mode, extra fonts, full work wordcount, organisational tree, more notes/organisational tools generally) are on the list of features that they *want* to add, and in some cases are actively working toward right now. Offline is already listed as an in progress feature, but a lot of back-end dark magic has to occur first for it to be possible.

It's never going to be as in-depth and customisable as scrivener, but that's not the goal, and if you still do 99% of your writing and composition on Scrivener bc that's what works for you then go ham. But Ellipsus is still a baby, so if you are willing to come back and have another look in a year or 18 months and see if it brings you joy, that'd be neat!

There are a lot of big, complex online composition tools out there that Ellipsus will never be. Ellipsus is (imho) delightful in it's simplicity - in the end it's you and a blank piece of paper.

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