Writing sucks, I love it

Uni student, writer, any/all pronouns.

[diamond-daze]

Wrote for about an hour and a half, around 600 words on Delta-V following on from the last snippet. We're on a roll!

[diamond-daze]

Downforce snippet #1

🏎️ ๋࣭ ⭑

“Winning the championship and being a champion are very different things,” she sniffed. “And you sure don’t look like champion material to me.”

Jiawei’s eye twitched. He was first in the standings — which, granted, didn’t mean a lot this early on but still — and here was Little Miss Fifth Place telling him he wasn’t champion material? Who the hell did she think she was — this upstart, this nobody, this rookie who had barely gotten in a kart when he was already preparing for Formula 4. What did she know? She’d been driving less than a decade, and he’d been karting since almost before he could walk. Unbelievable. She should shut her mouth and show some respect to her seniors, and he really shouldn’t be letting this get to him. It was a stupid comment from a stupid person and this whole entire thing was stupid.

Wordlessly, Jiawei turned away and started back on the path to the hotel.

“Hey!”

Maybe if he ignored her enough, she’d leave him alone.

“Hey! Where are you going?”

Don’t say anything, don’t encourage her…

“Are you deaf or something? I’m talking to you!” Marcia ran up to him and caught his arm. “You’re such a rude person, do you know that?”

Jiawei’s eye twitched again. He should see his trainer about that.

“I’m going to bed. Goodnight.”

“Well, let’s walk together.”

“Goodnight.”

“We are literally two rooms apart, you—”

“GOODNIGHT.”

“Fine!” She threw her hands up in defeat. “I’m gonna go out and have fun, like an actual human being, and you can go recite your lap times or memorise the rulebook or whatever it is you do when you’re off-track. Jackass.”

Marcia pranced off in the direction of downtown, and Jiawei rolled his eyes and resumed his trek home. Maybe if he gritted his teeth and endured, some other team would offer him a better contract and he could be rid of her by the season’s end. One could only hope.

[diamond-daze]

Another hourish of writing, this time 500 or so words on Downforce across a couple of docs. Productive day! Feels very, very good :)

[intactics]

few things anger me more than being told I shouldn't use a perfectly good word with the exact meaning I intend to convey. someone told me not to use "apotheosis" once because some people might have to look up what it means & to this day I hope she chokes

[intactics]

many years ago I was told I was uppity for saying "retrieve" instead of "get." in that moment I found my jihad

[diamond-daze]

Delta-V snippet number whatever

✧˖°.🪐⋆｡°✩

The barkeep was a Synth, their face stuck in a perpetual grimace: one eye half-closed, lip snarled, brows drawn low and angry.

“You could get that fixed,” said Euphrates.

“I could.”

“Why don't you?”

“They're war wounds.”

“Well then you could have it fixed for free,” a customer butted in.

The Synth turned to face her — most Synths had better-than-binocular vision, but looking at speakers was still polite — and made a noise somewhere between a sigh and a scoff.

“It's not like that,” they said, gesturing to their face. “This happened when my friend saved me at the Battle of [Two Terras]. Couple wires got snagged, and… Anyway, it's something to remember him by. Proof that he was here, that he was a hero. At least to me.”

“Sorry for your loss,” murmured the customer, shamefaced, and slipped away from the bar.

Euphrates hardly noticed her, lost in the memory of the battle. A third of his unit gave their lives there, protecting civilians, supplies, the wounded… Some of them died protecting their squadmates, and some threw their lives away for no good reason at all.

The barkeep set another drink down in front of him. Whiskey, by the smell of it.

“How'd he die?” The question was out of Euphrates’ mouth before he could stop it.

“Suicide,” was the soft reply. “Blew his own head off with his service weapon three weeks later. I came round to check on his injuries, and…”

“Found him.”

“…Yes.”

Euphrates didn't say sorry, only nodded and sipped at his drink. A veteran heard “sorry” and “thank you” day in, day out, and they didn't need to hear it from each other.

The barkeep's sightless eyes looked through and past him, perhaps fallen into his own reverie. Or perhaps scanning for more customers, as their hands started to move through a practiced routine, assembling a drink for someone who had only just sat down at the bar. The new customer smiled, and thanked the barkeep, handing over their credit chit.

Euphrates took another drink, settling his back to the bar and watching the room. Savros and Micah were in a booth together, snickering at something on a holo-tablet. Garrett was trying to chat up two ladies at once, and having luck with neither of them. Jaxon James was lounging at a table near the entrance, and Euphrates was almost certain he was waiting for a soldier to do something foolish that he could record and then blackmail them with.

They were good people, his unit. He didn't want them to die. Didn't want them to charge into battle and come home in a casket, dive on a grenade for the sake of another, be hailed as a hero and then quietly commit suicide the next day. He didn't want to lose his comrades again.

But the call had come from on high, and Euphrates was powerless to resist. An uprising had started in some far-flung colony, and Captain Euphrates was being dispatched to put it down. They were shipping out in two days. He hadn't told his men yet.

At least he could give them this night. One final night of happiness, one last hurrah. Tomorrow it was back to grim reality, to the blood and bombs and screaming, screaming…

One night. Euphrates downed the last of his drink and signalled the barkeep for another — two, in fact, as he reached for his comm. One more night.

[diamond-daze]

Wrote for an hour, 576 words on Delta-V. Nice little transition scene that sets up the big conflict and deepens characters a bit.

[thecraftyninjacat]

just spent twenty minutes scrolling the tag and giggling

@justcakethanks

[acanthawrites]

🦉

My partner critiques my fics in memes, I felt this on a very personal level.

[nyancrimew]

thesaurus.com save me

[tedlyanderson]

aid me

[j4gm]

assist me thesaurus.com

[avidcollectorofdust]

To YOU it’s bad writing. To ME it’s a very nuanced piece of work that explores subtle intricacies without outright saying it. And also it’s bad writing

[diamond-daze]

Delta-V: Interlude, Tigris

✧˖°.🪐⋆｡°✩

Jove, but Euphrates was a heavy man. He nearly crushed Tigris when he was laying on top of her like this, sprawled out with his arms up by her head and his soft breaths tickling her cheek. Two hundred pounds and six feet of muscle, and all of it sound asleep like the world's most suffocating blanket.

It was nice, though. Soothing. Deep pressure therapy or whatever, and a good excuse to stay in bed and doze rather than getting any work done.

Tigris nosed at his neck, breathing him in. Top notes of sweat and musk, naturally. Then the artificial scent of fabric cleaner. And under that, just barely present, was the warm, woody scent of the cologne he always wore to see her. The sweetness of it was long faded, only the sandalwood and clove still lingering.

He wore that cologne just for her, it seemed. Whenever she ran into him by chance — or rather, “chance” — he was perfume-free, smelling only of sterile hallways and clean bedding; though on one notable occasion, when she'd tracked him down in the [Centurai] system, he had smelled of something verdant and fresh and a little marine, almost-but-not-quite like her own favoured perfume. He hadn't been able to meet her eyes that day, keeping them fixed on a point some way past her head. She had deliberately left her perfume bottle on display that night, and in the morning found it a little emptier than it ought to have been, and his sheets smelling properly of her.

She pressed a kiss to his jaw, and he stirred but did not wake. A kiss to his throat next, over one of the nips she'd given him earlier, and his eyelashes fluttered. Then a drag of her tongue up to his cheek, and he groaned, shifting his weight and rubbing his face on hers, grimacing.

She grinned. “Morning, sleepyhead.”

“You find the worst ways to wake me up,” he slurred.

“You'll survive,” she said. “Now gerroff, you're crushing my ribs.”

He muttered something seditious under his breath, but complied, rolling off of her and onto his back.

Both of them stared at the ceiling for a long few moments. Her hand quested across the space between them and found his, twining their fingers together.

“Hey,” she murmured.

She couldn't see his crooked grin in the darkness, but she knew the sound of it in his voice. “Hey.”

I love you. “Let's go back to sleep.”

“Mm-hm.” His thumb stroked over her knuckles, and she fancied that it was Morse code, dots and dashes slowly spelling out I love you too.

[diamond-daze]

Couldn't sleep for love nor money, so about 2 hours of intermittent writing, 438 words on Delta-V, a Tigris interlude.

[literaryvein-reblogs]

A Few More Literary Vocabulary

Fabula: (also referred to as ‘story’ or ‘histoire’) the events of a narrative.

Genre: a kind; a literary type or style. Poetry, drama, novel may be subdivided into lyric (including elegy, ode, song, sonnet, etc.), epic, tragedy, comedy, short story, biography, etc.

Grand narratives: Jean-François Lyotard distinguishes between ‘grand’ narratives and ‘little’ narratives: grand narratives such as Christianity, Islam, Marxism and psychoanalysis involve systems that claim to explain everything. According to Lyotard, contemporary (or ‘postmodern’) worldviews tend to comprise ‘little narratives’ that offer fragmentary, non-totalizing and non- teleological, local or individual explanations of the world.

Heteroglossia: (Gk. ‘other/ different tongues’) a term used by Mikhail Bakhtin to describe the variety of voices or languages within a novel, but can be used of any text to give the sense that language use does not come from one origin but is mul­tiple and diverse, a mixing of heterogeneous discourses, sociolects, etc.

Implied reader: Wolfgang Iser uses this term to denote a hypothetical reader towards whom the text is directed. The implied reader is to be distinguished from the so- called ‘real reader’.

Intentional fallacy: W.K. Wimsatt and Monroe Beardsley’s term for what they see as the mistake of attempting to interpret a literary text by appealing to the supposed intentions of its author.

Jouissance: (Fr. ‘bliss’, ‘pleasure’, including sexual bliss or orgasm) a term introduced into psychoanalytic theory by Jacques Lacan, to refer to extreme pleasure, but also to that excess whereby pleasure slides into its opposite. Roland Barthes uses the term to suggest an experience of reading as textual bliss. Similarly, Jacques Derrida suggests that the effect of deconstruction is to liberate forbidden jouissance.

Mimesis: (Gk. ‘imitation’) the idea that literature attempts to represent ‘life’ or ‘the world’ more or less accurately, as it ‘actually’ is, etc.

Nachträglichkeit: a notoriously tricky term to translate, the sense of this German word (originally associated with the writings of Freud) can be variously rendered as ‘deferred action’, ‘deferred sense’, ‘delayed effect’ or ‘afterwardsness’. It is par­ticularly at work in trauma (where the meaning or impact of an event or experience does not happen only once, ‘at the time’).

Oxymoron: (Gk. ‘wise foolishness’) a trope that combines contradictory words or ideas, e.g. ‘bittersweet’, ‘darkness visible’.

Paradox: an apparently contradictory or strange statement of how things are: that which is apparently illogical or absurd but may be understood to be meaningful or ‘true’.

Parody: an imitation of another work of literature (usually with exaggeration) in order to make it seem ridiculous and/ or amusing.

Paronomasia: word play.

Pastiche: a work made up of imitation of other work(s); unlike parody, pastiche is not necessarily designed to ridicule.

Self- reflexivity: the phenomenon whereby a piece of writing refers to or reflects on itself. Often used interchangeably with ‘self- referentiality’.

Source ⚜ More: Notes & References ⚜ Word Lists ⚜ Writing Resources PDFs

[longstoryshort-143]

the horrors persist but so do books, art, hot chocolate, winter nights, the moon, the sea, the stars, sunsets, literature, libraries, cats, flowers, stories, love and the wistful feeling you get when you finally return home

[diamond-daze]

Book I read and loved in paperback only has its sequel available in hardback. FUCK

[bridgebetweenworldsofficial]

Things Writers Don't Always Talk About

(and I really think we should)

Writing is more than a hobby

For most writers writing isn’t just a hobby. It isn’t just “a thing we do” it’s not “a recreational activity”, it’s something we dedicate days, months, years of our lives to.

And it’s not just writing, that’s the thing, it’s planning, it’s research, it’s asking the right questions, it’s philosophy, it’s ethics. There are so many things that come with being a write. It’s always so much more than just putting words onto a page

It certainly isn’t easy either, but that’s why we do it. We don’t write because it’s easy, we write because we enjoy it but it sure as hell aint easy, it’s the hard work and the dedication that makes it all worthwhile

Writing can take a toll

You won’t ever really see it because the writers that do put their work and process and behind the scenes online will only post the good stuff. Because it will get the best engagement

But I can’t tell you how many times my writing has made me cry and the thought of what my characters have been through, or are going to go through has made me feel horrible

Because we can’t help but get attached to these worlds and stories that we make, and we feel so deeply about every choice we make within our writing and that can really take a toll on the writer

Giving our work to the world isn’t easy

Most (but not all) writers write so that someone will see their work. So that someone can bare whitness to their hours and hours of creation

But it isn’t an easy ordeal. And I’m not talking about getting published. I’m talking about the fact that once you put your work out there, online, in book stores, on websites you are putting your work out into the world without any ability to determine or change how it effects things. You won’t be able to control how people interpret what you made or how they interact with it

And that is a scary thing, because for so long this peice of work is your life, it consumes your everyday and once it’s out there it’s out there. There is not a single thing you can do about it, and that is terrifying.

We don’t write for approval

We don’t write for approval. We writers know exactly how weird most people think we are, especially after reading what we write. We aren’t looking for approval to keep creating what we do

What we do love for is those who will walk beside us and enjoy our works as they are. We write for the other weirdo’s just like us who feel estranged from normalcy. I know in particular I write for a small group of people that exist based on very specific circumstances, that isn’t going to be for everyone.

But I don’t write for everyone, I don’t write for the approval of every single person who comes across my content. I write so that people like me get to know they aren’t alone

People who use AI aren’t writers

I‘m sure there are many people who will try to disagree with me but I will never be anything but steadfast in this conviction

Using AI, reduces the entire point of writing into a production. By using AI you are making a product, you aren’t crafting anything. Writing is a practice, a craft, a skill to hone and develop. It isn’t just a method for production. And those who use AI are just cogs in a machine making an item

Writing holds life, it breathes life, it seeps into the hearts of those who whitness it. How do you expect something without a heart make something full of soul? You can’t, you never will

AI writers will never be real writers. And you don’t belong to this community.

[Obviously this is mostly just my opinion, but I feel that it is shared among writer communities enough for me to say it this way]

[prokopetz]

It's fine to disagree with the IAU about the definition of "planet"; however, if your definition includes Pluto but not Ceres, Orcus, Haumea, Quaoar, Makemake, Gonggong, Eris or Sedna, you don't actually care what a planet is – you just want the exact list of nine planets you learned in primary school back. Your cute little Pluto-including orbital distance mnemonic ought to be at least seventeen words long, and good fucking luck with the Q!