Grey Channing

My name is Grey, and, I'm a writer. I procrastinate way too much, make too many promises, cry over fictional characters, geek out over too many things, and occasionally, only sometimes, I write. Eclectic. Eccentric. Gemini. Wanderer.

[greywrites]

“ you’re safe with me. you can let go. breathe. ” Blaine to Sebastian (tag infinitywithyou)

@infinitywithyou

(detox!seblaine) Sebastian’s watery laugh was sharper than he expected. It turned into a shuddering half sob which he choked off into silence. He wasn’t used to being comforted and wasn’t used to being put in a position to need comfort. He tried at all times to craft and control everything from his appearance to his circumstances in order to avoid exactly this. Sadness, pain. Weakness. But he’d allowed the man that looked like Blaine to dump him on the side of the road and make him walk his way back to Westerville. He’d gotten too handsy and ignored way too many boundaries, until Sebastian’s teasing warnings turned into an argument. He’d never been put into that position before and it left him rattled. Sebastian felt Blaine shift behind him and the boy was glad that Blaine couldn’t see his face. He was a mess and Sebastian Smythe was never a mess. He was always put together. Always had the perfect facade. Sebastian never meant to let Blaine see him like this but the other had come to help Sebastian practice a solo...something they’d planned before the fiasco which made Sebastian a mess. Oddly enough Blaine was the one person Sebastian didn’t want to see him this way and the only person Sebastian felt safe enough with to hold him while he crumbled.

He suspected it was because he was still trying to impress Blaine. But his Warbler compatriot had seen too much. How could Blaine ever find him hot when he was consoling a teary eyed wimp? Sebastian couldn’t fathom it. Didn’t know how anyone dealt with such emotional episodes. Blaine was a saint and there was no other explanation.

“Is there such a thing as safe?” Sebastian asked quietly, thinking aloud while dwelling on the predicament which had landed him here. Sebastian didn’t know but he knew that he couldn’t be made to feel so threatened again. This was it. This was the moment he knew. He had to do the detox. If he didn’t...Sebastian would utterly fall apart...and not even Blaine would be able to pick up the pieces. He wiped his face and cleared his throat, trying to pull himself together. “You don’t have to do this. Seriously.” He tried to put on a brave face; that same old mask. “It’s fine. Isn’t your boyfriend worried about you?” Chang. Of course he’d be worried. Sebastian would avoid this emotional nakedness by dredging up Blaine’s boyfriend between them. Offloading the nicest guy alive back to the one he was in a relationship with. It was just easier that way. For the both of them. “Blaine…” He swallowed. “Just go.”

[greywrites]

“ not everyone is just gonna become another scar. some people will stay, if you let them. ” (For Altbray. Fuck me up <3)

    Teddy gave a watery half-laugh. She shook her head as faces flashed across the panorama of her memory. Her father and their scrabble board, her mother gone so suddenly that Teddy had never been afforded the chance to say goodbye. Allison whose last act was to invite Teddy to shirk responsibilities and savor the day together. Henry who had left her in the midst of an argument that they never got to resolve. An argument she never got to apologize for and soothe over. Teddy had said to Cristina that she needed another of herself in that room operating on Henry and that Cristina was the next best thing. The truth was Cristina had been in the OR where her fiance had died when Teddy hadn’t been. Teddy saw Owen’s face too. Her best friend who had chosen someone else time after time after time. Fate had been in her hands multiple times and each time the thing Teddy tried to hold on to had spirited away from her. Like sand. Like petals on the wind. 

    “Everyone leaves,” she said softly. Wiping bravely at her face. “Everyone dies.” She shook her head. “And I know I left you Quinn. For Germany. I know Owen and I conceiving together is a scar for you.” She fought to keep her features from crumbling. “But I don’t have anything to offer you. I don’t have any reason for you to stay.” She lifted her shoulders and dropped them. “I have a lump of scar tissue where my heart should be. And you don’t deserve that.” Teddy wanted so badly for Quinn to save herself. She had her whole life and a brilliant career ahead of her. How could she focus at all on having anything with Teddy? “Hurt people hurt people; and I hurt you. That’s all I know how to do.”

@lilm31

[leneemusing]

memes for that specific brand of ships

SOFTER: “  stop doing that— stop trying to hide your emotions from me.  ” “  i can’t make you trust me. but i’m gonna stick around long enough for you to realize you can.  ” “  not everyone is just gonna become another scar. some people will stay, if you let them.  ” “  i feel like i’ve been living in a storm for so long, like i’m just drifting from wave or wave hoping i won’t drown.  ” “  what happened to you? what made you so scared to stay still long enough to let someone in?  ” “  i don’t wanna be scared anymore.  ” “  even when you smile, your eyes are still sad.  ” “  you’re safe with me. you can let go. breathe. ”   “  i just want to belong somewhere again. or to someone, i guess.  ” “  the thing about never having a home, is you don’t know what to do when you’re finally given one. you just feel like you’re waiting for something to take it away again.  ” “  would you just sit still? you’re gonna get an infection if you don’t let me clean this up.  ” “  i’m not gonna hurt you. i’m just here to help.  ” “  close your eyes. go back to sleep. nothing can hurt you while i’m here.  ” “  you looked so peaceful while you were sleeping…i couldn’t bring myself to wake you up.  ” “  why do you trust me?  ” “  don’t do that— don’t shut down on me. let me in.  ” “  you were talking in your sleep again. i’m starting to think they’re memories and not just dreams.  ” “  i’m not used to letting people close. i don’t like being vulnerable— but i want to, with you. i want to let you in.  ” “  how did you get this scar?  ” “ i don’t always need you to fix everything. i just— sometimes i just want you to listen. ” “  you’re so beautiful when you laugh. i wish i could see it more, but maybe it’s the rarity of it that makes it so captivating. ”

DARKER:  “  every time i touch you, there’s a moment where you look like you think it will hurt. ” “ why aren’t you scared of me?  ”   “  you’d accept a caress from the same hands that leave you bruised, just to feel warm.  ” “  i’ll kill anyone that makes you hurt like that again. i’d kill them just for taking your smile.  ” “  i want to keep you all to myself. i don’t want anyone but us to know the things we do in secret.  ” “  you’re mine now. and i won’t let anyone take you from me.  ” “  would you kill for me?  ” “  i’d cut my heart out and place it in your hands if it would prove my devotion to you.  ”  “  you love me so fiercely. i’m almost afraid of it.  ” “  i know if anyone hurt me, you’d never let them see another day. and i think i like that a little too much.  ” “  i know you’re dangerous, but i also know you won’t hurt me. you bark, and you growl, but you never bite. not me, at least.  ” “  who hurt you? who made you so sad and lonely? tell me so i can make them pay.  ”   “  i don’t like the way they look at you. perhaps i’ll cut their eyes out.  ” “   “  they hurt me. now i want you to make it better. make them hurt too.  ”   “  if anyone lays even a single finger on you, i’ll cut it off and feed it to them.  ” “  yes. i killed them— but i did it for you.  ” “  i had to do it. no one gets to make you sad and get away with it.  ” “  i told you, i’ll love you no matter what. i’ll wipe the blood off your skin. i’ll clean the dirt off your hands from every grave you dig. i don’t care if you’re a monster.  ” “  you should be scared of me. i like that you’re not.  ”   “  don’t you know my love could destroy you?  ”   “  come, sit in my lap and tell me whose blood i should spill tonight.  ”  

[poetsandwriters]

When I get stuck while writing, I change my surroundings. If I’ve been working at the pine kitchen table for a few weeks, I’ll switch to writing on my bed. If I’ve been working on the bed, I’ll migrate to the office….A new location physically separates me from recent frustrations, promising a fresh start. Each room offers different comforts or inspiration: a cozy bed, shelves full of books by favorite authors, a view of evergreens and sky.

R. L. Maizes, in this week’s Writers Recommend; read the rest at pw.org! (via poetsandwriters)

[writingdotcoffee]

Rule one, you have to write. If you don’t write, nothing will happen.

Neil Gaiman (via writingdotcoffee)

[writingdotcoffee]

The writer is by nature a dreamer – a conscious dreamer.

Carson McCullers (via writingdotcoffee)

[writingdotcoffee]

Good writing is supposed to evoke sensation in the reader – not the fact that is is raining, but the feeling of being rained upon.

E.L. Doctorow (via writingdotcoffee)

[doesnotloveyou]

I once knew a guy who claimed to be feminist, but still had a few sexist dogmas he hadn’t gotten past, imo.

Something he said once about a popular female character has always stuck with me. The question “is this a good role model for girls?” was brought up about this character, and his response was, “why is this never asked about male characters and boys?”

knee-jerk reaction was to roll my eyes at him…but he was right. we don’t ask this of male characters often if at all. is it because we assume male characters are created for all ages and temperaments, but female main characters are only created to set examples for girls and women?

And if we do analyze female characters’ potential to influence younger audiences, why don’t we do the same with male characters? Male characters are known for having a plethora of vices and flaws, but if a female character is to be in the spotlight, she has to be a shining example of someone’s moral compass? in that case, male characters also should all be good role models all the time, or God forbid little boys pick up bad traits too.

[eggsyemour]

how do you uhhhhh….introduce your ocs on tumblr?

[ladycalliopemoon-blog]

Maybe share some kinda character bio?? I dunno, I’m clueless too but I wanna hear about them :D

[raenfalls]

There are so many ways you can start introducing an OC.

- Aesthetics or moodboards tagged with the OC’s name. The visuals could make people curious to ask questions.

- Blurbs of writing about them, either from a WIP story or something standalone about them.

- A straightforward bio with things like name, age, history, personality, interests.

- Search for prompts or lists of questions, or tag games. You don’t have to wait to be tagged to answer questions!

- I’ve seen some people include a little list of mini character bios on their WIP info page, sometimes including face claims.

I hope those suggestions help! I don’t think there is a wrong way to introduce them.

[mysharona1987]

Writing agent Jonny Geller gives advice to young writers. 

[greywrites]

Random Caps of Matt (4/?) | Southern Boys

[greywrites]

Random Caps of Matt (2/?) |  Southern Boys

[firemoon42]

Ways to un-stick a stuck story

Do an outline, whatever way works best. Get yourself out of the word soup and know where the story is headed.

Conflicts and obstacles. Hurt the protagonist, put things in their way, this keeps the story interesting. An easy journey makes the story boring and boring is hard to write.

Change the POV. Sometimes all it takes to untangle a knotted story is to look at it through different eyes, be it through the sidekick, the antagonist, a minor character, whatever.

Know the characters. You can’t write a story if the characters are strangers to you. Know their likes, dislikes, fears, and most importantly, their motivation. This makes the path clearer.

Fill in holes. Writing doesn’t have to be linear; you can always go back and fill in plotholes, and add content and context.

Have flashbacks, hallucinations, dream sequences or foreshadowing events. These stir the story up, deviations from the expected course add a feeling of urgency and uncertainty to the narrative.

Introduce a new mystery. If there’s something that just doesn’t add up, a big question mark, the story becomes more compelling. Beware: this can also cause you to sink further into the mire.

Take something from your protagonist. A weapon, asset, ally or loved one. Force him to operate without it, it can reinvigorate a stale story.

Twists and betrayal. Maybe someone isn’t who they say they are or the protagonist is betrayed by someone he thought he could trust. This can shake the story up and get it rolling again.

Secrets. If someone has a deep, dark secret that they’re forced to lie about, it’s a good way to stir up some fresh conflict. New lies to cover up the old ones, the secret being revealed, and all the resulting chaos.

Kill someone. Make a character death that is productive to the plot, but not “just because”. If done well, it affects all the characters, stirs up the story and gets it moving.

Ill-advised character actions. Tension is created when a character we love does something we hate. Identify the thing the readers don’t want to happen, then engineer it so it happens worse than they imagined.

Create cliff-hangers. Keep the readers’ attention by putting the characters into new problems and make them wait for you to write your way out of it. This challenge can really bring out your creativity.

Raise the stakes. Make the consequences of failure worse, make the journey harder. Suddenly the protagonist’s goal is more than he expected, or he has to make an important choice.

Make the hero active. You can’t always wait for external influences on the characters, sometimes you have to make the hero take actions himself. Not necessarily to be successful, but active and complicit in the narrative.

Different threat levels. Make the conflicts on a physical level (“I’m about to be killed by a demon”), an emotional level (“But that demon was my true love”) and a philosophical level (“If I’m forced to kill my true love before they kill me, how can love ever succeed in the face of evil?”).

Figure out an ending. If you know where the story is going to end, it helps get the ball rolling towards that end, even if it’s not the same ending that you actually end up writing.

What if? What if the hero kills the antagonist now, gets captured, or goes insane? When you write down different questions like these, the answer to how to continue the story will present itself.

Start fresh or skip ahead. Delete the last five thousand words and try again. It’s terrifying at first, but frees you up for a fresh start to find a proper path. Or you can skip the part that’s putting you on edge – forget about that fidgety crap, you can do it later – and write the next scene. Whatever was in-between will come with time.

[theinkstainsblog]

*Blinks* I-I’m not the only one to call writer’s block needing to un-stick the story? 

[andtheotherwriter]

How To Keep Research From Being A Pain In The Arse

If writing historical fiction has taught me anything, it’s this, so I recently analysed how I go about it and thought I’d share my studies. (Pardon the self-praise, but I should probably mention that I find I’m quite the natural at researching.)

Any additions and suggestions are most welcome, of course, since this is what works for me in particular. It might not work for you. Also, I’m interested in seeing how it works differently for different people.

I’ll use my WIP Blackbirds which is set in 17th-century Norway for the examples.

No. 1: Trust your intuition.

This one seems obvious, but it’s not. If something feels off about your facts or if you feel you should check or double-check something, do it. 

Example: People use fire for light and warmth in the 17th Century. Duh. To make a fire, they need wood. Well, duh. Right? No, it’s not. Most of my WIP takes place on an island which is above the treeline, so I got suspicious when I realised wood might not be that easy to come by.

No. 2: Do not trust Occam’s razor.

In case you’ve never heard of it, Occam’s razor is the idea that, when compared to each other, the easiest solution to a problem is the right one. It’s not.

Example: But people did use wood to make fires. That’s a fact. I also knew they did, in fact, own wood on that particular above-the-treeline island, because they used it to build boats, houses, and drying racks for fish (fishing industry being their main income). And that’s what rang a bell. Wood is invaluable. And they’d need a huge fucking lot of it for fire. Seems almost like a waste …

No. 3: Do not trust only one source or the first source you come across.

Unless you tried your best (more or less) and can’t find another one.

Example: I went through three sources that told me people used wood as a combustible. The fourth one told me that people in marshy areas (particularly in Scotland) would use peat instead. Bingo!

No. 4: Do not aim for perfection.

That’s the most important rule, and for me, it’s the hardest to follow. I’m a perfectionist, but there is no such thing as perfection when it comes to research, especially historical. I constantly need to remind myself that even historians don’t know everything, no matter how many sources they combed through. A lot of it is also based on interpretation and common sense.

Example: Since the area my WIP takes place in is in fact pretty marshy, I figured the people might indeed have used peat, which was way easier to produce/harvest than wood and which they also used for their houses. But that doesn’t mean I’m right. I could be entirely wrong about my interpretation, but it does make sense and sounds logical. And I’ll never know* the real answer, unless I’ll complete the time machine which I’ve been building in my attic for the last five years. (Kidding. Unfortunately.)

*Which is not entirely true. I might not have dug deep enough and there might be a source I’ll never get my hands on, and then the book is being published and someone whips out that particular source or I find that particular source and I realise everything I wrote is wrong but now everyone has read it already and I’ll forever be trapped in a spiral of You Fucked Up doom. But we shall blissfully ignore this possibility. I have nightmares about it.

[thelovejournals]

“I Look At You And See The Rest Of My Life in Front Of My Eyes.”

- anonymous | @thelovejournals

[metteivieharrison]

How Authors Get Paid

This is pretty simple. Authors get paid when you buy their books. If you don’t buy their books, they don’t get paid. They get paid a percentage of the price you pay for their books. If you buy highly discounted books (from amazon or B&N or Scholastic book fairs), they get paid a lot less. If you borrow a book from the library, they got paid for that one time (in the US), but at least they got that. If you read a book from a pirated site, they don’t get paid.

The problem I see is that most people don’t understand this very simple equation. They think that authors get paid by publishers just to be authors. Hint: we don’t. Authors don’t get paid to do book tours. Unless people buy their books. Authors don’t get paid by the government to be authors. Authors don’t get paid by Hollywood for their books unless they get a pittance if they’re actually given an option (1% of authors get books optioned, 1% of those get made into movies). If an author gets a movie made, they still make very little of that money, except for if books are purchased. If an author wins an award, most of the time, they make no money from that directly, only if more books are sold.

Are you starting to understand what my point is here?

Yes, some authors make money on the side doing school visits for children. A lot of them don’t even make that, especially in Utah, where local publishers are using school visits as a promotional opportunity and have nearly eliminated the market for paid visits from authors who AREN’T trying to push books on kids. (Yes, I have strong feelings about this.)

Yes, these days authors make money sometimes by being youtube celebrities (I can count on one hand the number of authors doing this). Yes, authors sometimes make money through Patreon, though this is pretty new and we’re still figuring it out. Think about this for a minute. Authors have to hustle to make money because actually writing books doesn’t pay them very much. What? Yeah, even NYT best-selling authors are not making enough to pay mortgages sometimes.

Lots of authors are offered lots of opportunities to write for “promotion.” We do need to promote ourselves if we’re going to stay in the game and keep getting contracts for new books. But promotion is pennies. I’m not trying to complain about my chosen profession. This part of it sucks, but there are other wonderful parts, clearly, or I wouldn’t stay. But if you want to help me out and thank me for any of my writing you’ve gotten to read for free, it’s really simple. Buy one of my books. And while you’re at it, buy a book from another author you love.

[adventures-in-a-world-of-fiction]

If you can’t afford to buy the book, get it from the library. As OP states, at least then there’s one sale. And if it’s there on the shelves, people who haven’t heard of the author might pick it up, and mention it to someone, and spread the word of mouth about it. And if the book gets borrowed a lot, then the library is much more likely to buy the next book the author writes.

In the UK, there’s something called Public Lending Rights, where an author gets about 8 pence per borrow of their books (it’s a little more complicated than that, because they sample from a subset of libraries, but that’s the basic idea). So if a hundred people borrowed my book over the course of a year, I would get about £8. That may not sound like much, but that’s kinda the point OP is making.

Authors aren’t making a lot of money, so every little bit helps. Piracy doesn’t help at all.

[more-legit-gr8er-writing-tips]

Don’t fucking pirate books.

[aimmyarrowshigh]

A publishing deal is nothing like a recording contract or being on a TV show/in a movie.

IF am author is paid an advance by the publisher – and that is getting rarer and rarer – it is basically “back payment” for 2+ years of work to write the book, and the average advance is $5000. For two years of full-time work – so that’s about $1.00/hr if you imagine it as payment for a 40-hour work week. AND AUTHORS DO NOT START TO EARN ROYALTIES UNTIL THEY’VE EARNED OUT THEIR ADVANCE. That means paying the publisher back in full for that advance money.

So really, authors make nothing until they’ve sold at least ~1000 books.

Most bestsellers sell roughly 5000 books. So to sell 1000 books and earn out the advance is extremely rare and extremely difficult. Most authors never sell enough copies to start earning royalties per sale, or else it takes 5+ years… and that’s IF despite low sales the publisher keeps your book in print at all. Most won’t.

If an author has not earned out their advance the first 6 months, most publishers stop printing that book, and the author never makes anything from what has already been sold because it goes to paying the publisher back for that advance.

Also when we say authors earn money for each book sale: it’s about $0.60 per book.

Yes, you’re paying $17.99+ for a hardcover or $8.99 for a paperback or ebook, but that is NOT how much the author gets. So if you imagine that an author DOES become a bestseller – let’s say they sell those 5000 copies and earn out their advance, so they get to make some money on the remaining 4000 books sold – that’s still only another $2400. It has likely been an additional 2-5 years at this point since they sold the book to a publisher.

So for 4-7 years of full time work, an average author makes MAYBE $7500. IF they are extremely successful and lucky.

That’s less than a dollar an hour for almost a decade of work.

Do not pirate books.

SOURCE: I work for a publisher.

[poetsandwriters]

I have come to view writing as a sort of prism….At some point you have to make a choice about which story you are going to tell about yourself. Are you going to tell a story of you as a failure who never did the thing that you wanted to do—which is the story you essentially tell yourself, a kind of private theater of pain—or are you going to tell the story that you’re working on, a story that can actually reach other people and connect outward to the world?

Alexander Chee, in Amy Gall’s Q&A “Which Story Will You Tell?”—read the rest at pw.org! (via poetsandwriters)