Pomegranate Seeds

Sowing a new life one day at a time. A personal blog of Pom. 30-something, disabled, queer, trans, they/them.

[dandylyonsolarium]

Dragon babybjorn

[dandylyonsolarium]

The baby is Bvoots, he’s squishy and silly and one day he will be so big and strong. Not today though. Today he’s squishy and silly

[lazer-t]

Canada Goose for a $15 Ko-fi supporter

Prints

[darlingofdots]

ten years ago as part of my creative writing degree we had a class on professional development where we learned how the publishing process works for different mediums and how to choose an agent and what the role of a publishing house is and back then, the advice was "self-publishing has its advantages but a traditional publisher will provide editorial support and market your book and if your book sells well enough they want to invest in your future" and now basically none of that is true anymore. books make it to shelves with noticeable errors and structural issues that could be addressed with one or two more rounds of developmental editing, authors are expected to do more and more of the marketing themselves to the point that they are expected to be social media influencers in their own right, and publishers appear to be prioritising flashy debut novels with huge advances they don't outsell, which means the author is less likely to get a follow-up deal.

Obviously a publisher is a business and a business needs to make money, but the idea used to be that you'd have a couple of very successful authors who bring in so much cash that they subsidise the new kid who is building a back catalogue of books that sell okay until they get name recognition and pay for themselves. I was told back then that a couple thousand pounds was very reasonable for a debut novel because you want to get royalties for the sales exceeding your advance and that way the publisher sees you as a profitable investment. The last couple of years I keep hearing about six figure book deals for debut (!) literary fiction (!) novels, what on earth?

I'm not saying that the publishing industry is uniquely awful or that it's worse than it's ever been or whatever, but especially in a time when reading and talking about books is trendy and there is so much money in books, it feels very, I don't know, symbolic? Prioritising flashy one-time projects over sustained and sustainable growth. Investing only enough resources to make your product fit for sale but not enough to make it good because people will buy it anyway. It's frustrating to me as a reader and as an aspiring writer and as a person existing in a capitalist system.

[poorshadowspaintedqueens]

One of the tags referred to people thanking their editorial teams in acknowledgments, and I want to point out the growing prevalence of people thanking beta-readers and writing groups, both of which usually rely on a pre-existing community or relationship and, just as importantly, are unpaid.

My day job is as a freelance editor for nonfiction books, and I can safely say that if the publishing industry were operating as intended, I would either not have a job at all or be working for a specific press. Authors pay me directly to do the work that a press editor used to do as part of publication contracts. This is because so many presses have started outsourcing all their editorial work to either third-party contractors or, even worse, to genAI.

In short, venture capital has broken the publication industry the same way it's broken the retail, restaurant, and travel industries.

[darlingofdots]

I didn't go into this side of it in my original post but YES! Fuck! I know this is a huge issue for translators too because they're being asked to do more work in less time for less money and I've heard rumblings about human translators being brought in only to essentially proofread work done by AI, which is so disrespectful to the sheer skill and artistic abilities of (literary) translation...

Anyway, I love editing. I think I love editing almost more than writing, and I'm pretty sure that I'm better at it. Last year I edited an academic article from 11k to 9k words for my supervisor and I felt like a god when I finished it, but when my supervisor asked if I'd thought about doing this professionally, I had to tell her that there's just not a viable career in editing anymore. Publishers used to employ! editors! Several different kinds of editors for different stages of the process! That used to be my dream job!

Editing is so essential to making a text good. It doesn't matter how talented or dedicated you are as a writer, you cannot achieve the level of quality by yourself that you could achieve by working with a skilled editor. That's normal! The lone genius who comes out of the cave with the perfect novel does not exist! The manuscript that gets sold to a publisher is supposed to be handed off to an editor who tells you to tighten up that plotline and reminds you that every day can't be Tuesday and sharpens your prose so your voice really shines. Skimping out on that part of the publication process takes money out of the hands of skilled professionals, leads to consumers (ew) receiving subpar products (ew!), and is such an injustice to the writers whose work can't reach its full potential (and the writers who won't get published because they can't afford to pay an editor out of pocket!).

It drives me up the wall. I hate reading a mediocre book and knowing that a skilled editor could have easily raised it from 3 stars to 4. We should all be way angrier about it, frankly.

[renthony]

When I was in college, I got my first tattoo. Not long after, a guy who sat behind me in one of my classes tapped me on the shoulder and told me that he'd seen my tattoo online, being made fun of as an example of "dumb shit fandom girls do." I'm not a girl, mind you (I'm nonbinary), but to a bunch of people online I was a "stupid girl who got a stupid tattoo for a dumb fandom."

Anyway, the guy from my class was really nice about it--he apologized for having to tell me bad news, and gave me the contact info for the guy who posted it so I could ask for it to be taken down.

Now, the tattoo in question? It's a bird. It's not actually a fandom tattoo, it just coincidentally looks vaguely like a bit of symbolism from a fandom that was popular at the time I got it. But it was enough to unleash a firestorm of "look at this stupid girl with her stupid cringe tattoo" comments.

(Even if it WAS a fandom tattoo...who gives a shit??? It's my body and my tattoo and I don't really give a shit what strangers think.)

The misogyny of my body being put online and circulated for mockery without my consent really fucked me up at the time. I felt awful. I was mortified. I was scared more people would recognize me from the post and give me shit. It sucked so bad.

So I just kinda think you're a fucking douchebag if you participate in tattoo shaming for anything that isn't, like, a blatant hate symbol. I don't really care if you think it's tasteless, or cringe, or badly done, or whatever other justification.

It's jackass behavior.

[b-side-takes]

not to be like that but misgendering is still misgendering even if you think you know someone’s gender better than they do. because that’s the basis of literally all misgendering you don’t get a special pass because you’re Transing Them

[historicity-was-already-taken]

(Yoinked this from LinkedIn, genuinely interested in seeing how responses align with demographics) (so far it’s those of us over 35 being indignant but I wanna see how those fully plays out) (it’s cultural and technological history/memory, bruh)

18

[bellisima-writes]

I am an old bitch - 20/20.

[starlight-shadowbanned]

How many of these have you done

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Remaining time: 4 days 7 hours

[captain-price-returns]

California farmers to destroy 420,000 peach trees following Del Monte bankruptcy

Del Monte Foods shuttered its Modesto and Hughson cannery plants in April. 

[sweatermuppet]

closing statement from an article about being intersex & the possible connection of gender expression and sexuality in intersex individuals, published in The Gay Liberator, 1970s

[yardsards]

anyway idk if anybody here needs this reminder but: if you are disabled and have a professional caregiver, you do NOT need to feel bad for asking them to do the things that are part of their job description.

your needs are not too much. your needs are not too "gross". you are not too needy. and if your needs are literally more than a caregiver can handle, then the problem is that your case is understaffed, not that you need too much.

you do not owe your caregiver any more than what is in their contract and the common courtesy/respect that is owed to all people.

if your caregiver treats you like your needs are bad, or like you owe them, then that is wrong of them to do and is not okay. you deserve better.

[closet-keys]

I think at bare minimum all medical professionals need to make sure they are treating patients with more kindness and respect than grifters. if you go to a doctor and they treat you like shit, humiliate you, and send you home without any information on your body or access to treatment, then health-grifters' offers will start to feel more tempting by simply giving the most basic performance of taking you seriously and caring about your well-being. grifters should be condemned for manipulating and exploiting sick people, and doctors also play a role in whether grifts thrive or are successfully identified and rejected. genuine baseline human respect, and beginning a relationship with a patient by earning (rather than demanding) trust, goes a long way.

[sallylla]

Portrait of a Regal Heir

Out of all the characters Enoch’s personality has went through the most changes so I’m trying to refine his design a bit.

***

Regal, pristine and cold… a portrait approved by his father, yet something which Enoch would much prefer to destroy.

Enoch Willowperch, an eagle owl from old money, who has worn so many masks for so long, he no longer knows what’s behind them. Heir to the WP Products, Captain Detective at the force, husband, and father of two owlets, he’s expected to be strong, polished and picture perfect.

Enrolling in the Police Academy was his first act of defiance, a way to prove he could achieve something without the Willowperch name.

Enoch’s a gentle giant forced into the role of a confident businessbird by his father, Elijah.

He’s still figuring out who he actually is and his friendship with a certain sarcastic little nightjar is making it harder and harder for him to keep those masks on.

[monstersovka]

✷ 🍂 ✷

[galileosballs]

The 'ingredients you can pronounce means it's healthy' line implies a world in which the kind of nutrition a person requires scales with their biology education and grasp of phonics. Which isn't true, of course, but sure would imply some interesting worldbuilding if it were

[rembrandtswife]

Welp. *sighs*

I have $1.87 in the bank and a couple of bills coming up, including $30 for my internet. If anybody can help me, that would be super great.

http://PayPal.me/MToddWeb

[rembrandtswife]

morning reblog am a couple cents in the negative, hah, but it's gonna get worse reblogs help if you can't donate

[sceptixfakemon]

the art community needs to return to paint tool sai . not only it's the most lightweight intuitive easy to learn software that's also surprisingly complete with many important and quality of life features while not being horribly visually cluttered, it costs only 30 dollars. once. v2 version and updates included. AND you get to support a solo dev (koji komatsu) that's been making the software by himself for 18 ywars. if you never used it before, give it a try, I promise you won't regret it

[rcrisu]

Breathes in-

PIFFINs!!!

[mossytops]

Carl and Donut sketch. I'm relistening to the series and boy oh boy its even better a second go around.