The Tackiest Quill U Know

"Quillyfied is like several grapes nestled in size order under the gentle breast of a domesticated Ostrich." - Anon (Background by Kudalyn)

[quillyfied]

Support Your Local Quilly

Etsy for handmade knickknacks

Editing rates for writers

And I’m always open for cross stitch commissions!

[gossip-girl-of-middleearth]

This made my brain go brr, therefore it’ll make your brain go brr too if you’re following me <3

[alyanas-little-hideout]

Fuck I scrolled on but this is going to be living in my head so fucking much why did you have to show this to me I will never be free

[quillyfied]

Trying to figure out how to ship something to Europe from the US is about to make me turn off international shipping on my Etsy.

[quillyfied]

Woke up from a lovely nap feeling, for literally no reason, particularly happy to be asexual. So. A very happy Saturday afternoon post-nap pride to my fellow aces and aspecs. We’re here, we’re queer, and sometimes we’re even well-rested.

[quillyfied]

Horror movie franchises that maintain not only good filmmaking quality but more importantly have a cohesive and faithful continuity, go.

[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.

[davy-jones-lock3r]

happy pride month my friends <3

[nanmarie]

those were the days... Picture the scene: Monty Python's Flying Circus ran from 1969 to 1974. Nothing, I mean nothing, had been seen like this before on TV. To really appreciate their courage and brilliance you need to know something about these days when gay marriage was not even on the horizon and most people would lose their employment if they were outed at work. The first Pride Parade was in 1970 and it was only in 1973 that the American Psychiatric Association in their generosity declared that homosexuality was not a mental disorder. Being LGBTQ+ was gradually decriminalized in various parts of the UK and a bit later in the US starting slowly in the late '60's.

Meanwhile, Monty Python was winning over hearts and minds through the funny bone. Groundbreaking.

[markcat]

I think Graham Chapman, the 4th man to join the scene, being gay and being a member of Monty Python is worth noting. He had a partner, David Sherlock, and was publicly open with his homosexuality as early as 1972. I just think it makes a difference in how Monty Python treated queerness in sketches when one of their members, their good friends and collaborators, is himself gay.

[quillyfied]

Being haunted by a phantom note on an old blog that won’t go away. Driving me slowly insane. Edit: there are TWO of them now. One is from me, reblogging a post to my main blog and then deleting it before checking the notification. The other, I couldn’t say. But I’m about to delete this app and reinstall it and see if that helps anything.

[quillyfied]

Don’t mind me, just slipping into a mental state akin to scratching your skin off to get rid of something that’s not really there but your mind is convinced that if you can just dig down deep enough you can get rid of the phantom itch for good.

[acegender]

explain your gender in 10 words or less without using boring words like “male”, “female”, “nonbinary”, “masculine”, “feminine” or “androgynous”.

go!

[quillyfied]

Being haunted by a phantom note on an old blog that won’t go away. Driving me slowly insane. Edit: there are TWO of them now. One is from me, reblogging a post to my main blog and then deleting it before checking the notification. The other, I couldn’t say. But I’m about to delete this app and reinstall it and see if that helps anything.

[lowpawly]

this is my impression of what it would look like if the toddlers at my job could make traumacore edits about me

[lowpawly]

alright by popular demand here is more toddler traumacore

[quillyfied]

Playing chapter 5 for myself before reading my library books because I have great priorities, but noticing that at the very beginning, Kris is dragging themself around, can barely function until they get the soul back in their body, and also their skin is greenish-gray.

Kris is actually dead/dying without the soul???

[quillyfied]

(Gotta say though, the Roaring Knight being an amalgamation of Noelle and Kris is having a lot more weight to me right now given the Weird Route)

[quillyfied]

Deltarune chapter 5 was so good!! So bittersweet and sad and good!

Most of my thoughts are on how embarrassed I am that Noelle’s talk sprite and higher vocal register in the Weird Route genuinely jumpscared me right now but I’m sure I’ll have more coherent ones once I find the time to play for myself.

[quillyfied]

(real talk tho I’m terrified to play Deltarune chapter 5 myself; looks hard for someone who doesn’t do platforming or anything more complicated than gen 7 pokemon)

[quillyfied]

Listen I’m only partially through watching this playthrough of Deltarune chapter 5 but I need to know why my dash isn’t drenched with Flowery fanart. He’s peak 2012 Tumblr Sexyman.

[quillyfied]

Alright who wrote Paranormal Activity: The Ghost Dimension, I just wanna talk