Doing Writing Things

She/Her, Fantasy and Romance writer. Haver of... too many ideas. Let's see if any of them sit still long enough to write down. My writing tag is "words from the well"

[caldraws]

hey bi people

[reynard61]

Let's ambush mama! 😼

[dvandom]

"Why do Pallas cats always look grumpy?"

"Pallas kittens."

[waywardmartian]

The sheer roundness of this kitten must be admired.

[derinthescarletpescatarian]

[derinthescarletpescatarian]

This phrase has already entered my vocabulary re: media criticism where like. The viewer has a concrete view of what they expect a story to be based on the tropes and cliches they're used to seeing together, and when that doesn't happen, they judge it as a failed depiction of what they assumed it was going to be instead of judging it as what it actually is.

"This show is problematic because the hero didn't kill the villain at the end": When does he steal the bread?

"These two characters who were close friends throughout the series don't kiss at the end! What the fuck?": When does he steal the bread?

"This feels like it's missing a conclusion! Like, the protagonist does bad stuff and because of a critical decision he makes as a result of his major character flaws, meets tragedy in the end! Where's the part where he learns better and brings is love back from the dead and becomes a good guy and gets a happy ending?": When does he steal the fucking bread??

[thetetra]

I heard this out as "When criticizing something, you must judge it for what it is, not what it isn't"

[derinthescarletpescatarian]

#this is why so many of us urge people to get a wider diet of stories

[casseyissleeping]

"long sentences kill pacing" well what if I want to turn into Victor Hugo then

[luna-azzurra]

Writers have two modes and they are "i haven't written in three weeks and i am rotting from the inside and everything feels wrong and i don't know who i am anymore" and "i wrote for four hours straight and forgot to eat and it's dark outside and when did that happen and i feel like a god" and there is nothing in between. no chill. no medium setting. just famine or feast and a very confused nervous system.

[pangur-and-grim]

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!

[pangur-and-grim]

genuinely, that’s the most important thing you can have! everything falls apart without it. you might have people telling you that your writing is shit, and that you’ll never make it. those people might be friends, family members, partners, peers, professionals in the industry, online trolls, basically everyone but your nonverbal pets. when that happens, you NEED to be like “hmm I dunno, I think I wrote something nice 😌”

if you keep writing, and working on your craft, and knocking on industry doors, eventually you will find success. just don’t give up on yourself!

[rablackwellwrites]

I second the "delusional level of belief in your own work." I haven't published on the same scale, but I can attest to the power of believing in yourself and your own work. There will be people who tell you your writing is no good, or it "could" be good if you make changes they want to see (whether or not it goes with the story you want to tell). Having a level of "actually, my idea is good and I believe in my skill" is healthy, and really helpful to get you through the harder parts of the creative process.

[motherfuckingshakespeare]

A HANDY CHART FOR THOSE OF YOU WONDERING WHAT THE FUCK IS UP WITH THESE. NOTE THAT THESE ARE ALL THE INFORMAL AND YOU IS THE FORMAL SO LIKE YOU WOULD ALWAYS ADDRESS YOUR SUPERIOR/ OLDER PERSON/ SOCIAL BETTER WITH YOU BUT WITH YOUR BUDS YOU CAN USE THESE. 

[homunculus-argument]

My dash is full of struggling writers rn.

[succumbing-song]

[dragon-in-a-fez]

[kjscottwrites]

[consolecadet]

These remind me of this drawing by Franz Kafka from the 1900s. We've been feeling this way for a long time.

[smol-civet]

prev, i'm sure you mean my guy Leonid Pasternak

[nondelphic]

writing is just sitting in front of a computer and making up problems for imaginary people while ignoring your own. fun and casual hobby.

[fashion-runways]

ROYAL BLACK Queen Of The Night Corset pls help me get out of debt donating to: ko-fi.com/fashionrunways or dinahlance-shop.fourthwall.com

[noahhawthorneauthor]

I tried to narrow this down. I really did. Instead you get 54 of my favorite queer books, not including the series many of these are attached to.

Also some of these authors I've read their entire backlist or close to it, so I didn't include all of them. (Looking at you, Allie Therin, KJ Charles, Cat Sebastian, Lily Mayne, Foz Meadows, Tavia Lark)

Do we have any in common?

[noshamehustle]

[formerglory25]

reblog if you too are bi and confused or support others’ right to be bi and confused

[nondelphic]

writing is just sitting in front of a computer and making up problems for imaginary people while ignoring your own. fun and casual hobby.

[pangur-and-grim]

Queer Books and Authors are at a Breaking Point

Authors, agents, publishers: every part of the industry is seeing the strain of five years of escalating anti-LGBTQ censorship.

[pangur-and-grim]

if you'd like to show support, here are some upcoming queer books:

When Life Gives You Corpses is a brilliant YA about a cursed praying mantis who falls for a young witch. Yield Under Great Persuasion is a raunchy, but surprisingly sweet story of two men repairing their relationship. Fabulous Bodies is a horror story about a queer rockstar rising from the dead.

This is Where the Future Bleeds is a fantasy set in a vividly imagined land, where two women (who happen to kiss) are the key to healing the broken sky. You're No Better is a story about a teen struggling in the shadow of his murderous parent. Oil on Canvas is about a woman who finds disturbing paintings in the home of her dead mother.

and then here's a list of 26 queer books by Black authors set to publish this year, and a 10 upcoming books by trans authors. if you want to fight back against queer censorship, use your wallet! or (if that's not an option) you can contact your local library and ask them to stock a copy.

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

Blood on the Icehouse Wall is a fantasy with a time travelling lesbian witch and her asexual werewolf girlfriend trying to undo their mistakes.

Salts of Mercury is the best book I've read this year and features a non-binary necromancer explaining why they did all that treason.

An Unexpected Attachment is an erotic novella about an android who's just got a penis attachment and wants to try it out for the first time.

Three Men in Orbit is inspired by Three Men in a Boat and tells the story of three men taking an excursion to a space station and then the moon. One of the characters is a trans woman and the author is openly trans.

[luna-azzurra]

The most interesting question you can ask about any character is not what do they want. it's what do they believe they deserve. because those two things are almost never the same and the gap between them is where your entire story lives. a person can want love completely and believe they don't deserve it and that belief will destroy every good thing that comes toward them in ways they won't even notice they're doing. write the gap. the gap is the character.