People keep talking about the writing life, but what does it actually look like? Do you graduate from uni, rent a “modest” apartment in Greenwich Village, NYC or a place on rue du Cardinal Lemoine in Paris, buy a desk, quill, fountain pen, stack of hardcover notebooks, Corona typewriter, Macbook Air or what other writing implement is hip at the time and spend the rest of your life making things up?
Every year around June, your publisher sends you on a world-wide book tour. Other than that, you hang out with your writer buddies, who all happen to be famous writers also.
I guess that can happen too, but more often than not, things are a lot more complicated. Out of all the names you’ll find on the covers of books in bookshops, a lot of them, perhaps even the majority had other work besides writing. Some were teachers. Others had day jobs or ran businesses. Sometimes, it’s because their books didn’t sell enough. Other times, they didn’t want writing to be their main gig.
Anthony Trollope wrote 47 novels and countless short stories while working as a postal clerk. He finally quit that job at 52 years old. Franz Kafka worked as an insurance clerk his entire life. Kurt Vonnegut kept his teaching job even after his career took off.
But isn’t writing full-time the dream? Isn’t it when you reach your full potential as a writer?
When most people imagine writing full-time, they’re thinking of this carefree existence where you can focus solely on writing what you want to write. However, that isn’t writing full-time. That’s being rich, so you can do whatever you please (which may happen to be writing books).
Writing full-time is a job. It’s when you rely on what you write to pay the rent next month. You have to be pretty consistent and publish new work regularly to keep your readers interested.
You can hardly write anything you want because once you become known for something, your audience will want more of that thing. Imagine what would happen if Metallica put out a k-pop album? Or if Stephen King wrote a book about gardening? Their fans wouldn’t be thrilled.
When your writing pays your rent, can you afford to spend years experimenting with some sort of avant-garde genre mashup that your fans will probably hate?
People also assume that being a full-time writer makes writing easier. But when you have all the time in the world, it’s no longer scarce. You end up wasting a lot more of it. Having a day job at least forces you to use the little that you have more efficiently. Full-time writers struggle too. They just struggle with different problems.
My point is: you don’t have to be a full-time writer to have a massive impact. Some of the most celebrated writers never wrote full-time, and yet, they left behind vast bodies of work.
If you average about 250 words per day over the next 30 years, you’ll have written 34 novels. I’d be pretty happy with that. It doesn’t matter that you started late or stopped writing altogether for five years.
When your livelihood doesn’t depend on it, you can afford to experiment a lot more and push the boundaries in ways the established writers cannot. That’s where the truly disruptive literature comes from.
You can do a lot of damage as a casual writer.
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Past Editions
#187: Writing For Yourself, March 2021
#186: A Stimulus Check for Your Mind, March 2021
#185: Always Behind the Schedule. March 2021
#184: The Most Important Skill for Writers, February 2021
#183: The Writers’ Love-Hate Relationship With Writing, February 2021
One of the many things I love about this show is that they weren`t afraid of intimacy between friends. They early on established that SG-1 is a group of people who are very close to each other and care deeply about each other. Like Sam put it into words once: “We were a team, Teal'c. No one can even begin to understand what we went through together, what we mean to each other.” So it was only natural they were comfortable with each other enough to share a hug or touch in the moments of great discomfort or the great joy.
🌙 hey y'all! february is almost over, so this is just a little recommendation list of all the fics i read and thoroughly enjoyed this month, to show some appreciation to all the incredible writers on this site. seriously, you’re all absolute angels!
🌙 remember to show your support too and reblog and leave comments on the fics that you love!
Fandom: DC’s Arrow
Canon: Oliver Queen
OC: Amelia Queen (belonging to @darknightfrombeyond)
FC: Emily VanCamp
Trigger Warnings: . . . breaking and entering? I don’t think there are any in this one
Word Count: ~960
Whisper felt the Hood’s presence at her back, static as an encroaching storm. His shadow cut sharply into the pale plaster wall with every turn of the emergency lighting. He watched but made no move to stop her as she slid a narrow skeleton key into the door lock.
A smooth twist of her wrist, done with the ease of someone who had done this before, one who had used this tool so many times that the key had become an extension of her will. No different from her hands, her fingers.
Whisper, he thought now, not without some pride, the shadow who moves through walls with hardly a whisper to show for her passing, and in the depths of his hood his lip quirked. If they only knew how uncomplicated her mechanics were.
Old-school but not careless; Whisper remained acutely aware of the mechanics of it – of how the smooth length of her precious skeleton key slid past the spring-loaded pins, bypassing the need to align with the shear line.
She trusted her tools, as she trusted herself. And with nary a wasted motion, a wasted breath, she was in. The room was dark, lit only by a low bank of lights from behind a desk. Whisper – Amelia Queen – held the door long enough to allow Starling City’s notorious vigilante to slip inside before easing the door shut.
Her soft-soled shoes soundless on the floors, she moved to the desk. Did not pull out the chair. Did not sit down. From a hidden inner pocket of her thin black jacket, she withdrew a security fob and inserted it into the computer port.
Immediately, the preprogrammed virus coded into the fob moved from the computer to the building servers. Copying vital information into a secure folder, before replacing it with subtle alterations designed to confuse and protect.
This would take minutes.
For the first time since the man in the hood caught up with her, there was time enough to talk. To try and explain . . .
She asked, “How long have you known?”
Not a muscle moved on the vigilante. His identity carefully concealed under green leather and the shadows of a hood pulled low. She knew his name. His face. His stillness shamed even hers; he wrapped silence around himself like a shroud.
“Long enough,” he said and her heart leapt at the soft timber of that familiar voice, absent the guttural edge criminals all through the city were learning to fear. “Long enough that I could have done anything I wanted with this information.”
Amelia considered him. Calm. She wasn’t afraid of him, of what he intended.
“Could have,” she noted “should have. But didn’t. You haven’t told anyone.”
It wasn’t a question.
It didn’t require an answer.
The computer beeped. A smoky blue light flashed in the unlit room, only once. Data copy complete. The virus started to move through the vulnerable servers. Erasing very little. Altering data. From the hall, voices.
Neither of them moved.
A fresh question surfaced.
“So why now?”
Blue eyes glinted.
Amy moved out from behind the desk, and the vigilante let her approach. No more afraid of her, than she was of him. A hard-won trust existed between them, and that wasn’t so easily shaken.
Slowly, tentatively, as if testing to see if he would reject her touch she lay one black gloved hand on his chest. Could feel the strong, steady pulse beating there. His leathers warm against his skin. From this position, so close, Amelia could see past his hood to the face there. Handsome. Haunted.
She said, “Until now I didn’t know I’d been compromised. You’re right. You could have done anything you wanted with this information – people would kill for my identity but you didn’t. You’ve been protecting me.”
Yes. He held her stare, falling into clear, intelligent eyes and marveled at the depth of love he felt for this woman. Yes, he’d protected her. He hadn’t known that she knew this – it explained why she’d allowed him to approach when he arrived.
“Why would you surrender your own identity to me? Oliver, that was never . . .” her thoughts scattered. Swallowing past a suddenly dry throat, she recovered quickly, “It wasn’t necessary. So why now? Why would you tell me?”
“Says the woman who’s risking it all to protect me,” he countered, but mildly. Through sheer force of will he dragged his gaze from her eyes, and leveled it on the quietly humming computer at her back. He told her, “My name’s in there. Video, audio surveillance. They haven’t put the pieces together yet but they will and when they do they have everything.”
She came here tonight to protect him.
Maybe not Oliver Queen – she hadn’t known his identity until minutes ago, when he revealed it, but she did it to protect the man in the hood. The military-level encryption in the fob, looking as benign as a pencil left on a pad of paper, flashed again. Complete.
His identity secured. Amy’s attention slid. Her hand fell away and she returned to the computer, carefully retrieving the valuable device.
“All that explains what you’re doing here,” she said and he understood. He could have helped her, guarded her, without ever having to reveal his identity but in the moment it had seemed vitally important that she know.
That he equalize their dynamic.
He loved her. He did trust her. She needed to know.
“I don’t want to keep secrets,” this secret “just to keep you.”
Amelia Queen slid the clever piece of Syndicate gear into the hidden pocket of her jacket, secured it there, and offered her husband a look of such gentle warmth, “You’re not going to lose me, Oliver.”
I will only accept requests via my Submissions link.
Please don’t spam my inbox - I will send an Ask to alert you that your request has been seen, and accepted. No reply necessary. You will, of course, be tagged when your request is completed and available.
A/N: I reserve the right to deny any submission if I feel unable or uncomfortable writing your request. To be clear, I’m fairly easygoing so don’t be afraid to approach me with questions . . . with the exception of aggressive asks, I will always respond.
RULES
🦎 Requests MUST be Submitted with all required information
🦎 Requests MUST contain a Prompt
🦎 I DO accept requests for smut
please read my list under the cut at the bottom of this post for what requests are firm refusals
I may accept requests for dubcon; send the request, and I’ll let you know
I will never write non-con
🦎 Below you’ll find two request forms, depending on whether you would like to use one of my pre-established ocs . . . or you would like to place yourself as the protagonist
A Note: this is the closest I’ll come to writing a y/n story. You can ask me to place you in the protagonist’s seat. This option is tailored to you specifically and will require at least a superficial description of your physical appearance.
A Note 2: your real name is not required. Offer any name you would like me to use in place of your own. (If you would like your real name placed in your story, you are not required to tell me - or anyone - that this is not an alias.) Seriously, call yourself Caterpillar lol I just need a name.
🦎 Out of respect, self-inserts will NEVER be turned into an oc on my masterlist
REQUEST FORM 1 - for oc requests
1 - Prompt (if the prompt is a line of dialogue, you can leave it up to me to decide who says it - or specify who you would like to say it [the oc or the canon character])
2 - Fandom
3 - oc name - pick a pre-established oc (masterlist updated as new ocs are created) tell me if there’s something in particular you’d like, or else I’ll just create an appropriate oc on the spot for your request - my masterlist is still under construction
4 - Fic Type:
imagine (less than 100-words)
drabble (100-words, approx. I may go over)
short story (1,000 to 3,000-words)
REQUEST FORM 2 - for self-insert requests
1 - Prompt (if the prompt is a line of dialogue, you can leave it up to me to decide who says it - or specify who you would like to say it [you or the canon character])
2 - Fandom
4 - Fic Type:
imagine (less than 100-words)
drabble (100-words, approx. I may go over)
short story (1,000 to 3,000-words)
5 - Self Insert . . . answer whichever you're comfortable sharing; I’m writing you as the protagonist of this story. Choosing not to answer these won’t disqualify your request.
Necessary:
Hair Color
Eye Color
Skin Color
Gender
Sexuality (if necessary, for what you would like written)
Extended Details:
Hair type/texture/length
Freckles/glasses
piercings/tattoos (and their location)
Scars
Body type/weight
7 - Self-insert Name (as stated above: your real name is not required. Offer any name you would like me to use in place of your own. If you do want me to use your real name you don’t have to tell me - or anyone - that it’s your real name.)
🦎 When requests are closed, I ask that you respect that decision. I will stop accepting requests once I’ve accumulated a fair amount and need breathing room to finish those lol and NOT because I’m done with you all. ^_^ I promise.
🦎 Please be patient. Not a single accepted request will ever be forgotten. As I do consider this blog, and the requests I receive, as a form of self-employment I allow myself Saturdays and Sundays off to avoid burnout.
🦎 I keep to a firm age-appropriate pairing. For example, I will write 16 y/o Scott McCall (Teen Wolf) with a 15-16-17 year old partner. However, if writing a Stiles/Derek ship . . . I will age-up Stiles to his 20s.
🦎 I accept suggestions for new ocs via Ask (not Submissions)
🛑 ❌ 🛑 ❌ 🛑 ❌ 🛑
OUT OF RESPECT OF TRIGGERS, THINGS I WILL NOT WRITE ARE BELOW
🛑 ❌ 🛑 ❌ 🛑 ❌ 🛑
These are a FIRM “no”.
There will be no negotiation.
Degradation
Dehumanization
Physical Abuse (not to be confused with rough play)
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