Writing is Hard

Syd // 28 // they/them // BA in English // This blog features writing prompts, inspiration, and my own work. My main is your-jellyfish-senpai, so follow-backs will be from there! I take requests! Reference the request guidelines page for more info. I also have a ko-fi: ko-fi.com/jellyfishsenpai

[luna-azzurra]

Something nobody prepares you for is that the better you get at writing the harder it becomes. beginners write freely because they don't know enough to know what's wrong. then you learn. and suddenly you can see every single flaw in real time as you're making it and you have to write anyway while your own brain is in the corner going "that's a weak verb. that transition is lazy. you've used that word three times." getting good at this is mostly just getting better at ignoring yourself.

[exhuastedpigeon]

Sometimes you hear a song and a fic pops into your head full formed. This is a trap. The fic may be fully formed in your brain, but you still Have to write it down. This is an important step that most people forget about.

[an0neemouse]

Write whatever you want. Write that incredibly niche thing that only two other people on earth will get. Write the super indulgent cliche thing that makes you kick your feet giddily. Write the angry rage story that whumps them all and makes people cry.

Whatever it is that YOU want to write. Write it. Because only YOU can.

[herssian]

online numbers can really fuck you up when it comes to your creative work because you're sharing something you worked on with all your heart but it's very important to remember there's actual people behind those numbers. even if it's 1. that's one whole actual person. that's a human being who said "haha nice". that's a connection with a REAL person with a REAL life and REAL thoughts and feelings and experiences. like. damn. that should mean something

[ghostcaterwaul]

Reblog to gain creative energy and to give more creative energy to the person you reblogged this from.

[shnehollander]

when the sex is a character analysis

[bwooom]

i love you mirror versions i love you possession i love you cloning i love you simulacrums i love you shadow selves i love you digital copies of a mind i love you alternate timeline versions i love you tropes that play with identity and what it means to be a certain person

[anonyymoose]

highly recommend: making that character’s mourning WORSE!!!! make them play pretend with that corpse. make it seem like they’re moving on until they start telling the new person to start dyeing their hair the color of the person they lost and start calling them their name to make it clear that they’re hanging out with this person now to try and make them into the old one. make your grieving character put people in the same situation the person they’re mourning died in and have them hope they die to prove it was unpreventable. make your grieving character put people in the same situation the person they’re mourning died in and have them hope they live to prove that it wasn’t doomed to happened. make your grieving characters actively harm the people around them and the memory of the person they lost. I love you morally dubious grieving characters

[aquilacalvitium]

Write it badly or it'll never be written

Write it badly or it'll never be written

Write it badly or it'll never be written

Write it badly or it'll never be written

Write it badly or it'll never be written

[aquilacalvitium]

Please keep interacting with this post because when I come to tumblr to procrastinate, this shows up again in my notifications and guilts me into writing again

[bloodraven55]

it never fails to surprise me how some people will simply take every single thing in a story at face value and assume that what the characters are saying or doing or thinking must always be true even when all of the context clues are screaming the opposite

[bloodraven55]

[luna-azzurra]

Quick Tips for Writing Time Skips

°˖➴ SHOW THE EVIDENCE, not the time!! don't say "three months later" and have everything exactly the same. Show the evidence: the houseplant is dead now, there's a new coffee shop, their hair is longer, the season changed, the relationship shifted

°˖➴ People don't pause their lives!! during your time skip, other characters didn't freeze. They got new jobs, started dating someone, developed opinions, had experiences. When we come back, there should be GAPS in what your POV character knows

°˖➴ Anchor it with a CONCRETE detail!! "The last time she'd been in this room, there'd been snow on the ground. Now the garden outside was screaming with roses." Give the reader something tangible to mark the passage

°˖➴ What DIDN'T happen is interesting!! "Six weeks and still no word from him" or "Another year of birthday candles she didn't make wishes on" sometimes the time skip is defined by absence and waiting

°˖➴ Compress boring stuff, expand important stuff!! "The trial took three months" can be one sentence. But the five minutes after the verdict? That might be three pages. TIME IS ELASTIC in fiction, use it!!!

°˖➴ Characters should FEEL differently about the skip !! time passing changes perspective. Something that felt devastating last year might feel trivial now. Or vice versa. What seemed certain became a mistake. SHOW THE SHIFT

[writingdose]

things I won’t let ai take away from human writers

em dash

“not x, not y, but z”

short sentence stacking as a stylistic choice

none of these belong to ai. these are all what human writers have been writing since day one, way before ai was invented. ai was trained to mimic how human writers write — so em dash, not x not y but z and short sentence stacking would never have been used by ai at all if ai hadn’t learned and mimicked them from human writers.

no, you are not “fighting against ai” by accusing every work that has em dash, not x not y but z or short sentence stacking in it as ai-generated, you are helping ai harm the writing community by engaging in witch hunt and scaring human writers away from creating/sharing their works for fear of being wrongly accused of using ai.

speculations, accusations and ai witch hunt harm the writing community as much as ai does, if not more.

[lavenderpanic]

all of my writing is actually just thinly-veiled fantasy about being seen at your worst and still being loved

[beastliness]

more people need to give themselves permission to write and draw pornography

[beastliness]

it is virtuous and necessary that you write, draw, and distribute pornography

[radfemart]

can we start with not conflating "erotic/sexual art or writing" with pornography

[beastliness]

no lmao

[awakefor48hours]

"You should create for yourself" and "it's okay to feel discouraged when creating your own original projects if no one interacts with them" are two sentences that should be able to co-exist with each other

[awakefor48hours]

On the one hand, you should kill that capitalist in your head that tells you to make art only for the enjoyment of other people. On the other hand, it's totally fine to be disappointed that you spent hours or even days on something that only got 4 notes. You can feel both ways.

[aquilacalvitium]

Write it badly or it'll never be written

Write it badly or it'll never be written

Write it badly or it'll never be written

Write it badly or it'll never be written

Write it badly or it'll never be written

[aquilacalvitium]

Please keep interacting with this post because when I come to tumblr to procrastinate, this shows up again in my notifications and guilts me into writing again

[quietwingsinthesky]

there’s wip (active development) and wip (stuck in development hell) and wip (oh you’re not even getting funding for this one)

[mountaintop-daydreaming]

this is wip (only exists in my mind when i listen to that one specific song) erasure