Hello is this gideonisms? I’m way too full of anxiety to send an ask off anon on that blog but if you haven’t tried magnesium supplements for your period cramps you really should, it’s really honestly life changing. I used to like… throw up the pain was so bad and once I nearly passed out and taking ibuprofen and paracetamol and using a hot water bottle still wasn’t enough to make me functional but when I take magnesium supplements I need one dose of painkiller at a time, if that. Magnesium helps relax muscles which is how it works. 300mg a day is the recommended dose for period cramps, and I recommend looking into it to make sure it’s suitable for you before just going for it, but honestly if you can try it you really should it’s life changing. It isn’t an instant thing but if you’ve been taking them for a while by your next period they should help. In terms of your current period, if you have a microwave you can make a surprisingly hot heat pad with some socks filled with rice. Only microwave it for short periods at a time though.
Aw thanks anon this is so sweet of you!! you don't have to be anxious I am the least intimidating person ever. currently could not take a grasshopper in a fight! but I get it. yes this is gideonisms but my ancient blog from high school. Will look into this!! Thanks for the tips & I will have to try the rice sock thing. Hope your day is going well!
I… know I have often seemed dismissive of your concerns before, and in fact I was getting ready to raise the issue of Martin’s continuing to live in the Institute’s basement, especially as I believe he’s been stealing fire extinguishers.
you’re supposed to steal office supplies at a shitty job, tho
also he probably doesn’t mean it but imagine if he had tried to kick martin out, jon would have fought him tooth-and-nail
Elias resists the urge to rub his sore temples. He thinks himself a good actor in the role of beleaguered, overworked boss but sometimes speaking with Jon makes him feel as though it isn’t an act at all.
“Most writers were the kids who easily, almost automatically, got A’s in English class. (There are exceptions, but they often also seem to be exceptions to the general writerly habit of putting off writing as long as possible.) At an early age, when grammar school teachers were struggling to inculcate the lesson that effort was the main key to success in school, these future scribblers gave the obvious lie to this assertion. Where others read haltingly, they were plowing two grades ahead in the reading workbooks. These are the kids who turned in a completed YA novel for their fifth-grade project. It isn’t that they never failed, but at a very early age, they didn’t have to fail much; their natural talents kept them at the head of the class. This teaches a very bad, very false lesson: that success in work mostly depends on natural talent. Unfortunately, when you are a professional writer, you are competing with all the other kids who were at the top of their English classes. Your stuff may not—indeed, probably won’t—be the best anymore. If you’ve spent most of your life cruising ahead on natural ability, doing what came easily and quickly, every word you write becomes a test of just how much ability you have, every article a referendum on how good a writer you are. As long as you have not written that article, that speech, that novel, it could still be good. Before you take to the keys, you are Proust and Oscar Wilde and George Orwell all rolled up into one delicious package. By the time you’re finished, you’re more like one of those 1940’s pulp hacks who strung hundred-page paragraphs together with semicolons because it was too much effort to figure out where the sentence should end.”
—
Why Writers Are the Worst Procrastinators - Megan McArdle - The Atlantic
The Why Writing Is So Hard field of psychology is very interesting to me.
(via abbrasions)
Oh my god. I understand so much. I was not the top of my class cos I had executive function issues. But yes. I used to just spit out the “you can’t do this all in one night” project in one night and I would get a good grade. And yes I stall on writing because I don’t want it to suck.
(via deducecanoe)
Salt in the wound: when I actually listened to the instructions to do a little bit at a time over several weeks, I’d get Cs. When I’d leave the work to the last minute and do the whole project in one night I’d get As.
(via lemonsharks)
Oh god yes.
Here in my spheres of the Internet, it’s funny how everyone shares this idea that WRITING = fantasy and science fiction, that WRITERS are people who get loads of money to publish their space elf stories. I think we all found each other here and now because we share these roots of being The Bookish Children, who aspired to be Tolkien or Adams when we grew up, and I think that’s great, and I’m so glad we share all this.
It’s weird, though, how our Writing About Writing then tends to be about fiction. And fiction is such a strange market, a really weird beast. I think that a lot of this post applies to fiction writers in a particularly toxic and demoralizing way but it’s also very true in nonfiction writing.
As a kid you have all of these… IDEAS about nonfiction writing. That your textbooks and news stories and magazines and adventures and dictionaries and everything are prepared lovingly and truthfully by experts. Edited and approved by some great authority. It isn’t Authors or Writers who create this stuff; you don’t want to grow up to be them; they are oracles, not celebrities. There is still this perception that nonfiction is handed down benevolently, like stone tablets from God.
And the truth of it is that nonfiction is handed down by whoever met the deadline first. These were generally not The Bookish Children whose Daydreams Finally Took Fruitful Wing. These were the ones who believed Terry Pratchett when he said “If you trust in yourself…and believe in your dreams…and follow your star…you’ll still get beaten by people who spent their time working hard and learning things and weren’t so lazy.”
The truth is, natural talent attracts a certain magician’s-flair attention, but that the Content Machine is starving, and it gobbles up sparkly cupcakes just as fast as it gobbles up plain bread. The news cycle turns over. Nobody’s reading it carefully, thinking of the children, setting words to flake and texture against each other just so. They’re thinking of Wednesday. They’re afraid they’re about to be found out as Mediocre, and if they miss another deadline they will get the Raised Eyebrow.
Talent is a pony you can ride for 3000 words, but when your job is 10,000 words a week then you need a fuckin trained warhorse that puts its head down and carries you stolidly through a battlefield of distractions and doesn’t listen when you try to steer it otherwise.
So you get this dichotomy in Writing about Writing, where in Fiction Writing you’re encouraged to build an elaborate fairy grotto and arrange the correct pencils in pretty Mason jars to attract the attentions of a Muse, and then do a bit of performance art where you try to market yourself while also being very humble and modest - it’s not very evidence-based, is it? And in Nonfiction it’s just THROW WORDS AT THE PAGE UNTIL THEY STICK! THROW WORDS AT THE WALL - THROW WORDS AT YOUR MOTHER. THROW YOUR MOTHER AT THE WALL. FUCK FUCK BALLS THEY’RE SLIDING OFF!! FUCK HAND ME THAT CONCLUSION WE’LL NAIL IT INTO PLACE AND PAINT OVER IT AND IT’LL KIND OF… CRUST OVER. THIS IS CRAP, IT’S THE WORST THING I’VE EVER MADE, SEND THE FUCKER OUT THERE YES GOOD DONE.
And the Nonfiction gets written, every damn day, thousands of words, filling up the Internet, bringing the news, coming through the radio, teaching the children, adorning the museums, educating the people, telling the truth, selling the product - it gets out there. But don’t think it isn’t creative, powerful, coming from some essential source - its pedigree is just as potent as fiction’s. This post may be terrible, but it has warhorses and cupcakes and all sorts of strange and alarming imagery. And most of nonfiction writing isn’t good. Most of it is workhorse, mediocre, bringing the truth to your mouth - some of it’s terrible. This certainly is.
And you didn’t notice. You noticed it was there.
Maybe try writing fiction like you’re writing nonfiction. Maybe it will help.
the All Around: speaks, reads, and writes both languages pretty well
the Conversational: one language is stronger than the other; can speak the other language a lot better than they read/write it (a lot of kids of immigrants are this type)
the High Schooler: understands what’s being said to them in the other language, can’t really speak it
don’t have your characters randomly drop words from their other language mid-sentence around people who don’t speak it lol
languages are a mindset thing. like personally if i’m around english-speakers, i’m speaking english and i don’t really switch to my other language (which is portuguese)
so like if you’re writing a bilingual character who speaks spanish and have them say something like “hey chad let’s go to the biblioteca” to an english speaker i’ll probably spend 5 minutes laughing and then close your story lmao
exception: the character is speaking in their weaker language and forgot a word (”where are the…? uh… llaves…. keys! keys, where are they?”)
otherwise really the only time your character should be randomly switching languages mid-sentence is if they’re talking to another bilingual
like i don’t speak spanish but i’ve legit never heard a spanish speaker say “ay dios mio” to gringos lmao
conversations between two bilingual people can take a few different forms:
Pick One: they pick one language and kinda stick with it for the whole conversation (a conversation i might have with my portuguese-speaking mom: ”you okay?” “yeah, i’m good. how’re you?” “i’m fine, but your dad-”)
Back-and-Forth: someone says something in one language, the other person replies in the other (”tudo bem?” “yeah, i’m good. how’re you?” “tou bem, mas o seu pai-”)
Combo: they speak a combo of the two languages, a popular example being spanglish, though basically every bilingual has their own combo language (”tudo bem?” “sim, tou bem. how’re you?” “i’m fine, mas o seu pai-”)
when in doubt: just ask a bilingual to look at your stuff and tell you if anything sounds weird
combo languages can look different depending on the bilingual
me and my cousin (native english speakers) speaking our portuguese/english combo sounds a lot different than my mom and my godmother (native portguese speakers) doing the same thing
the kids of immigrants usually come up with their own unique way of saying things that are different than native speakers
if you’re writing a bilingual family the older kids’ll probably be more bilingual than the younger ones
also, to clarify: bilingual characters might say words in another language on purpose in front of non-speakers
either to fuck with them or just ‘cause the word captures what they’re feeling more (i use “caralho” a lot)– basically the point is that accidental switching is relatively uncommon
i know earlier i said that people will forget words if they’re speaking their weaker language but tbh i do it with my stronger language too so really it works both ways
filler words are weirdly universal
so like while bilingual people don’t usually switch languages around people who aren’t bilingual we’ll throw filler words in
“ele me olhou e, like, eu juro que eu quase deu um soco nele-”
a lot of languages borrow words from english so it’s not too weird to have a random english word in an otherwise non-english conversation (my aunt @ my mom: “lilian você viu meu post no Facebook?”)
also sounds in general are just kind of a language transcending thing
you wanna find out what someone’s first language was?? break one of their bones lol
legit me when i cracked my rib: “AIIIIIII JESUS CHRIST TAKE ME TO THE HOSPITAL”
so if your character gets hurt they might make a sound of pain associated with their native language but will probably still speak in the language of the people they’re surrounded by. probably. it depends on just how much pain they’re in
if two people start speaking another language in public there’s a 40% chance they’re talking shit and a 60% chance they’re having a conversation like: “where’s the bathroom” “i don’t know, ask the waitress she’s right here” “i can’t just ask-”
Funny bilingual thing that happened to me: I got roped into a trip to the US during a bad depressive episode, made an overnight detour to a friend’s house to escape my Florida aunt, and in the next morning my friend asked me a question (in English) and I just blearily answered it in mumbly portuguese. Like I understood his question perfectly but my brain-to-mouth machinery was still set to PT-BR.
When you get this, reply with five things that make you happy, then send it to the first ten people in your activity :)
Thanks, anon, I was in a bad mood and it's always good for me to try and think about some positives!1. The people I've met while working at the college writing center2. I work really early at my other job, and I like being in the store before everyone gets there+eating my bagel in the back room.3. The feeling of a fresh buzz cut4. A foggy morning at the ocean5. I knit slowly, but it makes me happy to watch my scarves grow longer day by day as I add a few rows at a time. I'm an old woman
OH MY GOD whyyyy did no one tell me you’re supposed to send thank-yous after interviews?? Why would I do that???
“Thank you for this incredibly stressful 30 minutes that I have had to re-structure my entire day around and which will give me anxiety poos for the next 24 hours.”
I HATE ETIQUETTE IT’S THE MOST IMPOSSIBLE THING FOR ME TO LEARN WITHOUT SOMEONE DIRECTLY TELLING ME THIS SHIT
NO ONE TOLD YOU???? WTF! I HAVE FAILED YOU. Also: Dear ______: Thank you so much for the opportunity to sit down with you (&________) to discuss the [insert job position]. I am grateful to be considered for the position. I think I will be a great fit at [company name], especially given my experience in __________. [insert possible reference to something you talked about, something that excited you.] I look forward to hearing from you [and if you are feeling super confident: and working together in the future]. Sincerely, @mellivorinae
My brother got a really great paid internship one summer. The guy who hired him said the deciding factor was the professional thank you letter my brother sent after the interview.
Confirmed! I interviewed for a job right after arriving in NY. The interview went incredibly well, and I went home and immediately wrote a thank you letter and put it in the mail. I had a super good feeling about this interview.
I didn’t get the job.
However, a few weeks later, I was called in to interview with another editor in the same company, and I did get that job. I found out later from the initial editor (the one who didn’t hire me) that he had planned to offer me the job, but since I didn’t follow up with a thank you letter, he assumed I didn’t really want it. He offered the job to another contender–but when he got my letter in the mail shortly after the offer had already been made, he went to HR and gave me a glowing recommendation. It was based on that recommendation that I got called in for the second interview.
So: send an email thank you immediately (same day!) after the interview. If you’re feeling extra, go ahead and send a written one too. OR go immediately to a coffee shop, write the letter, and return to the office and give it to the secretary.
Pro tip: If you really want HR to develop a personal interest in your application, publicly thank them on linkedin. Just make a short post telling your network about how X recruiter really went above and beyond to make you feel welcome, or about how be accommodating and professional they were, or whatever. Make sure to use the mention feature so they’ll get a notification and see it.
Flattery will get you everywhere… and public flattery that might make its way back to their manager, doubly so.
Obligatory plug for one of FreePrintable.net’s sites: ThankYouLetter.ws. They have a whole section with interview thank you letter templates, and a page with specific tips for interview thank you letters. (There are also tons of other letter templates if you browse around a bit.)
Also like for cover letters I always closed with “thank you for the opportunity, and I look forward to hearing from your company, should my skills fit the needs of this position.” Which got me employed less than a year after law school in the field of my choice
I might be losing my mind a little bit, but I swear someone asked me how to write when they don’t have time, but now I can’t locate the question in my inboxes or messages, but I thought I’d address it just in case someone actually did ask me this question.
First off, let me start by saying, I may not be the best person to answer this. I’m not married, don’t have kids, and I work in the writing industry. So if anyone reading this has their own expertise to add to this post, please leave a comment for others.
Before getting too far into this topic, I want to acknowledge that some people may be dealing with a lot of life challenges at the moment, with serious health problems, being a caretaker for a loved one, serious financial problems, and unforeseen life crises, and may be legitimately unable to work on their writing because they ran out of today’s time yesterday and their physical and mental stamina ran out before they got out of bed this morning. If you find yourself in such a category, don’t fret. Life happens. It won’t be this crazy forever.
But for the average person who has at least half a grip on their crazy busy life but can’t quite squeeze writing into said life, here are some ideas that might help.
1. Get more out of your schedule by living with more intention.
Some of us human beings struggle to live intentionally. We pull out our phones to check on something, and before we know it, we’ve lost an hour to the social media black hole. Or we sat down to take a break and suddenly Netflix is asking us if we are still watching Stranger Things.
I know what some of you are thinking: Isn’t this post supposed to be about people who are too busy to write? Not about people who are just sitting around?
My point is, whether or not you actually spend hours unexpectedly watching Netflix, there are probably parts of your day you are living without intention, which usually means time is slipping through your fingers.
Not everyone wants to live every hour intentionally. Many cultures and lifestyles around the world don’t; they just go with the flow and do whatever, like the beach lifestyle.
What I am saying is that if you are a busy person who doesn’t have time to write, and you want to have time to write, this might be what you want to look at. Do you have behaviors and parts of the day where you are unintentionally losing time? Do you have the tendency to procrastinate things you don’t want to do, for example?
Intentional living doesn’t mean you never get breaks. It means that when you take a break, you take breaks you intended to take. It doesn’t mean that you never have free time. It means that when you have free time, it’s something you intended. Intentional living means making every hour count, and getting rid of moments where time doesn’t. It means when you are doing something, you are doing something, not kind of doing it. If I’m cleaning my room, but sort of just leisurely cleaning it, I’m probably losing time. But if I decide to draw upon more intention, and clean my room more intentionally, I’ll make an effort to do it in a more efficient manner and get done quicker.
So look at your lifestyle and see if you can free up more time by living more intentionally. And notice that I didn’t say you had to live at max capacity intention. I said more intention.
2. Don’t work harder. Work smarter.
There is a business show I love to watch called The Profit. In it, successful business man Marcus Lemonis goes into failing businesses and helps build them back up. One of the things Marcus says is that it’s better to work smarter than it is to work harder.
And when you think about it, it makes perfect sense. Here is a simple example. Let’s say I’m working really hard at doing the dishes. I’m working as hard as I can, but my methods are random. I hand-wash and put the dishes away one by one. I’m putting a lot of time and effort into getting this kitchen clean. But you know what’s better than working harder at that method? Working smarter.
Instead of hand-washing everything, I put them in the dishwasher. Instead of putting items away one by one as I wash them, I put them into piles and take the whole stack of plates to the cupboard at once.
Working smarter is about looking for ways to work more efficiently. It’s about finding ways to get more done in the time you have, and finding easier but still effective methods.
Pretty much everyone is doing something that could be done more efficiently. When you work smarter you can free up more time. Or, when you write smarter, you can get more done in the amount of time you have.
3. Stop using mental energy focusing on the fact you don’t have enough time.
My dad is a really busy person. One thing he said to me several months ago has stuck in my mind. He said, it’s amazing how much more you can get done when you stop thinking about how you can’t get it done.
This is probably going to sound weird, but the way we think is also a usage of time–our mental time. The mental time we spend thinking about how we feel sorry for ourselves is mental time we could be putting to use in a different way. You might could even say we can try to think with more intention or to think smarter. Instead of thinking about how I don’t have time to do something, I could be spending the “mental time” and “mental stamina,” thinking about how I can do that thing more efficiently.
Feeling sorry for ourselves about not having time often leads to sluggish demeanors and attitudes, and only makes it that much more difficult to be productive. It’s like we’ve dropped a boulder in our own path that we now have to push out of the way before we can continue.
The older I get, the more I realize, how we think about things is everything.
Unfortunately, though, when you make statements like that, you get a whole bunch of people going out and trying to micro-manage all their thoughts and feelings, and they actually end up just suppressing said thoughts and feelings.
It’s not about suppressing–it’s not about telling yourself you aren’t allowed to think or feel that way, that breeds resentment toward self and unrealistic expectations. Instead, if you have a problem with the way you think, you acknowledge it and move on. Or, depending on how serious it is, you acknowledge it, work through it, and then move on. It takes time–maybe months or years–but eventually it won’t be a tendency to think that way anymore. I am a strong believer that in most circumstances, we can eventually change how we think.
Anyway, my point is, stop using your “mental time” on thoughts that aren’t helpful to you. You don’t need them anymore. It’s not helpful to focus on how little time you have. What is helpful is focusing on how to best manage the time or task you have been given. What is helpful is spending your mental stamina on how you’ll build your better life, realistically.
4. Stop procrastinating and implement the 20-minute rule.
Learn to start doing something you don’t want to do, when you should do it. Don’t watch an episode first. Don’t play Candy Crush first. Sit down and start working. Remember, it’s okay if you really, really, really don’t want to do something. You are allowed to feel that way. But what matters is that you do it despite it.
My brother and I have a method for when we don’t feel like working on something. It’s what I think of as the 20-minute rule. Now, I don’t know psychologically why this works, but it works for both of us almost every single time. And I’ve seen it work for many others.
When you don’t want to work on something, you sit down and work on it anyway, telling yourself you only need to do it for 20 minutes. Now, you need to actually do the work intentionally–actually put in effort, not just sit there–and I don’t know why, but almost always, by 20 minutes in, you realize it’s not that bad. It’s like my dad always says, “Nothing is as bad as you think it’s going to be.” After 20 minutes, it’s easier to work longer, and I just keep working anyway.
You can try this with anything you don’t want to do, in order to get it done quicker so you can free up writing time. But you can also do this with writing, when you finally have freed up a few minutes to write and don’t feel like writing. Just give yourself 20 minutes. I bet 9/10 times you’ll want to keep writing after the 20 minutes.
5. Use the percolation approach to writing.
There are discovery writers, people who like to just sit down and start writing and “discover” the story as they go; and there are outliners, people who like to outline the story before they start writing. But there is also another writing approach that’s very common that we don’t talk about much, which is the percolation approach.
Percolation is when you get ideas for a story, and you let them sit in your mind for a while until you are ready to write them. If you don’t have a lot of time to write, or time to set aside to consistently write, the percolation method is a good one for you. You probably have ideas of what kind of stories you want to write. Let them sit in your mind. Let your subconscious take a stab at them. Think about them when falling asleep at night, or in the morning before you get out of bed.
When you feel ready to write the scene and have a few minutes, you’re all ready to go.
I think most writers use a little bit of all three methods. The tricky part about percolation is you might hit an area that doesn’t eventually come together on its own, so you do need to sit down and work it out. But, heck, you can even use the percolation method scene-by-scene. When one scene is ready to write, you write it. Then you let more ideas percolate, and then you write that scene. You don’t have to write chronologically either. Write the scenes you want, and before you know it, you might have half the book in your head done.
People sometimes send me Asks wanting writing advice. I suck at it. I don’t really know how I do the writing, or how one should do the writing, or what one should do to get better at the writing. All I can ever think to say is “write a lot of stuff and you will get better at the writing.” Which is true, but hardly a bolt from the sky.
Well, as it turns out, I do have one piece of Legit Writing Advice, and I am going to share it with you, right now. If you were in any of my writing workshop groups at a con, you’ve heard this advice already.
Warning: you’re going to fucking hate it. But if you do it, you will thank me.
If you have a piece of fiction you’re serious about, something you might want to actually shop around, or just something you really are into and want to make it as good as you can…do NOT edit it.
Repeat. DO NOT EDIT.
REWRITE.
As in, print out the whole fucking thing and re-enter it, every word (or use two screens). Retype the whole thing. Recreate it from the ground up using your first draft as a template. Start with a blank page and re-enter every. single. word.
I hear you screaming. OH MY GOD THAT’S INSANE.
Yes. Yes, it is.
It is also the most powerful thing you will ever do for a piece of fiction that you are serious about.
Now, let’s get real. I don’t do this for most things. I don’t do it for my fanfiction. But if it’s something original, something I might like to get to a professional level - I do it. You absolutely COULD do it for fanfiction. It’s just up to you and how much time you want to sink into a piece.
You can edit, sure. But you WILL NOT get down to the level of change that needs to happen in a second draft. You will let things slide. Your eyes will miss things. You will say “eh, good enough.”
The first time I did this, on someone else’s advice, I was dubious. Within two pages, I was saying WHY HAVE I NOT BEEN DOING THIS ALL THE TIME. I was amazed at how much change was happening. By the time I got to the end, I had an entirely different novel than the one I’d started with. When you’re already re-entering every single word, it’s easy to make deep changes. You’ll reformat sentences, you’ll switch phrases around, you’ll massage your word choice. You’ll discover whole paragraphs that don’t need to be there at all because they became redundant. You’ll find dialogue exchanges that need reimagining. Whole plot points will suddenly be different, whole story arcs will reveal their flaws and get re-drawn.
You cannot get down to the fundamental level of change that’s required just by editing an existing document. You have to rebuild it if you really want your story to evolve. You will be AMAZED at the difference it will make.
It will take time. It will seem like a huge, Herculean task. I’m not saying it’s easy. It isn’t. But it is absolutely revolutionary.
Try it. I promise, you will see what I mean.
*PSA: Tipsy!Lori wrote this post. In case you couldn’t tell.
different anon but can you rec me some good high fantasy??? im dying for something good to read over here lmao
abso-fucking-lutely
The Goblin Emperor by Katherine Addison: slow moving, internal plot that is so goddamn charming i died at least 17 times listening to the audiobook. City of Stairs by Robert Jackson Bennett second world modern high fantasy but it’s sooooo goooood. The Killing Moon by N.K. Jemisin honestly read everything by Jemisin. She’s one of the absolute best in high fantasy. An Ember in the Ashes by Sabaa Tahir this book was absolutely overhyped but i think it was well deserved. Tahir did classic/predictable tropes well which is literally all that matters in HF. However, that said, if her publisher doesn’t buy more books this series will not have as much of a lasting stay. This needs to be a long series not a short book-and-sequel or trilogy. The book didn’t… really work on its own at all, it worked with the promise of a sequel. The Mirror Empire by Kameron Hurley YA’LL I JUST REALLY WANT EVERYONE TO READ KAMERON HURLEY.Prince of Fools by Mark Lawrence Lawrence is really bad when it comes to lady rep in his books but his books are so good. Also he’s got a trilogy about killer nuns coming out soon that will have a female protag so we’ll see how that goes. Prince of Thorns by Mark Lawrence Jorg is the W O R S T he is my terrible awful son and I love him. This is pretty grim!dark in every sense of the genre. Crown Duel by Sherwood Smith ok it’s court drama high fantasy but it’s GOOD court drama high fantasyThe Naming by Alison Croggon Croggon is the only YA HF writer whose books emulate classic high fantasy in every sense of the term. Found manuscript style and everything. The Eye of the World by Robert Jordan WHATEVER IT’S 14 BOOKS AND I’VE ONLY READ THE FIRST BUT RAND IS MY SON. MY SON. The Burning Sky by Sherry Thomas ok this first book is a bit of a clusterfuck in terms of world building but the characters are so endearing and the sequel really fixes all the problems i had with the first book.
HAVE YOU READ URSULA K. LE GUIN BECAUSE HER. ROBIN HOBB? EVERYTHING BY ROBIN HOBB. Start with Assassin’s Apprentice. Honestly, Robin Hobb is the #goal for me.
While I haven’t read Cinda Williams’ Chima’s high fantasy series, I’ve heard its great and I believe that because she’s amazing. I also haven’t read Brian Staveley’s Unhewn Throne trilogy but I’ve heard it’s really really good and I believe that.
Obviously read Garth Nix’s Old Kingdom books if you haven’t.Obviously my entire internet presence is a testimonial to Leigh Bardugo’s Grisha trilogy (they low key changed my life shh) Kristen Cashore’s Graceling realm books are a given. Everything Brandon Sanderson writes is pure gold, the man is unreal. I love everything by Maria V. Snyder but she can err on the side of commercially predictable. I still love her kind of high fantasy.
But, yeah, you will notice everything I rec is either…. like classic HF, adult HF or relatively well known YA HF………
One of the strongest bonds that link us to our favorite stories is the emotional tie, or books that sink a fist right into our guts. When you finished a book where you couldn’t let go of after the last page, chances are, the author successfully punched you in the spleen. If you’ve ever wondered how to do just that, here are some of my favorite methods:
Make your reader root for your main character(s). Make your character stretch out their arm toward their goal, as far as they can to reach, until their fingertips barely brush it. Make your character want something so much that your reader wants it, too.
When your character trips and stumbles and stops to question themselves, the readers will hold their breath.
Push your character to their very limit, and then a little further.
When your character hits the bottom, they should scrape themselves back together and get back up. Give readers a reason to believe in your character.
If your character is challenging your plot, your plot should challenge your character.
Leave a trail of intrigue, of questions, of “what if?” and “what next?”
If a character loses something (a battle, an important memento, part of themselves), they must eventually gain something in equal exchange, whether for good or bad.
Raise the stakes. Then raise them higher.
Don’t feel pressured to kill a character (especially simply to generate emotional appeal). A character death should serve the plot, not the shock factor. Like anything else in your story, only do it if it must be done and there’s no other way around it.
What’s the worst that can happen? Make it happen. Just make sure that the reader never loses hope.
How to Plot A Complex Novel in One Day (It WILL take all day)
Now first, I have to say, that the plot you’re able to come up with in one day is not going to be without its flaws, but coming up with it all at once, the entire story unfolds right in front of you and makes you want to keep going with it. So, where to begin?
What is your premise and basic plot? Pick your plot. I recommend just pulling one from this list. No plots are “original” so making yours interesting and complicated will easily distract from that fact, that and interesting characters. Characters will be something for you to work on another day, because this is plotting day. You’ll want the main plot to be fairly straight forward, because a confusing main plot will doom you if you want subplots.
Decide who the characters will be. They don’t have to have names at this point. You don’t even need to know who they are other than why they have to be in the story. The more characters there are the more complicated the plot will be. If you intend to have more than one subplot, then you’ll want more characters. Multiple interconnected subplots will give the illusion that the story is very complicated and will give the reader a lot of different things to look at at all times. It also gives you the chance to develop many side characters. The plot I worked out yesterday had 13 characters, all were necessary. Decide their “roles” don’t bother with much else. This seems shallow, but this is plot. Plot is shallow.
Now, decide what drives each character. Why specifically are they in this story? You can make this up. You don’t even know these characters yet. Just so long as everyone has their own motivations, you’re in the clear.
What aren’t these characters giving away right off the bat? Give them a secret! It doesn’t have to be something that they are actively lying about or trying to hide, just find something that perhaps ties them into the plot or subplot. This is a moment to dig into subplot. This does not need to be at all connected to their drive to be present in the story. Decide who is in love with who, what did this person do in the 70’s that’s coming back to bite them today, and what continues to haunt what-his-face to this very day. This is where you start to see the characters take shape. Don’t worry much about who they are or what they look like, just focus on what they’re doing to the story.
What is going to change these characters? Now this will take some thinking. Everyone wants at least a few of the characters to come out changed by the end of the story, so think, how will they be different as a result of the plot/subplot? It might not be plot that changes them, but if you have a lot of characters, a few changes that are worked into the bones of the plot might help you.
Now list out the major events of the novel with subplot in chronological order. This will be your timeline. Especially list the historical things that you want to exist in backstory. List everything you can think of. Think about where the story is going. At this point, you likely haven’t focused too much on the main plot, yeah, it’s there, but now really focus on the rising actions, how this main plot builds its conflict, then the climactic moment. Make sure you get all of that in there. This might take a few hours.
Decide where to start writing. This part will take a LOT of thinking. It’s hard! But now that you’ve got the timeline, pick an interesting point to begin at. Something with action. Something relevant. Preferably not at the beginning of your timeline - you want to have huge reveals later on where these important things that happened prior are exposed. This is the point where you think about what information should come out when. This will be a revision of your last list, except instead of being chronological, it exists to build tension.
Once you’ve gotten the second list done, you’ve got a plot. Does it need work? Probably. But with that said, at this point you probably have no idea who half your characters are. Save that for tomorrow, that too will be a lot of work.
After you’ve plotted the loose structure of your novel from this, see my next post to work on character!
Notes for the “Asexuality & Academia” Carnival of Aces from an (autistic) asexual academic
Submitted by CJ DeLuzio Chasin
Some Carnival of Aces readers will probably already be familiar with my name 1. I’ve published several academic papers about asexuality 2. And for a while, I was one of only 2 asexual people writing academically about asexuality (the other being Andrew Hinderliter). There are many more of us now—mostly students. Some are out about their aceness, some are not (so I won’t name anyone). My participation in academic writing about asexuality is intrinsically linked with my own asexuality.
This post addresses 2 topics:
why I have written about asexuality academically, specifically as an “out” ace person (and more recently an autistic aromantic asexual)
what’s involved in the peer-review process (for people who aren’t already familiar with this) and why it isn’t (yet) working “properly” for asexuality scholarship
Why / how I somehow ended up being one of the first out “ace” asexuality scholars:
I didn’t start out wanting to write academically about asexuality. I actually tried to avoid it and have been studying other things in grad school—asexuality is not the focus of my research. In the first few years of my grad school experience, anything about asexuality beyond the basics (e.g., info that might be found within AVEN’s FAQ’s) would have been incomprehensible to an academic audience (and therefore unpublishable). Things were so basic that “this research finding has implications for asexual people and by the way, asexuality is a thing” was a viable academic paper/poster/presentation on its own 3. I wasn’t really interested in committing myself to a career of doing ace 101 for academics— I was already doing enough of that in my community and everyday life.
But apparently, I can’t help myself. Fumbling along hap-hazardly in my life, reacting to various things as the ace I am, there have been a number of times when I’ve been inspired to throw my thoughts at academic audiences. (Afterall, I am one of the aces with the capacity to produce academic-speak relevant to the specific disciplines primarily generating asexuality scholarship, and I was apparently one of the first to endeavour to do so.) At this point, I’ve published more about asexuality than anything else, so I’ve had to admit to myself that, despite my intentions, I’m something of an asexuality scholar. Part of that, though, is that I’ve been largely out of the “academic game” for the past few years for medical reasons— hopefully temporarily. The type of theoretical work involved in my writing about asexuality fits better within the context of my current limitations than, say, the type of intensive data-driven qualitative work involved in my ongoing (non-asexuality-focused) research. (The same applies to clinical-audiological applications of probability theory—my second-place topic, entirely unrelated to my main research area.)
The academic asexuality writing that I’ve done has been in my capacity as a member of a community that other academics and clinicians were studying (or treating), albeit as an academically inclined one— certainly not as “the voice of that community”, but nevertheless as “a voice from that community”. This writing is grounded in who I am as an ace person, saying things I have to say because I’m ace (largely either implicitly or explicitly in response to various misunderstandings surrounding asexuality in academic and popular spaces). For this reason, I have engaged in this writing as an “out” asexual person. The asexual part of my experience and identity matters to my academic writing about asexuality.
For similar reasons, I’ve also named some other aspects of my experience in this writing—specifically situating myself also as aromantic and autistic 4 in contexts where those things were specifically relevant. Naming myself publicly as autistic is something I thought long and hard about, especially because I can’t take it back and don’t know what the long-term professional consequences might be. However, academics have now started discussing “autism” when considering whether asexuality might “represent a symptom of a mental disorder (or a mental disorder itself,)” 5 even if some endorse a paradigm of neurodiversity or “neuro-atypicality”6. Because of this, I felt it was important for me to declare my presence as an autistic asexual within the academic conversation. Especially as someone whose name would already be recognisable to many asexuality scholars, situating myself as autistic partly functioned as an assertion that at least one of us autistic aces has been part of asexuality scholarship from early on (and therefore that others may already be present too).
At the same time, I am mindful that my (autistic) asexual positionality limits the kinds of arguments people would be willing to accept from me. Who I am, and the space I occupy in society, really matters to the academic writing I do about asexuality. My asexuality doesn’t matter because I think it will make non-ace academics take me more seriously— I think my own asexuality actually makes some people less inclined to take me seriously when writing about asexuality. (In contrast, my whiteness does not make people less likely to take me seriously writing about asexuality, even if perhaps it should— my whiteness means that my asexual experience is very specifically a white asexual experience.) The reason my asexuality matters to my academic asexuality writing is because it’s part of why I’m doing that writing in the first place… even if it limits what kinds of arguments I can make “work”. That kind of limitation is also part of why it’s not always safe for people (especially students) to be “out” about various aspects of their identities, why I am cautious about which parts of my experience I share, and why I have chosen to keep certain things off the academic/public record. My interest in asexuality scholarship isn’t “academic” really: it’s personal and political. This isn’t my career— it’s my life.
And in deference to Chrysocolla Town’s comment about scholars “who insist in presenting asexuality as an messianic ideology that will not only end cisheteronormativity, but also the patriarchy, traditional politics and capitalism”… I should note that I do believe that an ace-friendly social context would be radically different than the ones we have today. I believe that in order to re-shape societies in such a way that they would become genuinely hospitable to ace folks, some fundamental social changes would have to happen, including ending both cisheteronormativity and patriarchy. I don’t believe that asexuality will create those changes, just by existing. But gosh darn it, I will work toward the revolution. (As I said, this is my life.)
Demystifying the Peer Review Process (as it applies to asexuality scholarship):
Anyone in academia will already be familiar with the peer review process, but there are a lot of ace community members who read the asexuality literature who’ve never been through grad school or the scholarly peer review process. I strongly believe that asexuality scholarship should be accessible to (non-academic) ace community members. Part of understanding the academic literature, though, is understanding its context. Academic publications need to go through the lengthy, complicated peer review process. Since ace discourse and community have developed so quickly, the landscape of asexuality has time to shift between when articles are first written and when they are finally published. Also, while the peer review process generally functions to improve the quality of scholarship by making it more of a collaborative project, that isn’t really working yet when it comes to articles about asexuality, for various reasons.
So here’s some info:
what happens during the peer review process?
making required changes while keeping the integrity of the text
post-acceptance: copy-editing, copyright transfer agreements and “open access”
quality of peer review and “relevant expertise” to review asexuality-related works
germansingergirl
izzy806
blakekathryn
romaincrisis
theartofmadeline
