Just a Writer.

Eli | They/Them | Fae/Faer | 28 | Lesbian

[videogameoutofcontext]

[vogelpsittacines]

Illustration by Sophie Lucido Johnson

[hurricaneforcefan]

I want to apologize to @homunculus-argument for assuming their claim that pigeons can identify cancer was a shitpost.

[homunculus-argument]

As I stated earlier:

(original photo source)

[angelnumber27]

For most people, life doesn’t truly begin until they’re 26-30 or older. The way we romanticize and obsess over youth is super harmful. Your life is not over at 21, I promise you. It’s just beginning

[ptr-sqloint]

shivering, choking, unraveling on your bathroom floor

[awakefor48hours]

Every once in a while, I wish the friendship meter from the Sims was real so that way when people tell me "I used Chat-GPT" they can visually see just how much respect I just lost for them in that moment.

[clownfish-casino]

OKAY I'm curious

where do you write your fics

ellipsus

google docs

directly in the AO3 editor

notes app

physical paper

literally wherever I can (sticky notes, your hand, scrap paper, etc)

something else (tell me in tags or comments !!)

not a fic writer but I wanna press a button too !!!

Voting ended onJul 24

would appreciate reblogs for sample size ::]

[writingdose]

being a writer is fun

[pangur-and-grim]

I won't publish the ask (they asked me not to), but I thought I'd still answer it publicly!

no, royalties are not a significant source of income for most authors. if you wrote something like Project Hail Mary, then absolutely, the royalties would be substantial! but that's like winning the lottery. Ryan Gosling is not starring in the movie adaption of most books.

when you sell a book to a publisher, you get what's called 'an advance against royalties'. it's usually split into multiple parts, so you might get one third for the initial sale, one third for the final revised manuscript, and one third on the publishing date.

an advance against royalties is the publisher saying "we believe you will eventually make X amount in royalties, so here it is ahead of time." and then you don't actually see any money from royalties until the advance is paid off. most books do not make enough in royalties to pay off the advance (I have two children's books and one fiction book, and have yet to see royalties for any of them).

advances are still great, but you need to make them stretch! for instance, last year my net income was about 30k Canadian (21k USD), which is fantastic when you consider that I mostly made it through writing. but I'm definitely not a millionaire. I can live off my writing (not trying to undersell that!) but I'll probably remain in a low income bracket for the foreseeable future.

this isn't meant to discourage anyone from seeking out writing as a career! however, there is a reason that many authors have alternate jobs with writing on the side. or, you know, rich spouses.

[pangur-and-grim]

this isn't me making a fuss about pirating (I've pirated way too many shows to run my mouth on that lmao), but there IS actually a financial incentive to having people buy your books!

buying books shows the publisher that they can make money off you, which means they're more likely to give you advances for future books. and advances are what authors live off (if they don't have a side job). that's why I always push pre-orders so hard! you have to be a racehorse worth betting on, or else they send you to the glue factory....

if I can offer one alternative to pirating: asking your library to stock the book also helps authors, and doesn't cost anything. the only downside is the patience required.

[pangur-and-grim]

OOPS yes, @stjohnstarling makes a good point! everything I'm saying is from the perspective of traditional publishing, but it's a very different game if you're a self-published author

[gollancz]

I will also add that this is why pre-orders can make a HUGE difference to authors - because if there's enough hype, publishers can pull more levers to build that momentum and reach more readers to help authors earn out their advance faster.

[storm-of-feathers]

tumblr is great bc its like a diary where I can take other peoples diary entries and glue them into my own diary

[ismenes]

you know those studies showing that cursing helps with pain tolerance or whatever. that’s how i feel about making my weird little noises to get through my basic daily activities. sometimes you just have to go hggblaaaah for a minute so you can find the strength within yourself to get up or wash the dishes or send an email. mmmnneh. urgh. the torments are unending but you can always make some little sounds about it.

[dogpuppy]

[nineteenyearoldmeblog]

im fucking crying

[nightmarist]

A COMINT !!

[nyctosaurid]

barnyard the original party animals is the uncontested lord of bad implications in childrens movies

[nyctosaurid]

ok so like “the secret life of x” movies tend to not strongly explore the actual reasons why, exactly, their life has to be secret… they don’t really focus on it within the narrative. They do usually have some small justification for why animals or video games or toys or whatever have never just revealed themselves:

There’s no stated reason. They just pretend to not be alive. We usually can suspend our suspension of disbelief here because when it’s something like a video game or an emoji because any odd occurrences is perceived as a glitch or something similar but the actual reason why they aren’t too hung up on this kinda shitty lot in life isn’t said

They get something out of their current relationship with humans (like in toy story)

They have some specific reason to hide that they’re alive, like they die if they’re seen (like in the christmas toy)

They perceive themselves as sentient, talking creatures, but humans can’t understand them. They just see a squeaking mouse or an inanimate hot dog or whatever. 

and the last one is what most animal movies do, and it’s like, not devoid of weird implications but you can see where it mostly works.

but barnyard is the outlier here: it goes with tier one: the animals can talk and walk on two legs but just pretend that they can’t for unstated reasons. 

in the history of the barnyard world non human animals, at some point, decided to just pretend to be unable to speak. a “cow” or a “coyote” or a “hen” do not exist as we know it in the barnyard universe. the baa of the sheep is false; the ewe doesn’t understand it either. they only made up that noise to hide the fact that they speak human languages. a dog barking and running on all fours is a facade. animals naturally walk on their hind legs and made up whole postures just to appear non sentient.

and for what? what do they gain from this? they have no rights and no voice by their own choice. at one point a donkey claims the farmer is a good person because he’s vegan and a pig mentions bacon - this is not a fantasy universe devoid of death and misery and meat. do animals, in hushed whispers, remind their children not to sob in their real voice as they’re taken away? do the dogs not beg for kindness when they’re tied up and hit? do cows and chickens not cry for their life in the slaughterhouses? does a rat not scream a human scream when the trap misses their neck and only breaks their spine? Why? what is the point? They loose so much and have everything to gain.

anyways does everyone remember this really awful cat. it only appears in one scene but i can just sense the porn of it that would pop up if i googled it’s name

[inkthecryptid]

This post is like being tied to a chair as a a joker-style villain monologues and presses a gun closer and closer to my head as he reaches the climax of his rehearsed piece on the flaws of society and when he finally pulls the trigger it’s a little flag that says “bang!”

[mylordshesacactus]

For all that the 1800s etiquette guides are--obviously--derangedly sexist from a modern perspective? They're also mindblowing in how casually they will assert things that MODERN DAY CONSERVATIVES would scream and cry and shit their pants about.

"People back then always married young it's natural!!!" Every single 1800s guide I've ever met casually mentions that, of course, you really shouldn't get married before you're at least 20, and waiting until 25 is usually better.

Or, like. Okay here's a long segment:

Just firmly going "it is crazy sexist to blame The Wife for overspending when thirty seconds of asking questions will immediately establish that her husband was outright lying to her about how much money they had. Talk to your wife like a normal person."

Or--okay, here. A section on being honest and not writing love letters in secret, because that's usually a good sign that there's something untoward going on....

....except that he then immediately acknowledges that sometimes, the reason you're hiding this from your parents is that your parents suck. That there are parents who frankly have not earned the right to approve or disapprove of your partner.

(I realize the phrasing there sounds a lot less strong than my summary, but--trust me on this. When you're familiar with the narrative voice of these kinds of books, this passage is downright radical. The mere acknowledgement that if you treat your kids badly, it's your own damn fault when they don't talk to you? I've genuinely never seen that before in this genre. Don't freak out over "properly trained", either. It's just a linguistic shift--at the time, "training" was used the way we would say "raising" a child today. )

[mylordshesacactus]

"Delete all the nudes and sexts after a breakup or you're a piece of shit" has been the standard expectation since EIGHT. TEEN. EIGHTY. FIVE.

[mylordshesacactus]

"Men and women being friends with each other is literally normal. Don't be a controlling freak."

Anyway I was wrong the publishing date is actually 1882 so like.

[mylordshesacactus]

"If you have to abuse a child to keep order in your classroom then you're a bad teacher."

So like @ the modern Republican party, are the "traditional family values" in the fucking room with us right now--

[urfavhatesterfs]

YOU hates terfs

[switchingtogeico]

[captainhaterade]

[stankpasta]

rb if u hates terfs

[official-pussy-posts-2]

Official ‘terfs get out of my house’ Post

[donniehaspronouns]

“what if kids identify with something and it ends up just being a phase-?” good. stop teaching and expecting kids (and adults honestly) to formulate permanent traits and ideas of themselves. everything in life is a phase. that doesn’t make it any less legitimate while you experience it. let people explore themselves and know it’s okay if what you think about yourself changes.

[maxattax]

OP tags that I feel should be on the post:

#there is no permanent state of self#expecting that makes people fearful to explore options for fear of being wrong

[popsunner]

I love going viral on tumblr.com. It’s like if you stood in a field and said some of the stupidest shit a human being is capable of and then like fifty thousand crows attacked you

[popsunner]

Don’t do this to me

[professional-chaotic-dumbass]

my brother in christ you made the post

[tulipscomeinallsortsofcolors]