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YOU ARE THE REASON
"I'm Dorothy Gale from Kansas"
we're not kids anymore.
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@tryingtowriteplease
wow! i should really organize this place!
from now on any actual writing of mine will be tagged #mikeyiswriting or you can find it in the Actual Writing tab of this blog!
any dumb writing shitposts i make will be tagged #tryingtowrite
Anything Else will be #notwriting
see below for links to specific story/wip tags that i will update as i post things relating to more than just one
Also I just had a wave of feeling guilty for participating in the dangerous crow boy whose job it is to destroy plastic meme, because, hey, I'm an author. How would I feel about this if it was my characters? How does the author feel?
Anyway I googled dangerous crow boy whose job it is to destroy plastic and the first thing that came up was a blog post the original author wrote about how she's DELIGHTED that her dangerous crow boy whose job it is to destroy plastic has become a tumblr meme and she also answers a ton of the questions people have been asking about the dangerous crow boy whose job it is to eat plastic.
here's the site, fair warning, not the most entirely sfw, but should clear everything up
the universe is really giving like
“oh?? you had a really busy weekend?? you’re Very Tired??
that’s a damn shame. have a biblical plague curse”
this is so mean but sometimes i see published writing and suddenly no longer feel insecure about my own writing ability. like well okay that got published so im guessing i dont have much to worry about
I have a friend who is an editor, and gets submissions of mostly poetry and short stories.
I have had a glimpse into her slush pile, and let me tell you, the contents were unbelievable and immediately disabused me of the notion that reading through submissions is in any way glamorous. People have the nerve to submit unhinged paranoid ramblings, fetish porn, and a seemingly endless supply of poems about masturbation.
I no longer feel like my fiction is somehow an imposition on the people who read it. It may be forgettable, but at least it isn't typeset to look like sperm.
Do not be afraid to submit your work. Your competition is not only worse than you think, it's worse than you ever imagined.
Do these three things to get to the top of the slush pile:
The place has a style sheet. Use it. They say they want your MS in 16.5 point Papyrus italic with 0.8 inch margins all around, guess what you're doing before you send it off? Save As, reformat, send it. In the absence of a specific guide: Courier 12 pt (Times New Roman if you must), double spaced, align left, tab 0.5 at each new paragraph.
Check the word count. Don't submit novellas to 2500 word short story venues. BTW, you format the MS in that old style above because the question isn't literal words. Courier 12pt double spaced gives you 250 words per page for typesetting purposes. 2500 words is 10 ms pages, 5000 is 20 pages, etc.
Don't send your romance to Analog or your war story to Harlequin. If it's a cross-genre story, be sure there's enough of what the publication is focused on to interest them, but breaking through is hard if that's not something they usually do.
That's basically what every single editors' panel at every con I've ever been to has boiled down to. And invariably, someone tries to get up and argue with them, not realizing it's not a discussion.
Bonus tip: Don't be in any way cute in your cover letter. Just the facts/Luke Skywalker's message to Jabba the Hut in ROTJ.
Enclosed/attached is my story <Title> for your publication <Magazine>. It is x (rounded to the nearest 500) words. I can be reached at <email> (that you check regularly and isn't likely to dump things into spam) and <phone>.
(If submitting a hard copy: The manuscript is disposable. A SASE is enclosed for your response./A SASE is included for return of the manuscript and your response.)
Thank you for your consideration.
If submitting a novella length piece or greater, a brief and complete summary is appropriate.
In the midst of an interstellar revolt against an evil galactic Empire, vital weapon plans fall into the hands of a farm boy on the edges of the galaxy. With the help of an aging warrior from the Old Republic, and a smuggler with a dark past and his imposing alien copilot, the four set out to deliver them to the rebel forces but are instead flung into a rescue mission to save the beautiful princess who stole the plans as worlds are destroyed by the might of the Empire's weapon, the Death Star.
Captured by the Death Star on route to deliver the plans, they manage to escape the base with the princess, the old warrior sacrificing himself to make this possible. As the Death Star approaches the rebel base, they use the captured plans to stage a desperate final stand. In a fierce space battle of single-pilot ships over the surface of the moon-sized weapon, the farm boy manages to make the critical shot with an unexpected assist from the smuggler, destroying it.
Never under any circumstance put a cliffhanger into a query letter summary. There is no faster way to get the entire MS binned than doing that.
Happy writing.
PS "Top of the slush pile" means into the top 25% of manuscripts received. Three quarters of the submissions don't take the trouble to do even those three basic steps.
Now, that still means 25/100 submissions or 250/1000 submissions, but it still improves your odds and forms the basis for starting a relationship with the publisher for the next piece you send them.
PPS This is obviously about prose. Poetry certainly has its own submission rules, and I know none of them. If you're writing poetry, find out what they are.
writing challenge for dec if anyone wants to join:
join me in attempting to commit to min 200 words per day for the month of dec!
additional optional guidelines below the cut
my dec 1st was a woeful sunday: 218 words
Being obsessed with your own ocs is so so good for you i seriously can't recommend it enough
The only downside is that you have to do Everything around here
writing challenge for dec if anyone wants to join:
join me in attempting to commit to min 200 words per day for the month of dec!
additional optional guidelines below the cut
ready to alarm everyone with my spotify listening minutes again
fascinating that when you tell people "you have to learn the rules to break them" when talking about drawing/painting etc everyone nods and agrees but the second you say "you have to read books if you want to write better" there's a horde of contrarians begging to be the wrongest people ever all of a sudden
if one more person in the notes of this post says "omg op has clearly never talked to a beginner artist!!" as if im not a literal professional artist and was making a broad point........ this time im really gonna do it
and reading only fanfiction does not count as reading books to get better at writing. Fanfiction, where everyone reading it already knows who the characters are and what their relationships are and what the setting is and all that crap, is not the same thing as reading an original self-contained story.
If you only read fanfiction, you will not be able to write original stories well.
Reading books does not have to be expensive. It can be completely free. Project Gutenberg exists. So does the Internet Archive's lending library.
Fanfiction works in ways that original fiction doesn't. You can't write original fiction like it's fanfiction if you want your story to actually be well written and interesting.
I think it's important to point out why fanfiction is different - so much context and interest hooks depend on you already being interested in the source. You are familiar with these characters and therefore don't need to have the basics built into the story. With original work, you need all that underlying character development to be in the story you're writing to make us want to read it. You could 'cheat' and give us a modern Sherlock Holmes - but we still need your version explored in narrative to actually care about it. Dr. House is more than just Sherlock Holmes in a hospital, he has his own issues and foils and quirks. The Holmes from the TV show Sherlock and Elementary are vastly different takes on the same character. You need to read original fiction in order to learn how to do that in your own original fiction. Fanfic is great, but it intentional has gaps that make it a different form.
writing be like
I guess not today satan
hot artists don't gatekeep
I've been resource gathering for YEARS so now I am going to share my dragons hoard
Floorplanner. Design and furnish a house for you to use for having a consistent background in your comic or anything! Free, you need an account, easy to use, and you can save multiple houses.
Comparing Heights. Input the heights of characters to see what the different is between them. Great for keeping consistency. Free.
Magma. Draw online with friends in real time. Great for practice or hanging out. Free, paid plan available, account preferred.
Smithsonian Open Access. Loads of free images. Free.
SketchDaily. Lots of pose references, massive library, is set on a timer so you can practice quick figure drawing. Free.
SculptGL. A sculpting tool which I am yet to master, but you should be able to make whatever 3d object you like with it. free.
Pexels. Free stock images. And the search engine is actually pretty good at pulling up what you want.
Figurosity. Great pose references, diverse body types, lots of "how to draw" videos directly on the site, the models are 3d and you can rotate the angle, but you can't make custom poses or edit body proportions. Free, account option, paid plans available.
Line of Action. More drawing references, this one also has a focus on expressions, hands/feet, animals, landscapes. Free.
Animal Photo. You pose a 3d skull model and select an animal species, and they give you a bunch of photo references for that animal at that angle. Super handy. Free.
Height Weight Chart. You ever see an OC listed as having a certain weight but then they look Wildly different than the number suggests? Well here's a site to avoid that! It shows real people at different weights and heights to give you a better idea of what these abstract numbers all look like. Free to use.
Homie gonna share this
u know what, even if my writing isnt the BEST, i still made it all on my own. like there was a blank word doc and i filled it up with my own words, my own story. i took what was in my head and i made it a real thing. idk i feel like that alone is something to be proud of.
Here's to the people who can't get the words on the page. The people who are too tired after all life throws at them to write. The people who are blocked. The people who are burnt out. The people who can't write because of physical or mental illnesses. The people who don't know why they can't write. And the people struggling with all those other things that get in the way of writing and make it seem or be impossible.
You're still a writer, you're still an artist. And you matter. This world is better since you're in it. Thank you for wanting to write, even if you can't right now. I hope you and your words find each other soon.
"Don't use Libby because it costs libraries too much, pirate instead" is such a weird, anti-patron, anti-author take that somehow manages to also be anti-library, in my professional librarian-ass opinion.
It's well documented that pirating books negatively affects authors directly* in a way that pirating movies or TV shows doesn't affect actors or writers, so I will likely always be anti-book piracy unless there's absolutely, positively no other option (i.e. the book simply doesn't exist outside of online archives at all, or in a particular language).
Also, yeah, Libby and Hoopla licenses are really expensive, but libraries buy them SO THAT PATRONS CAN USE THEM. If you're gonna be pissed at anybody about this shitty state of affairs, be pissed at publishing companies and continue to use Libby or Hoopla at your library so we can continue to justify having it to our funding bodies.
One of the best ways to support your library having services you like is to USE THOSE SERVICES. Yes, even if they are expensive.
*Yes, this is a blog post, but it's a blog post filled with links to news articles. If you can click one link, you can click another.
Please, PLEASE use Libby. OverDrive. Hoopla. CloudLibrary. Kanopy. Flipster. Freegal. Transparent Language. Mango. Jstor. Your library would not offer it if they could not afford it, and we afford things by reporting the number of people who use that service, so if you don't use the service we can't afford it. It's a cycle. Keep it going, keep using it, and we'll keep providing because we'll be able to justify the cost to the bean counters in government.
Love how tumblr has its own folk stories. Yeah the God of Arepo we’ve all heard the story and we all still cry about it. Yeah that one about the woman locked up for centuries finally getting free. That one about the witch who would marry anyone who could get her house key from her cat and it’s revealed she IS the cat after the narrator befriends the cat.
Might I add:
The defeat of the wizard who made people choose how they’d be to be executed
The woman who raised the changeling alongside her biological child
The human who died of radiation poisoning after repairing the spaceship
The adventures of a space roomba
Cinderella finding Araura (and falling in love)
I don’t know a snappy description but the my nemesis cynthia story certainly lives in my head
hilariously, these are almost all in my fic tag. so, a compiled list from the notes (and some extras):
The God of Arepo (graphic novel 1 / 2 / 3) (ebook)
The Monster of Sentan
The Witch’s Cat
Raise Both Children
Stabby the Roomba (honorable mention)
Cinderella Marries the Prince (comic)
My Arch Nemesis Cynthia
Pirates and Mermaid
Eindred and the Witch
The Demon King
The Cornerwitch
Grandmother Beetroot
Apocalypse Daycare Worker
Grandmother Accidentally Summons a Demon
New Year Saga
A Story About Changelings
Ranger in the King’s Forest
The Difference Between a Hare and a Rabbit
Goblin Men (Canines)
I am in love with you /p
What about the one with the princess locked in a tower learning to become a wizard? That’s lived in my mind for years and I haven’t seen it in a long time
Oh, love that story, adding it to the list: 20. Princess Talia and adding a few more contenders 21. Thyme 22. The Monster under the Bed 23. A Meaningful Death 24. Humans are unstoppable…until they aren’t 25. The Monster under the Fridge 26. Antler Guy 27. Cleric slamming healing spells
Adding a few more I remembered: 28. The Frog and the Scorpion 29. HSTHETE 30. The First Witch in the World 31. Imagine that Oceans were replaced by Forests 32. A Faerie taking a Name 33. The Dragon on the Farm 34. Synovus & Menace 35. Raising the Anti-Christ 36. Aliens vs. Flora & Fauna of Earth (pretty sure there are even more additions to the original post but I had this one saved) 37. Doctors without Borders…in Space! 38. The Villain-Wrangler 39. The Last Contact 40. The 100 Parent-Point Children 41. And the Heavens Wept 42. The Night Gentleman 43. The Serpent God and their Priestess
44. No One Showed Up for the Last Storytime
Wow! @writing-prompt-s contributing to like half of these!
I can hardly take any credit for these stories! But I love sharing them. Unfortunately I cannot read all the prompt responses so please tag me if you want me to reblog a story that resonated with you so I can give it a little boost :)
conditions for success tonight are that i sleep through the night, my cat eats her dry food, and she doesn’t throw up (again)
hoping for the best anticipating the worst and we have work tomorrow. let’s go
