hello! my name is luka, and i used to have a writeblr blog (@writerwaage). however, due to a lot of stress because of classes and my brain being all funky, i took a long break. instead of going back to that old blog, i'm starting fresh over here!
i may be a bit rusty starting out since i haven't written anything creative in a really long time, so please forgive me! if you want to check out what i'm doing when i'm not writing, check out my main blog, @warm-wires
my tags + writeblrs i enjoy under the cut
my tags!
- #hello lou : just my brain! just chatting about whatever
- #wowie! : a tag for other people's work! it's all so cool!
- #by lou : anything that i have written!
- #wip [insert title here] : a tag to find anything related to a certain wip
- #inspo wip [insert title here] : find out what inspires my wips
- #oc [insert name here] [insert title here] : find all content about one specific character
- #swt : anything made using prompts from the Start With This podcast
- #misc : other miscellaneous writing
- #passing notes : asks and convos from friends, enemies, and those undefined
1. How many times have you done NaNo?
2. How did you get into it?
3. How much planning do you have done?
4. Any writing buddies?
5. What’s your personal goal?
Plot
6. What genre are you writing?
7. Do you have a title yet?
8. Any inspirations?
9. When did you come up with the idea?
10. Any romance sub-plots?
Character
11. What are your MCs names?
12. Who’s your favorite character so far?
13. Who’s your least favorite character so far?
14. Which of your characters would die first in the zombie apocalypse?
15. What’s your character’s favorite memory with another?
16. What’s your MC’s favorite food?
17. If had to gender swap your MC how much would it affect the story?
18. Which of your characters is the smoothest?
19. Which of your characters swears the most?
20. If your MC was in another book, what book would they be in?
so i may not be on here a lot but i 1000% promise i’m actually working on my latest project! i just want to name characters in a way that seems consistent with a conlang i’m making for the margie mayweather project
Length: 700~ words
Warnings: mention of blood, brief descriptions of injury and medical procedure, brief mention of a dead body, heavy flirting
Synopsis: (Adult/New Adult, WLW romance, apocalypse) Mara is injured and Jackie takes charge. I felt like writing a drabble with these two since it's been a while since I've properly sat down and wrote something. It's mainly about their relationship and less about the injury. Enjoy!
[ITWS intro]
“Let me take a look at it-” Jackie reached for Mara’s leg. Ruby blood seeped from the peeled skin where their attacker’s blade gashed her calf open. The woman flinched, sneering like the wounded possum she nursed back to health earlier that summer.
“Fuck no, I’m the one with medical training, remember? I’ll do it myself.” There it was again - that frightened defiance. Mara could build up as many bricks between them as she wanted, but Jackie had x-ray vision. She couldn’t imagine how many unkind hands have harmed her in the past. She rested the tips of her fingers against the edge of Mara’s khaki utility pants that she’d rolled up long before they crossed the creek.
A trembling hand darted for her wrist, squeezing it. Almost too harshly. Jackie winced and bit her lip. “Mara.” She spoke calmly, letting her maintain what little control she had in the situation. “You’re shaking too much. You wouldn’t even be able to thread a needle, let alone stitch yourself up.”
“Don’t need stitches.” Their eyes met. Jackie noticed the sickly tinge in her tan face right away. Even her normally warm, full lips were pale. The hand around her wrist loosened. “I don’t need stitches. It’s superficial.”
“You and I both know it’s not.” Jackie watched Mara’s weary eyes drop to the oozing blood before they dragged back up to stare at nothing in particular. Refusing to meet her gaze.
“Fine. Alright. It’s bad.”
“Let’s get you comfortable, yeah?”
It took a good deal of effort on both their parts to get Mara to a large oak tree that towered above the meadow. On any other day, the bright sunlight casting dancing shadows over the wildflowers would’ve been a dream resting spot. A romantic picnic spot, even. But with a corpse rotting just a hundred feet away and the piercing silence of a forest without a single bird or animal, it was more like a beautiful nightmare.
Jackie settled her companion against their packs so the rough bark of the tree wouldn’t splinter her bare shoulders. The wife beater Mara wore would never be white again after all the sweat and gore it endured the past three days. Even now, sweat trickled from her forehead and rolled down her slender neck. Jackie watched it disappear between her breasts.
Oh god, was she staring at her? She withdrew her gaze and passed Mara one of their canteens.
“Here, you should stay hydrated. Want something to bite down on?”
“Don’t tell me you’re sneaking a peek at me while I’m bleeding out, princess.” Mara snorted, taking a generous gulp of creek water. “It won’t make much of a difference. It hurts like a bitch already.”
The sun must’ve been hotter that day than she realized. Jackie quickly shook her head and busied herself with procuring all the supplies she needed from their medical kit. “It’s against some kind of medical law to flirt with patients, isn’t it? Besides, you’re covered in brains.”
“That didn’t stop you peeking yesterday at the lake.”
Wide eyed, Jackie glanced up at the smug smirk that stretched across Mara’s face. She chewed the inside of her cheek. “You know what, I think I’m going to give you a few extra stitches just for that.”
“Didn’t know you were into S&M, princess. Learning something new every hour.”
Jackie rolled her eyes, having trouble hiding a humored smirk that crept at the corner of her mouth. She withdrew the thin needle from the depths of their kit. Mara’s legs stiffened on either side of her. Concerned, she looked up to make sure she wasn’t about to pass out on her. Her brown eyes fixated on her uniform shirt where she kept all of her patches. Unblinking.
“Afraid of needles?”
Mara swallowed hard and gripped the canteen. “No.”
“Liar. It’s okay if you are, though-” Jackie motioned with her chin at the half sleeve floral spray on Mara’s bicep. “Kinda funny that you’re inked up and afraid of this little guy.”
“It’s different, dude.”
“Probably.” Jackie offered a lighthearted laugh and turned a bit to thread the needle out of view. “You can hold on to me if you need to. I got you.”
Way Down We Go by KALEO
As It Was by Hozier
Roslyn by Bon Iver
Landfill by Daughter
As The World Caves In by Matt Maltese
Gone By, Gone Soon by Harry & The Gondolas
The Bug Collector by Haley Heynderickx
[ Image descriptions: first image has a mustard yellow background and brown text that says "I survived Rocky Mtn. National Park" as well as "saturday, July 4th" beneath a simple drawing of mountains and trees. There's a fake red blood splatter across the drawing.
second image has the same yellow background and brown text and says "In The Woods Somewhere: featured artists" with a list of artists beneath it in green text. It says "KALEO, Johnny Cash, Hozier, Bon Iver, Daughter". It has the same mountain drawing at the bottom and two fake blood splatters]
i think i may work on some writing tonight? it really depends on my energy levels after cleaning :/ hate that my chronic pain issues drain me so easily
make oc playlists. spend hours on moodboards that have no purpose. write self-indulgent fluff that’s never going to be published. scribble three lines of poetry in the back of your history notebook. draw fanart of your own characters. write stupid dialogue that your publishers might hate. start new wips that you might never finish but write those three chapters that make you happy because if you don’t write them, who else will?
writing shouldn’t always be about “will publishers like this” or “i have to reach this word count” or “how do i get the most likes”.
16-year-old Margie Mayweather loves spending summers at her grandfather’s cottage in the countryside. Hundreds of miles from the loud city streets and her mysterious dreams, nothing ever seems to go wrong. This summer, however, Margie’s imagination proves more than it seemed as she gets pulled into a world just beyond the edge of the woods filled with prophecies, snooty fairies, and a hidden world threatened with extinction. In a race against time to save the land of her dreams, Margie discovers more about herself than she could have ever imagined.
genre(s): YA, fantasy, LGBTQ+, coming-of-age
current status: draft zero
pov: 3rd person past tense
if you would like to be added to the taglist, please let me know
Genres: New Adult/Adult, Horror, Pre-Apocalyptic, LGBTQ+, WLW Romance
Themes: hope, light in the darkness, sacrifice, optimism vs. pessimism, survival, humanity, zombies, national parks
Projected Length: Novel / 70k~ words
Synopsis: With a recreational drug with odd side effects on the rise and labor day weekend, park ranger Jackie Isaiah has her hands full with rowdy park guests and an extra long shift that she hopes will earn her enough money to go back home to visit family. Meanwhile, Mara Hasslet would literally rather be anywhere else than camping with her ex-girlfriend. When trouble comes to Rocky Mountain National Park, the fight for survival begins.
ITWS Playlist
ITWS Character Intros
ITWS Tag
Camp NaNoWriMo Goals:
Honestly?? I simply want to write every day, no matter how many words I put down. If I had to give myself a projected word count, I’d like to get 15k words written by the end of April!
Let me know if you’d like to be added to my NaNo Updates taglist! (other taglists below the cut) -
Imagine you're writing a story that takes place in a world that has no God, or gods, or saints. What do you do with exclamations like "Oh gosh!" (derived from "Oh God") or "Jeez!" (derived from "Jesus!")? And - oh god - what do you do with curses and swear words? If your characters can't say "Oh my god", "hell no", or "damn" because there are no gods to damn anyone to hell... what are your options?
Here is a list for inspiration
In general, non-religious curse and swear words refer to local cultural taboos.
Many languages swear by referring to cleanliness: dirty, sweaty, sticky, smelly etc. This includes things you do on the toilet.
Some languages, like Dutch, use diseases as curses and insults. For example, someone nasty/bothersome might be called a "cancer sufferer" in Dutch. These swear words are combinations of (derivates of) typhus, cholera, and cancer.
Societal hierarchy and family trees, mainly the inferior positions like a bastard (seen as inferior in the family tree) or a derogatory word that refers to lower class people (seen as inferior in that society).
On the other hand, you could insult a highly valued member of the other person's family, like their mother, or of their society, like their Queen/Emperor.
Sexual taboos, often implying someone (or their mother) is more sexually active than society accepts of them.
Calling someone the word for someone's genitalia refers to the same taboo.
How do you apply this to your language?
You could use explicit/taboo words as ... :
... an intensifier: "It was a shit-hot day."
... a negative adjective: "This is a shitty job."
... an insulting noun: "This journey is shit."
Or try to be creative and combine different taboos for a multi-hit offense. My favorite one is the Spanish "I shit in your mother's milk", which combines insulting the other person's mother, the taboo of bodily functions, and the taboo of cleanliness.
During my research I came across this article, which contains a number of concrete examples from all over the world you can draw inspiration from.
And on a less offensive note, you could always make up your own equivalent of "Merlin's beard!", "Great Scott!", or "For Pete's sake!" (Pete, by the way, is a catholic reference: Pete is Saint Peter.)
I hope this was helpful. Don’t hesitate to ask me any questions, and happy writing!
Follow me for more writing advice, or check out my other writing tips here. New topics to write advice about are also always appreciated.
Tag list below the cut. If you like to be added to or removed from the list, let me know.
And if you come up with creative curses, feel free to add them in the comments :)
I would also suggest to take superstitions of the world/locale into account!
For instance, a sailor might swear by the tides, or like, [gasp] "sky's breath, that's a big cannon!" or "Well, a Storm upon ye then!"
Like, stuff referencing the common dangers inherent in their life would be the basis for negative swear replacements like damn and hell, while the things sailors cherish and revere like the stars to chart by and the winds to sail by and easy waters etc. would replace the positive religious swear like "jeezus," "mother mary," "my g-d," etc.
Pick an idea that you’ve had for a while. Take exactly 1 hour to work on it exclusively. This can be one continuous hour, or 30 minutes for two days, or 10 minutes for six days. Then put it out there. Consider this your first try of many at this idea.
start with this is by night vale presents. i'm simply going through the prompts to work on my writing.
Melissa looked outside, to the woods. She had almost been certain that she had heard something coming from the treeline, stalking its way over to the cottage. All she could see were fireflies. It was a bit strange, it being the middle of the night and a bit too late for them, but it wasn’t the strangest thing she had ever envisioned at the edge of the wood by her grandfather’s cottage. Some summers, she had vivid dreams of an icy pale man watching her from the trees, or a woman with dark yet iridescent skin soaking up the first rays of dawn. Fireflies at midnight were hardly anything of note.
Two eyes revealed themselves among the asynchronous flashing, a stern blue-tinted silver Melissa recognized from somewhere deep in her mind. An aura of disapproval washed over her, radiating from the pair. She looked over her shoulder then back before lifting the window, careful of the aging wood. A small creak came from the joints and she paused, holding her breath. Melissa would hate to wake her grandfather this late at night for something so silly as an image conjured up by her overactive imagination. His snoring from the other room prompted her to sigh and continue opening the window. She bit her lip and slid one leg out, then the other.
The dewy, fresh-cut grass tickled Melissa’s feet. She was grateful she didn’t put on socks, and grateful the approaching summer’s heat kept the night warm for her to leave behind her coat. She left the window cracked so she could sneak back in without trouble, just as quietly as she snuck out. The night was cloudless and the moon was full, guiding her path without so much as a candle.
As she approached, the eyes began to sink back into the forest. Melissa considered calling out for whoever it was, but her voice caught in her throat. It crossed her mind that it could very well have been some sort of animal, although she couldn’t recall what sorts of animals had eyes that could genuinely glow like that. There was also the possibility that her call could wake her grandfather, and as accepting of her fantasies as he was, it wouldn’t be a very good excuse for why she snuck out alone instead of simply pursuing it in the much safer daylight. She bit her lip. All this internal deliberation wouldn’t get her anywhere. Melissa went out a few yards further and called out.
“Hello?” She paused, scanning her eyes across the trees. Some moonlight filtered in past the thick summer foliage, but not enough for her to make out who--or what--could be hiding. “Do I know you?”
The question seemed to echo back to Melissa from the woods. “I know you,” the echo replied. The voice was distorted, not in the typical sort of way echos are, but it was very much not like her own. Deeper, wiser, older.
Melissa furrowed her brow. “May I come closer?”
“Come closer,” the distorted echo replied.
She balled up her fists. Turn back, her mother whispered in her mind. There’s nothing in the woods but an echo. Melissa’s rationality always took the shape of her sweet, sensible mother. But everything else, every last hair on her head wanted her to walk into the woods, explore what this was. One step, then another. The eyes no longer retreated, and the fireflies moved, creating a gap in their line so Melissa could enter the woods without disrupting their movements.
As she got closer, the owner of the eyes came into focus. It was a tall, broad man, the one that had been a feature in her dreams since she was a little girl. He had the same full, silvery beard and elaborately done hair, with the expensive looking pins and fabrics styled into the thickest braid down his back. His clothes looked similarly expensive, dark and shimmery all at once, reminding Melissa of the constellations so much more visible in the countryside than in the crowded streets she spent the rest of the year in.
“Melissa, come with me.” The man gestured for her to follow her deeper into the woods.
Against all rationality, Melissa found herself following, just as he had asked. If she had later been asked why, or if her mother got a hold of her, she couldn’t really give a good reason as to why she began following a strange man into the woods. He was familiar, Melissa reasoned. Quite literally the man of her dreams. For all she knew, this was a dream.
To her surprise, they began to follow a well-worn path. In all her exploring of the woods in previous summers, there was no path, and it looked too old to have been formed in the months she was away. Melissa looked around, and then back up to the man she was following. In theory, she knew the woods like the back of her hand, yet despite not going too far, they were somewhere unrecognizable to her, at least, the memories of her lucidity. It was like a dream, trees shifting and growing in ways she couldn’t explain. No fear gripped her, only a deep curiosity for who he was and where they were going.
The further down the path they went, the larger the trees, or rather everything, seemed to get. Melissa relaxed herself, finding comfort in this. It was just another dream, and she’d copy it down to her journals as soon as she returned home and awoke. The trees grew larger and larger, or perhaps the two of them got smaller. If Melissa had to guess, she was no taller than six inches, or the trees become colossal giants to tower over them.
“You seem to be handling this well.”
Melissa was surprised to hear him speak, her cheeks going red, “Oh, well.” She cleared her throat and straightened out her nightgown, despite him not being able to see her. “This is just another dream of mine.”
“Hm.” He didn’t turn back to look at her.
If you want to be on my Start With This taglist or my general taglist, please let me know!
