heart's writeblr

[glassfrogforest]

[semiferalstreetcoyote]

there’s something that’s incredible about the intersectionality and flexibility of werewolves as metaphor.

anger issues? werewolf. intrusive thoughts? werewolf. unresolved trauma? werewolf. rejection by society? werewolf. autism? werewolf. transgenderism? werewolf. queer expression of any sort? werewolf. plurality? werewolf. dissociation? werewolf. repression of any sort? werewolf. abuse cycles? werewolf. emotion so strong it physically changes you? werewolf!!!

really doing it all

[sawasawako]

anyway… if anyone is looking to improve their reading & writing skills, i highly recommend this article by celine nguyen, which analyses the opening paragraphs of good essays to understand how and why they work. focuses on nonfiction but could apply generally i think

[masonhawthorne]

I keep remembering a run of Hamlet I saw a few years ago, where the Ghost was costumed in full plate armour which was very noisy, and instead of muffling it, they had him crash across the stage, stomping so the whole set rattled, and he said all of his lines in a bellow, like he was furious with Hamlet.

And the thing that made it absolutely terrifying was that Hamlet was the only one who reacted. He was cowering, and covering his ears with both hands, and yelling to be heard over the noise.

And no one else seemed to know why he was doing that. The other actors didn't even raise their voices.

That's scary, something so loud and painful, and REAL, and the people around you don't even notice it, and think that you're the crazy one.

[masonhawthorne]

Lots of folks wailing and gnashing their teeth that they didn't get to see this particular interpretation of Hamlet--go check out your local small theatre groups!

This wasn't a big fancy theatre, it was the local small theatre where half the regular cast members are people I went to uni with!

Your local theatres are probably doing cool stuff all the time!! Go see stuff!

[melomancy]

the ellipsis is the most powerful of all the punctuation…so versatile…i’m pondering…i’m omitting…i’m implying…i’m trailing off…

[projectiondepartment]

every time it rains i think of that raymond carver poem. poetry is like prayer to me methinks. or an incantation

[projectiondepartment]

this one btw

[thedaddycomplex]

So, okay, fun fact. When I was a freshman in high school… let me preface by saying my dad sent me to a private school and, like a bad organ transplant, it didn’t take. I was miserable, the student body hated me, I hated them, it was awful.

Okay, so, freshman year, I’m deep in my “everything sucks and I’m stuck with these assholes” mentality. My English teacher was a notorious hard-ass, let’s call him Mr. Hargrove. He was the guy every student prayed they didn’t get. And, on top of ALL OF THE SHIT I WAS ALREADY DEALING WITH, I had him for English.

One of the laborious assignments he gave us was to keep a daily journal. Daily! Not monthly or weekly. Fucking daily. Handwritten. And we had to turn it in every quarter and he fucking graded us. He graded us on a fucking journal.

All of my classmates wrote shit like what they did that day or whatever. But, I did not. No, sir. I decided to give the ol’ middle finger to the assignment and do my own shit.

So, for my daily journal entries, over the course of an entire year, I wrote a serialized story about a horde of man-eating slugs that invaded a small mining town. It was graphic, it was ridiculous, it was an epic feat of rebellion.

And Mr. Hargrove loved it.

It wasn’t just the journal. Every assignment he gave us, I tried to shit all over it. Every reading assignment, everyone gushed about how good it was, but I always had a negative take. Every writing assignment, people wrote boring prose, but I wrote cheesy limericks or pulp horror stories.

Then, one day, he read one of my essays to the class as an example of good writing. When a fellow student asked who wrote it, he said, “Some pipsqueak.”

And that’s when I had a revelation. He wanted to fight. And since all the other students were trying to kiss his ass, I was his only challenger.

Mr. Hargrove and I went head-to-head on every assignment, every conversation, every fucking thing. And he ate it up. And so did I.

One day, he read us a column from the Washington Post and asked the class what was wrong with it. Everyone chimed in with their dumbass takes, but I was the one who landed on Mr. Hargrove’s complaint: The reporter had BRAZENLY added the suffix “ize” to a verb.

That night I wrote a jokey letter to the reporter calling him out on the offense in which I added “ize” to every single verb. I gave it to Mr. Hargrove, who by then had become a friendly adversary, for a chuckle and he SENT IT TO THE REPORTER.

And, people… The reporter wrote back. And he said I was an exceptional student. Mr. Hargrove and I had a giggle about that because we both knew I was just being an asshole, but he and the reporter acknowledged I had a point.

And that was it. That was the moment. Not THAT EXACT moment, but that year with Mr. Hargrove taught me I had a knack for writing. And that knack was based in saying “fuck you” to authority. (The irony that someone in a position of authority helped me realize that is not lost on me.)

So, I can say without qualification that Mr. Hargrove is the reason I am now a professional writer. Yes, I do it for a living. And most of my stuff takes authorities of one kind or another to task.

Mr. Hargrove showed me my dissent was valid, my rebellion was righteous, and that killer slugs could bring a city to its knees. Someone just needs to write it.

[witch-without-gender]

This is the first time I’ve seen this post but I know I’m gonna love reading it every time it shows up on my dash

[funeral]

When I speak of poetry I am not thinking of it as a genre. Poetry is an awareness of the world, a particular way of relating to reality. So poetry becomes a philosophy to guide a man throughout his life. [. . .] The artist appears not just as an explorer of life, but as one who creates great spiritual treasures and that special beauty which is subject only to poetry. Such an artist can discern the lines of the poetic design of being. He is capable of going beyond the limitations of coherent logic, and conveying the deep complexity and truth of the impalpable connections and hidden phenomena of life. Without such perception, even a work that purports to be true to life will seem artificially uniform and simplistic. An artist may achieve an outward illusion, a life-like effect, but that is not at all the same as examining life beneath the surface.

Andrei Tarkovsky, Interviews

[orcbara]

too many stories about turning yourself into a monster as a metaphor for pretending to be something you aren't and losing yourself in the process. not enough stories about turning yourself into a monster as a metaphor for choosing to openly embrace yourself even if it's strange to other people

[nyancrimew]

i love the word "ostensibly", you can write some mean ass sentences with it

[thenightlymirror]

James Baldwin.

[anneofgreengaybles]

absolutely no one:

Madeline L’Engle, writing a wrinkle in time at some point in the early 1960s: what are kids into these days? comparative religious studies and theoretical physics, right? Yeah?

[nedlittle]

it drives me bonkers the way people don't know how to read classic books in context anymore. i just read a review of the picture of dorian gray that said "it pains me that the homosexual subtext is just that, a subtext, rather than a fully explored part of the narrative." and now i fully want to put my head through a table. first of all, we are so lucky in the 21st century to have an entire category of books that are able to loudly and lovingly declare their queerness that we've become blind to the idea that queerness can exist in a different language than our contemporary mode of communication. second it IS a fully explored part of the narrative! dorian gray IS a textually queer story, even removed from the context of its writing. it's the story of toxic queer relationships and attraction and dangerous scandals and the intertwining of late 19th century "uranianism" and misogyny. second of all, i'm sorry that oscar wilde didn't include 15k words of graphic gay sex with ao3-style tags in his 1890 novel that was literally used to convict him of indecent behaviour. get well soon, i guess...

[dancinggrimm]

I saw a review of The Tenant of Wildfell Hall that said 'I can't believe people think this was a feminist book'.

Like, do you know how swooningly, outrage-causingly shocking it was that the main character slammed her bedroom door in her abusive husband's face? Do you have any idea how unthinkable it was that she denied him access to her space and her person? She was supposed to submissively look away while he turned their son into an alcoholic for his own amusement and seduced innocent young women! It was revolutionary in 1848; when Bronte (Anne) wrote it, she had to do so under a male psuedonym because publishers wouldn't accept works by women unless they were harmless pap, which was all that was thought suitable for women to read lest their mild and gentle minds be corrupted.

The reason these groundbreaking books of history seem to tame and understated now is because they worked. They raised the bar, pushed the agenda forwards, cleared the path for the next writer. They did exactly what they were supposed to. Time is linear. History moves forward. We make progress.

When you are old, if things happen as they ought, a future generation of teenagers will read The Hate U Give and Simon and the Homo Sapiens' Agenda and Speak and think to themselves 'why did anybody ever think this was contraversial? Why did they ban them? These are just things we talk about, these are things we deal with like normal people. What was the past like, and how do we stop from backsliding into a place where these things are considered shocking again?"

I really hope that's how it goes.

[svengooliecat]

First rule of literary analysis: the analyst cannot judge a past work by modern standards or ethics. Doing so leads to faulty comprehension, straw man fallacies, and lazy logic and analysis. We must always consider the work within the broader frameworks of the history, culture, and events that shaped it.

[thewritingumbrellas]

Writing advice from my uni teachers:

If your dialog feels flat, rewrite the scene pretending the characters cannot at any cost say exactly what they mean. No one says “I’m mad” but they can say it in 100 other ways.

Wrote a chapter but you dislike it? Rewrite it again from memory. That way you’re only remembering the main parts and can fill in extra details. My teacher who was a playwright literally writes every single script twice because of this.

Don’t overuse metaphors, or they lose their potency. Limit yourself.

Before you write your novel, write a page of anything from your characters POV so you can get their voice right. Do this for every main character introduced.

[writerlyn]

This is legit good writing advice, especially the first bullet point! In playwriting class we did a bit where every bit of dialogue had to be an accusatory question and it was glorious.

[soracities]

Claire Mesud, interviewed by Publisher's Weekly (2013) [ID'd]

[jdotsodomite]

i hope you write (i hope we both write)

[zetarays]

hand in unedited hand

[homunculus-argument]

I'm not trying to shame people who don't read The Classics because god knows most of that stuff never saw an editor, but before you post/reblog quotes from the old book classics, framed as something the author personally said, you should be aware that the quote was probably said or thought by a character who wasn't supposed to be objectively correct. As a matter of fact a lot of those fictional little guys were written to be completely wrong on purpose.

You have heard of the sci-fi genre of Don't Create The Torment Nexus. Now consider the 1800s book style Don't Become The Dipshit Protagonist.