Writing a Book about Writers

I’m writing a blog because I need a break from writing my novel. Probably will call the book something like "The Writers" although that sounds a bit definite, don't you think? The book is really interesting, I promise, and far too complicated to explain in a description. Hopefully I will do a better job in the posts. Typewriter by Marie-Pierre Bauduin from the Noun Project and the other icons are by FlatIcons.com

[specialagentartemis]

my petty gripe about anachronism in historical/fantasy/spec-fic worlds is attraction language.

We’ve all heard the “should you use modern queer labels or not” argument but honestly even when people go “true, they wouldn’t use the labels ‘aromantic’ or ‘asexual,’” so often the characters describe their experiences as “I never felt romantic attraction” or “I don’t feel attracted to anyone” in ways that makes me go. You are stilllllll thinking about this in an extraordinarily modern online way. That 19th century steampunk detective man will NOT be angsting about having never felt romantic attraction, he would be angsting about being unable to feel moved by the beauty or charm of a woman, or something. And I do think that “attractiveness” language is different from the identity-level idea of experiencing attraction—Sherlock Holmes does not talk about not experiencing attraction, but when Watson says “What a very attractive woman!” Holmes responds “Is she? I did not observe.” (And then Watson calls him an inhuman automaton and calculating-machine and Holmes calls Watson’s judgement biased). Never swayed by the attractiveness of a man or woman, never desirous of marriage, never charmed by the delights of love, all of these feel like some of the variety of ways that someone in this milieu might describe an ace- or aro-spectrum identity more than “never felt attraction” does. Mostly because, like the terms for aromantic and asexual themselves, nailing down an exclusively attraction-based definition of a-spec identities is a relatively new and extremely post-AVEN thing. And yet in fiction everybody knows to articulate their experience as feeling sexual/romantic attraction. And I always want to go nooo how would THIS character think about it?? Not how you think this character SHOULD think about it, how would THIS person in THIS context articulate their feelings?

[achillesinhighheels]

vogue beauty taiwan august 2025 photographed by chou mo

[micro-usb-deactivated20230625]

[spaghettioverdose-deactivated20]

As a trans woman I can confirm that they indeed found an ancient forest inside a 630ft deep sinkhole in China

[gayweeddaddy69]

cis people can reblog this but keep it on subject, please

[senshibignaturals]

Happy pride month everyone always remember that the sinkhole has an ecosystem large enough to house not only insects but likely several species of small birds or mammals

[concerningwolves]

i am so so gently asking abled storytellers to try this little exercise: consider that maybe the main character doesn't miraculously get through traumatic event number 8277 with minor injuries. maybe they don't make a full, narratively-convenient recovery. there are tangible, long-term effects on their health. they are disabled. there are lots of ways to be disabled, and you can pick whatever makes the most sense. the point is that because they're the main character, they have to stay at the heart of the narrative. what happens to your story after that? just for the sake of this exercise, you're not allowed to have them spiral into helpless depression, or collapse under self-loathing, or turn their story into a quest for a cure or an uplifting recovery narrative. think it through instead. how can you tell this story with the character's disability? what needs to change? are there any reasons why these changes can't happen?

at the end of it, you might change nothing. but I think this is worth doing, because sometimes you'll find that the reason you didn't want your character to have a limp, or lose a limb or sense, or have some kind of SFF-appropriate fantasy disability is because of internalised biases. those are worth challenging & i truly believe that creators miss out on richer stories when they view disability either as a fate worse than death or as nothing more than a catalyst for tragedy.

[writersguild]

I found a pretty great open source tool recently for creating a worldbuilding wiki. It's called Chronicler (link) and they're doing a mascot competition.

To be honest, I'm not too great at character art so this is more an idea for some other artist to actually draw. The feathers and color scheme are from their logo. My goal was to make a mascot concept that is fairly simple so it's recognizable even if the entire mascot isn't shown (example: just the head as an emoji). I also wanted the silhouette and shapes to be fairly basic so that they're easy to draw and, again, easy to recognize. Below you can see my silly sketch page of other simple birds including a heart by my favorite doodle.

Anyway! I think a little birb would be a great mascot for the program!

[agnesmontague]

you can kinda tell when a writer has spent a lot of time around kids bc they avoid most of the pitfalls that come with writing children. namely, not giving them a too cutesy or twee voice but making them sound more like extremely weird little adults. kids playing pretend will almost never cutely slot into some romantic scenario for the adults' benefit bc the adults are usually too busy cleaning up or wondering what the fuck is wrong with their child. kids also have surprisingly stringent hangups ranging from very petty grievances to downright chauvinist gender roles, more often than not the result of a tragic education but sometimes far surpassing what they were taught in intensity. what im saying is there's nothing inherently wrong with treating fictional kids as stock characters but it's always quite nice to see when they aren't

[derinthescarletpescatarian]

It's extremely common for very young children to suddenly say something extremely cogent and articulate, that's jarringly inconsistent with their normal speech. This is usually something that they heard an adult say recently. A kid will spend ten minutes telling you a story about how they fought a wolf yesterday using simple sentences of fifty cent words, then nibble a snack, wrinkle their nose and say something like "I feel like Mum was overenthusiastic with the salt today, and not for the first time either" before going back to their clumsy story. (They do understand what they're saying when they do this. Kids' communication is usually held back by their vocabulary and pronunciation, not their understanding.)

Young kids are also a lot more socially aware than people give them credit for. Young children are perfectly aware that adults don't take them seriously. They know when their parents don't actually like them. They listen and remember when adults talk about them while they're in the room. Kids will develop basic abilities to charm etc. from babyhood and will begin experimenting with social norms and concepts of deception, appropriate information, and acceptable language and attitudes in toddlerhood. By the time a kid is five or six, they have solid social strategies for relating to adults and separate ones fr relating to their peers, that they'll continue to refine for the rest of their lives. They will also say completely off the wall shit because they don't have the context to know what is and isn't considered super fucked up yet.

By the time a kid is eight or nine, their main difference from adults is in experience, interests, and ability for long-term focus. An eight year old can think as intelligently and coherently as a thirty year old, they just have less experience and information to draw from, and are likely interested in very different things. They're also likely still slightly hamstrung by vocabulary and literacy, though much less so than a younger kid.

Teens will behave like adults who have little power (a teen is often at the mercy of their parents and the state and rarely taken seriously, which is extremely frustrating) and who are high stress and mid-crisis, because they're going through a transitory period where their bodies and moods are changing and are having to constantly learn and adjust; a fourteen year old in a stable situation will act pretty much like a thirty year old with an oppressive boss who's just left a tumultuous relationship.

[fuckyeahchinesefashion]

Three yaks dance in Lhasa city (cr 情满拉萨，吉吉)(If you do not reside long-term in a high-altitude environment, please avoid intense physical activity at high altitudes, as it may trigger altitude sickness.)

[nyxkaikaos]

[Three musicians in astonishingly good chubby yak fursuits dance to the tune of Michael Jackson's "Beat it"]

[gunpowdercarousel]

Me: They're probably dancing to some traditional folk music or something.

Me: *unmutes it*

Me: AH.

[ultrafacts]

In the cave mines there are tenfold less bacteria in the air than in the most sterile room in a hospital, so it also helps people with skin problems. Again, 300 meter deep, but the temperature here stays pretty much the same the whole year round – around 22 Celsius.

For decades, hospitals have sent patients suffering from asthma, hay fever type allergies and various bronchial blockages to spend time in the dark and humid galleries of the mine, where the salt-permeated air is believed to have decongestant and curative qualities.

(Fact Sources: 1 2)

Follow Ultrafacts for more facts

[the1920sinpictures]

1927 Kodak Petite Cameras. From Art Deco 1920, FB.

[hunny-and-haycorns]

Wow, apparently the bellows were also colored to match the housing, and they came with accessories like matching compacts.

[avatarofthewriting]

found what they look like with the bellows open!!

credit u/deepsky_wonders on reddit

[krebkrebkreb]

if your favorite oc ever broke containment and developed their own fandom, what would the most pervasive discourse about them be?

too beautiful/smart/skilled/strong/perfect/etc

blatantly evil in some way

was mean to someone once

the unforgivable crime of just being kind of annoying

“in the way” of a popular ship

age gap relationship (2-10 years)

age gap relationship (10-30 years)

age gap relationship (30+ years)

a stereotype/“bad representation”

female

op you forgot ______

character is bald / im bald / see answers

Voting ended onMay 6

(i’m not giving a “multiple apply” option on this one. pick the most applicable/what you think would be the most argued about.)

[krebkrebkreb]

incredibly pleased that everyone is following the instructions i forgot to give and reblogging to explain their choice in the tags 🙏 more of that please i want to know about your ocs and also i love you

[eusexuanal]

Settles down on your dashboard gingerly and with a big heaving sigh

[gingkopalace]

THIS is my hear me out

Rick shades doodle

*drawing w/ reference*

*Sidenote* we were ROBBED of more seasons of rottmnt

[dateamonster]

tbh im not entirely immune to a villain with a tragic backstory but i do think villain origins are a lot more interesting when the focus is less "here is the original sin, the first big bad thing that happened to them that made them who they are" and more "here is the first time a person who maybe otherwise felt powerless in their life realized that they could hurt someone and get away with it"

[dateamonster]

you can get a lot more mileage out of analyzing a truly abhorrent character through the lens of like. what sort of conditions would allow or even incentivize this kind of cruelty? what kind of person benefits from those conditions and how? over the more typical who hurt them type analysis. imo.

[smsomah]

Felt patterned door. Kazakhstan, around 1899. Samuil Dudin

[m-l-rio]

The good plot twists aren't the ones that are wild left turns out of nowhere, they're the ones that make all the other little things that didn't quite add up before suddenly click

[doomhamster]

...or all the things that SEEMED to add up before suddenly mean something very different, like a picture breaking up and resolving into something else.

[starcut-sand]

When I was in college, my Creative Nonfiction professor would regularly have us do something she called "hotspotting" (she didn't know that this was already a term tbc) with our rough drafts. Basically, hotspotting is when you look at your draft and pick out your favorite sentence, or one of your favorite sentences--one that you're really proud of--and write it down in a blank sheet in a notebook. Not a new document, a physical notebook. (You are not allowed to use technology for hotspotting.) And then you set a timer for however long--like maybe ten to twenty minutes--and you elaborate. You treat that one sentence as if it's the opening sentence to a new draft, and you write from there, until the timer is up.

It sounds like a gimmick, but honestly, some of my best writing in that class came from hotspotting. Usually, the sentence you consider the "best" is the one that really gets to the heart of something you're trying to convey. In a rough draft, it tends to be that you're fumbling around a bit before you really hit on the heart of things. So with hotspotting, you're starting from a less fumbly place, which means you're able to dig into your subject in a much deeper and more precise way. It makes you feel like a surgeon, a little bit.

So I do recommend trying it, even just for fun, even if you think the rough draft you have is already good. You might surprise yourself with what you come up with! :)

[incognitotoro]

Ooh, this sounds like fun

[specialagentartemis]

settings I would love to see more in fantasy:

Deserts, but like, positive. Deserts portrayed as beautiful places full of life and wonder. Desert as homeland, desert as a place of beauty and intrinsic value.

Mountains. Andean-style settings where the world is mountainous and the land is organized into altitude zones, where uphill/downhill are more meaningful than east/west

Island archipelagos. We’ve gotten a few in fantasy recently but 1) I want More 2) I want someone to do a Fantasy Kula Ring

Something inspired by Tiwanaku or Chavín de Huántar

Independent city-states. They all are unified by basically the same culture but they are all also politically independent variously at war, making alliances, happily trading, in a trade war, conquered and subordinate to other city-states, founding new city-states, travelling to the central temples of other city-states’ patron gods, etc.

Full of prehistoric animals that never coexisted with humans but they do in this fantasy world because they’re Cool

[jureiblueeagle]

the only issue with deserts here is that, deserts do have life, but it's hardy life that can handle the heat and lack of water. A desert, definitionally, just isn't a vibrant place of life and abundance with the exception of an oasis.

Because the desert would have to be altered to sustain more life, and that would mean it would be more of a grassland than a desert.

[specialagentartemis]

The Sonoran Desert looks like this:

The Chihuahuan Desert looks like this:

The Mojave Desert looks like this:

A desert can be and often is a vibrant place of life and abundance, and these deserts are home to plants, animals, and yes, people, and have been for thousands of years.

The partially excavated and restored Pueblo Bonito, the largest Great House of dozens in Chaco Canyon, the center of a social/cultural regional network that spanned hundreds of miles in the 900s-1100s.

The ruins of Paquimé, a cultural center full of royalty and ritual with settlements that radiated out around it for kilometers in the 1100s-1400s.

The remains of Casa Grande and its outlying adobe buildings, the largest remaining Hohokam platform mound great house, occupied in the 1300s-1400s.

I pull these out in particular because they were all at their height at roughly the same time as the European Middle Ages and the Early Renaissance, which a lot of popular fantasy settings take their inspiration from. It's not only possible to live in the desert with Fantasy Kingdom levels of technology, it's possible to have complex societies with politics and intrigue there.

Of course the modern Hopi, Zuni, O'odham, Navajo, Apache, Yaqui, Yavapai, Havasupai, and Pueblos live there today, as well as of course the millions of people of various ethnicities and origins who live in greater Phoenix and Tucson and Albuquerque and Las Vegas and El Paso. Parts of the surrounding landscape have been converted into grassland specifically to sustain cattle ranching, not humans; but they are also still very much deserts.

I am saying I want to see more positive depictions of deserts as places of life and abundance because that's where I live and that's the vibrant, beautiful desert environment I've come to know.

[fox-bright]

A DESERT ISN'T A VIBRANT PLACE?

Immediately before this post on my feed was a video of a pair of mated Gambel's quail, and a bunch of their babies, running around together.

I grew up in a very rural area of Arizona's High Desert. I remember lying in bed at night and listening to the coyotes, their voices distant through the sounds of the night bugs and the calling of screech owls and poor-wills. If I held my breath, I could hear the bats; I can't tell you which species, as Arizona hosts twenty-eight of them.

In the morning, before the rest of the household was up, I would lace up my tennies and walk out to one of the areas of protected parkland, which was mainly discerned from the owned land by the lack of barb-wire fences, though I'd cross those if I had to. I'd have to be careful of snakes--I encountered diamondbacks and coral snakes on occasion, but more often they'd be yellow and black kingsnakes, harmless but I didn't want to step on them carelessly--and blue-bellied lizards would dart and skate across the sand in front of me while I walked. Grey-carapaced grasshoppers with secretly colorful wings, beetles dark and dun and jewelry-bright metallic, butterflies in shocking shades, moths that hadn't settled down for the day, the occasional scorpion. Wasps of all sorts, elegant and filigreed and interested in me every time I sat to drink from my canteen. If I spilled water on the ground, little things would fly over or run up to drink from it--lizards and insects, and once or twice a small desert mouse.

The sky was vast and full of birds. Golden eagles, turkey vultures, merlins and gray jays and cactus wrens, Gila woodpeckers and peregrine falcons, hummingbirds and cardinals and the intimidatingly-large ravens who would land in groups and turn to watch me as I walked past, occasionally croaking out calls that sounded very nearly like human speech.

If I was lucky, a grey fox might cross my path; if I was unlucky, I might have to book it to get ahead of a band of javelina, whose stink would usually announce them well before I noticed their sound.

Kangaroo rats and horned lizards were less common, in the hours that I was out, but some days I'd still get to meet them as I went.

A couple of miles overland through the desert would take me to the Verde River, which in many places would not be considered a river at all to a Northerner, but which nevertheless held brown and rainbow trout, sunfish and catfish. Usually I was more likely to be watching the tadpoles than the fish, though, and then the toads and frogs that they became, which the blue herons would come over to snap from the water. The dragonflies, as long as my hand was wide, would land in the cattails until I'd been sitting long enough to attract mosquitoes for them to eat right from the air before they could bite me.

I can't sum up the sheer incredible density of the life in that desert. I haven't even started on the plants, the low, grey little shrubs that would explode into flowers of electric brightness for a couple of weeks of the year, the deeply-scented scrub, the many sorts of cactus and succulent. If I started describing them, I would not know where to start.

Deserts are as important as forests. And at least as much to be respected.