Zoe | They/them | Writing + voice stuff + assorted blog of xiexiecaptain | Fanfic, podfic, fiction, poetry, gay eldritch abominations, etc. | Mobile header art by thcrsthry | Sidebar art by bubblline
big believer that writing doesn't always have to be writing. sometimes writing is going for a walk. sometimes writing is rehearsing your characters' dialogue in the shower. sometimes writing is putting a song on loop and staring at the carpet. sometimes you need to hang out with your story instead of writing it
Every 21st century piece of writing advice: Make us CARE about the character from page 1! Make us empathize with them! Make them interesting and different but still relatable and likable!
Every piece of classic literature: Hi. It's me. The bland everyman whose only purpose is to tell you this story. I have no actual personality. Here's the story of the time I encountered the worst people I ever met in my life. But first, ten pages of description about the place in which I met them.
Modern writing advice: Make sure your POV character goes through a significant arc! Make sure they are changed by the narrative! Make sure they learn a lesson!
Narrators of every book of the 19th century: the lesson I learned is these people fucking suck, sayonara you freaks
Modern writing advice: It’s all about the character overcoming obstacles and learning! They learn their lesson so they can fix their mistakes and make good choices in the future! It’s a character arc! It’s called growth! Readers love it!
Everyone from ancient times through the 19th century: would you like to watch a Guy fuck up twenty times in a row
Somewhere or other, C. S. Lewis points out (and I'm paraphrasing here) that every era of writing has its own tropes and its own blind spots; its own failings and its own successes. This is why it's important to read in lots of different eras: so you can see what does and doesn't work, in the long run, and be able to make your own informed choices about how to write.
someone: hey I noticed this thing you did in your writing!
me, kicking my feet up flirtatiously: oh??? do you want to hear my thoughts on why I did that? do you want a play-by-play of the language choices in every related sentence? do you want an exhaustive breakdown of The Themes???
I used to find it reassuring, like, "Haha, wow, if THIS can get published..." but now I take it to mean "It doesn't matter if your book is good or not, all that matters is if you're in the right social circles (and you're not)"
As someone who used to acquire for an indie publisher ... it sucks on the other end, too. We don't WANT to work on shitty books with shitty writing. But bossman wants to make money, and shitty writer has marketing clout/knows the right people/is already published (even if it's only online/ebook).
I used to read the most AMAZING submissions I'd be forced to pass on. Like, there was one, a literary fantasy featuring a bi deaf protagonist who learns how to navigate a spectrum of relationships while discovering herself (I don't want to give too many details out of respect to the author/don't want her concept stolen) and I couldn't get it acquired no matter how thorough my proposal and marketing plan was because she was a debut author with fewer than 10k Twitter followers and we needed that advance money for another Fifty Shades knockoff (this was a few years ago lol).
BUT PLEASE DON'T LET THAT DISCOURAGE YOU! If you're a writer, and you're trying to get published, don't give up!! If your first novel isn't getting traction with either a house or agency, publish it yourself on amazon. Get that "debut" moniker away from your name. Prove you can sell your shit and keep working.
A good agent will work with you to come up with a marketing/publicity proposal. That will be huge in getting houses to notice your work - makes the acquisitions team's job easier as they can point to it and tell bossman "we have a plan". Look online for titles that have high ratings/are on the NYT list that can be compared to yours. That helps give acquisitions an idea of what they're getting into - and how to represent your book to their ED/publisher.
A good agent will also help you target editors/imprints whose lists match your book, increasing your odds of getting positive feedback or even constructive feedback. If I had a submission that just wasn't quite ready for publication, I'd give detailed notes of what I wanted and ask them to revise and resubmit.
Keep writing! Even if a book isn't picked up, start your next. It's so attractive to see an author with several unpublished works ready to be polished if you already like the work that's submitted. And more writing only refines your skills.
Yes, bad writers get published. And too many good writers, even when published, go unrecognized (if you like southern gothic fiction a la Where the Crawdads Sing, go read The Past is Never, which came out four months earlier and got NO national attention but is BEAUTIFUL). Be such a good writer that you break those odds.
Because you can. I've read your stuff on Tumblr. On Ao3. On Fanfiction.net. On Wattpad. You can do it.
sometimes I think people think "narrative parallels" means "exactly the same" and like...that's not the point, actually, the point with narrative parallels is that they're variations on a theme that are meant to illuminate something about each variation. a narrative parallel that is just a precise reiteration of another thing isn't saying anything. it's just redundant.
on the other hand this also does not mean every narrative parallel is meant to be a sort of goofus and gallant "this one good, this one bad" didactic moral lesson. so jot that down too
So I’ve pretty much accepted that I’m probably not going to go back and fully finish writing the last coda arc of Cutting Shapes. I apologize to everyone who loved CS and had hoped I might do that. I’m happy I managed to finish out the main emotional arc of the story, ending with chapter 13.
I did have in my docs folder the final ending piece of CS that I thought I’d share.
It’s not a full scene with dialogue or anything, but simply the emotional bookend to the fic that I had written forever ago knowing I wanted to place it at the very end of the fic to wrap it up.
And so figured I’d share it here for anyone interested who might want to read it.
(Song I had picked out for the final scene: “Frame of Mind” - Tristan & Bracken)
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I think if there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that the act of living is one of cracking open.
I used to think that cracks meant you were broken. I think lots of people do. But I’ve come to understand that “breaking open” does not mean “broken.”
Because we are all, day by day, fracturing.
There are fissures in all of us, made by the things we care about and the people we love or people who failed to love us in the way we needed. Each time our lonely hearts slam against the pane of glass separating us from the rest of the world, reaching desperately outwards, the force of it sends hairline fractures through our solitude.
That splintering is the sign that you, at the deepest core of yourself, do not wish to be alone―that your heart is not content to beat a solitary and singular existence.
Marco was right when he told me all those weeks ago that we weren’t made for boxes. That’s why all attempts at defining and cohesion felt like wounding, felt like closing myself off.
Yet, it is tempting. Aloneness will always call to the small and scared parts of us who have been sliced open by those jagged edges, whose instinct is to see cracks and immediately recoil. Because oneness feels safer. Cracks have sharp edges and hearts are fragile things. Reaching through them into the unknown spaces between ourselves and someone else is a terrifying feat to attempt.
And understanding this doesn’t make it less terrifying. Living isn’t suddenly easy once you realize it.
Living hurts. Cracking open is painful and awful and at times you feel as though you will not survive it. But despite this, despite everything, you must.
Because nothing compares to that sensation when you reach outward and touch something that, perhaps for the first time, does not hurt you. The confirmation that you do not have to be deathly afraid of what lies outside―of realizing that the peace of “singularity” I thought only music could give me was truly just the sensation of knowing what it is to exist without walls.
And slowly, so slowly, we learn how to gaze through our fractures instead of at them―to understand that our hurting and our suffering and our thinking we were somehow less whole simply means we don’t want to be alone.
And that is the furthest thing from broken.
Because, god, how beautiful the world looks when we gaze out at it through shapes that love has cut into our existence.
How beautiful is the light that glints off our jagged edges, sparkling and shining like music in my head when I close my eyes or the sight of Marco’s eyes on me when I dance.
I am not at my worst. Nor am I at my best. I might always be in this process, because that’s what life is. Life is movement. Life is a constant cyclical work of inhaling, exhaling, inhaling, exhaling, of finding changes in rhythms that help you live without suffocating. Of letting the outside world in, and then also letting it back out again.
I am working and living through this harrowing yet beautiful process of splitting open at the seams in order to let the world in.
And certainly does it have its rewards.
Like the feeling of a bass line vibrating through your chest or the sight of freckles disappearing into the creases of laughter lines.
Like that feeling you get sometimes when everything is calm and you finally feel like a part of the world around you.
