#author can't write

[inkskinned]

okay if you're really cool about things, i can be honest with you. before you read further, decide if you're a girl's girl. if you're cool and actually cool or like not cool.

men don't talk in my book because i was fuckken tired of the way they're the center of every fucking story. i was tired of how every story takes a moment to let them talk. men can shut up for literally one fucking book.

unfortunately not everyone is cool. professionally what i usually say is i didn't want to add violence to the world. the only men in my book are abusers, so they don't get to talk. they don't get to take up space. they ruined my life, they don't get to have their words echo anymore.

because like, yeah! you find practically any story about a person surviving trauma and... there's a man at the center. men are often rescuing us from these things. a "good man" is always standing around, being a good man, proving to the victim that good men are the real men. that her experience was unique rather than universal.

the redacted text has not been taken well by all of my early readers. there is this weird, crouching growl that keeps occurring with men-of-a-certain-age. why don't we hear his side of the story?

when i sat down to write everything that happened to me, i couldn't look at the frank brutality of my abuser's words on a page and think to myself: i actually let him speak like that. i had to redact his words from the manuscript. i then left it redacted. no victim is going to read this book and hear the person who hurt them. it is a book for the victims to speak. abusers shut up challenge, forever. for eternity.

my father once told me, chuckling, i should just have a page of redaction where i let the man just finally talk. it is funny to joke about how we should make a whole page in my book about a man that hurt me. this was not the only time someone commented - it feels like you're hiding things. how do i know you're actually a victim if he doesn't get to speak?

there are books where women aren't even present. i even genuinely like some of those books. like, who doesn't like the hobbit?

i keep running into people defending this imaginary man. the default narrative is so true to some people that they will defend any man, just by virtue of the assumption - "if he's acting like that, you had to push him." certain people need definitive proof that you didn't accidentally make your partner into an abuser. they need to decide if you deserved it, because they want to be able to judge you.

which makes sense, i guess, from a hind brain perspective. if you can figure out "why" someone was cruel, you can protect yourself against it. if you defend the bully, the bully might side with you. i don't really know their explanation for feeling this about a character in a book. trust me, i wrote the guy. he is not going to protect you.

i guess i just - there was a time in my life where i desperately wanted anyone to defend me. where i could have really used someone saying holy shit are you okay instead of what did you say to make him act like that to you.

instead, over dinner, a friend-of-a-friend i just met is pouring herself wine. i heard you wrote a book, she says. she gives me the kind of chilly smile i associate with knives. i heard it's unfair to men.

#the author is nonbinary. don't get fucking weird. #btw if ur a woman and u do this u go to advanced special hell. like if u defend ab*sers at all #u dont get to pretend ur protected from being misogynistic. ur not. we all have internal work. #writeblr #i can't write lately wtf

[breadandblankets]

there's a lot of Jason as a fanfic writer headcanons (which I love) but we're sleeping on the bat that is canonically not just a huge nerd but also a great writer: duke

where's he's at now he doesn't do hobbies he barely does humaning, he's The Signal practically full time, all his fics are on permanent hiatus

theres a better future where he learns to take breaks and has a note on his mega fic like "life ya know?" like No duke we Don't know

#duke thomas #please tell me in the tags what kind of fics you think duke writes #boygirltreehouse gave me the idea but he 100% writes warrior cats fic #he has a 500k uncompleted fic and u know damian is 🤏 to doxxing the author only to find out he lives down the hall #batfam #bread talk #this is incredibly unpolished an i can't force myself to word better #but its been sitting in my drafts since this morning and i can't stand it so take this shit

[consultingskeletondetective]

Controversial opinion but if someone spends days and weeks and months of their free time writing fanfiction for free and you don't like it,,,you don't have to say that 💀

I mean I get the argument, no one likes everything and you should accept criticism but literally the only thing that keeps writers writing is feedback, they don't get any kind of money or compensation and generally have to lie to their friends and family about what they're spending 90% of the time on so give them a break

Learning to write is an evolution that takes time and you'll stop that stone dead by leaving a nasty comment

#fanfiction #i don't want to say you can't leave criticism but you dont gain anything from it except ensuring the author never writes another word

[lord-squiggletits]

I think the key component to my personal reading of post-Delphi Pharma is that he's trying to be a horrible person on purpose. Not "on purpose" in the way that people have free will to exercise their own choices, but in that Pharma's "mad doctor" persona is a performance he puts on to deliberately embrace how much everyone else hates him. Basically, if people already think you're a "bad Autobot" and a horrible doctor who just kills his patients for fun, why try to prove otherwise to people who have already made up their minds about you? Just fully embrace the fact that people see you as an asshole. Don't try to change their minds. Don't plead for their forgiveness or understanding. Just stop caring. If you're going to be remembered as a monster, you might as well be a memorable monster, and eke as much pleasure and hedonism as you can out of it before karma catches up to you and you inevitably crash and burn.

I mean, I guess you could just go the route of "Oh, Pharma was always a fucked up creepy guy and Delphi was just him taking the mask off," but I really don't like that interpretation because, for one, it feels really wrong to take a character like Pharma becoming evil under duress and going, "Oh well clearly he did the things he did because he was evil all along," as if somehow Pharma breaking under blackmail/torture/threat of horrible death was a sign of him having poor moral character. As opposed to, you know, suffering under the very real threat of horrible death for himself and everyone he cares about while being manipulated by a guy who specializes in psychological torture.

The second reason is that it just doesn't make sense to write Pharma as having been evil all along. I mean...

Occam's Razor says that the best argument is the one with the simplest explanation. Doesn't it make way more sense to take Pharma's appearances in flashbacks, his friendship with Ratchet, his stunning medical accomplishments, and the few we see of him speaking kindly/sympathetically (or in the least charitable interpretation, at least professionally) towards his patients and conclude "This guy was just a normal person, if exceptionally talented." Taking all of these flashback appearances at face value and assuming Pharma was being genuine/honest is a way simpler and more logical explanation than trying to argue that Pharma for the past 4 million years was just faking being a good doctor/person. I mean, it's possible within the realm of headcanon, but the fact is Pharma's appearances in the story are so brief that there simply wasn't room in the story for there to be some sort of secret conspiracy/hidden manipulation behind why Pharma acted the way he did in the past.

I just can't help but look at things like Pharma's friendship with Ratchet (himself a good person and usually a fine judge of character) and the fact that even post-Delphi, pretty much every single mention of Pharma comes with some mention of "He was a good doctor for most of his life" or "He was making major headways in research [before he started killing patients]" which implies that even the Autobots themselves see Pharma's villainy as a recent turn in his life compared to how for "most of his life" he "used to be" a good doctor.

And although Pharma doesn't know this, we as the readers (and even other characters like Rung) know about Aequitas technology and the fact that it actually works, so... if Pharma really was an unrepentant murderer, why couldn't he get through the forcefield too? The Aequitas forcefield doesn't require that a person be completely morally pure and free of wrongdoing or else how could Tyrest get through, just that they feel a sense of inner peace and lack feelings of guilt. Pharma has murdered and tortured people by this point, and put on quite a campy and theatrical show of how much he sees it as a fun game, so why then can he not get through?

It circles back to my headcanon at the start of this post that the "mad doctor" persona is just that-- a persona. Delphi/post-Delphi Pharma's laughing madman personality is just so far removed from every flashback we saw of him and everything we can infer based on how other people see/saw him before that, to me, the mad doctor act is (at least in large part, if not fully) a persona that Pharma puts on to put his villainy in the forefront.

To avoid an overly simplistic/ableist take, I don't think Tarn tortured Pharma into turning crazy. To me, it's more like the constant pressure of death by horrific torture, the feeling of martyrdom as Pharma kept secret that he was the only one standing between Delphi and annihilation, the physical isolation of Messatine as well as the emotional separation from Ratchet, being forced to violate his medical oaths (pretty much the only thing Pharma's entire life has been about), etc. All of that combined traumatized Pharma to the point that the only way he could avoid cracking was to just stop caring about all of it. Because at least then, even if he's still murdering patients to save Delphi from a group of sadistic freaks, Pharma doesn't have to feel guilty and sick about doing it. As opposed to the alternatives, which were probably either going off the deep end and killing himself to escape, or confessing to what he did and getting jailed for it.

In that light, Pharma becoming a mad doctor makes sense. It avoids the bad writing tropes of "oh this character who was good his entire life was actually just evil and really good at hiding it" as well as "oh he got tortured and went crazy that's why he's so random and silly and killing people, he's crazy" and instead frames Pharma's evil as something he was forced into, to the point where in order to avoid a full psychological breakdown and keep defending Delphi, he just had to stop caring about the sanctity of life or about what other people might think of him.

Then, of course, the actual Delphi episode happens, and Pharma's own lifelong best friend Ratchet basically spits in his face and sees him as nothing more than a crazy murderer who went rogue from being a good Autobot. Then Pharma gets his hands cut off and left to die on Messatine. At that point, Pharma has not only been mentally/emotionally broken into losing his feelings of compassion, he's received the message loud and clear: He is alone. Everyone hates him. Not even his own best friend likes him any more. No one even cared enough about him to check if he actually died or not. He will only ever be remembered as a doctor who went insane and killed his patients.

So in the light of 1. Having all of your redeeming qualities be squeezed out of you one by one for the sake of survival and 2. Having your reputation and all of your positive relationships be destroyed and 3. People only know/care about you as "that doctor who became evil and killed his patients" rather than the millions of years of good service that came before.

What else is there to do but internalize the fact that you'll forever be seen as a monster and a freak, and embrace it? People already see you as a murderer for that blackmail deal you did, so why not become an actual murderer and just start killing people on a whim? People already see you as an irredeemable monster who puts a stain on the Autobot name, so why beg for their forgiveness when you could just shun them back? You've already become a murderer, a traitor, and a horrible doctor, so what's a few more evil acts added to the pile? It's not like anyone will ever forgive you or love you ever again.

Why care? Why try to hold on to your principles of compassion, kindness, medical ethics, when an entire lifetime of being a good person did nothing to save you from blackmail and then abandonment? Why put yourself through the emotional agony of feeling lonely, guilty, miserable, when you could just... stop caring, and not hurt any more?

#squiggposting #pharma apologism #i'm sure the doylist reason for the writing is just that pharma was a designated villain #so since he's a villain and 'crazy' it's fine for everyone even the good guys to treat him like complete trash #i just think from a watsonian perspective taking a sympathetic approach is way more interesting and logically consistent #what i mean is like. from a meta perspective one of the best ways to show that a character is super evil and not worth saving #is when even the good guy heroes. the ones who are supposed to be kind and compassionate and wise. see him as dirt #and this is also kind of a necessity in most plots bc TF is the kind of series that just needs action villains and long-term antagonists #so not every villain is written or has a plot to be made redeemable. and pharma is one of these bc he's not important or a legacy character #so from a doylist (meta) perspective you could read the autobots' disregard of pharma as a sign of #'this guy is not meant to have your sympathy as a reader. pay no attention to him' #but from a watsonian (in universe) perspective it paints a miserable picture of pharma being utterly forsaken by the ppl he served alongsid #and like yeah i'm super autistic about pharma so of course i view him with sympathy but like #the idea of being a loyal and good person for years only to be subjected to a Torment Nexus of #being blackmailed into breaking all of the oaths you held sacred. under threat of you and all your comrades dying horrible torturous deaths #then when your comrades find out about it they focus solely on the 'harvesting organs' and not on the 'blackmail' part #and then you get literally left for dead by your comrades and best friend hating your guts #and then you get rescued by a guy who uses you as a test subject for his evil machine #this is a fucking nightmare scenario like pharma could hardly be suffering more if the author TRIED to make him suffer #and for me it's like. the evil pharma did can't be decontextualized to what drove him to that. as well as the question of like #how easily ppl can write someone off as evil and turn a blind eye to (or even find satisfaction in) their suffering bc theyre evil #and either brought it on themselves or it's just karma paying a visit #like. i feel like if pharma WERE a shitty doctor and a terrible person his whole life then the delphi situation would feel like karma #but the way it's written and the lore retroactively put in makes it feel more pharma getting thrown in a torture carousel #and THEN becoming evil. but then being treated as if he was always evil or was some sort of bad apple #bc like i'm not opposed to LOLing when a villain gets a karmic torture/death related to the wrongs they committed #but in pharma's case it feels less like karma and more like endless torture + being abandoned by ppl who should have been more loyal

[l832]

[duplicitywrites]

people forget that (most) authors don't write to be popular.

that is why constantly being asked to update is so immensely frustrating. authors are not influencers, this is not paid content where you have a justified say in what gets made.

commenting "update please" doesn't tell the author you care about them as a human person, it says you only care about the next update. that is quite literally all it says, regardless of the intention behind it. choosing to interpret it another way is just an interpretation, it doesn't change the actual meaning of this as a demand devoid of genuine desire for interaction.

like, what is the answer to that request even supposed to be? "yes okay"??? it's just entirely ridiculous, and i'm tired of being told this should be taken as a compliment. the level of communication involved here is the same as dealing with a five year old who wants more candy.

it is not a compliment, it doesn't make me feel like someone cares, it makes me feel like people only care what i can give them, which is fucked up to say the least.

if you want to leave a short encouraging comment, then put some emojis or just say you liked it. it's not hard to do, and it's not some complex social skill you need to have, it is very basic decency that everyone should be capable of.

authors aren't here to serve you updates. these are real people, not products, try to treat them as such.

#authors who only write to be popular and write to reader demand... #that is a Choice i guess #can't imagine selling out when there is no actual money involved lol #thoughts #fandom

[theminecraftbee]

every time i exit like, an exchange writing period, and i no longer have a deadline, i start to become dizzy with "i should be writing right now--no writing??? i do NOT need to be writing right now??? cannot be right?????? writing??????"

anyway i've decided to use a poll to make you all into people who can create a deadline for me (and also i've started using habitica and want to try to write a LITTLE daily). there's no guarantee this is the one i'll actually go with given i've asked this like SIX TIMES in the past few months but this time it is a poll and also this time i'm trying to start writing daily again, so maybe this time it'll stick, idk??? so:

#bangs my head against a wall. sorry i keep using you all to judge interest to then judge whether i want to write something. #i am running into this problem where a lot of my wips are either busy waiting because they're for zines so i can't actually post them #i'm out of exchanges i actually wanna join until recursive opens to authors #and i really DO want to write something without deadline it's just that that's scary. #SO. i am like. out here trying to hold myself accountable i guess? #if it helps the one i'm currently MOST likely to write is the space heist i just have to figure out how to plan it #however if there's a bunch of interest in any of these i'll probably do that #especially since several of these are like. active wips. they Have Writing.

[shehsart]

It's gotten me thinking how it's so tragic it is that the league of villians are ostracized from society and their own families reject them simply for things beyond their control. (Touya's fire quirk incompatibility, Toga's need for blood) They've never been shown empathy so why would they empthatize with those who are blessed by the system? While they are forced to rot in the streets those with "socially acceptable" quirks get to thrive.

And it's beautifully written how these feelings of ostracism cause them anger and cause them pain all because all of them just wanted to love. Like Mary Shelley said "I have love in me the likes of which you can scarcely imagine and rage the likes of which you would not believe. If I cannot satisfy one, I will indulge the other."

Their "love" turns to loathing and drives them to madness. Touya loved his father and he was his no1 hero but if the no 1 hero beats his wife and abuses his kids what about the rest? Society has driven them insane then it hates them for being ugly victims too. If they were dead or passive it would've been convenient. Hawks calls twice unlucky before killing him and he refutes it in his last moments as Toga embraces him. He wasn't unlucky, he was just never accepted by those around him and he finally found that acceptance within the league. He says he lived a fulfilling life because he got to love them.

I just wished we got to see things from the villains perspectives more. MHA would've been much darker and grittier that way but I'm atleast glad we got their side of the story too. Love and rejection have always been a central theme of the league, they're almost inseparable.

#love them they are so Frankenstein coded #league of villains #lov #dabi #touya todoroki #shimura tenko #toga himiko #shigaraki tomura #twice #jin bubaigawara #shuichi iguchi #mr compress #bnha #mha #my hero academia #can't believe they were written by a shounen author #they represent the ugliest side of abuse victims this is so unique i think #and takes skill to write

[sugar-grigri]

If Fumiko is monstrous then Fujimoto should start presenting her as such

Fumiko is written to remind us that Denji is a child, and I repeat, she is the symbol of a child's sexual trauma in all its horror and "paradoxes".

Touching Denji without his consent, catching an adolescent who hasn't yet discovered himself off guard, is the most obvious way of proving the link between the theme of sexual assault and Fumiko, but it doesn't stop there.

The fact that Denji accepts only proves this point: it shows just how much he's someone who needs boundaries and protection. He passively listens to what he's told without question simply because Fumiko has the upper hand.

She has one, but spends her time pretending she doesn't, in particular by disguising her age like a predator, calling him "senpai" when she's 22, and playing up her protective role as a "bodyguard" when she's only there to stop Denji thinking for himself

As can be seen in the dialogue between Miri and Denji, she positions herself as an interlocutor, standing in Denji's shadow, influencing his decisions and distracting the boy from the substance of Miri's message.

But she's a complete paradox, still trying to make Denji believe she's protecting him, she refers to Chainsaw Man as a "child", which rather than demonstrating a good intention shows that she's well aware of what Denji is and that she's abusing him head-on.

Who protects a child by attacking him?

Once again, I insist, these are two pages from the same chapter. Dare you tell me that Fumiko doesn't present any contradictions?

Above all, she makes it seem as if she only wants what's best for Denji, even when he hasn't responded to her pleas for help. Once again, there's a paradox: the predator blames her victim for not having seen her own vulnerability, whereas she’s only abusing those of her victim.

Fumiko is a metaphor for the very dangerousness of sexual assault, gentle on the surface but insidious, its violence only made clear and felt after the event, rising like a tide.

When Yoshida convinces Denji to give up his normal life, he leaves him in the hands of Fumiko, a public hunter, who symbolises the extent to which, despite the monster in front of them, danger also exists among men, and that the milieu of public hunters is a harmful world for a child.

I think the reason Fujimoto doesn't immediately place Fumiko in a position of condemnation is to instil a feeling of frustration and powerlessness at seeing Denji unprotected, to make it clear that "he's missing something", a parental figure.

But I think that for the writing to be complete, the author has to take a clear stance on the subject, in his own way of course, but explicitly

Seeing Fumiko next to Denji makes me anxious, it's such a common form of violence that it pulls me out of my reading.

Fumiko is a monster, so I pray that Fujimoto will have fun explicitly detailing her dark side and her horror.

If he doesn't, then she'll remain an unfinished and confusing chimera, the result of lazy writing and a fear of commitment.

#csm 136 #csm 137 #csm 139 #csm 142 #chainsaw man #csm #csm part 2 #csm spoilers #denji #fumiko #fumiko mifune #my thoughts #But I'm a realist I can also see the flaws in an author I love Fujimoto likes the dissident and morally controversial aspect of his work #Even when the violence is correctly presented there will be no narrator to condemn it Fujimoto doesn't risk accentuating Fumiko's horror #but just making it more present more controversial Just to disturb his readers who sometimes have no real use for the script. #Maybe I'm being too hopeful and justifying the shortcomings of Fumiko's writing to reassure myself #It's possible she's the black spot in part 2 #In a jump shonen you can't present a 22-year-old girl touching a teenager as a joke. #I'm in favour of creative freedom but I'm also in favour of authors being aware of their audience.

[quatregats]

Something I've been thinking about is how Patrick O'Brian manages so skillfully to write characters whose actions contradict their beliefs, which I think is honestly a big part of why his characters feel so real. Mostly with Stephen and Jack—e.g., and perhaps most notably, Stephen has notably leftist sympathies (honestly I have no idea how to characterize his politics in period terms) who nonetheless becomes very comfortable with his rise to the landed gentry, while Jack is a card-carrying Tory who much of the time sympathizes far more with working class sailors and farmers than with the upper classes—but I'm sure he does it to a lesser degree with some of his minor characters (James Dillon, while perhaps not precisely minor, comes to mind), and I love that he's able to do that, especially the way in which he embeds it in the narrative. We see how they're all unreliable narrators of themselves; we understand how they want to be seen and how that does and doesn't coincide with the reality, but most importantly, this isn't presented as something reprehensible, just as a part of their own humanity. They are not their expectations for themselves, but they don't need to be those expectations to be beloved.

#stephen is especially guilty of this and i think it's very interesting how he thinks of himself versus how he acts #which is probably an essay on its own #but i do think that this is another point he and jack make a fun foil on #(for jack this manifests much less explicitly but i think it's definitely still there) #i can't think of other characters atm besides james dillon #(who okay. his actions don't contradict his beliefs exactly but there is a weird and complex relationship between them) #though i do suspect that there are probably more #idk i've been thinking about this a lot because o'brianizing hornblower has brought to the forefront #how different those two authors treat internal/external narratives #patrick o'brian is kind of like yeah they don't really line up but that's okay that's just what it's like to be a person #while for hornblower and cs forester it's like the internal narrative is so unbelievably unreliable and negative #but the external narrative also seems to be resoundingly positive #(which is probably why. in my humble opinion having watched two episodes of it. the tv show is much more Fun) #writing hornblower in o'brian format is just like wow there is no weirdness going on did i write him wrong #but no it's hornblower he just sounds so much more normal without the 24/7 mental gymnastics #perce rambles #aubreyad

[fromtheseventhhell]

Arya and Dany stans: *discuss the likelihood that they'll have a positive relationship given their parallels, foreshadowing, status as key characters, and being two of George's favorite characters*

Stansas: Is this Sansa shade?

I think it's hilarious that Stansas got mad at me for (accurately) pointing out that they accuse Arya and Dany stans of being motivated by Sansa hate simply because...we get along and like both of them lol. The idea of them getting along is about their characters and has nothing to do with Sansa. Just because they pit Dany and Arya against each other for Sansa's sake doesn't mean we're motivated by the same thing. Are there some conversations that bring up Sansa + Arya's strained relationship? Absolutely, that isn't baseless in the books considering they're written as foils and George has already said they have issues they need to work out. The "Stark sisters 4ever" fantasy they have is just that, and it's funny we never see this same energy for Arya being turned into a prop for her sister 🤔. Sisterhood didn't stop Sansa from siding with Joffrey, telling Cersei that Arya was a traitor (even though she had no idea where Arya was), or calling Arya unsatisfactory when she thought that she was dead so why are we supposed to pretend it's an all-important factor when discussing Arya's potential relationships with other characters?

#arya stark #daenerys targeryan #anti sansa stans #fandom forever talking about how the sisters writing is misogynistic but when we acknowledge that conflict it's an issue #yes Arya loves her sister but that doesn't mean all of their issues are going to magically disappear when they reunite and this is somethin #we were explicitly told by the author! guess we're supposed to just ignore what he said cause it doesn't fit fanon though #this idea that we're constantly thinking about Sansa and forming our opinions to spite her is so insane I can't #we can't even like two female characters without it being turned into a conspiracy theory 😭 #the real issue is that they can't stand that we talk about Arya as her own character and not just a prop for Sansa #cause where's this energy for the Stansas and /supposed/ Arya stans who come together to hate on Dany?? #or for the ones who erase Arya's entire story and mold her into a prop whose only purpose is to serve Sansa?

[hannie-dul-set]

i personally don’t agree with your statement what you’re expected to reblog. i thought i could just use this app for fun and to read about my fav artists without being expected to do anything, and never really planned on being active and making reblogging a routine parr of my reading experience

then i guess you're not really aware with how this app works. tumblr is a reblogging site. that's the only way posts, or in this case fics, can get around and reach new audiences. the algorithm doesn't care aboit likes. tumblr doesn't care about comments (but i appreciate those as well!!)

if you enjoy and have fun reading the works of authors who spend hours of their days making content for you to consume, don't you think the bare minimum you can do is click that tiny button at the bottom of the post to show your appreciation, no?

#never too late to add reblogging to your reading experience!!!! #i've been on this platform for years now and the number of authors—friends—i've seen leave this site and quit writing bcs of the lack of #interaction. lack of feedback they get from their readers is more than i can count on my fingers!!! #tldr. reblogging supports content creators. if you can't even do that then this isn't the platform for you. #(and would just like to clarify for the general public— i won't block you just bcs you don't reblog /my/ works. #if your blog is empty i'd simply assume no one uses it/is a bot/doesn't know how to use this dammed app

[myymi]

this kid needs better priorities

#'he's gonna be mad :(' #baby you are in a life or death situation #<- says the author who's making tails think this #sonic the hedgehog #miles tails prower #sth #tails the fox #sonic #unbreakable bond #dynamic duo #wip fic #i can't sleep so im writing instead lmfao

[greenerteacups]

Hi! I am an ardent fan of your writing, and I hope to be as sorted and planned as you some day in my own writing journey.

My question is: you have a keen eye when it comes to planning character personality, dynamics, and such. I've also been wading through your ask replies, and your insights into how you write people and how you make them play off of each other is so wonderful to read. If it's not too personal a q, how did you learn how to write like this? Did you go to school for writing, does it come from years of observing people, do you have reading list recs for "how to write real people and real interactions"?

Thanks! This is a really flattering question. I'll try to answer it honestly, because I wish someone had been brutally honest about this with me when I was a young writer.

I didn't go to school for writing. I started doing it when I was about nine years old. It sucked very badly. I kept writing throughout high school, and it still mostly sucked, but some of it was occasionally interesting. ("Interesting" here does not mean "good," by the way.) I took a break in college, and then came back. I've been writing ever since. Sometimes, I feel good about it. A lot of the time, I don't!

I hate giving this advice, because I remember how it feels to get it, and it's the most uninspiring, boring-ass, dog shit advice you can get, but it's also the only advice that is 100% unequivocally true: you have to write, and specifically, you have to write things that suck.

I do not mean that you should make things that suck on purpose. I mean that you have to sit down and try your absolute hardest to make something good. You have to put in the hours, the elbow grease, the blood, sweat, and tears, and then you have to read it over and accept that it just totally sucks. There is no way around this, and you should be wary of people who tell you there is. There is no trick, no rule, no book you can buy or article you can read, that will make your writing not suck. The best someone else can do is tell you what good writing looks like, and chances are, you knew that anyway — after all, you love to read. You wouldn't be trying to do this if you didn't. And anyone who says they can teach you to write so good it doesn't suck at first is either lying to you, or they have forgotten how they learned to write in the first place.

So the trick is to sit there in the miserable doldrums of Suck, write a ton, and learn to like it. Because this is the phase of your path as an artist when you find what it is you love about writing, and it cannot be the chance to make "good writing." This will be the thing that bears you through and compels you to keep going when your writing is shit, i.e., the very thing that makes you a writer in the first place. So find that, and you've got a good start.

Some people know this, but assume that perseverance as a writer is about trying to get to the point where you don't suck anymore. This is not true, and it is an actively dangerous lie to tell young writers. You are not aiming to feel like your writing doesn't suck. You are aiming to write. You are aiming to have written. Everything else is dust and rust. And of course, you'll find things you like about your pieces, you'll find things you're proud of, you'll learn to love the things you've made. But that little itch of self-criticism, in the back of your brain — the one that cringes when you read a clunky line, or thinks of a better character beat right after it's far too late to change — that's never going away. That's the Writer part of you. Read Kafka, read Dickens, read Tolstoy, you will find diary entries where they lament how absolutely fucking atrocious their writing was, and how angry they are that they can't do better. A good writer hates their sentences because they can always imagine better ones. And the ability to imagine a better sentence is what's going to make you pick up the pen again tomorrow. And the day after that. And the day after that.

Which is what I mean, and probably what all those other annoying, preachy advice-givers mean, when we say: a good writer is just someone who writes every day. It's that easy, and that hard.

#by the way a lot of this draws on ideas inspired by 'letters to a young poet' by rainer maria rilke if you're interested #that's a formative text for me as an artist #it won't teach you how to write but it will teach you how to think perhaps #and once you know how to think. well. life is just pretty good #and i can't say the writing gets easier but when life is pretty good i find myself enjoying it a lot more #this word vomit was prompted by the question 'how do you write real people and real interactions' #because that's like — i'm not trying to be pedantic but— #that's kind of just 'how do you write literature'? #because that's all literature is. what are human beings? how do you write a person? how do they interact with each other? #like shoutout to the void if you know for sure how to write real interactions then please for the love of god tell the rest of us #because i think most of all authors in history have just been giving it our best stab #'this is how the world looks for me. is it how the world looks for you?' #so my advice on that score is: try to see how the world looks for you #and then try to share it with me #don't worry about whether it looks the same for me. it won't

[aroaceleovaldez]

a quick helpful reference guide:

Children's books - Target demographic is generally up to like age 10 - basically elementary school and below, for us Americans.

Middle-grade books - Target demographic is approximately middle schoolers (ages 11-15).

YA (Young Adult) - Target demographic is about 15-20ish year olds, so high schoolers and early college.

There is such thing as "upper middle-grade books" (targeted more towards the upper range of middle grade, so middle schoolers going into high school) and other such more specific intended target demographic age ranges within those groupings.

What these ranges mean is that the books differ in how they present subject matter to be appropriate to the intended audience demographic. Obviously, books geared towards younger kids are going to be shorter, use simpler language, and present concepts in ways that are easier to understand for younger children. As the target age demographic increases, the length, word choice, and presentation of topics will become more complex. The actual subject matter within the book itself is unrelated to this classification system for the most part - the books are graded on what's presumed appropriate for that age-range in terms of how children learn and their presumed literacy and reading comprehension at that age, rather than the topic itself.

Rick Riordan is a middle-grade author, and his books are usually middle-grade - including the entirety of the Riordanverse and Daughter of the Deep. The only exception is The Sun And The Star, which is loosely either upper middle-grade or YA, as Mark Oshiro is a YA author and co-authored it.

#rick riordan #< basically only gonna tag that cause this is more general books rather than pjo-specific #anyways stop calling Rick a YA author he's not #also QUALITY IS SUBJECTIVE TO THESE CATEGORIES #a book being shitty because it's middle-grade does not excuse it being shitty #it just means it's shitty and also middle-grade #in fact its probably more difficult to write well for younger age groups because you have to break down the concepts well #and your audience is less likely to have the life experience to understand certain references or experiences #and you need to take that into account #it doesn't mean they can't handle certain concepts or deserve shitty writing #some writing is just obectively bad from a structural standpoint

[bnnywngs]

"mom, i'm home and brought lan zhan to do homework with me!" wei ying yelled as soon as he opened the door to their cramped apartment.

"welcome, sweetheart!" cangse sanren yelled back, waving a red stained spatula to the boys "are you staying for dinner tonight, a-zhan?"

a door opened somewhere inside the corridor and footsteps could be heard.

"yes, if i can?" lan zhan bowed as politely as he always were.

"gege!" a soft, happy voice exclaimed, before a body crashed into wei ying's back.

"a-yu! you're home already?" wei ying laughed, turning his face enough to boop his brother's head with his own forehead.

"yep! got our early today because i wanted to see gege~"

"xuanyu." lan zhan greeted the younger one.

the boy only glared at him with a disgusted expression.

"are you a kid?" wei ying laughed and tapped the arms around him "let gege go, i want to clean my bedroom a bit before lan zhan goes there. wait here, lan zhan, i'll call you."

"hm." lan zhan nodded.

xuanyu smiled brightly at his brother, asking if he needed help and being asked to keep their guest company. but, as soon as wei ying turned his back to them and walked further inside the apartment, xuanyu dropped his happy face so quickly it was almost scary, straight up glaring at lan zhan.

"go away, you pest." the boy said.

lan zhan sighed, already used to this.

"wei ying wants me here."

xuanyu glared even harder, sneering, but before he could say anything, a hand chopped his head quite hard.

"your brocon is too much." cangse sanren said with a loud sigh "leave your brother's boyfriend alone."

lan zhan bowed to the woman with respect, and took a package from his bag "uncle sent this."

"oh, my! you shouldn't have! but thank you anyway,~!" cangse sanren pinched lan zhan's cheek and went back to the kitchen with the package and her youngest "have fun with a-ying! and let the door open!"

#wei ying #wei wuxian #lan wangji #lan zhan #cangse sanren #mo xuanyu #the wei household is LOUD #wangxian #mdzs #look mxy can't be ooc if he never really shows up #guy appears in name only the whole story #wwx parents are alive bc i want to #alternate universe #modern mdzs #teen wangxian #my writing #bnnywngs writing #author is sleep deprived