sci fi is when women in tank tops are covered in grease and sweat and are shouting at people and racing against time to save lives

Literally cannot emphasize enough that my #1 writing advice is to stop being afraid. Stop being afraid of sounding too cringe, or too stupid, or too horrifying, or too horny, or too weird, or too much, or too little, or too you. You need to put your entire pussy into your art. Sure, it won't be to everyone's tastes, but if you keep yourself to the blandest tamest safest roads possible you will be of no one's tastes, not even yours.

One hill I will die on is that some stories genuinely work better in first person, and that people who have this rigid opposition to reading first-person narration no matter the context or premise (I see this a lot) are depriving themselves of some really excellent stories.

don't leave me!

I hate it when I’m writing a thing and enjoying it and then I hit some kind of wall where I know exactly where it’s going and what needs to happen to get it there, but it just isn’t working anymore.

Sometimes it’s because the idea needs to bake a little more.

I’m stuck on The Care and Feeding of This House, specifically on the scene where I introduce Rook, trans woman, furniture restorer and generally handy person, and Mayhem, her short, colorful, chaos personified cis girlfriend, and I think part of the problem is too many characters, so both of them need to go.

If they can’t show up in this story, I hope I find another one for them, because I love them.

Being a writer is 10% writing and 90% falling into rabbit holes about architecture and the history of toilets

Um. Disabled people are allowed to use a fantasy setting to let those characters that are disabled have a magic miracle cure if the want. This isn’t anti disabled, it’s wish fulfillment and that’s okay.

Trans people are allowed to use a fantasy setting to let those characters that are trans have a magic miracle transition that makes them 100% biologically the other sex. This isn’t transphobic, it’s wish fulfillment and that’s okay.

“some people don’t deserve redemption” redemption isn’t something that’s deserved, it’s something someone does. it’s making the choice to change the way you live your life, to be better, to do good things instead of bad things and try to make up for the bad things. and everyone can and should do that, at any time, no matter what they’ve done. we can’t change the past, but we can choose what kind of person to be now and in the future. we have the responsibility to do so. it is so completely not about “deserving.”

learning from the reblogs of that post that there's a lot of people out there under the impression that "kill your darlings" means "kill your characters" and that's the funniest possible interpretation of that phrase

since a couple people sent asks: it means you can't be precious about your own writing when the time comes to edit. sometimes you will write a really good scene, or a really good line, or a really good description. it will be your new favorite thing you've ever written. the kind of thing you want to post on tumblr attributed to "the book i haven't written yet" because it's just that good. but when the whole thing is done and you're reading it over, it just. it doesn't actually work. it stands out like a sore thumb. it fucks up the pacing, or maybe once you've really got a handle on characters you realize it's ooc. "kill your darlings" is about learning to delete those bits, even though they're really good, because they're making the work as a whole worse.

... but a lot of people i know don't actually delete them because it's 2023 and you can just cut and paste them into a different document titled "bits" until you write something where they'll fit. and sometimes it actually does fit in the work, but you tried to put it in the wrong place or in the mouth of the wrong character. but learning that you can put a lot of excellent paragraphs together to make a story that's worse than the sum of its parts is the important part.

“that character is a war criminal” that character is from a fictional fantasy world and did not attend the geneva convention

hard agree with these tags specifically

how many ‘and’s is too many for one sentence, asking for a friend

How many cups of tea can you get from one bag? If the next “and” has no flavor, that’s how you know it’s time to make fresh tea.

thinking about my finished book sitting on someones bookshelf...... my book being held in someones hands as they read about the little world i created..... someone excitedly gushing about my book...... fanart...... thats the dream babey

You're telling me that most people don't design entire universes and pantheons and systems of magic-physics as hobbies? Their 'good days' aren't defined as such because of big moments of inspiration which force them to rethink the parameters of their entire glossary and make half-a-dozen documents entirely out-of-date? That's not an everyday and everyone thing?

Normal people's weekends are composed of... like... grocery shopping and hiking and shit?

Sounds fake.

making friends on writeblr is so fun its like Woah lookit all these cool people with amazing ideas!!! and they want to talk about it and share it with me and the rest of us??? amazing i love it here

[ID: A tweet from Joseph Scrimshaw @ josephscrimshaw, posted on 3 June 2023 at 6:43PM. It has 267k view, 1665 retweets, 56 quoted tweets, 5651 likes, and 75 bookmarks.

The tweet reads: 

“WRITING ADVICE: If you’re scared of the blank page just puff your body up and make the page think you’re very large.”

End ID.]

if you’re wondering why i’ve finished like ten books in a week it’s because i am majorly procrastinating writing

About the whole "do I bring back that previously shelved WIP because I suddenly got the urge to work on it again?" dilemma.

Here's the thing. What I posted about yesterday and where my brain immediately went was that if I could just focus on one WIP I would make more progress, get it finished faster, Do Book More Productively.

And here's the other thing. I remembered today that I literally could not give a fuck about that. What if instead of spending a year working on one book from start to finish until it's complete, I spend three years (or whatever) switching between three different WIPs, writing what I want to write when I'm in the mood for it, and then probably finishing all three within a few months of each other?

What if I reach a point where I feel like no, actually, I want to obsess about this WIP and this WIP alone for a few months? What if I end up shelving a WIP for a year or two? What if I write bits of each of them every other day? What if there is no system and I just do what I feel like doing at any given time?

WHAT IF INDEED? Like, it literally makes no fucking difference at all. This is not my job. I write because I enjoy it. I share the process because I enjoy that too. I don't have to divide time equally between WIPs or work on one at a time or any other predetermined structured approach.

On one hand, this is terrifying because I find comfort in systems and routines, as well as in predictable and measurable productivity. On the other hand, I've been thinking a lot about the difference between a genuinely comfortable routine or system, and feeling like I must compulsively regiment everything to stop myself from feeling like a worthless piece of shit.

So yeah. Now I have three active WIPs.

opening your writing doc and immediately scrolling back 3 pages like "alright what the fuck is this story about again?"