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justynakulisa · 3 months

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Sometimes self care is chucking a chapter into a bin and writing something completely different in its place.

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justynakulisa · 5 months

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Low level/continuous pain tips for writing

Want to avoid the action movie effect and make your character's injuries have realistic lasting impacts? Have a sick character you're using as hurt/comfort fodder? Everyone has tips for how to write Dramatic Intense Agony, but the smaller human details of lasting or low-level discomfort are rarely written in. Here are a few pain mannerisms I like to use as reference:

General

Continuously gritted teeth (may cause headaches or additional jaw pain over time)

Irritability, increased sensitivity to lights, sounds, etc

Repetitive movements (fidgeting, unable to sit still, slight rocking or other habitual movement to self-soothe)

Soft groaning or whimpering, when pain increases or when others aren't around

Heavier breathing, panting, may be deeper or shallower than normal

Moving less quickly, resistant to unnecessary movement

Itching in the case of healing wounds

Subconsciously hunching around the pain (eg. slumped shoulders or bad posture for gut pain)

Using a hand to steady themself when walking past walls, counters, etc (also applies to illness)

Narration-wise: may not notice the pain was there until it's gone because they got so used to it, or may not realize how bad it was until it gets better

May stop mentioning it outright to other people unless they specifically ask or the pain increases

Limb pain

Subtly leaning on surfaces whenever possible to take weight off foot/leg pain

Rubbing sore spots while thinking or resting

Wincing and switching to using other limb frequently (new/forgettable pain) or developed habit of using non dominant limb for tasks (constant/long term pain)

Propping leg up when sitting to reduce inflammation

Holding arm closer to body/moving it less

Moving differently to avoid bending joints (eg. bending at the waist instead of the knees to pick something up)

Nausea/fever/non-pain discomfort

Many of the same things as above (groaning, leaning, differences in movement)

May avoid sudden movements or turning head for nausea

Urge to press up against cold surfaces for fever

Glazed eyes, fixed stare, may take longer to process words or get their attention

Shivering, shaking, loss of fine motor control

If you have any more details that you personally use to bring characters to life in these situations, I'd love to hear them! I'm always looking for ways to make my guys suffer more write people with more realism :)

#for referencee #writing reference

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justynakulisa · 5 months

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Publication day!

I’m happy to announce that my flash story, To Err and Fall, to Lose it All, has been featured in the winter issue of A Coup of Owls! It’s a modern take on the Slavic myth of a demon leading lost people astray into the woods. I’m honoured the story found its home at ACoO.

You can download the issue in .pdf from their webpage.

#writers on tumblr #publication

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justynakulisa · 5 months

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Every time. Every damn time.

You heard about death of the author, now get ready for:

DEATH OF THE STORY

A story goes out in print and suddenly it ceases to exist in my perception. Off you go, my wordly child, into the wide wild void. Been nice knowing you, now do not perceive me.

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justynakulisa · 6 months

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You heard about death of the author, now get ready for:

DEATH OF THE STORY

A story goes out in print and suddenly it ceases to exist in my perception. Off you go, my wordly child, into the wide wild void. Been nice knowing you, now do not perceive me.

#publishing woes

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justynakulisa · 9 months

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^this, but also:

Buckle up, folks, because I'm going to rant.

Sure, fiction can be and often is escapism. It can give us a moment of happiness and perfection in an unhappy and imperfect world. There's nothing wrong about that.

But fiction can also hit you like a battering ram and leave you shattered on the floor under the magnitude of emotions, some or none of which even have to be uplifting. There are moments in our lives when we need tragedies, when we need a story to put us through a meat grinder and spit us on the other side so that we can rebuild ourselves after a katharsis.

Stories haven't got any obligation to lean the upper way of the happiness scale. What they should and, dare I even say, must do is make you feel. And feelings come in multitudes, in a myriad of shades that have our heart quiver and rush and still, that leave you trembling and sobbing and raging and laughing out loud.

A good story should have an emotional impact that resonates with you. No one's ever said it should only ever be a comfort-only happy ending kind of story.

Hi, Neil

Just quick reminder, in case you've forgotten: TV shows are supposed to save us from hurtful reality, and S2 had a genre hurt/no comfort.

I really hope S3, if it ever happens (or a book maybe?), will take away all no-s, and transform them into yes-s. I refuse to embrace cruel reality of the end of Ep6. I even wrote a fix-it on Ao3.

Your heartbroken, saddened, crying 😭 fan,

Lots of love and respect though, always,

Helen

I'm sorry. I thought that anyone who had seen Crowley and Aziraphale split up in the Bandstand and again on the Soho street, and the bookshop burn down and Aziraphale discorporate, in Season 1, had already experienced bad things happening to characters they love, especially at the end of act 2.

And no, I didn't ever think that I was only making comfort viewing. I was making thinking and feeling viewing too.

I love that it's making people write fix-it-fictions. That's always the best response to art: making your own.

#writing #storytelling

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justynakulisa · 10 months

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Alarm bells being rung by Maureen Johnson on AI and the Big Publishers

#a very important thread #and something that i am not at all surprised to see unfolding #companies are actively engaging in death of an author but said death is them stabbing us in the back and taking what's left like look in rp

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justynakulisa · 1 year

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I keep thinking about this for obvious reasons, and my recent addition to that ongoing train of thought is the pipeline from "art&lit = content" to the popularity of AI generators and the apparent indifference from the masses towards the threat it poses to creative outlets.

Because if it's "just content", you don't have to worry about people behind it - it's easy and quick to do, after all! Anyone could do it! And so, if anyone could do it, so can a computer programmed putting together what's in its database. It's fun, it's easy to use; it's not like it's harming anyone.

Of course add to that the general lack of knowledge how those generators work and what they're using to spew the results at people, and the result is the generators mass-producing cheap, fast content. Faster than a human would, of course, which is a given with programmes of that kind, and that's the thing corporations look forward to. And after techbros have got over their distaste for anything art-related (how many times have we heard what we do is pointless and doesn't really contribute to the society and really we should just switch to IT or something tangible and stop wasting our time on nonsense) and realised they can turn it into something that's 1. more tech-y and 2. easily sellable to corporations, suddenly art&lit stopped being nonsense and became The Next Big Thing But With a Tech-y Twist.

So yeah. I think there's a connection, but I'm not a sociologist to properly study it. I'm just a writer whose future is slowly shaping to be really fucking bleak.

On art and literature, and why it's not just "content"

Forgive me in advance for the incoming salt, but this is a rant I've been sitting on for ages. A tweet I saw* only cemented my need for the aforementioned rant, so here we are.

A bit of context first. I worked at a bullshit, huge corporation for almost 6 years; after that, I've moved on to a corporation that's way smaller and involves some actual work rather than bullshitting for 5 days a week, but it's still a corporation. That's a background experience I'll be relying on, mixed with observations of the absolute hellhole that LinkedIn is, with a sprinkle of mainstream media attitude. For the sake of clarity, I usually refer to art and literature as "art", but I'll be using art&lit in the post. With that out of the way, LET'S DIVE IN.

If there's one thing that's aplenty in every corporation, it's the amount of self-affirmative spam you receive every day. Department status updates, newsletters no one reads, trainings and videos to watch, and so on, and so forth. And it is, regardless of the corp and the type of spam, called "content". It's an apt name for it, because it's neither art, nor anything useful. Just a barrage of words some poor soul had to put together. Oh, I'm sorry, not a poor soul. A content creator.

I can say I'm a content creator at my day job. I write software documentation and manuals. It requires some thought and some effort, it's not a bullshit job I could ignore without any negative consequences to me or the company or the world at large. But it's not art I create there. It's content. It's got no artistic value whatsoever except maybe for explaining concepts in an easy-to-understand way. The companies themselves have got no qualms about calling that type of fruit of their employees' work "content". That at least doesn't bother me. "Content" is an adequate term for repetitive, artless form of work that require creating something out of nothing.

But when the same term is applied to art&lit, when artists and writers are called "content creators", I grow spikes like a porcupine.

I understand why it's easy to use those terms. They're easy, umbrellous enough, and carry their meaning well. It encapsulates people who don't do art&lit, but dabble in education, design, what have you. But the results of their work isn't content as it's seen at its core and at its roots.

You churn out content daily and often without effort. Those instagram accounts posting variations of the same photo every day? That's content. A book written for 3 years and edited for the next 2, full of gorgeous prose and magnificent storytelling, or a painting that took weeks to finish? That's not content. That's art. And people who let it into the world by effort of their hands are artists.

That line of thought brings me back to that tweet I linked earlier. "Media consumption" is just as dehumanised, nebulous term for experiencing art&lit as "content creation" is to refer to the act of writing and painting/drawing. It assumes the interaction with content at the speed and rate it's created. Which is: fast. Then faster. And faster and faster, until both you and artists end up in an ever-rushing cycle of more, more, more. (I already ranted about streaming and the effect it's got on media, so I'll stop myself from doing it again ;)). But, FOMO, anyone? I'm sure all of us have experienced it at least once at some point. Corporations and mainstream media have got a way of slithering into our lives and taking terms and things that make us happy for themselves. They also tend to flatten nuances, limit imaginations, and produce countless iterations of the same trope if only they realised it was popular. (Side note: it's very obvious in traditional publishing when agents and editors seek stories centred around a motif for some 5 years after the first book with that motif made a breakthrough. That's something to talk about for another time, though.) And after all traces of what made an idea unique and brilliant, after art&lit have deteriorated into simple content, then both terms truly become equivalent.

I don't think that simplification is something we as a society should condone.

___

* - as often happens, given tweets' fleeting nature, this on too no longer exists. (should've made a screenshot, that's what). it had something to do with commercialisation of entertainment and the push for new films and shows and stories be published faster and faster as a never-ending stream you cna drown in. or so i think, at least.

#culture #writing #musings #but filled with rage

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justynakulisa · 1 year

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Happy Read an Ebook Week!

As part of the event, my short story anthology, Seasons, is available now at 50% of its usual price. Find it at https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1079842 from March 5-11!

#ebookweek23 #writers on tumblr

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justynakulisa · 1 year

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Life is being a bitch recently, so I guess this is as good time as any to wave the flag of not being dead and say that I've got a short story anthology out there in the wild. 4 stories, 4 themes, 1 ebook. Available on:

my kofi store: https://ko-fi.com/s/788911e555

a selection of retailers: https://books2read.com/seasons

#personal #writing #indie writer

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justynakulisa · 1 year

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There are so many amazing stories in this issue!

And there's also me, who have brought you The Mechanisms-inspired scifi spin on the myth of Ereshkigal and Nergal, with Gilgamesh and Enkidu boomering in the backgorund, and Ea-Nasir selling shitty electronics and NFTs. Contrary to what it may seem, it all does make sense.

ISSUE #4 IS HERE!

Happy New Year, everyone! 2022 was truly amazing and we could not have imagined more wonderful support for our inaugural year. We are so excited for what 2023 has in store and can’t wait to share it all with you—starting with our whimsical and visceral Issue #4.

PURCHASE ISSUE #4 HERE.

ISSUE #4’S DYNAMIC COVER, “GLOOP,” WAS DESIGNED BY Brittany Hentzell-Pannekoek (@britepancake).

WAYS TO ENGAGE WITH OFIC:

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Leave us your comments! If a piece spoke to you and you’d like us (and the author) to know, fill out this form.

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THANK YOU ALL SO MUCH FOR YOUR SUPPORT. HAPPY READING AND HAPPY NEW YEAR!

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#thank you again for having me <3

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justynakulisa · 1 year

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• • • ISSUE #4 PREVIEW • • •

COMING JANUARY 1, 2023

Featuring work from @youhadme-at-hella, @justynakulisa, @s-eli-johnson, and @sga_writes.

Reserve your copy here.

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#thank you for having me!#happy and proud af

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justynakulisa · 1 year

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ʀᴇᴍɪɴᴅᴇʀꜱ ꜰᴏʀ ᴡʀɪᴛᴇʀꜱ <3

it's okay to stray from your story. go write that short fic you can't take your mind off of! give you—and your characters—a break.

you! won't! always! make! your! word! count! -- you don't need to keep stretching sentences because the scene you finally got right is a hundred words too short. sometimes it's better that way.

the "rules" and "tips" are just ~guidelines~ (especially for people who like to swear by them) -- writing has no laws. especially first drafts. scrap the grammar, scrap the emotional tips, write it because it feels right, not because someone else says so.

every writer procrastinates. it's not easy being a writer.

take time off for yourself. the only thing harder than writing a story is to keep pushing it when you need a break the most. come back to it later. I promise there will be no dumpster fires when you're gone.

all writing is "real" writing. I don't think there's an explanation here?? fiction writers are writers. nonfiction writers are writers. fanfic writers are writers. (like how all reading is real reading!! in every format, too!)

it doesn't need to be perfect. honestly, it might never be. but it can be really close to it. if you're not satisfied with it, move on and come back when you're ready.

you are just as skilled as any bestselling author. remember that everything you read has been heavily edited by teams of people! their first draft could not even be as good as yours is now.

not using clichés is cliché. you will find one in any story. no one can bring you down for liking a certain trope. just because it's common doesn't mean it's bad!

no writer is fully well-rounded. dialogue will be easier to write for some, and description for others.

and, finally, no one knows what they're doing. trust me. we're all stumbling around blind here.

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justynakulisa · 1 year

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Reasons why that creative project has been sitting at 95% completed for months or years on end:

What remains to be done is all editing and revision, and you resent the fact that your work can’t just be perfect on the first try

You remember that there was something you wanted to change, but you didn’t write it down and now can’t recall what it was, and you can’t proceed until you figure it out

You’re stuck in a loop of “there’s this one problem that I know I can’t resolve without external feedback, but I don’t want to show it to anyone else until after that problem has been resolved”

It’s really the process that you enjoy, and you’ve learned that you can indefinitely postpone the emotional letdown of a completed project if you simply refuse to acknowledge that there’s nothing further to be done

The unhinged perfectionist part of your brain is convinced that calling a project finished is tantamount to admitting that you couldn’t have done it better

You got absorbed in a second project and genuinely forgot that the first one existed

Aliens