#not my most polished fanfiction ever but it's a lot of fun not to put too much pressure on myself to make it 'perfect' | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

asamiontop · 2 years

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hey!!

quick question/praise

i love your writing so so much, wtstu will always hold such a special place in my heart. do you have any suggestions or tips for people looking to start writing fanfic? writing tips in general as well as tips for fics in specific?

i’m having trouble writing a solid beginning even though i know where the story wants to go. any tips for that as well?

additionally, how to capture the essence of the characters if that makes sense?

sorry for the loaded ask!!

thank you!! <33

👋 hello and thank you!! It’s so 🥺 to get asked for writing tips I don’t even know what to say besides trying to get you something at least marginally useful.

I’m not anything close to professional at this, and since Where the Snow Takes Us was like my first ever long thing, the best I can do is share my experience and hope that it helps!

In no particular order…

What got me started writing fic was basically a whole lot of reading it. I read and read and read until I was blue in the face and found myself craving content that I couldn’t find. When the idea bunnies nagged me enough, I gave in and started writing that content myself.

Reading lots of fanfiction for your fandom also helps capture the essence of the characters. Reading their reactions to hundreds of unique situations builds up a cache in your head of things that make up who they are. You carry that inherent understanding with you always, so while writing you can ask yourself what you think they would do/feel in the situation you’ve created. It also helps me if I can correlate a character’s personality to a person I know in real life. They don’t have to be the exact same, of course. Even if you identify just a few similar personality traits between someone you know well and your character, then you can ask yourself what your reference person would do to inform the character’s reactions. Imagine and play out your character’s reactions, their thoughts and feelings, what they might think vs what they might verbalize, and everything that goes on internally before putting pen to paper.

Beginnings are hard. It’s just kind of an awkward situation in general bc you’re trying to rope someone into your brainscape from scratch. With fanfiction it’s easier bc you can assume your reader knows the characters and the basic tenets of the world from your tags.

Usually with beginnings I tend to think of a really mundane situation that will become unique because of the way the characters treat it or because of what I know will happen in the future. (In wtstu the beginning is really mundane - Korra is covering for a friend at work.) People experience things every day that are easy to write about and relate to - so if you start with something mundane that your readers can quickly connect with, that’s a decent place from which to launch the rest of your story.

Alternatively I have read and enjoyed many openings that are, for lack of a better phrase, “self-aware” in the sense that the story seems to knows it is a story and introduces itself as such. Beginnings like “it was an accident the first time they kissed. This is what happened.” Those are a very different style but really fun too!

Writing tips… there are so many to be given! Here are a few that I think about a lot:

Use a thesaurus! Great word alternatives abound and frequently you will find some that are a little more specific and a lot more expressive for what you want to say

Use action verbs. Specifically, edit out most uses of the verb “to be.” It may seem difficult at first, but I suggest writing an excerpt and then going back and replacing all instances of “is.” Then reread and see if it sounds more polished. (Some other examples of using action verbs: “befriend” instead of “make friends with” OR “felt” instead of “could feel” OR “attacked” instead of “was attacking”)

Focus on maintaining a consistent verb tense. Personally I find it really distracting as a reader when a story slips from present tense to past tense and back again. So I always make an active effort to check and recheck and make sure I stay in the same tense. Usually when reading thru my own stuff, I always end up correcting some unintentional tense changes—they can happen really sneakily, so don’t feel bad if you find it in your work!

Flow is key. I reread my stuff a dozen times (not sure if that’s healthy but I’m a perfectionist and can’t let things go) and avoid excessive repetition of words, names, or sentence structure — all of those things can render the story monotonous or repetitive. I often remove details that at first glance seem important but actually detract from the main story or scene. Extra details can feel like bumps in an otherwise direct road and break the reader’s focus. Keeping those details in your head as an author adds a lot of depth to the writing, but know that the depth will come through even if all the background knowledge doesn’t make it into the words. What “flows” for you will be unique, but I suggest (if you have time) reading through your work and evaluating if it flows smoothly and without distraction.

Write what you want to read (or write). Don’t write for other people or what you think will get the most attention—if you’re not into the story, it’ll come off flat and uninteresting (because your own interest isn’t there to shine through!) Fanfic is most often a hobby, so do it for you.

Lastly, there are writing tip blogs to follow on tumblr! I recently discovered this and have been enjoying them a whole hell of a lot. Like lyralit, whose top posts have a ton of concrete examples of some of the tips above. Go scroll thru that blog and other related posts like this.

Sorry for the long, disorganized answer lol… there’s a lot to this! Hopefully this has helped a bit!

#my asks #long answer

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greenhikingboots · 2 years

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For the Fanfic Writer Emoji Ask : 🥺, 🎢, 💖, 🦅 Thank you🥰

LoulaNorth! Who leaves the most wonderful comments on AO3. Hello, darling! Thanks for the ask. Always fun to play along with these things. This is my Jonsa page, so I'm going to focus on Jonsa fics for these answers. Also my laptop is being wonky, so I couldn't link the post being refrenced. I'll try to remember to add it in the replies later. Here goes! - Is there a certain type of moment or common interaction between your chaters that never fails to put you in your feels? Oh goodness. I love a good confession of feelings scene. I had a lot of fun with my Jonsa one-shot, A Boy in His Cups, because it's a remaging of Jon's first POV chapter in AGOT, where he already knows the truth about his parnets. Which meant he was super in his feels in that fic. A mix of woe is me self-pity but also self-righteous, I'm better than Joffrey and Sansa should be mine. And pining! Basically, I just love having all that going on at once, in the middle of admitting feelings because -- ah! -- they're so strong the character just can't hold them back anymore. Such fun. - Which of your fics would you call your wildest ride? I'll go with the first Jonsa fic I ever started writing which was called For Better Dreams. It's taken down now, but I hope to eventually rework it and republish it. It was show inspired, a S6-8 fix it of sorts, but as I was writing it I was reading the books for the first time and reading so many amazing metas here on Tumblr. And that sort of made me lose interest in writing about show elements I'm no longer confident will be included in the final books (if they're ever finished). So I quit that fic when it was about 75% done with it even though I was very proud of the quality of writing I'd written. Since I hope to go back to it eventually, I guess that means the wild ride isn't over yet. - What made you start writing? I wrote for a different fandom for 8 or 9 months before I started writing for Jonsa. What made me want to write for that one was a desire to see more fics with a particular element of canon-compliance that I liked but thought was too often overlooked. What made me start writing Jonsa? Nothing too specific I guess. I read a couple one-shots that I liked and was basically like, "Yup! Let me get in on this action!" - Do you outline fics or fly by the seat of your pants? I outline but it's a very loose outline. As I write the chapters in more detail, some pieces get moved, some get removed altogehter, a lot get added. I also relate to GRRM saying he's a "gardener" when he writes -- sometimes I plant little ideas I'm not 100% sure how I'll use later on, but I do it anyway because it makes the characters and their situations more flushed out, which I like. Plus, I've been trying to remind myself that fanfiction is supposed to be fun. Stories don't have to be completlely polished and perfect to be enjoyable for both writers and readers. That's all I got. Thanks so much, Loula. I'm flattered you wanted to know. 🥰

#fanfic writer emoji game #jonsa fanfiction

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arnold-layne · 1 year

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also obviously what you post is your choice and i'm not saying that to push you to publish anything you don't want to, but editing isn't a required part of the process, you don't have to put in the extra effort to post stuff on tumblr. it's a nice coat of polish to put on, it's proper form and useful in many ways, but you're allowed to post rough sketches if you don't want to bother. as long as there's something that communicates it to the reader in a form or another, you're allowed to post any random unfinished story outlines or one half of a scene you wrote for fun or whatever you want. (and also ironically you won't ever know if something you never posted would've gained attention, again not saying you HAVE to publish anything, you don't, but there's sometimes value in just throwing something into the void, even if in practice it changes nothing to the feedback it brings)

I know you're right and I probably should loosen my standards on my work for my own sake but....it's just that I take so much pride in how clean and polished my writing is. not just any writing - exactly because it's fanfic. I hate that fanfiction has that reputation of "scribbles of a 12-year-old", which can detract even the best plot or engaging romance or a captivating character arc into an object of mocking in online groups created specifically for that. and I dunno about facebook or other social media, but in vk there is a lot of it. like A LOT. and since I started out like 10 years ago there, it's a very deeply ingrained fear now. fanfic is already considered the most primitive form of writing by an overwhelming majority of people who aren't terminally online like me, who also happen to surround me irl, and if I don't put out the best work I'm capable of providing....it will just lose those remnants of value it still has in my eyes. I know this is incredibly irrational and a harmful mindset. I know that fanfic can be good or bad like books in any other genre. I'm working on it and there's progress. it's slow but it's there, because, as much as I polish my writing, i could be doing way more editing if I forced myself to lmao

yeah you're right, its guaranteed not to get attention if it sits in my drafts until my demise. it's all either unfinished or incredibly self indulgent sex scenes tho. or it's in russian and in a fandom no one knows about because the books haven't been translated into any language except for polish lmao. so yeah. my regular fics don't get a lot of attention already, this stuff also hardly will

#but yknow. if any of you are interested. i can set up a google doc with this stuff probably #dont wanna put it all on my main writing blog but i can set the doc up for especially loving readers #lemme know if any of you wanna. ill think of it #arnold's laments

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dycefic · 3 years

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Hello, I recently read some of your work and I really really like your writing style! I’ve loved everything I’ve read so far and if it is not a burden to you and you are okay with doing so, I was hoping you could answer a few questions?

I was wondering if you had any formal writing education? Any advice for writing? Also wondered what kinds of books and authors you read, if you read?

I am sorry for all the questions, and if they’ve been asked before (I tried to find any answers you may have given to these or ones similar and I’m sorry if I missed them but direct me if need be).

I am also a writer and I’m always very curious about writers I look up to/ really like- most of them just happen to not be among the living so I do t really get to ask them any questions. Thank you for your time! It’s a pleasure to be able to read your writing!!

Thank you!

I am blushing extensively, thank you for all your kind words!

As for writing, I have had no formal education in it. I tried - and might not have dropped out of university if I'd succeeded - but creative writing required higher general scores than I got in school. I've read a lot of books on writing... like, a LOT... and always taken an interest in plot structure. I'm pretty sure I'm the only person who walked out of House Of Flying Daggers (I saw it in theatres, I'm that old) rhapsodizing about the way they visually represented traditional storytelling metaphors (ie 'a rain of spears').

I will note that while it seems that absolutely everyone recommends Stephen King's 'On Writing', I've never read it because a) I found the little bit I read wordy and self-indulgent, and b) the very mention of that man's name enrages me because my partner once got into a serious hyperfixation and we didn't have a single conversation in which King's name was not mentioned for OVER A YEAR. This is not King's fault, but the name still fills me with intense fury.

Books on writing I would recommend:

K. M. Weiland's 'Structuring Your Novel': I like her 'voice', and her chosen examples, and pacing longer stories is one of the things I have the most trouble with.

J. Michael Straczynski's 'Complete Book Of Scriptwriting': It's an old book now, but it's still one of the best I've ever read, and my long-standing favourite. There's a ton of fascinating history about the evolution of screenwriting, and a lot of very pithy advice that applies just as well to novels and short fiction as it does to movies and television.

Chris Baty's 'No Plot? No Problem!': I haven't reread this in quite a while, but I remember it as being really helpful as well as fun to read. I also recommend NaNoWriMo in general. I've been participating since 2002 - this year will be my twentieth anniversary of NaNo - and my writing has improved enormously in that time. Writing is like everything else, insofar as the more you practice, the better you get. I've hit 50K every year since the beginning, so even if I never got a novel I wanted to finish, polish, and put out there (and a couple of them are promising), that's still 950,000 words I've written.

Also? Fanfiction. Fanfiction is a GREAT way to practice the craft. Because the characters and universe are pre-built, you can focus on the writing itself, on things like examining nuances of character, identifying and using tropes, and building a compelling story. Between NaNo and fanfiction, over the last 24 years, I have written over 2,000,000 words, and you can't do ANYTHING two million times without getting better at it.

As for who I like to read, I can't recommend Diane Duane, Tamora Pierce, and Georgette Heyer too highly. Not only do they write good stories, they were/are very, very technically skilled. Reading their work is an education in itself. I also recommend consuming narratives from other cultures - I learned a lot about different narrative conventions from things like reading translated novels, myths, and fairy tales, reading manga, and watching Chinese and Korean movies and dramas. It really gives you a different perspective on the mechanics of storytelling, and shows you how many 'default' or 'obvious' plot tropes are actually really culturally specific. (I have consumed every re-telling, re-imagining, or re-translation of Journey To The West, including the old tv show AND the Hallmark movie. I really recommend this, as it is FASCINATING how many ways different people interpret the same story. The Korean 'Korean Odyssey' and Netflix's 'New Adventures Of Monkey' are my favourites)

Bonus reading: When Books Went To War, by Molly Guptil Manning. It's not about writing, but it's about why stories are important, the lifeline a novelist can throw to someone experiencing the darkest of times, and what I believe may have been publishing's finest hour. I cry every time I read it, and it makes me proud to count myself a writer. If you ever wonder why you're slogging away so hard at learning so fickle and difficult a craft, this book will remind you.

“The therapeutic effect of reading was not a new concept to the librarians running the VBC (Victory Book Campaign). In the editorial Warren published on the eve of commencing her tenure as director, she discussed how books could soothe pain, diminish boredom or loneliness, and take the mind on a vacation far from where the body was stationed. Whatever a man's need—a temporary escape, a comforting memory of home, balm for a broken spirit, or an infusion of courage—the librarians running the VBC were dedicated to ensuring that each man found a book to meet it.” ― Molly Guptill Manning, When Books Went to War: The Stories that Helped Us Win World War II

#writing

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bamsywrites · 3 years

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Mistakes Like These

Summary: Kakyoin never paid much attention to the younger Kujo. Who knew stockings and short skirt were all it would take change that

Rating: 18+, nsfw

Words: 4877

Warnings: cannabis mention, alcohol use

Tags: afab, fem pronouns, modern!au , doesn’t follow the canon like at all, very au, brother!jotaro x sister!reader, kakyoin x reader, soft dom kak, lots of pet names, plus size reader

Notes: I haven’t written any fanfiction in over five years so this might be rusty. I’m sorry for any mistakes made or if its not how the characters would act. I’m still new to the Jojos fandom but had this idea pop in my head and decided to get it out. I want to turn this in to a multi part story and have several parts already planned out, I just want to have feedback to see if people actually like it.

“Have a happy Holidays. Make sure to check in with your financial advisor about the spring semester.”

A sigh escaped your lips as you read the most recent email in your student inbox. Patience may be a virtue, but it was sure one you didn’t possess. At least not right now anyway. Tsking your tongue against the roof of your mouth, you moved the mouse over to the refresh button and clicked. Your eyes followed the downloading icon in circles, fingers tapping anxiously over the desk.

“Have a happy Holidays. Make sure to check in with your financial advisor about the spring semester.”

You exhaled angrily through your nose and leaned back in your chair. Your eyes fixed on the ceiling for a few moments before you looked over to your bed where your cat, Miso, had woken up from his nap.

“I know I should be more patient. But this grade is what determines if I move on to the next course which I need if I want to graduate soon and get out of this apartment.” You spoke as if your cat had scolded you for your impatience.

Your apartment was nice. Super nice. Your friends often described it as “apartment goals.” You could have never afforded it on your own. Hell, you couldn’t afford it even when you graduated and got a job. Two large bedrooms with a spacious living room, modern kitchen, and a balcony that overlooked the cities skyline. There were only two major downsides: there was only one bathroom which had to be shared with your roommate and your roommate happened to be your older brother, Jotaro.

Now, you didn’t exactly hate your brother. He was like any older brother, he thought you were extremely annoying and wanted nothing to do with you most of the time, though there were times growing up where he’d come home with scrapes and bruises after dealing with someone who picked on you at school. As you were both older, you found each other more bearable than you did when you were younger. That didn’t mean, however, you wanted to live with him. Especially while you were in college, which was supposed to be your time to let loose and have fun while still receiving an education, of course. Your grandfather, however, had other plans.

Joseph Joestar was a real estate mogul and had some serious money to his name. He loved to dote on his two grandchildren and was upset that for the most part your parents chose to give you a “normal” life without the extravagance that he offered. Birthdays and christmas he would buy you each a present, until Jotaro turned 15 and started asking for money instead. He made your mother an offer that he knew she couldn’t deny: he would pay for the entirety of your schooling, from associates degree to PhD if thats what you wanted, in order for the two of you to focus on your studies he’d also give you a weekly allowance so that you wouldn’t have to work, and he’d buy you each your own apartment and pay to furnish it how you liked. Holly couldn’t turn down the offer, what kind of mother would deny her children an opportunity like that? However, she did ask that her father only buy a single apartment for her children to share. Her hopes were that it would strengthen your relationship and it also meant she could see both her darling children whenever she desired.

You didn’t want to seem ungrateful at all for what Jiji had done for you. You knew you were extremely privileged to have the opportunities that he provided you but, fuck, sometimes you wished you had your own place. You wanted the independence, to know you earned something but also because sharing a bathroom with Jojo was infuriating. He always moved your stuff, never cleaned the shower, and he never had patience for you to get ready in the mornings. A wishful sigh left your lips as you thought of your future, with just you, Miso, and the ability to use the bathroom whenever you wanted.

Your eyes moved back to the computer screen, clicking refresh, and rolling your eyes when you read the same email from the dean again. Like you expected anything different, you just turned the term paper in yesterday. You brought your cup of tea up to your lips but furrowed your eyebrows when you realized there was none left.

Pushing yourself up out of your chair you formulated a plan for the rest of your evening. You would refill your cup of tea, hop back on your computer to play Overwatch with your friends until the early hours of the morning, and then cuddle up with Miso and look at TikToks until you fell asleep. It was foolproof. No way that you would even think about your term paper grade.

And if you did, you could always refresh your email in between matches.

-----------

Your finger tapped your lip as you looked over all the snack foods in the pantry. While waiting for your tea, you realized that the only thing that could make your plan better was a good snack. You had just gone shopping so it meant that all the poky, ramen, and chips you desired were on the shelves and it made the decision extra hard.

In the middle of your contemplation, you heard the front door turn and the sound of your brother and his friends entering the apartment.

“You know it's true, Jotaro. Your apartments bigger. Its nicer. It has that view that drives the ladies wild. Our apartment is cramped and it smells like weed.” Polnareff’s voice was the first you heard as the trio entered the house.

“Don’t forget the upstairs neighbors who are always playing loud polish music.” Kakyoin added, plopping down to sit on one of the chairs in the living room.

You heard your brother sigh and could feel his annoyance. You never understood how the trio became friends, it was a mystery to everyone including them but they had been together since their days in primary school and the bond they shared was one that intrigued you.

“Yes, yes. The polish,” Polnareff nodded. “Known around the world for their ability to ruin the mood with a hurdy-gurdy.”

There was silence, and you could tell your brother was not budging a bit. A party was not Jotaros thing. Kakyoin wasn’t a partier either, from what you gathered he’d much rather stay at home playing video games and smoking weed. Sucking your bottom lip in your mouth, you made your decision, grabbing a bag of chips and a box of strawberry pocky. You did your best to hold those in one hand and your cup of tea in the other.

“Feel that Christmas spirit, Jo. Help Pol in his never ending crusade to get laid. The poorman is gonna end this year with, what, a batting average of zero. He’ll be a disgrace to French men everywhere.” The teasing tone Kakyoins voice almost made you laugh.

“Hey! Batting average of 3. You know this,” Polnareff shot back, causing his roommate to throw his hands up in mock surrender.

“Jotaro,” The french man turned his attention back to your brother, who simply turned on the TV in what seemed to be an attempt to drown out the sound of his friend's voice, “C’mon. I’ll buy your cigarettes for a month…..Two months?” His voice was getting more desperate, his head turned toward you. A smile stretched across his features as he jumped off the couch and threw his arms around your shoulder.

God, you just wanted to go to your room.

“New deal,” Polernaff declared, squeezing you to the side of his body as you tried not to splash your tea all over the floor. Kakyoin looked away from the TV, eyebrow raised, Jotaros attention never faltered from the knock-off Viagra commercial. “If you agree to a Christmas Eve party I will buy you cigarettes for three months, I will never ask anything of you ever again, and I will stop flirting with your sister.”

Kakyoin snorted, shaking his head and turning his attention to Jotaro. Since you had moved in with Jotaro, the frenchman hadn’t stopped making comments about how beautiful he thought you were or just giving you flirty winks whenever you walked through the room. You found it annoying at first, but you quickly got over it when you realized he did the same thing with every girl, and boy, that he saw.

“Good grief,” Jotaro sighed. “Its a deal.”

------------------

“I can’t believe you agreed to this.” Kakyoin mumbled as he and Jotaro watched their friend place the final touches on the decorations and food for the party. Y/N had already put up Christmas decorations earlier that month, there was some snowmen set out on the dining table and a cute tree with some presents neatly wrapped under it. However, Polnareff had decided that wasn’t enough. He had hung up snowflakes to come down from the ceiling, there was garland hung on every wall, and so much fucking mistletoe.

Polnareff had even requested that his friends dress festive. Jotaro, of course, didn’t listen and wore what he always wore. Kakyoin decided to humor his friend and wore a Santa hat along with a dark green v-neck and dark wash jeans.

“You don’t need the money, right? Grandpa Joestar’s allowance has to be enough for cigarettes.” He continued, watching his roommate place a bowl of peppermints by the door.

“I just wanted to get him to shut up,” Jotaro said with a roll of his eyes.

“You think he’ll actually follow through on leaving Y/N alone?”

Jotaro shook his head, “Out of all the people in this city, you’d think he’d leave the only one of limits alone.”

Kakyoin simply nodded, taking a sip of his drink.

-----------

You smoothed your hands over your outfit, turning to the side to get it from a different angle. You couldn’t decide if you liked it or not. The sweater was cute, it was red with a deep green christmas tree that had colorful little puff balls as the ornaments. Your make-up and hair looked nice, too. That wasn’t what concerned you. It was the white pleated skirt and tight red stockings that caused you pause. You grabbed at your love handles that spilled over the top of the skirt a bit and your eyes traveled to how your thighs looked in the stockings.

Polnareff had told you you could invite some friends over. Which, of course you could, this was your apartment and you didn’t need his permission. You had told him as such and invited over your three closest friends.

You turned around to your bed and looked at Miso, who was comfortably curled up. “How do I look?” You waited a moment before turning back to the mirror and smacking your lips together. You were tempted to take off the skirt and tights and throw a pair of jeans on but something changed your mind last minute. Instead of heading to your closet to change, you instead grabbed the reindeer antler hand band and slipped it on top of your hair before heading out of the safety of your bedroom.

You were so distracted with the new decorations that you didn’t notice the pair of eyes that were glued to your form.

------

Simply Having a Wonderful Christmastime was playing for what seemed like the fifth time. Kakyoin had never hated Paul McCartney more than he did now. He was just now starting to feel the buzz of all the drinks he had had but it didn’t make the party any more bearable.

“She,” Kakyoin pointed to a blonde girl in a Santa dress, “is gonna hook up with him,” He pointed to a dark haired main that had for some reason felt the need to take his shirt off.

Jotaro simply grunted before eyeing more of the members of the party. This was a game they’d been playing for the past hour and a half, making bets on who was gonna hook up with who and who was gonna get the most shit faced.

“He’s gonna end up passed out in my bathtub,” The dark haired man stated, pointing to the only person dancing to the playlist Polnareff had created.

Kakyoin broke a smile as he watched the clearly wasted man's horrible dance moves. His attention was brought away from the scene by the sound of Y/N’s laugh. For what had to be the millionth time that night, the red haired man eyed her up and down. That outfit looked so fucking good on her but the smile streched out across her lips looked even better.

I wonder what the lipstick would look like smeared on my cock.

The thought slipped into his head and he couldn’t stop from staring at the red painted on your lips.

Does she feel as soft as she looks?

He took a sip from his cup. He knew he shouldn’t be thinking about his hands running over her thighs or his fingers digging into her hips. It was strange that he was having these thoughts. He’d never viewed Y/N as more than just Jotaro’s younger sister. He never thought she was ugly, in fact there were multiple times that he thought she was down right gorgeous but it had never turned sexual. Something about that outfit had sent him over that edge.

The sound of Last Christmas brought him out of his trance. Kakyoin almost immediately rolled his eyes. He almost missed the hurdy-gurdy.

“Good grief,” Jotaro mumbled and grabbed the pack of cigarettes off the coffee table. “I’m heading out for a smoke.”

Kakyoin watched as his best friend got up but instead of heading for the balcony, Jotaro went out the front door. The red haired man was tempted to follow but as soon as that thought popped into his mind he heard the drunk voice of his other best friend call to him.

“Kak, you gotta show these guys the cherry thing!”

---------

It was well past 3. The party had ended and most of the attendants took an Uber home. The only people in the apartment were you, Polnareff, and Kakyoin. Jotaro had still not returned from that smoke he said he was going to take hours ago. The buzz had long worn off and the reality sank in that you had to clean the disaster of an apartment that was left in the christmas party’s wake.

There were red solo cups strewn about various surfaces and all over the floor, glitter seemed to have gotten everywhere, there were plates of food left half eaten, and there was a candy cane just stuck to the wall. Looking at the destruction, you almost wondered if the fun you had had was worth it. With your parents coming over tomorrow...or, well, today…..for Christmas, you had really no other option than to clean it, with that thought in your head you grabbed a garbage bag and started cleaning.

After a few minutes, you heard the familiar rustle of plastic as someone was opening a trash bag and you turned to see Kakyoin helping you with your task.

“Thanks,” You told him as you threw a plate of half eaten cake into the bag.

“No problem. Pol is passed out in the hallway and I gotta make sure Jo makes it home safe, so I’m kinda stuck here.”

You simply nodded in response and kept about your task in silence. A silence which seemingly bothered Kakyoin because a few minutes later he cleared his throat and broke the silence.

“So I, uh, noticed your man wasn’t here tonight.” He almost smacked himself for asking the question. You thought he was just making small talk, the thought of him having more devious reasons behind asking if you were single hadn’t crossed your mind.

“My….My man?” You quirked an eyebrow, looking back over your shoulder at him.

“Yeah, your man. I saw you with some guy a while back,” Kakyoin had put down the now full trash bag and was leaning against the counter top with his arms crossed as he spoke.

“Oh,” You suddenly realized who exactly he was talking about, “Yeah, um, we broke up six months ago,” You said with a laugh.

“Oh...Six months?” He titled his head to the side, “Are you sure? Hmm… Well, sorry I didn’t notice...I uh guess I should be more observant.

You shook your head, placing down your own bag and heading past him to the pantry to grab another. “Its alright, I’m not offended. I’m sure you find me as annoying as I find Jotaros friends.”

Kakyoin raised his eyebrows at your statement, “You find me annoying? I mean, Pol, I get. Yeah. He’s one of my closest friends and even I can’t handle him sometimes. But me? I never talk to you.”

You had busied yourself with cleaning the rest of the cups off the counter, “ I don’t know. You’re just…” You looked up and noticed his eyes quickly flick down to your lips before making eye contact with you again. “I mean, you did one time give me oregano and told me it was weed.”

“First,” Kakyoin started, his body shifted so it was turned toward you, “Thats not annoying. I would call that immature, maybe. But annoying? Nah. Second,” he threw up two fingers to emphasize his point, “ In my defense, you were 15 and I was worried about you finding our stash under Jo’s bed and I thought it would lessen that chance if I gave you your own stash.”

You laughed, setting the bag down and turning to look at him. You couldn’t help but notice how good he looked in that dark green shirt but you quickly willed that thought away. “Kakyoin, that doesn’t make any sense.”

“Hey, at the time it did.”

You tilted your head to the side, you had plenty of stories that you could use as proof that he was annoying, “ What about that time you and Jojo left me stranded at school because the new playstation came out?”

“Thats not fair,” He noticed the playful hint your voice was taking and it caused a small smile to tug at his lips.

“How about the time that you threw up in my make up bag?”

“Hey, that was all Frenchie. Not me.”

“Or…..” You were silenced by Kakyoin pressing a finger to your lips. You hadn’t noticed that the two of you had just kept moving closer and closer as you were talking. You could get a better look at him now, his eyes looked tired but there was a mischievous glint to them, proof to you that he found this just as amusing as you did.

“What about you, huh? You saying that you’ve never been annoying?” He cocked an eyebrow, giving you a knowing look that let you know he had as many stories about you that you had about him.

“Look, I never once implied that I wasn’t annoying. I’ll own up to it,” You shrugged, “I was a total brat.”

Kakyoin snorted, “Don’t act like you’re not still a brat.”

“How?!” You looked almost taken aback, “How am I still a brat? You hardly see me!”

Kakyoin loved banter and teasing with his friends, it was kind of his thing. It was how he showed affection. If he didn’t gently bully you how was he supposed to show that he cared? But this, this teasing between the two of you was different. It made the room seem hotter and his pants feel tighter. That coupled with how fucking cute you looked in that damn outfit, even if your make up had worn off a bit and the lipstick was smugged. He couldn't deny it was doing things to him.

“I see you now,” His voice was deep, his tongue sticking out to wet his bottom lip as his eyes trailed you up and down.

Your cheeks immediately turned a blushy pink and your skin was hot under his gaze. Your lips parted but no words came out. This was Jotaros best friend, there was no way he was flirting with you.

Kakyoin took a few steps forward so he was as close to you as he could be without touching you. “I see you now,” He repeated in the same low voice, this time keeping eye contact with you, “And I see a brat.”

He pushes a few strands of hair out of your face and behind your ear, a gasp hitching in your throat as his heated skin touched your check briefly, “Unless you’re gonna show me otherwise.”

“I…” You swallowed the lump in your throat, suddenly weak at his gaze. “H-how?”

You look into his eyes and you can see it. You can see how much he wants you and how intense that want is. No one has ever looked at you that way before and it made your stomach erupt in butterflies. Quickly, you turn your head away not being able to handle the intensity of his stare. You feel his fingers on your chin guiding you to look back up at him, holding you there so he can take in all the features of your face. Its like he’s looking at you for the first time. His fingers move gently from your chin down to your neck, your breathing hitched in your throat when you felt the soft pad of his thumb move across your lips.

“If you want me to stop, tell me sweetheart,” He’s eyes had gotten a few shades darker and his voice seemed more strained than usual. Kakyoins free hand traveled under the sweater your were wearing, fingers lightly dancing along your side as his other hand stayed on you face, gently tracing the outline of your lips with his thumb. “Tell me right now and I’ll go back to pitching solo cups and scrubbing counters.”

In the pit of your stomach you knew you shouldn’t. You knew that if Jojo ever found out he’d flip, he’d always done his best to keep you and his friends separate. You always thought it was because you annoyed him and he didn’t want to have to be around you more than you already were, Kakyoin knew that it was because no matter how the man acted, he deeply cared for you and would do anything to protect you. These thoughts of Jotaro’s reaction filtered through your mind but your brother wasn’t here right now.

You acted on impulse, your tongue peaking out of your mouth to coax Kakyoins thumb between your lips. He watched with heavy lidded eyes as you gently sucked on the digit, swiping your tongue along the length of it. His breathing picked up for a moment before mumbling a quiet, “Fuck.”

Almost instantly you were hoisted on the counter with his lips against yours and wasting no time to swipe his tongue into your mouth. His hands quickly traveled up your thighs, pushing your skirt to pool at your hips and quickly ripping the stockings down the middle. Your legs hooked around his waist, pulling him as close to you as possible as your fingers worked at undoing his belt.

He pulls away from your lips for a moment to help you pull down his boxers and jeans. You licked your lips as you admired his cock, already hard and glistening with precum. You felt his fingers on your face again directing you to look at him.

“My cock needs to be inside you, sweetheart. Can I do that?” He was breathing heavy, he had never wanted someone so much in his life. All he wanted right now was to feel your pussy around his cock. Consequences be damned. “Can I fuck you, princess?”

You whine when you hear him speak, his voice is like nothing you ever heard before. Lust and want seemed to be dripping off every word. The whole situation leaves you speechless. At the nod of your head, Kakyoin pulls your panties to the side and slides inside you. His moan and your whimper are the only noises in the quiet apartment, his eyes watching your face intently for any sign of discomfort or desire to stop.

“Fuck me,” You breath out when your vocie finally comes to you. “Please, Kakyoin. Fuck me.”

He groans and happily obliges, rocking his cock in and out of you. Your small gasps and whimpers only egg him on more as he increases the speed of this thrust, your hands bracing yourself against the countertop. His eyes break from your face to watch his own cock slide in and out, the sight of his cock slick with your wetness makes him moan.

“Thats a perfect fucking pussy, sweetheart.” He breaths out so soft you almost can’t hear him over the slick sound of his skin on yours. His eyes find yours again, hand moving back to rest on your jawline and hold you in his gaze. He leans close and sucks your lip into his mouth, his teeth nipping at the soft flesh before soothing it with his tongue.

“You’re such a good girl,” Kakyoin tells you before pressing his lips against yours again. He picks up the pace because, goddammit, he wants to feel you cum on his cock. He pulls aways, resting his forehead against yours. Your moans are soft and the whimpers that follow cause him to smirk.

“Oh, fuck. That feels so good,” You whisper, looking into his eyes. He can see you getting closer and closer and its making it hard for him to keep composed.

“You take a cock so well, princess,” His lips brush against yours, he tilts your head to the side so that he can kiss down your neck, and then back up again. His lips find the lobe of your ear and gently suck on it. Your moans are getting more and more erratic, every now and then you’ll gasp out his name.

“You gonna be a good girl and cum on my cock,” Kakyoin whispers into your ear, his lips brushing against the shell of it. “Shit, sweetheart, I wanna feel that pretty fucking pusy come on my cock.”

It’s the sound of his voice whispering those dirty things in your ear that sends you over the edge.

“Thats it, princess. Fuck, sweetheart…I’m...shit. Can I….?” The red heads voice is ragged and incoherent but you knew what he was asking.

“Fuck, yes, please,” Its all you can do to get the words out. “Please, I wanna feel you come in me.”

You both come hard, his fingers digging roughly into the skin of your thighs and loud moans filling the space of the kitchen. The warmth of him spilling inside of you is enough to make you want a round two. After a few moments the two of you are left breathing heavy, his forehead resting on your shoulder as he tries to catch his breath.

You stay like that for a moment, trying to regain your composure and come to terms with everything that had just happened. This was a development in events that neither of you ever saw coming. Its you that make the move to separate, pushing against his chest and moving off the counter. You avoid eye contact with him, flating your skirt back down and picking up your, now ruined, stockings off the tiled floor. You could feel his cum drip out of you down to your thighs.

“That was….” Kakyoin broke the silence, buckling his belt and running a hand through his hair. You noticed he too was looking at anything but you.

“Yeah,” You nodded your head in response.

“You know we can’t uh…-”

“Yup.”

“Like, ever.”

“Trust me, I’m aware.”

“H-Happy...Happy Christmas.”

You just nod and quickly retreat to your room, throwing yourself on your bed and groaning into your pillows. After a moment, you crawled under the blankets and pulled your cat into your chest.

“Miso. I think I’m a slut….”

--------

Kakyoin watched as you retreated away down the hallway, his mind still wrapping around what had happened. The fact that he was the one that instigated it. He was the one that made all the moves and god, he shouldn’t have. But he had wanted to. He had wanted to get you in that position all night.

It was at that moment that Jotaro entered the apartment again, smelling of cigarettes and….perfume? Kakyoin was gonna have to ask him about that one later. “

“The prodigal son has returned,” The redhead teased his friend, doing his best to hide the guilt he had for what he had just done.

“Shut up,” Jotaro mumbled. He eyed his friend curiously, he was very observant and it was very naive of Kakyoin to think that he wouldn’t notice the change in his friend. “What’s wrong with you?”

I just busted a big one in your sister. And would probably do it again if the chance presented itself. No biggie.

“I’m, uh, I’m just tired.”

-----------

Thank you so much for reading this! I appreciate it very much. Let me know what you think of it and if I should continue the story. Merry Christmas!

#kakyoin x reader #noriaki kakyoin #noriaki kakyoin x reader #kakyoin #jjba #jjba x reader #jotaro x reader #jotaro kujo #jotaro #jojo #stardust crusaders

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todaydreambelieversfic · 3 years

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Author Spotlight: Gleefuldarrencrissfan Day 2

Author: @gleefuldarrencrissfan

Share one of your strengths.

I've been told that I do a great job writing in each character's voice, especially Blaine, Kurt, Santana, Brittany, and Finn. It's very important to me that my characters remain true to who they are. I work very hard to make sure that each one sounds like they would in the show.

I've also been told that I'm great at cliffhangers. Honestly, I end on cliffhangers a lot as I try to figure out which route I plan to take for the story. I map out stories, but sometimes, the story takes me in a different direction. I also like to take suggestions from my readers. Many times, I have multiple scenarios on the direction in which the story can go. I love keeping my readers on their toes.

Share one of your weaknesses.

Well, because I have so many scenarios running through my head, I sometimes get stuck, and so, I don't update regularly. I used to try to publish weekly or more, but as a mom of two, a full time assistant in a high-needs classroom, an avid crafter, and a member of a band, my plate stays pretty full. I hope that my readers will subscribe and drop a comment from time to time to remind me to keep writing.

Which fic has been the hardest to write?

I'm going to bring up two, Dueling Duets and Love, Blaine. Dueling Duets is a complex fic with many characters and a very intricate plot. On top of that, Blaine has PTSD, as do I. It became too painful to finish this, so it is the only fic of mine that is abandoned. I would like to finish it, but I just don't see that happening any time soon.

Love, Blaine was so difficult for me because I wrote it all before publishing, and I thrive on feedback. I kept going back and rewriting scenes over and over because I just couldn't make up my mind about certain things. I also get anxious with a timeline hanging over my head, and so I went past the deadline. Unfortunately, my appendix decided to burst the week I was supposed to publish, so I was trying to write through the pain. I did finish it, and I'm proud of it, but I probably won't put myself through that again.

Which fic has been the easiest to write?

Private Messages, by far. Honestly, it was so easy because Kurt was me in a sense, a fanfic author, desperate for feedback on his writing. I also outlined this fic thoroughly, and so it just seemed to flow when I got to a certain point. It is by far, my most popular fic, and honestly, it is my favorite of all of the ones that I've written. Don't get me wrong. It was very complex, bouncing back and forth from Blaine's and Kurt's perspectives, with plotlines from the show, Kurt's story, and the actual story all coming together and interweaving at times making it difficult to write, but I always knew where it was going, and so it was the easiest to finish.

Is writing your passion or just a fun hobby?

It's one of my passions, along with music and crafting. I'm an artist at heart, and so I'd never be happy or fulfilled in life if I wasn't creating in one shape or form. I honestly love the way art makes you feel, both as the artist and as the person affected by other people's art. My favorite thing is one someone tells me how my writing or work made them feel.

I'm also writing educational children's books, and I hope to inspire kids in the future to love to learn, and so it is a major passion of mine to be a published author and get my books out there for kids to read.

Is there an episode or character or arc above all others that inspires you just a little bit more?

Blaine Anderson. He was by far the character that inspires me the most, probably because I see myself in him, the confident, happy performer who is really quite insecure and maybe even depressed. I wish that the show would have let us see more of his personal life. At felt like, at times, he was just Kurt's boyfriend, but he was so much more than that. It would have been nice to actually see his home, his parents, and his brother to get greater insight on why he is the way he is. Thank god for fanfiction.

What’s the best writing advice you’ve ever come across?

Just write. The first draft does not have to be perfect. That's what editing is for. Get yourself a beta, dig in, and just get the words on the page. No one can read your work if the pages are all in your head.

What’s the worst writing advice you’ve ever come across?

Stick to what you know. That's what research is for. Branch out. Explore. Interview and talk to others. Although, if you are researching something embarrassing, for example, Brazilian waxing, use incognito mode. lol.

If you could choose one of your fics to be filmed, which would you choose?

Private Messages. I just love this story, and I think it would best translate into a movie. Besides, Blaine is an actor in this one, so it works.

What’s your process? Do you write your story from start to finish, or do you write the scenes out of order? Do you use any tools, like worksheets or outlines? What are the perfect writing conditions for you?

Ha ha. I find it funny that I have a process because it depends on the fic I'm writing at the time. for my more complex stories, I do best when I map them out first. I don't do a complex map, just a basic synopsis of the first 10 chapters or so, and then a rough outline afterward. Of course, I keep it a soft outline, and I also plan a few other scenarios in case the story goes in a different direction. Even Chris Colfer says that his characters surprise him in his stories, and so I'm in good company, I suppose.

However, on my shorter stories like Rim Job, and idea just comes to me, and I just write what comes to me, and then I even take suggestions from my readers about further chapters. I guess it just depends on the tone of the fic. If it's serious, I'm much more structured, but on my less serious pieces, I just have fun and write.

The perfect conditions are when I'm alone (be it when others are sleeping or out of the house) and I can just allow my muse to work. I put on some background noise (Glee music or episodes) for inspiration and just sit down in front of my laptop with my notebooks. Many times, I have scenes written in my notebooks before I type them out (I write when I'm waiting at the dr.'s office or at work during a break, ect) so all I have to do is type and polish the scene. Unfortunately, I have several scenes in my notebooks that haven't made it into a word document yet just because of lack of time. Hopefully, I will catch up this summer.

***

Check out Gleefuldarrencrissfan’s Fics

Somewhere Only We Know - Blaine has three little words on his mind when he says good bye to Kurt in the court yard at McKinley. Can he make himself declare them out loud? An alternate ending to "Born This Way"

Silly Love Songs - It's Valentine's Day, and Blaine had plans to serenade Jeremiah. But what if Blaine discovered the doodle Kurt made in Silly Love Songs before he serenaded Jeremiah? The scene at the Lima Bean is canon and everything to the point of Kurt sketching the doodle, but the ending, of course will be how I had hoped it would've happened.

Courage - Do you believe that one moment can change the course of your life? That one event change the way you saw everything, or do you think it's a series of moments that build from one experience to the next. A year ago, I would've said that was crazy. But I'm not the same guy that I was a year ago.

#author spotlight: gleefuldarrencrissfan

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dickwheelie · 3 years

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Hello! No pressure to answer, of course, but I recently decided I want to start writing fanfiction, but I don't really know where to start lol. And I've always really loved your work, so do you have any pointers on how to get started? 💖

oh wow this was an unexpected message! I don’t think I’ve ever had anyone ask me for advice on fic writing before but I will do my best. (and wow thank you for the kind words lol)

I guess the short answer is that fic writing is like any kind of writing (for me at least): you get an idea, you write it down, and you do your best to make it sound good. Which is super unhelpful but the thing about writing is that you can kind of do whatever you like, there are no rules. Lots of writers and listicles about writing will try to tell you otherwise, but they’re wrong, because there are no rules.

Fanfiction is especially nice because there are like. Super no rules. You can take other people’s characters, worlds, etc and put them in a sandbox and play with them as much as you like. And you can feel totally free to be self-indulgent. Honestly in my opinion most writing, original or fanfic, is self-indulgent (even for “serious” published authors), but writing fanfic seems to be more freeing for a lot of people. So feel free to write without shame, which of course you should always do, but fic writing especially should be fun and guilt-free.

“Where to start” is going to depend on who’s doing the writing, but in my experience, if you have a fic you want to write, Just Start It. And yes this is frustratingly unhelpful. If I Just Started every fic I wanted to write I’d be golden. But the fact of the matter is if you don’t Just Start It, in some capacity, it’ll never get written.

At the risk of sounding like the hypocrite author of one of those listicles, here are some of my tactics for Just Starting the damn thing:

1. Start small. This is my number one go-to for when I’m staring at a blank word document. Narrow in on a character’s pov, do some inconsequential dialogue, describe something specific in the scene. I like to write fics in chronological order, so this structure helps me take a small moment or scene and build on it, widening the scope gradually as the fic progresses.

2. Outline. In the past I’ve never been a fan of this one but recently it’s really saved my bacon. If you have a big idea in your head, this is a good way to deal with it. Start a bullet point list of things that happen in the fic. Don’t make it sound good, or polished, don’t even use capital letters or punctuation. Don’t worry about blanks in the story or sections you need to fill in later. Just write the stuff that you know has to happen. I can almost guarantee you will end up writing paragraphs worth of descriptions of scenes once you get into it, which will help when you sit down later to fill in the blanks.

3. If you only have a single line, or a tiny idea, or a moment you want to capture, take that and write it down. Just put it on paper, and turn it over in your head until you can build on it. Sometimes I end up writing short little ficlets that are just moments between characters, looking at their thoughts or feelings in a specific moment. They’re not gonna be super long or win any awards, but they exist, which is more than I can say for the stuff I didn’t bother to write down.

I will also say, again hypocritically, that you shouldn’t put too much pressure on yourself in terms of writing quality. Like I said, fic writing should be fun, and I know from experience that if you’re second-guessing every other sentence you put down because you’re not sure if it’s good enough, you’re never gonna get anything done. It’s not a college admissions essay, it’s not a grant proposal, it’s not gonna be a published novel. Just put Something down, and if it’s not amazing, either you’ll make it better later when you edit, or you won’t. Or maybe you won’t edit at all! Again, no rules. Sandbox. Have fun with it! (Meanwhile I will sit over here and try to take my own advice in future.)

Of course take all of this with a grain of salt, because your writing habits might be completely different from mine. Sometimes these tactics don’t even help me! I’m going through a dry spell as we speak, and who knows how much longer it’ll be before I can manage to get started on something in the pipeline.

And I’m realizing now that my fic writing advice is similar to my regular writing advice. I’m not sure if any of this is really what you were asking for, but for me writing is writing. Doesn’t matter if it’s a fic or an original piece, I tackle it pretty much the same way.

Tl;dr: It’s a cliche, but it’s a good one: Start It. Start small, start with an outline, start with a scene you have in your brain, but Start It. Be self-indulgent, shameless, and do everything wrong. It’s fanfiction, it’s supposed to be fun, so have fun with it!

(I hope this was helpful, like, at all lmao, but feel free to send another ask if there’s something specific you wanted to know that I missed as I was rambling on. Also if you do write something and post it please send it my way!! Happy writing!!)

#idk what to tag this as lmao #is it dumb to tag it with my writing tag #that might be dangerous lmao #gwyneth writes

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ravenwolfie97 · 3 years

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2020 Art Summary

Yep, it’s 2021 already. 2020 is finally over. It felt like it lasted forever, and it felt like the end would never come, but here we are. Crazy how the time flew by.

I felt like I didn’t get much art done this year because of Current World Event, but I made a lot more than I thought I did. Even some of my new favorite pieces came out of this year, so I think that’s worth celebrating and looking back upon!

I was insanely productive during the first month of 2020, and looking back I was surprised at all the stuff I did, but then I remembered that that winter season was actually one of the best times of my life! I started being more socially involved, and I think my newfound drive at the time translated into all the art I pumped out this month. This is just a small fraction of what I made in January, but I only have so much space. Quite a few complex pieces in both style exploration and polishing my own style.

Apparently February was a rather intimate month. Things began to slow down in terms of my own art here, with me spending more time in social settings and school work ramping up, I didn’t have as much time to coop up in my room to draw. I did wanna do something for a friend’s Valentine’s Day OC art challenge, so I drew my lovey-dovey couple from Dance of 1000 Words havin’ a dance. Nothing actually came of that challenge, but it was fun to do regardless.

One of the things I was most proud of in the winter season was making more friends, and one of the closest friends I made was completely coincidental. I met a person named Kiri on the bus one night I decided to volunteer somewhere by myself, and we ended up chatting and getting along. They quickly told me their tumblr username, and I shot them a message immediately after they left. A couple days later, we met up for brunch, and we started becoming really close friends and creative partners!

Not much else happened in March cuz that’s when Current World Event started becoming an issue, but Kiri and I still kept in close touch and we randomly started developing a concept for a Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Galar Edition. These are a handful of characters we thought up, with Skipper the Scorbunny and Dross the Dreepy as the main characters, Morgrem as the main antagonist, and some shopkeepers such as those of the Greedent Bank and the Indeedee General Store. This was also my first time drawing all of these Galar Pokemon (except Scorbunny, but I also made Skipper a bit more unique than a regular Scorbunny).

Lots of events happened this month. First of all, Steven Universe Future ended, one of my favorite and most influential shows was no longer continuing. I had to do something as tribute, both as a send-off to one of the greatest cartoons in the world and as a cathartic release for my feelings towards it.

A while later, I got the opportunity to start playing an MMO in beta called Fer.al, by the same people who made Animal Jam, which coincidentally I had also beta tested for back in the day. I ended up getting really attached to my first character, a Senri I named Sasha, and though I’ve made more characters than them since, they’re still my absolute favorite. Though I haven’t touched the game in a few months, I was really engrossed for a long time and enjoyed playing through the beta and early access phases.

At the end of the month, some friends of mine invited to a roleplay group with some mutuals, and we all played characters in a crime syndicate. Just a bunch of ragtag thieves and criminals who ended up together in order to protect an artifact called the Crown of Thieves, which was essentially a flag to be taken by other groups to prove that they are the best thieves in the land. My character was based heavily on my sona (if it wasn’t obvious) and was also influenced by Cloud Strife, since the FFVII Remake had just come out and I was super into watching the cutscenes at the time. My character’s (code)name is Valkyrie, and they are a mercenary, going between multiple different employers to carry out whatever duties they need to do. They have a more complicated backstory, but presently they were recently hired by recommendation of their friend Shark (played by @shmoots-universe who is also My friend now ily maya) who works with a group called the Court Cards who are currently in possession of the Crown of Thieves. Valk never really had a place to call home, but staying with this group of people had to be the closest they could get to that feeling. They still sleep with a knife under their pillow because of trust issue but that’s okay.

Okay, so technically these examples started in April, but I continued making content with them in May, and the month was just pretty void of art in general, so here I am addressing them.

There were two main things I worked on this month: a Steven Universe AU of my own and the whole #sixfanarts thing that kicked off around then. Let’s start with the fanart bits. I did two and a half of them (six in April and nine in May), and it was so much fun to be able to draw stuff I don’t normally do! My personal favorites are shown here: Blake Belladonna from RWBY, Roll from Megaman, Yuki Konno from Sword Art Online, and Link from The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess. The other thing I’d been planning for a while was a Steven Universe AU, probably to cope with the show being over but also because I was inspired by a lot of those SU AU artists I started following at the time. I won’t share the details here because it’s gonna have its own blog at some point, but the example I’ve shown here is of a comic I made loosely in order to introduce a divergence in the plot of the story as well as introduce a character unique to my AU. It was a lot of fun figuring out how to draw the characters and get a feel for the style.

As the year progressed, my amount of art I made per month began to dwindle, this time mostly because school was kicking my ass especially hard with finals. However, I took what time I had to get some backburner pieces finished, like the Tigerlily picture which I sketched out a couple months back, and the Gunvolt picture which I started working on SIX YEARS AGO. I don’t quite know why I got the urge to work on it again after so long, but it was nice to finally realize. The other drawing for DOTS was done in the dead of night but I was really happy with how it came out.

Despite only having two summer classes left of school, this month was really rough because they demanded a lot of my time and attention. I did not have the gumption to do anything digital, so I stuck to my sketchbook to get out what I felt like getting out.

My friends and I did a stream of the game Helltaker, and I really enjoyed the concept, so in following my friends I made my own Helltaker demon OC named Raksha the Ravenous Demon (it’s a pun but also got mythical insp). I also got super into Hazbin Hotel at this point, mostly because the Addict music video dropped and I couldn’t get enough of it, so I doodled Angel Dust cuz I felt like it. The other drawing I did was actually a free commission I gave a friend of mine as a prize for a trivia game show I ran back in June. He along with a couple other friends got some free drawings from me for getting the top three scores, and this one in particular was fun because of how interesting it was. He wanted me to draw a video game reviewer called the Irate Gamer from a specific moment, and I decided to go ham and just make it as dramatic as possible.

University classes finally wrapped up and right after that I was in the process of moving out of my apartment and getting adjusted to living with my parents again. I did a couple of agg.io drawing sessions with my friends from the Court Cards group as well as a new Dungeons and Dragons homebrew group I had joined. I drew some more of Valkyrie and came up with a design for my DND character Qakuqtuq (or Kai for short). He is monkey grandpa and I love him.

My main focus was on finishing a polished piece for my friend Cake, whose birthday was in the upcoming month. I wanted it to be as amazing as possible, so I put a lot of time into getting more detailed and making them look good. In addition to that, I did a few TOME doodles just for fun. The creature on the bottom was for this month’s art challenge on my Discord server where we made original TOMERPG monsters, and I created Hundylow, a Crystal-element monster based on the Grindylow from English folklore.

This month was a lot more productive than the past few had been. I tried to do a 31-day art challenge called Creatober but failed to get past the third prompt because I was still swamped with other work. I’m still happy with what little I did, including the piece with my characters Kyle and Guarudan from DSWD.

I don’t remember how, but I also suddenly rediscovered an old Flipnote Hatena series called Tales of LostClan, a Warriors fan series that I would say was the most obscure thing I’ve ever been super invested in. It was what got me into the actual Warriors books, and I liked it so much I redrew the animations into a comic... twice. Didn’t get nearly as far the second time but clearly my love for this little fanfiction had not waned after nearly a decade. I felt like drawing a book cover/movie poster for the series, just to get it out there and see how much I’ve improved over all that time.

Also I felt like making a vampiresona just before Halloween because I never dress up for Halloween in art (or real life anymore, for that matter), and I wanted to do something like that for once. It was short-lived but I really liked the design!

The focus of this month was definitely on Pokemon stuff. As per usual I contributed to the current Gotta Draw ‘Em All collab, and I was tasked to draw Regieleki. It was really fun to figure out how to make it stand out and look like it was made of electricity.

I also committed a lot of my spare time to my Fakemon Gym Leaders, as I had been working on bringing them to life in the past year or so now. As of this post, I’ve finished rendering their full body poses and gym badges, but I’m still working on completing all eight VS portraits, the first half of which are shown here.

I... didn’t draw anything this month, actually. What I’m showing here was worked on in the last few days but has actually been in progress for a couple of months, and I just finished it earlier today, in 2021. But I needed to show something off, and it’s also about time I mentioned it.

Back in October, I kept seeing people rave about this game called Genshin Impact, and I was interested but not so much as to start playing it... until my friends started playing and I was like “fuck it, let’s download it”. Since that day, I have been super immersed and in love with this game, to the point I came up with my own canon based on my gameplay experiences. This also included the creation of an original player character: Astra, the non-binary Traveller. And now, I’ve finally drawn them and brought them to life.

It has been one hell of a year. I had some of the highest highs and lowest lows in 2020, lots of changes, and I have now officially moved onto the next chapter of my life now that my time at university is finally over. I’m very excited for what 2021 has to offer, and I’m going to go forward with great ambition.

#my art stuff #art summary #this is always a joy to do every year and i'm glad to keep up the tradition for the sixth year in a row #this year was super good for this as well just to look back on what i was actually able to accomplish #long post #tome #hazbin hotel

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forgottencoffeemugs · 4 years

Text

writeblr intro

Hi, my name is Bri! I recently realized I never made an intro post, so here it is!

basics // Bri | 21 (22 in a week) | she/her

I’m a recent college grad who has come back to regularly writing thanks to plenty of time home because of stay home orders. It’s been a long time since I’ve been able to dedicate myself to writing, and even longer since I’ve focused on original works rather than fanfiction, so I’m excited to be here! This blog started as an experimental fresh start, and a place for me to dump all my ideas that don’t fit neatly anywhere else. Now, it’s become a fun community to see the process of other writers and to get inspired to improve my own writing.

I love music, dogs, cheesy supernatural romance books, and I spend entirely too much time taking personality tests and reading horoscopes for fun. I studied Psychology, with minor focuses on coding and the intersections of technology and society. Recently I’ve been spending most of my time reading, writing, playing through the Mass Effect series, and watching let’s plays on youtube.

I haven’t had a chance to interact with many other writers, but I’m super down to chat, so never hesitate to message me about your writing, your wip, or even just how your day is going!

writing // 2 wips and lots of other things

I love to read fantasy and romance, and that’s where my writing tends to fall as well. In addition to short stories and two longer series, I write a tiny bit of mediocre poetry on the side.

|| THE COVEN ||

The Coven is about a found family of vampires who are all struggling through their own interpretations of the meaning of immortality. For now, I plan to release this wip as a series of “short” stories about various groupings of this particular coven. To start, I’m working on bittersweet, the story of Cassian and Elena. These two are my babies, and I’m so excited to tell their story. Their relationship is essentially the trope of grumpy meets wholesome cutie and they’re each other’s weakness. After that I plan to write about how the original trio (Cassian, Theodosios, and Kassandra) came to be together, and it’s going to be all sorts of fun.

Basically the product of every vampire fantasy I’ve had since middle school (lol).

elements // angst, romance, violence, found family, meaning of life

|| TWICALNFB ||

Full title: The world is cold and life’s not fair, baby

This one is very much still in the early stages. Originally a fanfic, I’m planning to adapt it to be an original. In a world where supernatural creatures like demons and angels walk the earth, the Sins and the Virtues are some of the most powerful beings alive. Very few humans know the truth, and those who do are often working with angels against demons. The sin of Wrath finds himself wrapped up in the search for a human woman’s missing brother. Things seem trivial at first, nothing more than an amusing distraction, but things quickly take a more interesting turn when a plot to murder Wrath comes to light and a simple missing person case turns into a dangerous hunt for the truth.

elements // angst, violence, supernatural, more to come

Note: I’ve worked on this story for years. It’s been a favorite that I always come back to when I have time, and ever since I finished the first chapter, I’ve dreamed of really fleshing it out and turning it into an original story. Very excited to put those plans into action.

|| OTHER WRITING ||

I have quite a few short stories and poems. I have a lot of fun experimenting with these kinds of things, so I’m usually proud of them despite the lack of polish.

there are too many to list, but my masterlist can be found on my blog!

//////

That’s all I can think of for now, but like I said, if anyone wants to talk my inbox is always open! A big thank you to everyone who’s helped welcome me to the writeblr community, I look forward to getting to know people better.

#writeblr intro #writeblr #stuff about me #about #forgottencoffeemugs

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imagine-your-love-story · 4 years

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Your story with Din is so cute! And lil' baby Yoda makes an appearance too🥺 How do you write so well? Is it just something where you start, then you get into The Zone™, and then you can't stop? ---Doomguy Anon

omg THANK YOU SO MUCH Doomguy Anon!!!!! ♥♥♥ (one day, I’m gonna figure out who you are and hug you ;)

So! Writing! Okay. This is my JAM. Prepare for the incoming info dump!!!

I’ve been writing for roughly 10-12 years. I’d always dreamed of writing and publishing a novel for as long as I could remember. So I read everything I could on the process and I started telling the stories I had in my head.

Now, having said that, I need to leave a side note here.

It took a LONG time.

I’ve written hundreds of thousands of words across original stories, poems, fanfiction, you name it.

I didn’t start out well (and I also started “late”, around 18-ish, so I was no child prodigy writing since I could hold a pen). I received some pretty crushing criticism and a lot of rejections. But that’s okay! Around 2010, I had my first short story published in a very small independent press (I’m not even sure if they’re still active anymore!). I was paid $15 and even though I knew that wasn’t much at all, I was absolutely thrilled to get paid for my writing! (And it was no genius story either)

That really amped up my writing. I joined sites like Wattpad and fanfiction.net and AO3 and I wrote like crazy.

It also helped that I was in pretty large fandoms. About 4-5 years ago, I was heavy into the Star Wars fandom and I wrote like a woman possessed. Like, I couldn’t sleep because I had so many ideas boiling in my brain and I HAD to write or it would feel like an incessant itch I couldn’t scratch!

I continued focusing heavily on short stories with the occasional novel here and there. Author Ray Bradbury suggested writing short stories to become familiar with the art of writing. It gives you a project you can actually finish rather than the long-haul marathon of writing a novel. It teaches you how to tell a story in a short, compact, and snappy time frame that holds the reader’s attention.

I also joined NaNoWriMo, which, if you’re not familiar with it is National Novel Writing Month. I believe I’ve done it about six or seven times now? Did any of those novels actually get to a final polished draft? Heck no! But it gave me the chance to become familiar with words, to let myself make mistakes and still keep writing.

I also keep a journal daily. The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron suggested it’s a great way for creatives to explore their creativity unhindered in its purest, raw form without feeling like they have to make everything perfect all the time.

So I write a minimum of 3 pages every day (sometimes 4x that much if I have a lot on my mind!) and I’ve been doing that for about 7 years.

Some people don’t care for journaling (which is okay!) but for me, it’s like a sanctuary. It’s just me and the words. I can just write. About anything and everything. I never reread it, I don’t edit. I let the words just GO.

I have trouble with wanting everything to be eXACTLY PERFECT and my journal reminds me that words and thoughts and concepts MUST be messy first. The words MUST get on the page before I can start to corral them into a story!

Because my anxiety causes me speech problems sometimes, writing has become a natural form of communication for me. I’m FAR more comfortable putting words on the page than I ever am with speaking, even to people I’m familiar with.

So the pieces of advice I have for writing are this:

1. Write.

It’s literally the simplest thing and your brain does not want to accept it (trust me, every writer struggles with this). Classes and trainings can only teach you the basic tools but they can’t teach you how to tell YOUR stories. That’s a relationship you have to cultivate with only yourself and the blank page (as terrifying as that sounds).

2. Read.

The more you read, the more you fill your brain with words to use. And it also gives you the chance to recognize structures and styles that other authors use which will help you to build your own stories.

THIS INCLUDES FANFICTION. Plenty of traditionally published authors write fanfiction so it’s not a lesser form of literature/writing. Read everything!

3. LET IT BE MESSY AND “BAD”

I struggle with THIS SO MUCH. In order to have written a story, the words MUST be on the page. Not in your head. So put the words on the paper. ALL OF THEM. You can ALWAYS take out words or rearrange them later!

“Bad” writing doesn’t exist. It just means you’re learning. You don’t look at a child’s drawing and say, “That’s terrible.” You encourage them and you point out how you like the way they used color and lines. Because they’re learning. And so are you.

4. GET SUPPORT

This. is. soooo important. The act of writing is fairly solitary but the PROCESS of writing requires other people to motivate you when your creative batteries run dry.

When I was super active in the SW fandom, I was OBSESSED with writing 24/7. But I had a lot of people who were looking forward to my stories and that fed my enthusiasm.

Due to fandom politics, I left the SW fandom two years ago and now I’m only on the fringes. That crazed MUST WRITE ALWAYS obsession I had? Nah. I haven’t been able to write that much anymore. So it’s super super super important to have a support group.

But if you don’t have support right now, DON’T LET IT STOP YOU.

I didn’t have much support when I was starting out. But I really wanted to write so I kept doing it.

It’s a journey. It’s supposed to be fun and give you a chance to explore the thoughts in your head, the stories you want to tell.

I’m still not where I want to be with my writing goals (still working on that coveted novel!). But literally, the only way to get better at writing is to keep putting words on the page. Those early stories will be rough around the edges. They won’t be pretty.

But they will be YOURS. And with every story you tell, you really do get better, I promise. ♥

p.s. almost forgot! For me, my writing fluctuates depending on what’s going on in my life at the time and energy-wise. It’s RARE for me to get In the Zone TM. That’s for very, very few stories. Most of the time, I have to plink it out. Word by word, phrase by phrase.

Some days, the writing will flow really well and words will be like magic.

Other days, I don’t know how to put a sentence together to save my life. It feels like I’ve “forgotten” how words work.

So no matter how much time and effort you put into writing, it will never be easy but there is a rhythm to it and you learn to ride the highs and lows. And dang, when it’s done? And you have a story? It’s a head rush like nothing else!

#asks #Anonymous #doomguy anon #wow that was really rambly #i hope that helped???#if you need more specific information #please let me know!#i was kind of all over the place on this response!

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stuckwith-harry · 5 years

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hey you, i only followed you recently and I really like your hinny fanfics and your poetry. Would you mind telling me about your process when you write? I really wanna learn how to write properly and you seem to take your craft so seriously. How do you built a story, how often do you edit, how much time do you spent on your work, what do you try to go for,...? Thanks xxx

Anon, this is the coolest ask I’ve EVER received, and I’m hanging it on my wall next to all the colour-coded flashcards with poems on them. This is going to be LONG, and by no means exhaustive - I’m gonna jump around and ramble a bit and if there’s anything specific you wanna hear more about, please ask! I fucking love talking about writing!

I’m gonna put most of this under a cut, but before we dive in: yes, I tAkE mY wRiTiNg sErIoUsLy in the sense that I’d like to publish some original bodies of work in my life and to have physical copies of them exist on a bookshelf that’s not my own. I don’t need it to pay the bills, but if you googled my full name I’d like for, like, a poetry collection to show up and not, I don’t know, the two poems I got published in a regional newspaper when I was eight.

(And please let the record show that they’re fine poems for a primary schooler. The cringe years came way after that, kids.)

So, even having some ambitions in the industry, the reality is that I’m a 19-year-old kid with a keyboard and a dodgy internet connection who discovered fanfiction when she was twelve and got hooked for life. We’re going to retire the idea of “writing properly” for now, because writing is supposed to be fun and I haven’t actually gotten accepted into that Creative Writing Bachelor’s degree I so desperately want to do. YET. Don’t let the fancy writing blog (@jessicagluch) fool you into thinking I know what the heck I’m doing. But, okay, with that out of the way, let’s get into what I’m personally doing right now, yeah?

Fanfiction

You asked about process, and the truth is, I don’t … really have one. For the Muggle/FWB AU called “Let Me love” I just published, I actually wrote a pretty detailed outline that I then filled in, which was fun, but it’s not a habit exactly. I’d written a lot of assorted scenes and pieces of dialogue for that one, too, so I had a lot of material and just had to put all the scraps and pieces in order and stitch it all together. After the brainstorming, word-vomity part of writing Let Me love, my #1 task was figuring out where everything went, and making sure it’s all there.

As soon as I’d written a full first draft, no gaps, and the anatomy of the whole thing had somewhat clicked into place, I moved away from it for a while. Wrote something else. Came back maybe a week or two later, polished up the prose a bit very late at night.

Figure out when your creative hours are, if you can pinpoint it at all. Mine are precisely “I was supposed to be asleep two hours ago and I’ve got an important thing tomorrow” o’ clock. Sigh.

Just - leave it alone for a bit, come back with fresh eyes. I love writing Let Me love - I’m working on part 2 right now - but after you’ve fucked around with the same sentence fifty times, you get sick of it. And I did. At some point you have to decide to put down the pen and let it be.

Especially because fanfiction isn’t something you’re writing for a publisher - hopefully, you’re writing it mostly for you - no one is holding a gun to your head to get rid of every last adverb or stuff like that. I can do what I want, MOM. I am allowed to make the thing I’m writing as tropey and campy as I want and hold up a big old middle finger to the rules, if that’s what I want to do.

Fanfiction, to me, is this grand, batshit writing playground. That’s why I fell for it in the first place - it’s inherently self-indulgent and hedonistic and that you can write everything EXACTLY as you please is the primary purpose it serves as a genre. So go wild.

(Process-wise, the one thing I do very consistently is making moodboards and playlists. I like having some inspiration material to swim around in, which helps me figure out what the story looks and feels and sounds like in my head.

Every fic has a soundtrack. SOUNDTRACKS ARE IMPORTANT, PEOPLE.

Like, Let Me love is all coloured lights and night-time London and texts left on read. It’s neon signs and wearing somebody else’s t-shirt, messy bedsheets and hangover breakfasts and quarter-life crises.

This is the Pinterest board.)

What I pay most attention to is the stuff that gives the text depth beyond the surface. I look for metaphors - and I personally prefer the ones that carry through the whole thing, ideas we explore throughout the story and revisit at the end. I look for themes that hold a story together beyond the plot. I look for subtext and imagery and I want symbolism, goddamnit.

(That’s the poet kicking in.)

And of course, I’m a product of my generation, so I love referencing other bodies of work and subverting tropes and stuff like that. Hey kids, intertextuality is fun!

(Like, do you see what I did there? See how the phrase “hey kids x is fun” in itself is a reference to something? See??? I’m a fucking genius.)

I think we need some examples. Allow me to toot my own horn for a minute.

In the Halloween 2018 oneshot I wrote, which is about Harry grappling with the anniversary of his parents’ death when he’s a little older, he visits the graveyard with Ginny and Lily Luna. Ginny comments that “it’s freezing”, to which Harry responds with the titular, “you’re warm”. And yes, it’s October, it’s probably cold. They’re keeping each other warm. And yes, it’s maybe about comfort in harsh situations in general, a more metaphorical warmth, if you will. I get it.

But when you remember this exchange is taking place on a graveyard, you might start to wonder about warm, living bodies as opposed to cold, deceased ones. And then you think about how this whole story is about the living remembering - in a sense, living with - the dead. And how it’s about death as a part of Harry’s life. And you can probably guess by now that all my literature teachers fucking adored me.

(But he’s also choosing a side here, maybe. But I’m merely the author, you don’t have to listen to me at all. My words beyond the words don’t mean shit unless you decide they do and even then you’re going to find yourself knees-deep in a debate around authorial intent in record-time. In the age of “Nagini was a cursed human woman all along”, I’m not sure I want that.)

I also reference other pieces of work a lot. Often poems, and even more frequently, songs. The songs in Let Me love are VERY IMPORTANT and I can’t show you the full playlist right now because SPOILERS. But the chapters are split into sub-sections via song lyrics. Those are part of the playlist. There’s also a lot of referencing songs in general because Harry is a big music fan in this one, but that’s just indulgence on my part. If I want to make a 21st century Harry a Mitski stan, then I will. And I did!

(AND Let Me love has a Friends reference. For funsies, but also, for much more than funsies.)

“I love you / please do not use it” was inspired by a poem by Savannah Brown called “organs”. (It’s linked in the author’s notes at the beginning.)

“It’s two sugars, right?” borrows and/or references a ton of lines and phrases from T. S. Eliot’s The Hollow Men. Most noticeably:

Sublety isn’t my middle name, exactly. (The forget-me-not-blue sky in The Bride On The Train, anyone?)

In short: I like when my fanfictions are worth rereading. I like when you can come out the second read having found a little more than you did the first. I like when you can wander around a little, and, like a treasure hunter, make some strange new discoveries.

Lastly: of course, writing from your own experience helps. Spy on your own life. Collect all the ways in makes you feel, like a thief, write it down, memorise it, put it in the story. Reuse! Recycle! ✊🏻

I fortunately don’t relate to Harry’s childhood trauma, but the feeling at the beginning of “We’ll figure it out” - which is a story set shortly after him and Ginny find out she’s pregnant and he’s struggling to connect with everybody else’s simple bliss, because he’s terrified, and he’s terrified of admitting he’s terrified - that was real. That “wait a minute, this moment is amazing. I’m supposed to be the happiest person on the planet right now. Why am I not feeling it? What is this emptiness? Am I not happy right now? Why am I having doubts? I’m not supposed to have any doubts! What the fuck is wrong with me?”, that was lifted from a specific experience.

Side note, I’m really proud of that one.

Okay, poetry!

Where there is even less rules and more fucking around ensues!

I read and promptly lost a quote recently about how explaining a song sort of defeats the purpose. (I’ll link it here if I ever find it again.) In some ways, poems and songs work really similarly, and I think it applies here as well: if you could really explain the whole poem in one sentence, or a few sentences, if you could accurately and concisely summarise exactly how it feels, then you wouldn’t really need the poem. My favourite poems (or songs) tend to be the ones that outline a really specific emotion via a few powerful images, but I couldn’t precisely tell you what the emotion is. Like, I know exactly what this thing is saying, I know this exact feeling, I GET-GET it, but don’t ask me to explain the thing, just READ the THING, and you’ll KNOW.

Mitski does this really well. Like, I couldn’t explain to you what Last Words Of A Shooting Star makes me feel, but it does. I can tell you that “I am relieved that I left my room tidy, they’ll think of me kindly when they come for my things” cuts through me like a hot blade but I can’t pinpoint exactly why and I don’t want to. All I know is she Gets It, and that I want her writing chops, goddamnit.

Or, like, look at Laura Gilpin’s Two-Headed Calf. Yeah, I’ve read that poem a hundred times and thought a lot about all the themes it’s presenting me with. But I have zero desire to explain those themes to you, because I’d kind of be robbing it of its magic. I don’t want to tell you what it’s about. I want you to read it and I want to simply sit with the knowledge that we know, we Get It, that “twice as many stars as usual” kicked you in the shins, emotionally speaking, as much as it did me.

Few words, max impact, is key.

In Mary Oliver’s words, we want something inexplicable made plain, not unlike a suddenly harmonic passage in an otherwise difficult and sometimes dissonantsymphony - even if it is only for the moment of hearing it.

I’m realising right now that leading with these shining examples and then following them up with my own thing is nerve-wracking. But I like to think that I accomplished something like that with a little poem I wrote called Basements.

It’s is based on the prompt “back to nature” and follows that, uhm, somewhat loosely, a little subverted. I think it’s about impermanence and nostalgia and the fact that the places we lived in continue to exist even when our lives in them don’t anymore. It’s about that and a lot of other things. Maybe. The truth is, I don’t want to explain it to you: I just want you to read it, and then I hope that it made you feel something, and I’m going to trust that you Get It. Maybe you don’t get the same things I did, but that’s great. I’d love nothing more.

Before it was all those things, it was a poem about my life. The neighbourhood with the yellow house across the graveyard that I spent nine mostly happy years in. (The house, not the graveyard.) Every single thing in there is true: my sister really bust her lip and we both cried; wild lilac really grew there; we did spend most of our summers catching tadpoles, and yes, that neighbourhood was a construction site from the first day we lived there to the very last.

And I really sat in the driver’s seat of the family car about a year ago and watched it from afar. I didn’t come up with that - it’s my life. I only went on a scavenger hunt through my own memories, through the places and records and mementos of my life, and arranged a few specific anecdotes in a way that would give them meaning.

It’s kind of what I’m proudest of when it comes to my poetry - that I get to just live my life and see the metaphor and the meaning and symbolism as I’m experiencing it. I sat in the car and I thought, huh, that’s definitely making me Feel A Thing right now, that I’m sitting in the driver’s seat looking at this place I haven’t really been to in years, my childhood home, where I don’t live anymore. That I drove here myself.

I think that, when done right, specific makes universal. If you arrange a kaleidoscope of memories in just the right way, what it’s making you feel will speak for itself, and you won’t have to explain it. Most people who’ve read “basements” probably didn’t spend countless summers playing in literal holes, originally dug out for basements that were never built because no one wanted to move there. Holes that then grew full of weeds and wild lilac and felt like miniature jungles right outside our parents’ houses. It was perfect, it was specifically mine, but the feeling behind it is universal, I think.

Like, that’s how half of Taylor Swift’s RED works. That’s how most good Taylor Swift songs work. That’s why the bridge in Out of the Woods is so good and why I love New Year’s Day so much and it’s EXACTLY why All Too Well is considered her best song by so many people. Because she zoomed in on the details of her life and let the world take a look. Because “we dance around the kitchen in the refrigerator light” is a line in that song. THAT’s why it MAKES YOU FEEL THE THING.

Back to poems? This:

So we tell them all about the dayWe planned revolutions on my bedroom floor, or how we onceSpent an entire Monday lunch break making life plans over ice creamAnd most of our parties talking politics over beerWe both paid for ourselves.About the days you drive me to school. In your carI am the girl, front-seat passenger of our lives,Who does not need reach for the steering wheel –The road is alright.

isn’t fiction. These are my memories, carefully selected and re-arranged for Politics at Parties Boy.

I didn’t make up these film stills of a non-romantic relationship that never became anything other than non-romantic because neither party ever made a move. What I did is look at my own life like it’s a piece of fiction. If these memories were a movie, you could pluck them apart and say, see, the screenwriters put this scene here to communicate that.

The truth is, I am the screenwriter and the protagonist and the actress and the director and the camerawoman. I looked at a teenage girl who refused to let her friend buy her a beer at a school party and decided “huh, I guess that tells us everything we need to know” because I was that girl.

And I did pay for the beer, so we’d never move into “let me buy you a drink” territory. He was already driving me to school.

That’s my best lesson on poetry, really. I look at my life like it’s a piece of fiction and then I make it one. I put personal memories in poems meant to be read by other people, I overinterpret everything that happens to me, am literally constantly thinking about how to work every knock-back and struggle into my narrative arc and look for symbolism in anything from the date, the weather, and the colour of my front door. I watch myself in third person all the time and thus become my own muse. I’m the painter and the painting.

It’s a somewhat narcissistic and masturbatory approach to poetry, but as far as writing about your own life goes, it’s what works for me.

As far as writing about not yourself goes - well, I’m a narcissist and I’m bad at that, but I wrote a poem about the Mars rover Opportunity that shut down this February called Spirit shuts down and Opportunity feels no tremble, no ache. For stuff like that, if you don’t happen to be Struck TM by a lightning bolt of inspiration (which is the exception, not the rule), a good old-fashioned mind-map helps. I just let my robot grief go wild on the page for a bit and what I ended up writing about was death and the human condition and being a teenage girl, maybe.

I really enjoy taking two concepts/ideas and juxtaposing them, watching a theme unfold in the overlap. Like, it’s a poem about a robot AND about being a teenage girl and in between those two lies a poem about the futile attempts to teach a robot human emotion. Maybe.

It’s a poem about how my mum always cries at the airport and about me making my own happiness my priority and it kind of ends up being about my intense guilt of making my parents watch me change and grow and leave.

It’s about the night I wandered through a quiet street in Central London at 1 a.m. and realised that the city of my dreams sleeps like any other place, that people wake up early and make coffee and go to work and have bad days here. That it’s not all dream. It’s some people’s lives. But it’s also about watching another person sleep - the way someone’s face changes when they do.

In the middle lay a poem about finding a friend in a lover. Not the daydream, but my life.

Lastly, I can’t talk about my own poetry without talking about my darling poem 5 disasters. It’s my pride and joy. Like, you could kill me write now and I’d be like, it’s okay, I’ve written the poem I want to be remembered for and it’s this one. I wrote it in less than a day and every time I think about the fact that I wrote

I cravedsomething more violent than death, somethingviolent enough to bea beginningand for my life to be thousands of themI wantednothingto remainexcept the girl that sentthe disastersand survived -may this wasteland bewhere I find her.

… I lose my shit a little bit.

(5 disasters was a rarity in how quickly I wrote it. It often takes me weeks. Sometimes months. There’s poems I’ve been meaning to write for years now and I still haven’t found the words. Take your time.)

5 disasters is a lot of things, but within the context of the poetry collection it’s hopefully going to exist in one day, it serves as almost an instruction manual for metaphors: here, the floods and rainfalls are always change and the forest fires are always my highschool demons and my friends and how they look the same. The colour yellow is always referencing the same love. Basically, I like pinpointing my symbolisms and then crafting a poem around them. You end up creating something like an in-poem universe that you get to navigate like a fantasy novel. Like you’re telling a story about a natural disaster, but it’s all a metaphor, Hazel Grace.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. As I do.

I hope this serves as a starting point of sorts, anon. Most importantly, have fun, don’t concern yourself with all the rules too much. Experiment, be bold, read lots.

Again, if you’ve got any questions, I’d be thrilled to help. Thanks for the opportunity to toot my own horn to this outrageous degree, it’s been a blast.

#this is SO LONG i'm SO SORRY i was VERY EXCITED #jessie the writer #owl post #anon

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loki-hargreeves · 4 years

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New ask game for writers: 1. 4. 5. 10. 11. 13. 14. 17. 19. 22. 23. 27. 30. 33. 34. 36. 37. 39. 40. 41. 49. 50. 51. 52. 54. ... i am sorry they are all so good ... so i wanna know all

First of all, I want to say I love you. Thank you for sending them in! <3

(new ask game for writers)

1. Favourite place to write.

My bedroom, candlelit and all, preferably with coffee nearby. My room is my own little bubble where I can actually get creative things done.

4. Do you have writing habits or rituals?

Yes! I light up candles whenever I can and I brew a pot of coffee. I also play music that would suit the thing I’m writing. I have an angst playlist for sad stories etc.

5. Books or authors that influenced your style the most.

I started to write fanfiction as a literal kid because I was in love with Erin Hunter’s warrior cats books. Also, I’d say R.L. Stine’s goosebumps books have inspired me a lot. Recently, fanfiction inspires me a lot and old classics. Shakespeare is my favourite right now!

On tumblr, @delicrieux inspired me to make this blog and I am forever grateful for finding her amazing works.

10. Pick a writer to co-write a book with and tell us what you’d write about.

Ooh, I like this one. I would absolutely love to write an angsty/horror book with Stephen King! Probably a murder mystery, but I want to fill it with twists and just unthinkable solutions.

13. How do you deal with writer's block?

I procrastinate a lot. I either just sleep all day and feel bad for not writing, or I try to focus on art. Sometimes focusing on other things is a good canvas for fresh ideas.

14. What’s the most research you ever put into a book?

Once, I wrote a 100K word fanfic about Titanic so I read a lot of books about the ship and I watched a bunch of documentaries too. I also researched a lot in general of the early 1900s so I could try to make it as authentic as possible. I’m sad that I deleted it though. It was a lot of work.

17. On average, how much writing do you get done in a day?

This can be from 0 words to 20K words. But on average, I’d say I write about 1K words. Even if I don’t finish a fic, I try to write something every day.

19. First line of a WIP you’re working on.

“Mysteries have long questioned humanity on Earth, made mankind scratch their heads in wonder as they pondered what could possibly be the reasoning behind the odd things that occurred.”

22. How many drafts do you need until you’re satisfied and a project is ultimately done for you?

Honestly, very few. I tend to write on the go. Usually, I have two or three drafts and the rest just comes with time.

23. Single or multi-POV, and why?

It depends on the story. Personally, I like to write single POV better, but when I try to make the story oblivious and full of misunderstandings, multi-POV is much better.

27. Do you share rough drafts or do you wait until it’s all polished?

Sometimes, yeah. I usually ask my best friend for opinions and sometimes I might explain my plots to close friends. But that’s rare. They tend to stay in my head.

30. Favourite line you’ve ever written.

Well, it’s more than just one line, but I couldn’t think of anything else, I’m sorry!

“Their lips touched gently, yet all their love poured into it. For that short, beautiful moment, they tried to forget it was their final kiss goodbye. It was their final kiss on the same fields where they had their first. A kiss to seal the chapter of their love story to an end. “

33. Do you listen to music when you’re writing?

Always.

34. Handwritten notes or typed notes?

Handwritten! They feel more personal. It’s romantic.

37. Most inspirational quote you’ve ever read or heard that’s still important to you.

“You can be anything you want to be, just turn yourself into anything you think that you could ever be.”

39. Do you base your characters of real people or not? If so, tell us about one.

Yes, I do that quite often, but not always. I tend to base them on people I know or even celebrities.

If I have to write about someone who is being nasty or rude, I just imagine whatever my highschool bully would say/do.

40. Original Fiction or Fanfiction, and why?

Original fiction because it is the source for fanfiction. Without it, we wouldn’t have fanfiction at all.

41. How many stories do you work on at one time?

Too many.

49. What do you find the hardest to write in a story, the beginning, the middle or the end?

The middle, maybe. I try to avoid plain, boring ‘grey spots’ in fics and they always form in the middle. I hate that.

50. Weirdest story idea you’ve ever had.

It’s kind of weird, but I loved it.

So it’s about these creatures ‘ethereal explorers’(EE) that travel through dimensions/alternate universes. They keep track of different worlds, collect stuff and study creatures etc. Their main purpose is to be a messenger and try to keep up peace. Some of the EEs are good, others are evil.

Only these creatures can travel through many dimensions at once, but a human can only travel through one at the time safely. Then one day, a human slips into a portal accidentally and goes through multiple dimensions and miraculously survives, which is a 0.1% case. The ethereal explorer finds this human and is naturally interested to know how they survived.

The story revolves around the human and the EE as he is taking her home to her home dimension, which means they have to travel through 20 something dimensions. Of course, during that time they get into danger but they also get closer.

52. How did writing change you?

In many ways. Writing has brought me closer to other people. It has made me patient and perhaps wiser when it comes to choosing my words.

Writing has made me an old soul. I have studied the past so much and fallen in love with a time that is no longer.

54. Any writing advice you want to share?

Don’t worry too much about what other people will think about your writing. Write whatever you like and so you build an audience that likes that as well.

Take your time. Don’t pressure yourself or force yourself to write when you don’t want to. If you don’t feel like writing, but you have ideas please write them down. I hate how many times I’ve lost ideas because I didn’t do this.

And listen to music! Music can set the mood to writing and it’s magical.

Just be you. Don’t be anything you aren’t, it won’t work in the long run.

Thank you once again! This was fun :)

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