Hello hello!!! Hope your having a wonderful day!! I have a very serious question, I'm thinking about writing things that like aren't just fanfictions, I've been thinking about it For a LONG while!! I just don't know WHAT the hell to do, how to do it, and figured I could maaaybe ask you!! since you are the only other writer I'm following who published books besides Neil Gaimen... I just thought you could give some tips and basic things, like do I need to go to school for this? Can I open the gates and zoom right into it?? Can I make illustrated novels? How do or would I publish?? Overall everything?? Also again hope your having a nice day! Hope the weathers good in your area!!!

Hello! Thank you! Yes! Writing advice! That I can offer!

Wow! Me and Neil Gaiman, huh? That’s a really honoured place to be 🤣👌 Honestly his advice has always been my fave: Just write.

If you have a good idea just write it out. Hell, it doesn’t even need to be a good idea. You can edit it later! Just write! Get it out of your head and you’re already most of the way there!

If you’ve only written fan fiction and you’re nervous about the transition to original work, I recommend thinking of original stories as AU fic with renamed character as a starting point. Almost all the biggest writers today basically started in fanfic (ever heard of 50 Shades 🙈 worst example but HEY it’s true)

So yeah you’re in a good place when it comes to practicing the craft since you’ve been writing fanfic!

I never went to school for writing. I studied linguistics and German in uni 😂 So you definitely don’t need to go to school for writing. From what I’ve seen you can gain good connections in writing programs, but the academic programs at universities tend to focus on more “lit” genres. So if you’re writing like Murakami/Kafka or planning to be the next Atwood/Hemingway, writing programs can be good.

I’m published with an LGBT+ indie publisher, NineStar Press. They’re not one of the big conglomerate of publishing houses obviously, but they offer wider distribution than self publishing AND they do all the work, apart from making the suggested edits obviously. The process of submission to publishing with them takes about 9 months. With traditional publishing it can take years.

I found I learned a lot working with my editor so that was an important part of my development process. I definitely recommend finding an editor once your story/manuscript is nearing a final draft stage. If you publish traditional or indie your lit agent or editor will help with that. If you self-publish you’d have to pay an editor usually.

Which brings us to the open the gates and jump right in part: Self publishing! It’s fun. It’s easy. Its instant. It’s free! You can put it out there for free or make a few bucks, a lot if you’re lucky and your book goes viral! You can do ebook and or print and illustration as well as far as I know! My favourite thing about self publishing is that it really closely mimics fan fiction. You can basically self publish anything on KDP as long as it doesn’t go against their guidelines.

I’ve really enjoy self publishing for my shorter (smuttier) work, but I probably wouldn’t have jumped into it without a friend showing me the ropes and the experience of having published with NineStar first because I learned a lot through that process. The nice thing about self pub is you can publish any length so it’s great for things that are shorter and don’t fit regular publishers’ criteria. For example two of my self-pub stories (Whisky and Pearls / His General’s Gambit) are only around 10-20k words. That’s barely novella size. Most publishers want 50k at least.

Last but most important: publishing should NOT cost you anything. It might not make you rich, but it definitely shouldn’t cost a penny. If you’re self-pub you might choose to pay for marketing or an editor or a cover (I make my own covers and trade off editing projects with a friend so that saves money haha). But if you’re working with someone and they offer to publish you for a fee…RUN. That’s not legit. Publishers need writers, writers don’t need publishers.

My bestie @inaseaofmidnightblue went to school for writing and is publishing her first book traditionally next year so when she’s less busy (she’s VERY busy getting married right now 😂) she might be able to add more context around the traditional publishing perspective.

But yeah that’s what I’ve got! Happy to follow up if you have any other questions! Happy writing!

crochawk exchange for a crochawker

i feel passionately about the need to enfold people experiencing (or diagnosed) with "just" depression or anxiety into the mad pride project. the more people who view themselves as mad, the better. much as the rhetorical move from "neurotypical" to "neuroconforming" emphasizes the artifice & social construction of "neurotypicality," so too will expanding identification as "mad" expose the sane/mad dichotomy as a false one.

it's true that (some) people with "just" depression and/or anxiety have an easier time navigating the psych system than people who have more stigmatized diagnoses. but this is not to say that they necessarily have an easy time — the carceral psych system is hostile to everyone subsumed by it, even the most "privileged" patients. we should of course critique & examine how our experiences are shaped by various intersections of privilege, but we cannot forget or ignore how someone with "just" a depression/anxiety diagnosis can still experience the full force of the carceral psych system brought down upon them (including but not limited to involuntary institutionalization, police intervention, & forced medication or other forced treatment).

we must encourage, if not insist, that those with the least-stigmatized diagnoses view their difficult experiences navigating the psych system as bound up with the liberation of people who have more stigmatized diagnoses &, often, a more violent experience of the psych system. we need more people to drop the "i have anxiety/depression but i'm not crazy" line and say loudly, "i have anxiety/depression & i am crazy. my access to just treatment is linked to the conditions of all other crazy people, who are my allies, peers, & friends. we are united in our cause & we all deserve a more liberating system of care."

Wei Wuxian eats a watermelon. Yep!

The way Azirphale is underestimated and practically infantalized by heaven is so closely tied to his femininity and I think we should talk about it more because I just want to shout about how relatable the way he's treated in his workplace is as a woman working in a traditionally male field

It's in all the little niggling comments from your boss about personal things that hold no bearing on your work

and the assumption that what you're doing must be simple if it was assigned to you

your work is trivialized

and you get these the placating smiles when you're told plans and proposals are rejected and passed over

or when your complaints are dismissed

and you get more of the same from upper management

it all feels so frustrating and draining but you're at work so all you can do is take a breathe put on that mask and move on with your day

It is all so deteimental to your emotional well being and textually, so much of this is tied to Aziraphale's softness, his gayness - his femininity

The thing about working in an environment and gives you this feeling - of being simultaneously destrought watching your belief in yourself get chipped away but also just so irate becuase you know you don't deserve it - is how it builds. It sinks under your skin and feeds into this indignant dejection until you can have a moment of release - but Azirphale doesn't get to bitch about it over drinks with friends, he doesn't get a lunch break where he can go for a walk and listen to an angry scandi death metal playlist, he doesn't even get the chance to cry about it in the bathroom for 5 minutes before confronting it again

(And I talked a little bit about it in the tags of this beautiful photoset but this all comes into play whenever Crowley dismisses his plans or calls him an idiot. These are purely emotional reactions; I really don't think Crowley means much by it - he respects Aziraphale's opinion and genuinely thinks he's brilliant - but Crowley is so quick to use this terminology when Aziraphale is making a decision Crowley thinks is wrong and he doesn't know how much this hurts Aziraphale. Just like Aziraphale doesn't understand the true impact the Fall had on Crowley, Crowley doesn't understand the ways heaven has been tearing away at Aziraphale's self worth)

Aziraphale has been facing this constant drip of denigration since before the beginning of time and has never released the pressure valve. At this point, he's a bomb waiting to go off

im having fun

COME ON BABY, DON'T FEAR THE REAPER

hey it's nanowrimo. i have tips bc i've done it about 34 times.

Don't edit. Ever. Stop it. If you just decide to start a new project half thru this one with all new characters, no problem. pick up and keep writing as if you'd already written the first half of that.

"but i spelled it wrong" whatever. "but the grammar" whatever. make it exist first. no time for sense. think like you're working on a typewriter. no backspace. only forward go.

Don't re-read further than a paragraph or two backwards. "did i mention the gun before?" listen - it doesn't matter. if you need there to be a gun there, the gun is there. put it back in once you finish the book.

"i forgot the specifics of X thing i already wrote" whatever. change it, make a note/comment to figure it out later, and just write what makes sense for the moment. "no raquel it's legit the characters name and origin" idc that character is now reborn as Claudius from Elsewhere. it's fine.

only you see your mistakes. nobody else knows. one of the ways writing and dance overlap - only you know the choreography. nobody else will know if you miss a step, so just keep dancing and pretend you meant to do it like that.

it's an illusion that you need to write linearly - from point A to point B to point C. Nah; that's just timeline propaganda. I've written a LOT of books out of order and just reordered them once i've finished. if you have a scene you'd LOVE to write but can't get there yet because of plot, just fuckin write the scene. I've always found its easier to establish "point F" "point J" and "Point A" and then wiggle my way between those scenes.

write what you WANT to write. 230 pages of smut? of well-researched discussion on bread? whatever. the point is to strengthen muscles however you can.

if you miss a day, a week, whatever. not the end of the world. we all have dry days. also time is a myth so u can do this challenge whenever u want.

as soon as you try to write for a specific audience, you kill your voice. you are writing for yourself. stop thinking about how people will take ur book. it don't matter. what matter is u, enjoying writing. i luv u.

play to your strengths. i have characters talk so much because i don't know how to write a plot if it kills me but i'm really good at dialogue so.

i love a flight of fancy. write a poem in there. shift tactics and write in code. keep it fun for yourself.

see what happens if you shift something major about ur main characters - gender, wealth, superpowers. or if you change point-of-view. or if you kill everyone in a big explosion. do NOT edit anything before this or after it. often these little weird one-off exercises teach me what interests me about what i'm working on. it is never what i thought. plus it is a fun way to add like 1k words.

stretch.

it's for fun and for practice. stop doing that project if it's giving you anxiety. once my nano was literally 50k words of half-started stories. just things i tried and tried and tried and wasn't able to flesh out. oops. but i am now 50k words of a better writer.

add dragons?

read books/listen to books on tape/etc. people often make the mistake of "buckling down" to just write. you need inspiration. you need to like. fill up on words. you need to remember how it feels to lose yourself in a story.

i don't have the time or space to really talk about this in this post but a lot of creative people turn to drugs/alcohol because it can help you be more creative. this is harmful, and walking a blade that only cuts deep. if you notice you and your loved ones are turning more to substances, please know i love you and i hope you are able to get help soon. i feel like this almost never gets mentioned because it's kind of a hazy underbelly to art. you are always more important than the work.

on that note. drink your fukin. water.

don't talk about a story until you've finished it. once you tell the story, it exists already, and isn't about discovery. i usually have a very canned "haha we'll see" response.

grapes :) tasty snack.

i love you be free.

“I don’t talk about Palestine because I don’t like going into politics : /” fuck you. The existence of Muslims and MENA people has always been political to the West. Their lives and their deaths. Their happiness and anger and sorrow. Their love and hatred. Their sweat and blood and tears. Everything has always been reduced to politics when they are more than you could ever begin to comprehend. Palestine will be free. And so will Sudan and Pakistan and Lebanon and Yemen and Syria and every other country, place and people who suffer only for their pain to be called political by those responsible for and complicit in it

god i want. an au where it dosn't work. where it's just arr g'raha who's woken up, and he doesn't have all these memories and all these people keep looking at him like they're mourning someone. the world has changed and time has changed and all the people he knows have changed, but he hasn't changed, he was just sleeping, just sleeping, and the world nearly ended several times and apparently he helped prevent yet another end but he has no memory of this. they want him to join the scions. he does not know these people. (he barely knows the warrior of light, now, but did he ever truly know them in the first place?) his little sister is alive and well. she looks at him like a ghost. she's changed, and she's older than him now. he acts bratty and loud and brash to cover up the fact that he does not know anything it seems, and he is tired but he was sleeping for so long, so how could he be tired?

he doesn't know these people. they seem to know him. he wonders if he'd killed someone, when it was him and not that exarch who woke up. he wonders if it should have been him who was "killed" in that way, if it is him that lives and not that man who had known and become friends with all these figures from legend. he wonders if he'll always be fated to be a historian one step back from everything, because he simply cannot be a hero.

Any reactions from friends or family? Do you notice yourself being treated differently or judged as you get bigger?

ooooh i love talking about this.. i haven’t gotten a single reaction from family or friends!! and i’m 20lbs past my previous heaviest, so… haha i’m honestly just very lucky, they’ve never commented much on my body or anything?? as a teen i think it was painfully obvious how uncomfortable i as with my boobs, so that may be part of why :))

the only comment i got was years ago when my gma just said “300 comes fast” and i could tell she regretted saying anything… ANYWAYS hope she’s right hehe :3

as for being treated differently… certain things are different?? it largely depends on how i present myself, lol. with a cute outfit/hair/makeup or whatever i get treated very well still, but like. a t-shirt and baggy jeans and a chubby round face w minimal makeup bc im on my period?? people sometimes don’t make eye contact lmfao

on the other hand, sometimes there are ppl who treat me VERY well when i’m looking especially chubby/fat and i always kinda wonder…

coroner voice the short stories got her

(I have received... several invitations. I do not think they're seriously expecting us, but it would be rude not to attend, right?)

not to be a bitch but like. i can never take "ohhhh kon is soOOoOoo sad about tim/ber uwaahhhh he's in love with tim but it's unrequited waaahhhh" angst seriously because like... i get it, the only thing you know about kon is that he's the other half of a popular m/m tim ship, but uh. rebirth kon is living an existential fucking nightmare. i think he's got way bigger fish to fry than whether the tim who only kind of remembers him at all is dating some other guy lmao

I just think Tallulah gets to be upset about this. “It’s not Wilbur’s fault” “He’s not a bad dad” “He loves his daughter so much” yes! These are all true! And it’s not his fault! But he’s still not there. And Tallulah has gone through so much and still hasn’t seen him, the one time he was around was the one time she wasn’t, and all she has are letters and “I’m thinking of you always” and things that used to be theirs together, but he’s still not there. She’s waited and she’s been patient and she’s loved him all the same, and he’s still not there. Like yesterday, and the day before, and the day before, from the happy milestones to the traumatic events, he’s still not there.

She knows that it’s not his fault, but it doesn’t change the fact that he’s absent. That in and of itself just adds to the sorrow, because she knows why he’s gone, and she’s been told time and time again it doesn’t mean he doesn’t care, she knows this - it doesn’t mean it doesn’t sting, that it doesn’t hurt, that she doesn’t yearn for her father to be there more than anything in the world, and he’s just not there.

So yes, she gets to be upset, and be caustic, and stomp her feet and write bitter messages, and be angry and vitriolic, because she’s a little girl missing her father, who feels things with her whole heart and soul - and that means she gets to feel the ugly parts of it, too.

The devil keywords – temptation, corruption, your shadow self

The devil is one of the 22 Major arcana cards. The one in the Rider-Waite deck has an image of the devil sitting on a throne with a man and a woman chained at his feet. It looks like a dark version of the lovers (and the two are connected thematically and numerologically since the lovers is card no.6 and the devil no.15 – 1+5=6). To put it simply, the devil represents the obsessive pursuit of material goods/physical pleasure which, in the end, leads to the corruption of your spirit. It’s associated with the sign of Capricorn whose dark side can manifest as an obsession with money, social status and power (also fun fact - according to the novel Vegas’ birthday is December 31st which makes him a Capricorn sun according to western astrology). So, what does any of this have to do with the lovers and VP? The devil is also associated with dark sexuality and everything taboo. Also, as I mentioned above, it represents your shadow self aka everything you feel ashamed of and try your best to repress. In VP’s case on one hand, we have Vegas who uses his sexuality as a weapon, is interested in BDSM and enjoys torturing people. On the other hand, we have Pete, probably the most repressed character on the show, who suddenly has to come to terms with the fact that he is a person with desires and that those desires are pretty dark and unconventional. And all of this happens while he’s being held captive by Vegas in the safe house sex dungeon. Vegas, who tortured him almost to death and is now trying to seduce him with his little monologue and a lot of chin grabbing. Do you see where I’m going with this one? We can interpret Vegas as the devil figure from the card – he’s the one trying to make Pete take off the mask he wears around everyone else and stop hiding his dark side. Vegas has seen glimpses of Pete’s true self after all – first in ep. 7 and later in ep. 10 and 11, and is fascinated by it. He wants to see more of it and uses one of his preferred methods – sex, to achieve his goal (and probably starts to regret that decision after he sees Pete’s smile in ep.12 – is Pete truly someone he can handle? But that’s a discussion for another time.) Pete is one of the chained figures and he’s there because he chose so himself by forsaking his personhood and letting himself be seen as nothing more than a weapon by the main family, someone who fades into the background the moment he isn’t needed (is he real if no one can see him?). If you look carefully at the Rider-Waite card you can see that the chains are loose enough that the two figures can free themselves at any time if they wish so. Vegas is trying to make Pete do just that – drop the act and live his life as his authentic self, without shame. He’s also trying to set Pete free so he can put a chain on him himself. And we all saw how that plan backfired on him.

There's also another reason I chose this scene – when the devil shows up in a love reading (surrounded by positive cards) it can mean that the people involved have amazing sexual chemistry. And there are literally chained people drawn on the card. And we all know what happened 30 seconds later in the episode.

*I decided to retouch my old devil card a little to fit my new template instead of drawing a new one :))

happy TWO YEAR anniversary to everyone who attended the destiel wedding!

and happy valentines day to the rest of you guys <3 click the image for a surprise!

if you’ve ever seen that one post (i’ll link it in the replies) about the parallels between the rodeo scene in 12x11 and the movie “urban cowboy” and it entirely broke your brain, then this post is for you. and also i’m kissing you on the mouth

[ID. Digital art of Dean Winchester done in black and white. He’s is laid back on top of an electric bull. One hand rests on his hip while the other hovers in mid-air, fingers slightly curled, and he seems to be looking at it. When clicked, the transparency shows Castiel standing behind him. Castiel is holding Dean’s hand to his lips, while his other hand supports the back of Dean’s head. Castiel has a visible halo and wings that he has curled protectively around Dean. End ID.]