Right (mustering the necessary fucks to get shit done in the work group chat)

This isnt a joke my favorite piece of writing advice that I’ve ever seen is someone that said if you were stuck with a fic and couldn’t figure out why or what was wrong, your problem is actually usually about ten sentences back. Maybe there was something wonky about the tone or the dialogue or you added something that didn’t fit but it’s usually ten sentences back. And every single time I get stuck in a fic I count back ten sentences and it’s always fucking there

lizzie totally just dropped a stanky one

Our own Lynn Neary has a unique term for her TBR pile – she calls it the “Shelf of Constant Reproach.” It’s not quite your basic TBR pile, though – the Shelf of Constant Reproach is specifically those books that you always MEANT to read, that you tell people you’ve read, that you feel embarrassed about not having read. For Lynn, that’s things like Moby Dick and Lolita, which she finally tackled as last week’s Friday Read.

Me personally, I feel terrible about my inability to make any headway on The Brothers Karamazov, which my dad jocularly calls “The Brothers K” when he’s speechifying about how it’s the best novel ever written. (Uhh, sorry, Dad, I’ll be over here with the new Garth Nix …)

How about you? What’s on your Shelf of Constant Reproach?

– Petra

I am going to start swearing by authors

“Holy mother of Mary Shelley!”

“What the Tolkien?”

“By Victor Hugo’s spare underpants!”

The first draft process:

Receiving feedback on your writing:

Found poetry or a writer's search history?

A writer taking a little break:

credit: @itstimeforcomics-blog

Classic writer's defence.

When it's a REALLY rough first draft: