writingandothermistakes
shitpost rough drafts, dumb poetry, and lotsa gay
writing sideblog of an idiot college student
25 posts
Don't wanna be here? Send us removal request.
Last Seen Blogs
gloomscape
...Page Does Not Exist...
korybing
Kory Bing!
buttonsofbutter
ButtonsOfButter.
forgingtime
ForgingTime
generoindie
Gênero Indie
Text
sometimes i think about power fantasies and like, how fucking specific Power Fantasies are. how specific it is to like..individuals, i guess?
like: i have been in chronic pain my entire life. i am genetically pre-disposed to remember bad things more easily and more often than i will good things. i lived thru nearly 2 decades of extreme powerlessness before i found my feet, and it’s still not technically independence. Independence for me may never be an option.
when people talk about power fantasies, i feel like a lot of the time there are two distinct flavors: Absolute Power over OTHERS and Absolute Power over SELF. i dont have any idea who gravitates towards What more, but i know that i personally gravitate towards Ultimate Autonomy rather than Ultimate Authority. is it a self-esteem thing? do those who feel themselves capable of independence, who revel in it even, lean towards Ultimate Authority?
its like one am so im almost passed out but. theres def something in this idea ill get at further when im not almost asleep
1 note
·
View note
Text
yknow, sometimes it really does feel like everything just . stops.
i don’t stop, and neither does the world but - isn’t that what’s supposed to happen during pivotal moments? during life-changing choices? isn’t the world supposed to go slow and syrupy, providing time for a dramatic closeup so the viewer (in this case me, i guess) can truly comprehend the gravity of the moment? to provide space to remember the context, the narrative, the motifs and building symbolism?
i think my philosophy professor realized that something is wrong, possibly around the same time he posted an announcement saying Does Anything Matter? in which he complimented our weekly discussions as if they did. I hope it’s something he realized with the entire class, not just me, but either way this week the essay prompt clarifies you’re supposed to have an a priori that ‘it matters that things have significance, that significance is important for meaning’.
I do not think that I am significant. Objective and popularist review confirms this, mostly. only mostly. i cannot tell if i am significant. This is a severe fuck up in my meaning, in my purpose, in my mattering. In my justification of continued so-called-reality.
time should slow down when thoughts these big hit around in my skull with worlds like determinism and perspective and subjective. i know time should slow down, because i meant to write words and worlds came out instead, and these thoughts are grave enough to produce their own fucking gravity, they hit my nerves like electricity with their electromagnetic fields, and their atmospheres create a distinctly dreary atmpospheric quality to everything i fuckin do.
and the world doesnt stop but i need it to because this is exhausting and weekly fuckin essays dont mix well
6 notes
·
View notes
Photo
god i fucking love this site and the painfully specific things people on it get passive aggressive about
544 notes
·
View notes
Text
Tips for new writers
How Authors Should Use Tumblr, A Five-Step Guide by Rachel Fershleiser
Tumblr is a blogging platform and a social network. Your posts get distributed and liked and reposted just like on Twitter, but instead of displaying 140 characters you can display unlimited text, images, animated gifs, photosets, audio files, videos, and more. You can follow whomever you like and get a beautiful dashboard that streams the content you’ve selected throughout the day. It’s a network of over 50 million blogs, and a great place to build a readership for your books or just your daily thoughts. My Tumblr tends to be about books, feminism, cooking, nail art, and Veronica Mars.
1. Don’t get fancy with your URL. firstnamelastname.tumblr.com will make it easy for people to find you and last longer than one book’s marketing campaign. You can still make the title of the blog You Rach You Lose or Release McCracken. Your Tumblr can be your main personal website or professional homepage. It’s free and doesn’t require any technical skill. Make sure you upload an image to be your avatar so you don’t have a creepy blue default profile and choose a theme from our theme garden to customize your look.
2. Find people to follow. You can start here. There are recommended blogs in “books” and “writers” and “poetry” plus maybe you have other interests! Food? Politics? Fashion? It’s all there. Some writers I love to follow are Neil Gaiman, John Green, Jami Attenberg, Emma Straub, Heidi Julavits, Nathan Englander, Lynda Barry, Elliot Holt, Alex Chee and Edan Lepucki. You can also see curated content in various community-edited topics at this link.
3. Go to the Goodies page and grab a Bookmarklet for your browser. This nifty little tool makes it incredibly quick and easy to incorporate blogging into your daily life and makes reading the internet a useful task. Click it whenever you want to blog something. Text that is highlighted will automatically be quoted. Photos will automatically be captured in the photo tab. Youtube pages will be ready to go on the video tab, no embed code required. Most importantly, credit will already be linked to the source. You can also add your response, analysis, commentary, etc.
4. Tag all your posts with relevant topics like “books” or “lit” or “Knopf” or “Rachel Fershleiser” or “Friday Night Lights.” These tags will help you get discovered beyond people who already follow you. You can search other people’s tags using the “search tags” field in the right side of your dashboard. Then you can hit track and they’ll stay in your sidebar and give you an alert when a new post arrives. Then you can like or reblog posts and those people will discover you, and your followers will discover them. Here are posts tagged Galleycat.
5. Like and reblog actively. You’ll get a sense of what’s popular in your community and people will start to notice you. Keep a balance of blogging about yourself or your writing and blogging about other people’s work and things you enjoy. This ensures you’re joining a conversation and not just shouting advertisements. You can also ask and answer questions — a great way to share book recommendations, brainstorm titles, and learn what’s on your readers’ minds.
[Source]
146 notes
·
View notes
Photo
[screenshot of google doc:
blip blip blip!
walking into the room and they look at you and we stop like
blip blip blip!
rolling off of the bed staggering to the desk and i take my meds like
blip blip blip!
my mom, she’s laying in the bed that my roommate sleeps in, she’s screaming you cunt i trusted you! in her sleep and shes pointing at me, my eyes they hurt in the light of the computer screen but its too late to go to sleep—
— ((what if we werent what if it wasnt what if my head felt like it was attached to the inside of my skull—))
my water bottle keeps spilling, mint cool cold herbal sticky on the sheets on the plastic of the mattress, my mouth is covered in cuts, mint cool cold toothpaste fluoride sores in my mouth on the skin of my lips,
blip blip blip!
its like a cat when they blep with that dissociation cutesy “failing at being a cAT” way except
blip blip blip!
its got an i because for me, right and its got a
blip blip blip!
like the wires in a living machine and its electricity pain pain hurt hurt
BLip blip blip!!!]
0 notes
Text
How to Return to your Manuscript
Every writer knows what it’s like to set a manuscript down for an evening and just… not pick it up again.
Usually when this happens, we have every intention of returning to it the next day, but for some reason or another, we don’t.
One day turns into a week. Which turns into a month. Maybe two.
The longer the manuscript’s been set aside, the harder it becomes to pick up again. It turns into this dark, hulking presence lurking at the edge of your consciousness, like something in a horror movie, eating away at that piece of your identity labeled “writer.”
The reasons for not picking it up may change, but there’s always one.
You may not know where to start again, or doubt that your abilities are up to the standard its plot or characters require. You may not know where to find the time to write anymore. You may have even sat down to write just a few minutes ago, and ended up here on Tumblr instead, unable to bring yourself to open the manuscript file.
If you’re reading this post and feel personally attacked…
Don’t fret.
I have a writing exercise for you.
Set aside ten minutes of your day to look at your manuscript.
I recommend reading the last scene you completed, but this is your manuscript and your time. You can look at the first page. Or that one scene in the middle that you actually kind of like. Just don’t look at a blank page. Blank pages are scary and this is all about eliminating writing anxiety.
Personally, I make this the last thing I do in the day, so I go to sleep with my manuscript in my head. Sometimes it helps to let my unconscious mind have a go at sorting through what I’ve read. However, I think it’s helpful to do this before any long period of time when you can let your mind wander. You may find writing more helpful before work/school or during lunch. Before a commute. Whatever works best for you.
But don’t write and don’t look for more than ten minutes.
You’re not allowed to change a single thing in the document. Not a comma. Not a misspelled word.
When the ten minutes are up, simply close the document and go on with your day/night.
There will probably be some things that you do want to change in the manuscript. They may be very simple, sentence-level fixes, but they may be as big as an idea for continuing the scene or the start of the next chapter. Let those thoughts sit with you, instead of all of the manuscript doubt and anxiety that were sitting with you before.
And yes, keeping your time down to ten minutes is important. You want a focus on a bite-sized portion of the manuscript. If you read too much, you’ll give yourself too much to consider for the next day, you’ll find too much to change, and you’ll run the risk of making your work as anxiety-inducing as ever.
The next day, sit down with your document for another ten minutes.
Allow yourself to make the changes you didn’t make the first day, or ones you’ve come up with since. This may mean adding a few commas and removing a few ‘that’s. This may mean continuing with the scene. Ten minutes is the perfect amount of time to set down a good paragraph. Try that.
Again, force yourself to stop after ten minutes, even if you’re on a roll now. The stopping means that you have to keep all of those changes that you’re excited to make inside your head. It means that your thoughts about your manuscript are good and productive. It’ll keep you looking forward to your next writing session. Key advice: at the end of every writing session, always leave an edit in your head. It’ll be that small, tangible thing you can start with in your next session.
Rinse, repeat, and develop a routine.
Sit down for at least ten minutes every day. Make it a routine. Once the manuscript is open, do whatever feels comfortable to you: whether that means reading a chapter, editing something old, or writing something new.
If you’re coming up with edits and scenes that simply require more than ten minutes, start amping up your writing time. Write for an hour. Write for two or three.
Have a super busy day and know you can’t write for an hour? Those ten minutes are still fine. They’re still enough. Never feel like having spent three hours writing yesterday means you have to spend three hours writing today. Never feel like a failure for not spending X hours a day writing. That will only lead to not writing at all.
What if you get stuck again? Go back to a shorter writing time, go back to reading and not writing. Reduce the pressure you’ve put on yourself and relax your expectations. The most important thing is simply returning to your manuscript every day whether you have something good to set on the page or not.
Never got un-stuck in the first place? That’s still okay! Keep spending your ten minutes with your manuscript. Write or just read. Keep it in your thoughts. Make it a defined, real, thing instead of that monster lurking in your head. It may take time, but eventually, something will click, and by that point, opening that file and getting started will be a piece of cake.
If you are able to write for an hour or two each day, you may find it useful to continue setting aside ten minutes each evening to read that day’s work–read but not edit–and keep a few edits in your head for the next day’s session.
By the end of a week, whether you’ve written a hundred new pages or fixed a lot of bad grammar, you’ll at least be in a place where you’re once again thinking about your manuscript in tangible terms, as a thing made up of words and paragraphs instead of anxiety and blank pages.
Maybe in the end, you’ll decide that you simply need to abandon this story and pick up a new one. If this happens, you’ll be in a great place to start, with a writing routine already in place.
More likely than not, just spending time with your story will fan up your love for it again. And once more, your manuscript will be the annoying, stubborn, untameable child you adore instead of a lurking horror.
For more advice on working through writer’s block, check out another post of mine: What to Do When You Can’t Write
3K notes
·
View notes
Text
u ever like wanna write and its this baseline push-push-push in ur forearm bones but its not quite there yet so you just kinda stare and you dont got the words because theyre all gone right now but you wanna
write
0 notes
Text
loving her is like walking in a moving elevator
0 notes
Text
its not that im scared of you, or maybe it is, but darling, you choose the worst times to appear, and there you are, after five years, just around the corner and with a baby and a job and living in my goddamn town like you’re not a harbinger of every nightmare i had when i was fifteen
0 notes
Quote
What if women had minstrel cycles instead of menstrual cycles? You’d just have a guy with a lute follow you around for a week every month and play you songs constantly?
My boyfriend (via thecarrionlibrarian)
#no but can you imagine if that was how you learned once a month you weren’t pregnant#by some dude singing songs about the victory of it#you wake up and he’s there and you are so happy#this dude becomes your favorite dude#but then you realize you haven’t seen your friend’s minstrel in a while#I mean everyone notices#like half the people are on the same cycle so for one week out of four your job is just flooded with fucking minstrels everywhere#the cacophony#but Mary over there is all alone#and she’s like my minstrel is late#but we all fucking know#her minstrel has gone off to find her a baby#a nine month journey he must make alone#and until he comes back there is no music in her life#what a glorious world this would be#I love the minstrels (@onionjuggler)
131K notes
·
View notes
Text
A Genie offers you one wish, and you modestly wish to have a very productive 2017. The genie misunderstands, and for the rest of your life, every 20:17 you become impossibly productive for just 60 seconds.
111K notes
·
View notes
Text
A Genie offers you one wish, and you modestly wish to have a very productive 2017. The genie misunderstands, and for the rest of your life, every 20:17 you become impossibly productive for just 60 seconds.
111K notes
·
View notes
Text
Prince Aladdin
i just rewatched aladdin with the roommates and it got me thinking
aladdin wishes to be made a prince, but all genie does is get him a lot of stuff and money. that’s not what a prince is. a prince is the son of the king, someone in line for the throne. someone with a lot of money is just - rich. so what i think is:
genie goes okay, that’s a big one - and i can do it! but not on my own, not if you want to do it right. not if you truly want a chance to marry your princess for real, as a prince. and aladdin is a foolish, moral, kind boy - and he agrees. he’s fallen in love with jasmine, an innocent all encompassing love, and he’ll do anything for this sweet, clever girl he only knew for a few hours. so genie takes him across the desert, far from agrabah, and plops right in the middle of a skirmish and is like okay, good luck! and aladdin is like ?????
but there’s assholes with swords attacking a young girl, and aladdin doesn’t even have to think about that, just like when he stood in front of the whip for those little kids. there are three men against him, but he’s fast and clever and has been against a dozen trained palace guards. so it’s not easy to get out of there alive, especially with the little girl to protect, but he manages it with only a thin slice on his upper arm, and he’s endured worse for less. so he picks up the little girl and says “i think we should get out of here, hmm?” and she’s in a pretty red silk getup with tiny jewels encrusted on her like stars against sunset. and she nods and throws her arms around his neck. she won’t talk, only points in the direction of home, but aladdin’s okay with that, he’s used to quiet, scared kids. so he keeps up a steady stream of stories of agrabah, which seems almost like this other desert land. but there are more men with swords and aladdin is like what the fuck is going on, but he hides the girl in a corner and fights them too. and that’s how it goes all the way home. there’s no one on the streets really, and they all scatter when the men attack, and they keep on attacking, he fights his way all the way through the city with the girl on his hip or hidden away.
and he should have known, of course, but he was tired and bruised and bleeding by the time he realized the little girl is silently guiding him to the palace and he’s like why can’t you princesses stay inside??? but he walks up and the guards get one look at the child in his arms and whisk him through and multiple people try to take the girl away but she won’t budge from him, a stubborn pout to her lips as her hands remained locked behind his neck. and he’s finally tossed into a throne room where a tall old man is sitting in agony and two young men pace in front of him, each at least a decade older than aladdin. “they’ve taken our sister!” one of the younger men hiss, “i don’t care about their power or their connections, they’ve taken esfir, and we must go get her!”
“uh,” he clears his throat, “hi?”
and all three men whirl on him and the old man stumble-runs to him. esfir finally lets go of aladdin to picked up and twirled around by her father. the two men are rahim and shapur and they look in wonder at this dirty boy of fifteen who’s returned the girl to them, and he speaks with an accent and clearly is not from here and they get the story from him - he’s traveled across the desert because those in his own country want him dead. “you know,” rahim says as the king clutches at esfir in desperate relief, “you could have held her for ransom. you almost died saving her, and we would have paid handsomely to have her returned safely.”
and aladdin gives him a flat disapproving look, appearing in this moment four times his age, and says “people are not objects or bargaining chips. especially not lost little girls.” and rahim and shapur share an impressed conspiring look and they each grab one of his arms and lead him away. “hey! what are you -”
“do be quiet little brother,” shapur says cheerfully, “we really have to get you out of your rags.”
Keep reading
12K notes
·
View notes
Text
5 People are trying to lift a very heavy piece of furniture. Twist: They all want to be the person who only acts like they are lifting, and none of them are willing to admit this to one another.
2K notes
·
View notes
Photo
An interesting sci-fi short story from 4chan.
[Imgur]
47K notes
·
View notes
Quote
Bad books on writing tell you to “WRITE WHAT YOU KNOW”, a solemn and totally false adage that is the reason there exist so many mediocre novels about English professors contemplating adultery.
Joe Haldeman (via rachelfershleiser)
I cannot reblog this enough, this is hilarious to me.
(via inkblot101)
@dapperdarb
(via merriebear94)
38K notes
·
View notes