Horniness is not intrinsically less pure than any other human motivation

"He only made this art because he was horny!" ...Yeah, and? You only made a sandwich because you were hungry.

ykno the thing about poetry is that 99% of it is bullshit and the other 1% will cut you like a material knife, and for every person that 1% is a different section of the whole. this is probably true about all art.

nothing sluttier than lighting up a cigarette immediately after an absolutely brutal fight and inhaling deeply before exhaling the smoke with a sigh of relief while still disheveled and covered in blood and coming down from the adrenaline high. you could literally have sex onscreen and it would be less erotic.

and getting someone else to light the cigarette for you because you're too badly injured/exhausted to do it yourself... that's gay sex baby

youve heard of missionary position. now get ready for MERCENARY position

[#knife against throat #against a wall #but like consensually]

"I can fix him" good for you. I need to craft a scenario in which he betters himself, to prove to myself that I can meaningfully atone despite how much of myself I see in him.

"I can make him worse" I can too but first I have to prove that there was hope for him somewhere, at some point, which he rejected. Because if there was never any hope for him, what hope is there for me?

A strong start. 

Reminds me of this I found a couple days ago

there is love in this story. even in its most brutal end. there is love in the story. how? where? here: here in me telling it to you, in spite of everything. because of everything.

no salvation and no turning of the tide. that's not the point anymore. we were here. oh so briefly. but we were here. we tried. do you know what i mean?

Ref Recs for Whump Writers

Violence: A Writer’s Guide:  This is not about writing technique. It is an introduction to the world of violence. To the parts that people don’t understand. The parts that books and movies get wrong. Not just the mechanics, but how people who live in a violent world think and feel about what they do and what they see done.

Hurting Your Characters: HURTING YOUR CHARACTERS discusses the immediate effect of trauma on the body, its physiologic response, including the types of nerve fibers and the sensations they convey, and how injuries feel to the character. This book also presents a simplified overview of the expected recovery times for the injuries discussed in young, otherwise healthy individuals.

Body Trauma: A writer’s guide to wounds and injuries. Body Trauma explains what happens to body organs and bones maimed by accident or intent and the small window of opportunity for emergency treatment. Research what happens in a hospital operating room and the personnel who initiate treatment. Use these facts to bring added realism to your stories and novels.

10 B.S. Medical Tropes that Need to Die TODAY…and What to Do Instead: Written by a paramedic and writer with a decade of experience, 10 BS Medical Tropes covers exactly that: clichéd and inaccurate tropes that not only ruin books, they have the potential to hurt real people in the real world. 

Maim Your Characters: How Injuries Work in Fiction: Increase Realism. Raise the Stakes. Tell Better Stories. Maim Your Characters is the definitive guide to using wounds and injuries to their greatest effect in your story. Learn not only the six critical parts of an injury plot, but more importantly, how to make sure that the injury you’re inflicting matters. 

Blood on the Page: This handy resource is a must-have guide for writers whose characters live on the edge of danger. If you like easy-to-follow tools, expert opinions from someone with firsthand knowledge, and you don’t mind a bit of fictional bodily harm, then you’ll love Samantha Keel’s invaluable handbook

"A ship can never truly love an anchor." dude shut up. a ship without an anchor gets dashed against the rocks. it's useless, completely at the whim of the currents. a ship loves an anchor so much it carries it everywhere it goes. the anchor gives the ship the world to love. dude.

DUDE DON'T YOU DO THIS TO ME

In light of the recent PostPlus nonsense tumblr is trying to pull, here's a reminder that monetization of fanfiction can lead you to legal trouble. On Ao3 it's against the TOS to even mention any money-sending site at all because of the conditonal protection they offer.

Putting your entire fanfiction blog behind a paywall is like pointing a neon sign saying "please sue me". I bring this up specifically because tumblr mentioned fanfiction in the post that they made and that is going to leave a lot of people misinformed.

Remember: Do NOT paywall your fanworks.

And rest assured, my blog will never be pay-to-read, even if this weren't a fanfiction blog. I think the whole thing is ridiculous.

the crushing guilt of being unproductive vs the exhaustion of being burned out. fight.

“Your art isn’t valued by the number of notes you get” okay but. If you spent 6 hours baking a cake for a party, but no one at the party eats your cake, it’s still disappointing.

This articulates something about the different between value and validation that I didn’t previously register on a conscious level.

This is why I tell people I feel more like an entertainer than an artist.

I want to hear them laugh, chat, comment, speak, roar, cry, get irrationally angry, I need people to respond to my art and get inspired and need more.

I don’t want a note, I want a response.

Responses are very nice. I like reading over them. They make me feel fuzzy. Of course, likes and reblogs are also very appreciated, but responses make me feel a special kinda fuzzy.

Responses are crucial for content creators. You can’t grow a plant without giving it some water. The day and age of internet has really spoiled us into thinking “seeing is the same as responding” and it’s just not. A million people can see your created content but without a response, it might as well be zero.

Fic writer aesthetic

- you just had a brilliant idea. it’s 3am - bonus: you have something important the next day - “wow I wrote so much, let’s see the word counter” 350 words “LIES” - when your worst work gets the most attention - “[AO3] You’ve got kudos!” emails are your lifeblood, water your crops, and clear your skin - B L A N K P A G E S O F D O O M - playing the entire story out in your head. never writing it - watching or reading anything ever and imagining an au - making playlists to write to. never writing - getting an “[AO3] Comment on ______” email and doing the thing. you know the one - headcanons. so many headcanons - spending days or weeks on a piece - watching the hit count rise and the kudos count stay on said work - when will the kudos return from war

- You have a great idea for a new fic. You have seven half finished fics already.

- Your story idea is no longer relevant/appealing because of things that happened in canon.

- You have a great idea for a story and no idea how it should end

- You have a great idea for a story and know exactly how it should end and how it should begin and in the middle is a vast wasteland of ????????

- Trying to figure out an appropriately literary way to say “and then they do that thing, you know, that thing they do on the show where they make that face and it’s just adorable?”

- Worrying your headcanons reveal way too much about your deep dark secrets as a person.

- Writing down a headcanon that DEFINITELY reveals too much about your deep dark secrets as a person and editing it to make it seem a little more subdued.

- Having to decide between what you want for your faves and their happiness and what’s actually in character.

- Being stuck on an idea for 9000 years and then taking a shower and figuring it out instantly.

- Seriously what is it with being in the shower did you make a deal with one of the fae where you’re only a good writer while you’re naked??

- “What are you writing?” “Oh, you know…just…a thing….”

- What the hell you can just copy/paste formatted work on Ao3 you don’t have to put the html in yourself WHY DID NO ONE TELL YOU THIS, WHY DID IT TAKE SO LONG TO FIGURE OUT?

- Wanting to tell your non-fandom friends about your story ideas, but they can’t understand a word you’re saying.

- Wanting to tell your fandom friends about your story ideas, but they’re all reading your fics and you don’t want to give them spoilers.

That moment when you step out of the shower and instantly forget your solution because the fae are tricksy bastards and you failed to fully comprehend this before you signed that damned contract.

This speaks to me. 

Warning to writers

While you are worrying about whether beta readers will steal your ideas, there is a more genuine threat on the horizon.

When offered a publishing contract, please do all your research before you sign. There are a number of fakes and scammers out there, as well as good-intentioned amateurs that don’t know how to get your work to a wide audience. I won’t tell the heartbreaking stories here - there are too many.

Being published badly is worse than being never published.

It can destroy your career and your dreams.

The quick check is to google the publishing house name + scam or warning.

But, to be sure, check with these places first. They aren’t infallible (nothing is) but they can help you protect yourself. They are written and maintained by expereinced writers, editors, publishers and legal folks.

Absolute Write: Bewares and Background Checks

Preditors and editors

Writer Beware

and the WRITER BEWARE blog

Keep yourself and your work safe.

This is really important, so if you are a writer or have writer friends, or you are a writing blog, please reblog it.

Just to let you know, PublishAmerica changed their name to America Star Books.

HEAD’S UP, WRITER TYPES: THIS IS AN IMPORTANT PSA!

Also applies to many so-called freelance sites that are just content mills, and may not pay unless your work is used, even if the contract seems designed otherwise.

Listen, reading these is like legit reading horror stories.  When it comes to publishing your writing, always, always, ALWAYS do your research.  Not only will it help you avoid scams, but it will also be likely to help you land a much better fit for an agent/publisher/whatever.  Knowing more is never going to hurt.

Omg!!! Thanks for the warning! Writers— reblog!

I’ve heard stories like this that are scarier than horror stories. This is an all time worst nightmare for a writer. Everyone reblog and make sure you keep your work safe! 

Always, ALWAYS check Writer Beware. Let me also recommend Kristine Kathryn Rusch’s blog about contracts and contract scams for authors in her section Business Musings.

Reblogging again for the links. Also check pred-ed.com and the Absolute Write forum. Then google Publisher’s name + scam and see what comes up. Do NOT use the BBB ratings, they are wholly unsuitable for rating publishers and regularly give A ratings to well-known publishing scams. You can also read my own post on publishing scams, have a link on the left of my blog ( can’t link here, I’m on mobile, sorry).

@korrigu

SUPER IMPORTANT PSA!

Equally important to know is that you can SELF-PUBLISH through a number of platforms these days. @ean-amhran and I used Amazon’s CreateSpace and Kindle Direct Publishing to publish both of our books. No editors, no contracts, no finagling with publishers who want to change your materials. Just direct-to-market material.

(Granted, it means you’ve got to do a LOT more work yourself with editing and formatting and cover art, but it’s worth it to miss the headache of trying to bargain with publishing houses or avoid scams.)

Be vigilant, fellow writers!

If you choose to self publish then HAVE A PLAN and think things through.

And hire an editor. Please, for the love of all that is holy, hire an editor. It’s expensive, but you will get a better book out, a better reputation…

If you’re going to publish electronically, make sure you also get someone who can LAY AN EBOOK OUT PROPERLY.

I have spent money on Kindle books, many of them reprints of older works, whose formatting is so messed up as to render them unreadable.

I actually recommend using the Smashwords Style Guide even if you don’t use Smashwords.

It lays out how to neatly format an e-book in a wonderful step by step format, and you can get it free from Smashwords. Just leave off the couple of things that are (very obviously) Smashwords specific.

If you can’t stand dealing with the meticulous detail, then by all means hire somebody, but most people can learn to format an ebook correctly and once you’ve done it a couple of times it takes about an hour tops.

@ghdos spread the knowledge

Because the redirects aren’t working for me, I’m going to assume others might have trouble with these links, so for those who need it the URL for the website to Writer Beware is: www.sfwa.org/other-resources/for-authors/writer-beware/ As stated on here: “Writer Beware is sponsored by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, with additional support from the Mystery Writers of America, the Horror Writers Association, and the American Society of Journalists and Authors.” These are not publishers’ guilds, notice; you sometimes see scammers trying to defend themselves against Writer Beware exposes by claiming that they’re “small press” or “indie” and Big Publishing is somehow out to get them - but all of those guilds are run by and for writers, to help support them and represent them in the field. It is the closest writers have to having unions, and there’s no direct competition between them (you could literally be an in any of those guilds are the same time as each other, in addition to others, and I believe a number of authors are).

Writer Beware is a wonderful resource, and I highly recommend it. It’s both a good general guide to the scams people run/red flags to watch out for (such as giving up your copyright entirely as opposed to specific rights, or being charged to publish something or have it edited, when they’re trying to act like they’re a “normal” publisher), and a frequently-updated list of the latest specific known scammers, both in “fake agents” and fake/scammy publishers categories. (The company formerly known as Publish America is one of the most famous and egregious cases, but by far not the only one)

Additionally, for SF and fantasy writers, the SFWA’s own list of qualifying markets that one can be published in as a prerequisite to be able to get into their guild (remember, it IS a profession-based guild), is a great guide to normal markets for those genres that have standard contracts that aren’t abusive or scammy, and their guidelines include some of the industry-standard minimums for “per word” etc rates, so even if some new magazine market isn’t on their list, you can tell if it’s suspiciously far outside the usual per-word or whatnot standards. (It’s likely the guidelines for Mystery Writers of America etc also would be useful in that vein) Even if you’re unpublished or don’t want to join their guild, they’re a wonderful group and resource, and I highly recommend their site and Writer Beware in particular! The other sites mentioned above, such as “Preditors and Editors” should be still valid if you Google them, and are often rec’d by Writer Beware, but Writer Beware is the one I’m most familiar with. :)

Also, you should never have to pay an agent or anyone a  “reading fee”! DO NOT PAY PEOPLE TO READ YOUR WORK!!! Run away from so-called agents that charge a reading fee! They are considered unethical in their own industry!

Also related to agents: Should you go this route and seek one, DO NOT PAY ONE DIME TO THEM upfront! A real agent only gets paid when he sells your book to a publisher! The average cut is about 10-15% of the first sale profits, if I remember right, with cuts of film and other rights maybe being more, when sold. At most, writers should only be responsible for the costs of phone calls and postage.

For more information see: How Literary Agents Get Paid. Standard Commission Practices and Payments for Literary Agents

Edited to Add: Some other great, highly respected resources for writing and getting published are:

Writer’s Digest

The Writer

Writer’s Market