its-a-writer-thing

[its-a-writer-thing]

My goal for this year is to take everything I've learned over the last 15 years, put it together, and start working towards publication. With that in mind, I've been doing some research into magazines that pay for fiction.

I figured it might be of interest to others, too, so I wrote a short article with links to the relevant magazines submission guidelines to streamline the process.

[its-a-writer-thing]

When your Character...

Gets into: A Fight ⚜ ...Another Fight ⚜ ...Yet Another Fight

Hates Someone ⚜ Kisses Someone ⚜ Falls in Love

Calls Someone they Love ⚜ Dies / Cheats Death ⚜ Drowns

is...

A Ballerina ⚜ A Child ⚜ Interacting with a Child ⚜ A Cheerleader

A Cowboy ⚜ A Genius ⚜ A Lawyer ⚜ A Pirate ⚜ A Spy

A Wheelchair User ⚜ A Zombie ⚜ Beautiful ⚜ Dangerous ⚜ Drunk

Funny ⚜ In a Coma ⚜ In a Secret Society ⚜ Injured ⚜ Shy

needs...

A Magical Item ⚜ An Aphrodisiac ⚜ A Fictional Poison

A Coping Strategy ⚜ A Drink ⚜ A Medicinal Herb ⚜ A Mentor

Money ⚜ A Persuasion Tactic ⚜ A Quirk ⚜ To be Killed Off

To Become Likable ⚜ To Clean a Wound ⚜ To Self-Reflect

To Find the Right Word, but Can't ⚜ To Say No ⚜ To Swear

loves...

Astronomy ⚜ Baking ⚜ Cooking ⚜ Cocktails ⚜ Food ⚜ Oils

Dancing ⚜ Fashion ⚜ Gems ⚜ Herbal Remedies ⚜ Honey

Mushrooms ⚜ Mythology ⚜ Numbers ⚜ Perfumes

Roses ⚜ Sweets ⚜ To Argue ⚜ To Insult ⚜ To Kiss

To Make False Claims ⚜ Wine ⚜ Wine-Tasting ⚜ Yoga

has/experiences...

Allergies ⚜ Amnesia ⚜ Bereavement ⚜ Bites & Stings

Bruises ⚜ Caffeine ⚜ CO Poisoning ⚜ Color Blindness

Facial Hair ⚜ Fainting ⚜ Fevers ⚜ Food Allergies

Food Poisoning ⚜ Fractures ⚜ Frostbite ⚜ Hypothermia

Injuries ⚜ Jet Lag ⚜ Kidnapping ⚜ Manipulation ⚜ Mutism

Pain ⚜ Paranoia ⚜ Poisoning ⚜ More Pain & Violence

Scars ⚜ Trauma ⚜ Viruses ⚜ Wounds

[these are just quick references. more research may be needed to write your story...]

Writing Resources PDFs

[its-a-writer-thing]

Writing because murder is illegal, going to space is expensive and magical creatures apparently don't exist...

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"If you use em dash in your works, it makes them look AI generated. No real human uses em dash."

Imaging thinking actual human writers are Not Real because they use... professional writing in their works.

Imagine thinking millions of people who have been using em dash way before AI becomes a thing are all robots.

REBLOG IF YOU'RE A HUMAN AND YOU USE EM DASH

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“What if I write it and it’s bad-”

WHAT IF YOU WRITE IT AND ITS GOOD? WHAT IF YOU WRITE IT AND ITS EXACTLY WHAT YOU WANTED? WHAT THEN????

[its-a-writer-thing]

Writing Description Notes:

Updated 9th September 2024 More writing tips, review tips & writing description notes

Facial Expressions

Masking Emotions

Smiles/Smirks/Grins

Eye Contact/Eye Movements

Blushing

Voice/Tone

Body Language/Idle Movement

Thoughts/Thinking/Focusing/Distracted

Silence

Memories

Happy/Content/Comforted

Love/Romance

Sadness/Crying/Hurt

Confidence/Determination/Hopeful

Surprised/Shocked

Guilt/Regret

Disgusted/Jealous

Uncertain/Doubtful/Worried

Anger/Rage

Laughter

Confused

Speechless/Tongue Tied

Fear/Terrified

Mental Pain

Physical Pain

Tired/Drowsy/Exhausted

Eating

Drinking

Warm/Hot

[its-a-writer-thing]

I don't even do outlines anymore, but this still happens. Planning means nothing; never has.

[its-a-writer-thing]

The bigger the issue, the smaller you write.

You don't write about the horrors of war. You write about a kid's burnt socks lying in a pile of rubble.

You pick the smallest manageable part of the big thing, and you work off the resonance.

[its-a-writer-thing]

Overcoming Mid-NaNoWriMo Stagnation

So, the 15th of November is approaching like a runaway train and you realize you've hit a block. For days you've been staring at the last sentence of your work in progress, wondering how you got here, what went wrong - where did your ideas and passion go? Don't worry, mid-NaNo fatigue is a phenomenon I'm familiar with, even if you won't find it mentioned in the average psychological journal. Of course, writer's block is a well-recognized problem and it's my humble opinion that the dead end most of us reach mid-NaNoWriMo is a supercharged version of that issue.

A heady mix of fatigue, stress, day-to-day life and the presence of a ticking clock combines with the fear of failure that most of us harbour when it comes to our dreams and aspirations is a creativity killer. I can't promise you a silver bullet, but when I run into a roadblock these steps usually get the creative juices flowing again!

Rest

Yes, yes, I know you're going to say that you're on a timer (you are) and that letting more time pass will stress you (understandable), but understand this; you aren't productive right now. The difference between sitting staring at a blank page, writing nothing and sitting on the couch watching a TV show with ice cream or taking a spa day and writing nothing is found solely in benefits to your state of mind.

You cannot pour from an empty bottle.

Rest can be productive when it allows you return to your best self. So take a few hours or a day to actually rest; watch TV shows that remind you of your project, play games, or read. Better yet, get out of the house - play the tourist in your home town. It might bring some ideas to the fore, but even if it doesn't you'll be able to come back to your computer tomorrow with a refreshed set of eyes and a little breathing space.

Look at Writing Prompts

Sometimes the problem is really a lack of ideas, and that's fine. When I find myself well and truly stumped, I often turn to writing prompts. Whether this leads to a few pieces of flash fiction, or I find a way to connect them to the project that's kicking my ass the process is helpful.

Why?

Because writer's block often leads to the fear that the ideas are gone forever, especially if it's prolonged. Being able to write anything at all takes some of that fear away and lets my mind ease back into what it's good at; making up little stories for fun. Read More

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Samhain as it Should Be (According to the Scots)

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The Roots of Halloween in Scotland

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Worldbuild Differently: Unthink Religion

This week I want to talk a bit about one thing I see in both fantasy and scifi worldbuilding: Certain things about our world that we live in right now are assumed to be natural, and hence just adapted in the fantasy world. With just one tiny problem: They are not natural, and there were more than enough societies historically that avoided those pitfalls.

Tell me, if you have heard this one before: You have this fantasy world with so many differnet gods that are venerated. So what do you do to venerate those gods? Easy! You go into those big temple structures with the stained glass in their windows, that for some reason also use incense in their rituals. DUH!

Or: Please, writers, please just think one moment on why the fuck you always just want to write Christianity. Because literally no other religion than Christianity has buildings like that! And that has to do a lot with medieval and early post-medieval culture. I am not even asking you to look into very distant cultures. Just... Look of mosques and synagogues differ from churches. And then maybe look at Roman and Greek temples. That is all I am asking.

Let's make one thing clear: No matter what kind of world you are building, there is gonna be religion. It does not matter if you are writing medieval fantasy, stoneage fantasy, or some sort of science fiction. I know that a lot of atheists hate the idea that a scifi world has religion, but... Look, human brains are wired to believe in the paranormal. That is simply how we are. And even those atheists, that believe themselves super rational, do believe in some weird stuff that is about as scientific as any religions. (Evolutionary Psychology would be such an example.)

What the people will believe in will differ from their circumstance and the world they life in, but there is gonna be religion of some sort. Because we do need some higher power to blame, we need the rituals of it, and we need the community aspect of it.

Ironically I personally am still very much convinced that IRL even in a world like the Forgotten Realms, people would still make up new gods they would pray to, even with a whole pantheon of very, very real gods that exist. (Which is really sad, that this gets so rarely explored.)

However, how this worship looks like is very different. Yes, the Abrahamitic religions in general do at least have in common that they semi-regularily meet in some sort of big building to pray to their god together. Though how much the people are expected to go into that temple to pray is actually quite different between those religions and the subgroups of those religions.

Other religions do not have this though. Some do not have those really big buildings, and often enough only a select few are even allowed into the big buildings - or those might only be accessible during some holidays.

Instead a lot of polytheistic religions make a big deal of having smaller shrines dedicated to some of the gods. Often folks will have their own little shrine at home where they will pray daily. Alternatively there are some religions where there might be a tiny shrine outside that people will go to to pray to.

Funnily enough that is also something I have realized Americans often don't quite get: Yeah, this was a thing in Christianity, too. In Europe you will still find those tiny shrines to certain saints (because technically speaking Christianity still works as a polytheistic religion, only that we have only one god, but a lot of saints that take over the portfolios of the polytheistic gods). I am disabled, and even in the area I can reach on foot I know of two hidden shrines. One of them is to Mary, and one... I am honestly not sure, as the masonry is too withered to say who was venerated there. Usually those shrines are bieng kept in a somewhat okay condition by old people, but yeah...

Of course, while with historically inspired fantasy settings make this easy (even though people still hate their research), things get a bit harder with science fiction.

Again, the atheist idea is often: "When we develop further scientifically, we will no longer need religion!" But I am sorry, folks. This is not how the human brain works. We see weird coincidences and will go: "What paranormal power was responsible for it?" We can now talk about why the human brain has developed this way. We are evolved to find patterns, and we are evolved (because social animal and such) to try and understand the will others have - so far that we will read will in nature. It is simply how our brains work.

So, what will scifi cultures believe in? I don't know. Depends on your worldbuilding. Maybe they believe in the ghost in the machine, maybe there si some other religions there. You can actually go very wild with it. But you need to unthink the normativity of Christianity to do that. And that is... what I see too little off.

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Writing References: Tips & Advice

Some Tips & Advice for Writing Fiction

Active Reading ⚜ Hook ⚜ Outline ⚜ Summary ⚜ Wordiness

Allegory ⚜ Food ⚜ Horror ⚜ Humour ⚜ Memoir ⚜ Mystery

Beginning & Ending ⚜ Chapter Ending ⚜ Last Line ⚜ The End

Conscious Language ⚜ White Room Syndrome ⚜ Writing Style

Creative Writing ⚜ Journal Writing ⚜ Speculative Biology

Fight Scene Part 1 2 ⚜ Plot Twist ⚜ Subplot

Procrastination ⚜ Rejection ⚜ Vocabulary ⚜ Your Audience

Writer's Block: Part 1 2

Your Character: Hero ⚜ Likable ⚜ Morally Grey ⚜ Well-Rounded

Writers on Writing

Anaïs Nin ⚜ Andrew Motion ⚜ Annie Proulx

Elmore Leonard ⚜ Ernest Hemingway ⚜ Friedrich Nietzsche

George Orwell: Motives for Writing ⚜ On Poetry ⚜ On Nonsense Poetry

George Orwell: The Prevention of Literature ⚜ On Good "Bad Books"

George Orwell: Describes A Writer

H. P. Lovecraft ⚜ Henry Miller ⚜ Italo Calvino

Jack Kerouac: Are Writers Born or Made?

James Baldwin ⚜ John Rechy ⚜ John Steinbeck

Joyce Carol Oates ⚜ Ray Bradbury ⚜ Ronald Knox

Kurt Vonnegut: The Shapes of Stories

Margaret Atwood: On Plot

Rick Riordan: On Character ⚜ On Dialogue ⚜ On Plot

Rick Riordan: Some Common Problems in Unpublished Manuscripts

Stephen King ⚜ Ursula K. Le Guin ⚜ Vladimir Nabokov

Virginia Woolf: On Censorship ⚜ On Words

W. H. Auden ⚜ William Strunk Jr. & E. B. White

Zadie Smith: Dance Lessons for Writers

More: Worldbuilding ⚜ Plot ⚜ Character ⚜ For the Poets ⚜ Prompts Notes & References ⚜ Templates ⚜ Word Lists ⚜ Writing Basics

[its-a-writer-thing]

Scottish Folklore Resources

Since its spooky season, I thought I'd share this list of short posts about Scottish folklore creatures for anyone seeking inspiration. These posts are mostly based on what I have heard as someone who grew up in central Scotland, so please keep in mind that they may differ slightly from other stories you might here; folklore is very much a living oral tradition and there are usually a few iterations of anything floating about.

With that said, I did do some background research to offer other perspective and fact check my memory as much as one can when dealing with this kind of topic!

The Baobhan Sìth

Cat Sìth

Cù Sìth

Red Caps

The Wulver

[its-a-writer-thing]

I just reada really good fic but halfway through I realized "oh shit this is really familiar.... didn't I write something like this once?" And as I kept reading I kept predicting what happened next and the further I went the more convinced I was that they'd ripped off my story-

like, copied the ENTIRE plot and re-written it, just better than I had? The characters were more fleshed-out than mine were, and the POV was more interesting, and the pace made more sense- but it was MY STORY?

So close to the end I was like "holy shit.. do I message them? Ask if my story inspired theirs? Should I be angry? Flattered?" Cause their tags and description didn't mention me AT ALL, which, sure, it's fanfiction to begin with, but if you're using my work than at least credit me as inspo, right? Just to be courteous?

But I get to the end of the final chapter, and it's not finished, and I'm kind of disappointed cause I never finished my story and I was really immersed in their version now and had been looking forwards to seeing how they tied up my loose ends- so I scroll to the bottom to leave a comment, and.

It's MY URL.

IT WAS MY STORY THE WHOLE TIME.

THE ONE *I WROTE*.

In *2013*.

And FORGOT ABOUT

BECAUSE I WAS SO INSECURE ABOUT MY SLOPPY, SHALLOW, AMETEUR WRITING

And I'm just sitting here now staring into space thinking about every shitty story I've ever written now like

IT WAS ALL GOOD?

IT WAS GOOD THIS WHOLE DAMN TIME??

I'M A GOOD WRITER?????

[its-a-writer-thing]

It's my birthday today (yay!) and it's been a phenomenal year - I even started writing again!

In the spirit of this I want to spread some positivity and writerly support drop a link to something you've written here and I'll read it and leave some feedback or reblog it (depending on whether it's posted on Tumblr or not)

Ill start the chain with this wee piece;

Can't wait to see what you've all been creating!!

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As a writer I need everyone to know that whenever I write "exchanged glances" my intent is this