#writing funny

[writer-psalmie]

Writers when it's time to write the story no one forced them to come up with in the first place 🙄

[conindiundrum-writing]

Procrastinating 🫠

[nondelphic]

writing would be so relaxing if it didn’t involve stress, deadlines, perfectionism, existential spirals, emotional labor, self-doubt, eye strain, or the crushing weight of wanting it to be good

[thebadphilosopher]

I love rereading stuff when editing and realizing that I can write. Does it happen often? No (haha), but it's nice when it does.

[greyling-writes]

Frantically typing out the least readable 100 words anyone has had the misfortune of reading with my eyes half-closed in my notes app at 11:58 PM so I don't break my writing streak was not on my bingo card, but maybe it should've been.

[wrenmkingsley]

You DON'T have to suffer for your art, I promise!

You know how sometimes the algorithm backfires and you find something on your dash that makes you go not just bruh, but brrrruh? I came a across a post on my lunch break today, all about what it means to Be A Real Writer®. I'd link it, but I don't trust y'all not to be a dick to the person who posted it. (I'd threaten to come to your house and fuck your mom if you did, but many of you guys live an ocean away and I don't travel by plane for ethical reasons.)

Anyway!

There is no such thing as a real or fake writer. Do you write? Yaaay, congrats you're a writer!

There is no such thing as a real or fake author, either. Have you, through one way or another, commercially sold your writing? Guess what, you're an author now!!

Suffering for your writing and seeing writing as a fate you can't escape from, some glorious purpose that you were burdened with at conception, does not make you any more or less valid of a writer than the twelve year old girl writing minecraft youtuber RPF straight into the AO3 post work page.

And I'm not saying that because I'm a twelve year old girl writing RPF or because I'm somehow butthurt about people looking down on romance and smut writers like me. I genuinely do not give a fuck. (And, yes, that's exactly what someone that gives a whole lot of fucks would say, but you're just gonna have to trust me on that one.)

I'm writing this post, because I can't think of anything that would stifle your growth as a writer more than aspiring to Be A Real Writer®. Been there, done that, and all I got where years of my life in which I barely wrote, and if this stupid rant saves even one person from that fate I'll die happy.

But what does Being A Real Writer® even mean? If you're still reading this post you probably have a feeling for the concept already, but let's try and cobble together a definition:

Being A Real Writer® means embodying the ideal of the tortured artist. You creative process needs to be painful. Writing hurts. Not writing hurts more. So, driven, haunted creature that you are, you write. You have to hate everything you write, have to burn and hide everything that isn't up to snuff, because you're not writing so you can share it with other people who might enjoy it or — perish the thought — to make a living, no you're writing for the art, for the Craft, to create something real and true.

And that pursuit of art is something that people should respect! You're martyring yourself on the altar of Literature®! You're slaving away in the solitude all Real Writers® crave, spending years and countless ripped-up drafts on your masterpiece, your good and true and beautiful contribution to the cultural world heritage, unlike those self-proclaimed "authors" that churn-out content to the brain-dead masses, the people writing romance and mysteries and smut and thrillers and fucking cozy fantasy.

… You don't have to live like this. Listen to me, I'm taking your face in between my hands and staring directly into your soul: You don't have to suffer for your art.

"If literary fame could be safely measured by popularity with the half-educated, Dickens must claim the highest position among English novelists" wrote Leslie Stephen in the Dictionary of National Biography about Charles Dickens. Yeah, you read that right. Charles the GOAT Dickens. The Real Writers® of the 19th century considered Charles Dickens peakslop. (Please also note that you have no idea who the fuck Leslie Stephen is.)

Being A Real Writer® is meaningless. More than that, it's holding you back. If you hate what your doing and also kind of hate readers (at least those that dare to read genres other than belles lettre), buddy, I don't know how to break this to you, but at some point you're gatekeeping yourself.

Dickens was the most famous british writer of his time and the literary elite thought he suuuuuucked. But the readers? They adored him.

What if, instead for some vague pursuit of true literature, we wrote to tell a story? To entertain! To brighten peoples' life and maybe even make them think a little? (Dickens wrapped his bitter pill of social commentary in delicious delicious wit and melodrama and readers gobbled it up, still gobble it up two centuries later.) To make people feel? Even so-called lesser emotions like anger and fear and disgust and arousal?

What if we wrote because we enjoyed it? (Yes, sometimes it's a schlep and it sucks and you hate being literate at all, but that shouldn't be the norm and there is no glory in it.) What if we published out work to make money to have more time to write, because we have to work less hours at our jobs now that we have a second income?

Or just to make money?

There is nothing morally wrong with writing something formulaic just to sell it. People enjoy things for a reason, mostly because those formulas work. (I could go into the theory and, yes, Craft® that goes into writing a half-decent generic-ass romance novel, but it's not really that important.)

The only bad novel to write is the one you hate writing.

That's the actual issue with 'churning out content'! That many people that try to do it absolutely hate it! Because the people that go out of their way to write something genre (derogatory) for money (derogatory), are too scared of failure to write something 'hard to sell', so they turn to something they think is easy. Otherwise they wouldn't be 'churning out slop', they would just be writing. And just as a sidenote, most if not all successful genre authors are just doing what they love, because readers can lowkey tell if you're looking down on them and your own books.

Just, for the love of the oxford comma, find the joy in your creativity! Write a shitty book, publish a shitty book, read a shitty book, if only it brings you joy! You will never live up to your standards of good and real and true writing, because you made those stupid standards up to feel better about the fact that you believe that your writing will never be good enough to publish! That you will never be good enough to call yourself an author!

But, hey, at least you're humble enough to know that you suck, not like those wannabes that self-publish smut, like uh, what's his name? Oh, yeah, Hugo Award finalist Chuck Tingle.

… Oh.

[echo146]

How it feels working a 9 to 5 and having too many WIPs of varying forms and genres alongside unrealistic expectations for myself as a writer yayyy xox

[cranberry-queen]

Tips from a Beta Reading Writer

This one's for the scenes with multiple characters, and you're not sure how to keep everyone involved.

Writing group scenes is chaos. Someone’s talking, someone’s interrupting, someone’s zoning out thinking about breadsticks. And if you’re not careful, half your cast fades into the background like NPCs in a video game. I used to struggle with this so much—my characters would just exist in the scene without actually affecting it. But here’s what I've learned and have started implementing:

✨ Give everyone a job in the scene ✨

Not their literal job—like, not everyone needs to be solving a crime or casting spells. I mean: Why are they in this moment? What’s their role in the conversation?

My favourite examples are:

The Driver: Moves the convo forward. They have an agenda, they’re pushing the action.

The Instigator: Pokes the bear. Asks the messy questions. Stirring the pot like a chef on a mission.

The Voice of Reason: "Guys, maybe we don’t commit arson today?"

The Distracted One: Completely in their own world. Tuning out, doodling on a napkin, thinking about their ex.

The Observer: Not saying much, but noticing everything. (Quiet characters still have presence!)

The Wild Card: Who knows what they’ll do? Certainly not them. Probably about to make things worse.

If a character has no function, they’ll disappear. Give them something—even if it’s just a side comment, a reaction, or stealing fries off someone’s plate. Keep them interesting, and your readers will stay interested too.

[quinnjgraham]

I know this is the website where we talk about artists and writers doing anything other than making art or writing, but man, we REALLY undersell how good it feels to actually work on your stuff.

Like you hit your word count for the first time in a week and its like

[conindiundrum-writing]

“How do I write good female characters-“

Exactly the way you write male ones. Treat them the same. The beauty of it is, even if you write shit male characters too, at least it’s clear you don’t discriminate.

[nondelphic]

writing is such a fun hobby! step 1: spend 3 hours writing. step 2: reread it and die inside. step 3: close the doc for 2-5 business months. step 4: repeat

[inkandpaperqwerty]

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

[seekerknight557]

i think it is a very powerful thing when the story inside you is so loud that you are forced to relearn how to draw, write, and talk to people to get it made into a real thing

[willowiswriting]

[thedeepbluedark]

sitting down to write isn't really about creating a story, it's about getting the story onto the page before it destroys me

[conindiundrum]

being a writer is funny because one day you think “is this too similar to everything that’s ever been written before??” And another it’s more like “wow this is completely different and unrelated to anything and entirely unmarketable.” And then you sob. It’s all the same project btw