alittleredfinch-blog

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Me talking to another writeblr: it’s okay to take a few days off. You need to gather your thoughts and form cohesive plot lines.

Me talking to myself: wow two days and you haven’t written? I guess you never wanna finish this book you lazy fuck

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“why bother writing bisexual characters if they just end up in a m/f relationship”

my dude

my guy

my pal

stop talking forever

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I have made. A mistake.

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Writing process:

get The Best Idea ™

frantically start writing, no breaks, while patting myself in the back for my incredible productivity and swearing this is my best writing project yet

realize I have no idea what the plot is

try to outline

burn everything I’ve written

scream, but quietly, because it’s probably 4 a.m.

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mark hamill has achieved peak comedy everyone else go home

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A sudden, terrifying thought

When you see an animal with its eyes set to the front, like wolves, or humans, that’s usually a predator animal.

If you see an animal with its eyes set farther back, though—to the side—that animal is prey.

Now look at this dragon.

See those eyes?

They’re to the SIDE.

This raises an interesting—and terrifying—question.

What in the name of Lovecraft led evolution to consider DRAGONS…

As PREY?

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giant isopods are so in right now and I love it

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I fucking hate that trope in swordfighting where they just push grind the swords together as hard as they can while looking in each others eyes. Just fucking kick the other guy in his nuts! Not like he’s going to notice anyway while he’s staring intently at your beautiful eyes, and noticing your stubble, and damn, those lips look surprisingly rosy, and his golden hair…

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Any tip and/or tricks for editing a story? Either along the way or after a bulk of material is put together? I usually feel most comfortable editing my own things as I write a scene or some dialogue between two characters so that it's more in line with what I have in mind, is that bad practice though? I wonder what you think about it.

Are you a plotter or a discovery writer? (Plotters plan the story in advance, discovery writers “discover” the story as they write.) If you’re a discovery writer, you’ll probably edit along the way more, whereas if you work from an outline you might be able to get away with editing after you write. Either way, here are a few thoughts:

If you can avoid it, I really recommend forgoing sentence-level editing as you write the first and second drafts. If you must rework sentences as you go (some of us are wired this way, especially discovery writers), rework them for content not style. You could end up spending a lot of time perfecting words that you later need to cut for story reasons.

You can save yourself a lot of headache by making your first edit (after the story is written) a story-level edit. This means assessing the big-picture stuff of structure, plot, character, point of view, and conflict without dealing with sentence-level issues. This is where you move or delete entire scenes, change the ending or beginning, remove or combine characters, change the point of view or tense, and clarify your plot.

After the story-level edit, you can go through and add details, make your sentences prettier, obsess about character names, find the perfect word for “green,” tighten up your dialogue, etc. But again, I recommend not doing this until you are confident about the structure and direction of your story.

If you are truly a bleeder (someone who is so language-focused they can’t move on to the next sentence until they have perfected the first one), consider starting with very short stories so that you have a prayer of finishing them in this lifetime. This will increase your confidence, and gradually you won’t spend so long on every sentence, enabling you to write longer and longer stories.

Ultimately, the process you described (editing as you go along) is only a problem if it’s a problem. If editing this way works for you and it’s not hindering your progress or ability to finish your stories, I say run with it! But if you feel sometimes it’s getting in your way, take some of my previous points into consideration.

Ok, that’s all I’ve got for now. Hope this helps!

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this recurring trend of writing fae societies and making them all lilywhite cishets is soooo stupid bc these are beings who are wayy smarter than humans and also fucking immortal. there is absolutely no reason why they should follow/enforce arbitrary human concepts n norms (i.e.: gender, sexuality, fucking time) because they would’ve learned that none of this matters nor is it beneficial to their society!!! also genetic variation exists!!! unless you can give me a legitimate reason as to why having darker skin would actually be detrimental to fae, you should be writing brown fae!!!!

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when you go back to daydreaming after having been interrupted and your brain does a previously on of your fantasy

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Writing fanfic

Mixing tenses

Losing focus

Doubting myself as a writer and a human being

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We all know tampons and pads are super fucking expensive but the most wholesome part of life is that I’ve never met someone who wasn’t willing to give you one when you needed it

It’s the little things

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D&D Haiku: Dice

Polyhedral fate.

Roll to determine events.

Gamer jewelry.

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The year is 2018. Your bills are on autopay. You just got paid and you still have $1200 from the last check. When you want something, you buy it without moving money around. Your credit cards are paid off. You and your friends have 2 international trips planned and paid for this year. Your parents are in great health and you’re able to help if they need anything. You love your job. Your desired creative career is falling into place and you get to take your little cousins to Six Flags and Universal Studios over the Summer. Your relationships are healthy and supportive. All of the toxic energy from the past 6 years is gone. You going to concerts, eating good across the states and your crib has art and warmth throughout. 2018 is going to be so good to you.

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 SCI-FI DOESN’T HAVE TO BE DEPRESSING: WELCOME TO SOLARPUNK

Imagine a scene, set in the future, where a child in Burning Man–style punk clothing is standing in front of a yurt powered by solar panels. There weren’t many books with scenes like that in 2014, when Sarena Ulibarri, an editor, first grew interested in a genre of science fiction that imagines a renewable and sustainable future. Four years later, it’s different.

Welcome to solarpunk, a new genre within science fiction that is a reaction against the perceived pessimism of present-day sci-fi and hopes to bring optimistic stories about the future with the aim of encouraging people to change the present. The first book that explicitly identified as solarpunk was Solarpunk: Histórias ecológicas e fantásticas em um mundo sustentável (Solarpunk: Ecological and Fantastic Stories in a Sustainable World), a Brazilian book published in 2012. In 2014, author Adam Flynn wrote Solarpunk: Notes Toward a Manifesto.

But it was in 2017 that this genre of science fiction — viewed by its supporters as a light of optimism in a world of despair — showed signs of taking off, riding on a set of new publications, support from publishers and increasing interest from readers.

(via SCI-FI DOESN’T HAVE TO BE DEPRESSING: WELCOME TO SOLARPUNK | ozy.com)

Nice article here featuring comment from Solarpunks.net’s very own Adam Flynn, and Sarena Ulibarri of World Weaver Press the publisher of the upcoming Solarpunk: Histórias ecológicas e fantásticas em um mundo sustentável anthology translation. Check it out! 

It’s great to see solarpunk reaching more and more parts of the mainstream!