creative-walnut-bro

[creative-walnut-bro]

Hey. I think I hate you.

[creative-walnut-bro]

Hey, random writing tip: Instead of having something be a ridiculously unlikely coincidence, you can make the thing happen due to who this particular character is as a person. Instead of getting stuck on "there's no logical reason to why that would happen", try to bend it into a case of "something like this would never happen to anybody but this specific fucker." Something that makes your reader chuckle and roll their eyes, going "well of course you would."

Why would the timid shy nerd be at a huge sketchy downtown black market bazaar? Well, she's got this beetle colony she's raising that needs a very specific kind of leaf for nest material, and there only place to get it is this one guy at the bazaar that sells that stuff. Why would the most femininely flamboyant guy ever known just happen to have downright encyclopedic knowledge about professional boxing? Well, there was this one time when he was down bad for this guy who was an aspiring professional boxer...

I know it sounds stupidly obvious when written out like this, but when you're up close to your writing, it's hard to see the forest for the trees. Some time ago I finished reading a book, where the whole plot hinges on character A, who is 100% certain that character B is dead, personally getting up and coming down from the top rooms of a castle, to the gates, at 3 am, to come look at some drunk who claims to be this guy who died 17 years ago. Why would A do that, if he's sure that B is dead?

Because he's a Warrior Guy from a culture of Loyalty And Honour, and hearing that someone's got the audacity to go about claiming to be his long-lost brother in battle, there is no other option than to immediately personally go down there to beat the ever-loving shit out of this guy. Who then turns out to actually be character B, after all.

[creative-walnut-bro]

I keep seeing the take that authors on AO3 need to stop deleting their fics and instead to orphan them without any explanation of the consequences of orphaning a fic and as an author I really need to say something to this.

Stop telling people to just orphan their fics.

Orphaning a fic means giving up any and all ownership over it. No way to claim it back, edit it or delete it. Yes it's an archive but an author should still have the right to delete their work if they feel like they don't want it to be up anymore.

Readers always scream for authors to orphan their fics instead of deleting because they feel like they have a right to the fanworks that is shared with them for free. If it's so important to you to not lose a fic, download it. Also comment and encourage the authors, instead of telling them to give up all ownership to their work.

To authors, if you think about deleting your fics, there are other options you should employ first. If you don't want it connected to your name, put it into an anonymous collection. As long as it's in there, noone can see you wrote it, you still can edit ot or delete it and moderate comments on it. You can even move it to anther account, just create another one, add it as co author and then take your main account off. Then you can still edit it from your second account but it's no longer connected to your account.

If you don't want it to show anymore put it in a unrevealed collection, that way, the fic won't show up but it's still there, you can still see it, read comments and make it public again.

If you feel the urge to delete your fic, try one of these options first and see how you feel about it after a while, you can still delete or orphan afterwards, but this hopefully makes your decision easier.

Only orphan a fic if you're 100% sure. This is permanent, there is no way back from that, AO3 support will NOT help you if you did it on accident or change your mind. Don't listen to people telling you to just orphan it, make very sure, this is what you want.

[creative-walnut-bro]

The curtains were blue because everything in the room was carefully colour coordinated, reinforcing the character’s stylish and controlled characterisation. The curtains were blue because everything in the room was a different colour, reinforcing the character’s eclectic and globe-trotting personality. The curtains were blue because the character is elsewhere established to hate the colour blue, subtextually implying that their deceased spouse was responsible for that decoration choice.

The curtains were blue because throughout their filmography the director consistently uses cool tones to mark moments of distance between characters. The curtains were blue to tie the events in that room into the broader oceanic motif of this particular novel. The curtains were blue because the assonance evoked a contrast with the following stanza of the poem.

Even the curtains looked expensive: floor to ceiling velvet drapes, in a flawless royal blue. She tucked the saucer up on the windowsill and tied back faded blue curtains with a loop of string. The narrow blinds were the same navy blue as the pinstripe suit of the man who served eviction notice that sent them to this office.

The curtains were blue because the author’s childhood home had blue curtains, which they discussed in their letters related to their feelings of comfort in that place. The curtains were blue because the author’s childhood home had blue curtains, which they discussed in their letters related to their feelings of grief in that place.

The curtains were blue as an allusion to the contemporary joke about literary criticism, an extension of the author’s autocritical approach that will be further discussed in section seven.

The curtains were red, as a pun on;

The curtains were read.

[creative-walnut-bro]

Male writers writing female characters:

“Cassandra woke up to the rays of the sun streaming through the slats on her blinds, cascading over her naked chest. She stretched, her breasts lifting with her arms as she greeted the sun. She rolled out of bed and put on a shirt, her nipples prominently showing through the thin fabric. She breasted boobily to the stairs, and titted downwards.”

[creative-walnut-bro]

jetpens just started stocking a product that will be an ergonomic game-changer for a lot of folks!

this is the kutsuwa punyu spiral pencil grip. unlike most pencil grips that are solid tubes and have a fixed maximum diameter they can wrap around,

the punyu is a spiral! it wraps like spaghetti.

this means that, unlike almost every other grip on the market, this grip can be added to almost every pen or pencil! and that includes fountain pens and gel pens. you can see it here being used on a pilot metropolitan fountain pen and a sakura gelly roll gel pen.

(not an affiliate link, not sponsored, you can buy from wherever you want if interested, jetpens has a lot of specs of their products that I appreciate)

a jetpens review even mentions someone using these on the lamy safari line of fountain pens. the ones with a really sharp triangle grip. these grips seem really really versatile, especially if you are about to sit down and take notes for hours on end!

if you do use this with a fountain pen, I recommend making sure the fountain pen is not prone to hard starts or drying out, has a good flow (whether that flow is from a wet nib or a wet feed or both), and/or that you use a relatively wet ink. because the goal is to have the fountain pen continue to write even if you put it down for a few minutes, so you do not have to keep removing the grip, capping the pen, uncapping the pen, or reapplying the spiral grip!

over the years some folks have asked me if I know of anything like this, and well, now we both do! if you get this let me know what kinds of pens and pencils you use it with and how well it works! this is a really exciting pencil grip!

[creative-walnut-bro]

seeing straight men be disgusted by booktok smut recommenders has actually radicalized me to the side of booktok smut recommenders. girls your taste may be atrocious but i will never disparage you for exposing mainstream discourse to the concept of soaking through your underwear. spent my whole life listening to men talk about penises it’s about time they get jumpscared by women talking about pussy in crude detail on social media. go forth and goon my warriors

[creative-walnut-bro]

Me: *agonizing over whether a semicolon goes here, what the proper dialogue should be there, other assorted rules and semantics*

Terry Pratchett: "!" said the stranger.

THAT'S ALLOWED?

[creative-walnut-bro]

okay so I have a question about tumblr, ao3, and wattpad

so we all know tumblr & ao3 are in love but what about wattpad???? Like wattpad is the place for original stories and ao3 is for fanfics like is wattpad a third wheel???????

[creative-walnut-bro]

[creative-walnut-bro]

No shame in using the safeword (quitting a fic that doesnt do it)

[creative-walnut-bro]

Fandom Problem #9566:

I think some people don't understand the fact that one of the strengths of fiction is that it can include putting yourself in the shoes of people you would not like, that you would not agree with, and may even hate. But putting them into a perspective in which you can understand. Of course, "understanding" doesn't mean "condoning," but that part seems to be lost on people.

[creative-walnut-bro]

affirmations for writers: i know how to write. i have seen sentences before, and i know how to make one. i can identify up to several words and their meanings. i am not afraid of semicolons.

[creative-walnut-bro]

Anxiety: You're almost 30 and haven't published a single book. You wasted your chance to become a successful author!

Me: Stan Lee created Spider-Man at age 40. George R. R. Martin wrote A Game of Thrones at age 48.

Anxiety: Oh fuck nvm you do you, king.

[creative-walnut-bro]

do you ever just … picture a whole scene, a whole fanfiction in your head, you know how to place every single word of the english dictionary that you need (or your language dictionary), you know how to structure your sentences, you know just what your characters are going to say to each other and then… and then you just open microsoft word.

[creative-walnut-bro]

do publishers realize that advertising books using fanfic tropes spoils the experience of reading an original story. stop telling me it’s enemies to lovers and there was only one bed and unrequited love hurt comfort golden retriever black cat timeloop major character death. why do i give a fuck if i don’t know any of the characters and now plus i already know the entire plot of the story. that’s what ao3 is supposed to be for

[creative-walnut-bro]

Fucking hate watching children go “um Actually UwU” about AO3. saw someone say that fixing a bug with bookmarks isn’t a good reason to close a site down for a couple hours and they’re all lying about what they spend money on

meanwhile this very week my actual day job shut down the internal programmes for idk how many hours to fix a minor bug that popped up out of nowhere. I mean??? I don’t know shit about IT but “shut down all functions while we fix a problem” is so damn common. And “oh this took longer than we said” as well.