elph13

[elph13]

It's been a shitty health day and on those days, I re-listen to The Lord of the Rings and seek out amazing fan art.

Éowyn, disguised as Dernhelm, among the Riders of Rohan ⚔️

Based on Eugéne Grasset’s “Jeanne chevauchant au milieu des hommes d’armes” (1894)

[elph13]

Progress even when you hate it

I'm having to live by the mandate that fifty shit words a day is better than no words a day. That fifty words I hate is better than nothing.

[elph13]

Cannot believe how soon this bitch will be out in the world. Witchlore is my first novel for young adults, coming October 2025. A spooky season treat.

[elph13]

Writing is a process of breaking and re-making. Of putting words on the page and knowing in your bones they aren’t quite right, not yet, but you will not find the better ones without these clumsy inadequacies. Of seeing a finished novel not as a beautiful achievement but a palimpsest of mistakes and curious diversions. When I look back on a paragraph in the final page, the printed ink raised under my fingers, I feel the ghosts of all the paragraphs it could have been. Edited out, straightened, stripped, rebuilt, enforced, the dead drafts linger.

So writing now, I look down and think, you are temporary, you are a straw house. Soon I will be killing you and making pictures with your bones.

[elph13]

Magpie-ing

I'm trying to have a space where I can just put shit that catches my eye. Hilary Mantel talked about being a literary magpie as a writer and that's always stayed with me, it speaks to my natural process. See the shiny, grab it, tuck it away, nestle it close and let it feed an idea. Endless notes, random camera rolls, post cards, I keep it all.

[elph13]

[elph13]

Just gathering for book 3, gathering gathering gathering

Separation, W. S. Merwin

[elph13]

Book 3

[elph13]

When grief is just attached to you. Some days cradled close, some days dragged around, some days a millstone around the throat strangling the words and breath away.

[elph13]

Sylvia, putting the writing life into words when tragedy strikes. Girl, how could you be so accurate.

Sylvia Plath, aged 29, in a letter to her mother, 2 months after discovering her husband's infidelity (dated Saturday, 29 September 1962)

[Ted Hughes (aged 32) - her husband, who was having an affair with a married woman, Assia Wevill (aged 35), who rented their London flat; Sylvia was living with their children at Court Green, their house in Devon]

[elph13]

Why not

Simone de Beauvoir, from a diary entry featured in Diary of a Philosophy Student

[elph13]

Book 3 maybe who knows

Emily Dickinson, from her poem titled "1188," featured in The Emergency Poet

[elph13]

We're doing it, wrapping this bitch up (the bitch resists wrapping at every stage, a tangled mop of madness with slashing claws and angry screams of rage for being thus contained)

It's a long story

Am I better? Nope but I am doing better and that's what matters most.

[elph13]

Adult book 3 who knows maybe I just collect stuff

[elph13]

No one told me there was Conclave fanart. Happy Easter to me

[elph13]

Just writing chat

Working on the last installment of THttHOP atm and friends, oh friends, it is a fiddly motherfucker. Requiring multiple spreadsheets (I hate spreadsheets) and so many additional research documents and an excel calendar. Wanting to do right by the story is sometimes, yes, coming up with awesome plot twists, but a lot of the time is just finding post-it notes all over the place with minor characters' names on so I don't forget they exist. Poor Colin.

[elph13]

Next book inspo