itsalwaysyou-jw

[itsalwaysyou-jw]

[itsalwaysyou-jw]

I'm sorry. It's been six years, and there's still no explanation for The Sign of Three that isn't gay and tragic.

[itsalwaysyou-jw]

SHE'S BACK, Y'ALL 😄 this chapter was captivating!

Everybody go read this, she is the bee's knees and legitimately the most talented writer I've ever had the pleasure of recommending.

New Fic

Colour me in

Fandom/Pairing: Sherlock/Johnlock

Rating: Teen and Up

Warnings: None

Chapters: 1/3

Wordcount: 7,5k

Tags: Fix-It, TSoT, Song-Inspired, Musical Fic, POV Greg Lestrade, POV Sherlock Holmes, POV John Watson, The Best Man Speech, Drunk Sherlock, Love Confessions, Pining Sherlock, Meddling Lestrade, First Kiss

Summary: Sherlock needs help with the best man speech. Greg needs a way to clear things up. And John needs to figure out if he’s made the right choice.

Read it on AO3.

This fic is set during and after TSoT and has slumbered in my WIP folder for months now until the brilliant @itsalwaysyou-jw​ convinced me to do a writing challenge during quarantine. The goal: get something published by next Saturday, no minimal word count, no genre requirement, just FINISH SOMETHING (which is hard enough as is). So, here you go. This is what I’ve come up with. Tags below the cut

Keep reading

[itsalwaysyou-jw]

[itsalwaysyou-jw]

me joining tjlc in 2016:

[itsalwaysyou-jw]

things i’ve learned as a slush reader

in the past month, i’ve read over 200 submissions for the literary organizations i volunteer with, and i want to share some of the stuff i’ve learned about writing as a slush reader.

(a slush reader is someone who reads submissions, and either declines them or pushes them through for editors/judges to make a final decision on whether or not a story will be published.)

a rejection does not mean you are a bad writer or that you’ve written a bad story. it’s all chaos. there’s no rhyme or reason to any of it. i was chosen as a reader for these publications because my personal taste in literature jived with the editors. that’s all it comes down to – personal taste. if your taste doesn’t match the taste of the slush readers, you’re not going to get published. there is no way you can predict that, so all you can do is keep writing and keep submitting and hope your work aligns with someone who gets what you’re trying to do. that said, there are some across-the-board things that are worth noting:

your story should be doing some kind of Work. what is the intention of your piece? what are you trying to comment on, explore, or do? it doesn’t have to be concise or obvious or complex, it can be literally anything in any way, but if you’re writing something just for the sake of getting published, or to validate yourself, it’s going to be pretty obvious to readers. that is not to say that self-validating work is not valuable, or that a story cannot be both Doing Something and self-validating, but readers want to see that you have something to say, some work to do other than, “i want to be a good writer.” 

readers will probably have made their decision by page 4. probably sooner than that depending on the quality of the writing. that means you have (if you’ve written in 12pt serif font and double-spaced, and please dear god, do these things unless you’re intentionally playing with form) about a thousand words to engage a reader. if you’ve written a short story, personal essay, or novel excerpt (sorry, cannot speak for poetry), this means your core conflict needs to have been introduced by this point and headed in some kind of direction. to put it more clearly: i need to know what’s going on. elusiveness is not your friend. i want to know: 1) who is the main character, and 2) what do they want? if you do not have these things established by page 4, your work might still be an early draft.

caveat being, of course, if you’re writing experimentally, in which case i hope you’ve submitted to an experimental publication. but there’s a big difference in good experimental vs bad experimental writing, and that is:

write with intention. intention is the difference between dancing alone in your bedroom and becoming a ballerina. both forms of dance might be good, you might be an innately talented dancer alone in your bedroom, but choreographed dancing takes discipline and practice. when it comes to writing, every sentence needs to be chosen to determine if it works for the piece. this is unfortunately one of the hardest parts about writing.

take risks. my least favorite stories are the ones that make me think, this has been done before. having to read hundreds of stories means repetition – i see the same themes over and over (white man feeling conflicted about cheating on his wife), the same writing styles (purple prose run-on sentences), the same characters (middle-class english teachers). i want to read words i don’t expect about stories i’ve never thought of. i want to see confidence in creativity. i want to see writing that acknowledges convention and destroys it for something better. show me newness, ingenuity, artistic expression. show me the stuff you’re afraid to write for fear of ridicule – that’s the stuff that gets published.

THE WORLD WANTS TO HEAR FROM FANFIC WRITERS. when i volunteered with one publication, the application involved a list of the last 15 novels i’d read. and i thought, i don’t want this gig if i can’t be brutally honest, so you bet your ass i put fanfic on there. i was accepted within a day. when i’ve told my writing mentors that i write fanfic, their faces have all lit up in excitement and they have a ton of questions. i cannot tell you how many submissions i’ve read where the interactions between characters feel stilted and normative, and all i’m looking for is the kind of dynamic tension and chemistry that fanfic authors have mastered. so if you write fanfic and don’t think you’re good enough to write “literature” i’m here to tell you, you absolutely are. 

[itsalwaysyou-jw]

God bless past-me who started chapter 26 of Welcome Home back in July. Present-me wanted to get back into it but had no idea where to start.

Now that the chapter is already started, I just have to pick up where I left off. Most of the time, I hate past-me. This time, however, past-me came in clutch

[itsalwaysyou-jw]

Writing/drawing something INCREDIBLY SELF-INDULGENT

[itsalwaysyou-jw]

four times Sherlock was alarmed by sex and the one time he wasn’t

[itsalwaysyou-jw]

My characters when I try to write a transition scene:

[itsalwaysyou-jw]

Sherlock ︱The Reichenbach Fall ↳ “And honey, you should see me in a crown.” 

— James Moriarty

[itsalwaysyou-jw]

tbh, it’s been johnlock from the start…i mean, normal roommates don’t share groceries and money, they write their names on their food and make sure everything is split evenly and just live in the same building as each other, but john and sherlock have been all “ummm can i have some money?” “here, take my card!” “john are you making the thing with the peas?” “wow, sherlock, you’re gonna get the milk for once?” “john, you don’t need a silly side job, i have cases, i can provide for you” “sherlock, that’s 57 texts” “john, you don’t need these silly women”

like they’ve been domestic consulting detective husbands from the second john claimed the chair with the union jack pillow and sherlock tried desperately to clean up for him at a moment’s notice.  they were never roommates or colleagues or friends.  they’ve always been so, so, SO much more.

[itsalwaysyou-jw]

Guess who’s back! (back again)

Six weeks ago, I underwent a bilateral gastrocnemius slide.

What does that mean?!

It means that I had a surgery to “elongate my calf” (which an extreme simplification of what happened) on both of my legs. I’ve spent my entire life walking on the balls of my feet due to chronically tight calves, which is horrible for your foot health long-term. (I had a stress fracture for over five months that was supposed to heal in six weeks max).  Before, I could not: walk on my heels, walk heel-toe (not even close), sit with my legs at a 90-degree ankle, tap my feet, or do anything else that required my foot to reach anything past a 100-degree angle to my leg.

In other words: my legs and feet were messed up, y’all.

What else does that mean?!

It means that I was MIA due to pain-killer-induced fog and that I was focused on recovery and pain management instead of writing or social media. It means I spent the first two weeks in my bed in a haze and using an office chair to move to the bathroom, the third week walking with extreme pain and crouched over, and the next three weeks after that doing physical therapy to improve my gait and strength.

The result: my stress fracture is healed, walking is easier, and I am obsessed with the things I never knew were normal. My new annoying habit is tapping my feet when I sit down. It’s so satisfying!

Anyway, all this to say: I haven’t been writing for obvious reasons (including depression from feeling isolated and helpless). I’m back to writing now, though I am sorry to say my inspiration is directed toward my original work. For now, both of my fanfics are still on hiatus. I promise I haven’t given up, I’m just so taken with my original story idea. :)

Anyway: here’s the first little bit that I wrote today in honour of Six Sentence Sunday. It’s nothing special, but I’m trying to get back into the swing of engaging with my readers/fellow writers. :)

Both of the men on either side of the door had drastically different reactions to their reunion. Let’s take them one at a time: David knew in an instant that something was wrong. He’d known James back when mankind saw fit to go months without cleaning themselves and still, he’d never seen him looking quite so dishevelled. Perhaps the closest occasion was once, on the run, when he’d encountered a drunken James in a shoddy pub… Yet still, there was something very wrong. It wasn’t his hair and rug-imprinted cheek, nor was it his clothes, which were the same as he’d been wearing yesterday when they’d eaten pizza together. (Though, in fairness, this would have been a valid observation to hint that something was wrong with James, a man who owned not one, not two, but 87 pairs of hand-stitched pajamas with his initials sewn onto them.)

I know that’s more than six sentences, but we gotta paint a picture, right?! Anyway, if you read all this, please consider dropping a like or reply so I know who is still active.

I go back to work on the 17th. Wish me luck and thank you for reading. :)

[itsalwaysyou-jw]

creators see your reblogs. creators read the nice tags you type in when you love their work. creators beam when you ask to be added to the tag list, or tagged in their edits and writings. creators see your comments saying how beautiful their content is. creators smile when you send an ask telling them how much you like their work. creators appreciate interaction with their content and love you for it, really. so if you like something, reblog it, say how much you love it in the tags, reply to it with a nice message. you’ll make someone’s day.

[itsalwaysyou-jw]

Ok, so you know that amazing vintage photo from the stage production of The Warrior’s Husband? 

That Amazon energy is now fierce angel energy, and a certain demon is very appreciative.

[itsalwaysyou-jw]

A snippet from the beginning of my (untitled) WIP. This was the first portion I ever wrote for this passion project. I had been watching Jane the Virgin and eating Doritos that I couldn't lick off my fingers fast enough when this popped into my head fully-formed and I was ready to type.

Please let me know if you would like to be a beta reader once the first draft is complete.

(If the picture is blurry, clicking on it should resolve the issue.)

[itsalwaysyou-jw]

The first summary for my current (untitled) WIP. I have a good feeling about this one, y’all. 

Please let me know if you want to be included in a group of beta readers once I have the first draft complete.

(If the image is too blurry to read, clicking on it should resolve the issue.)