languishing-pineapple - Tumblr blog

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my art may never be as good as i want it to be, but i have hands and a pencil and i will make that everyone else’s problem

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Reasons you should continue writing

Because you love it

Because you want to write

Because you want to get better

Because you want to create something

Because you love your characters

Because you love your world, society, or whatever it is you love

Because you want to write a book

Because it’s fun

Because it’s a skill

Because you want to be a writer

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Do other writers ever get this like, hyper-specific dialogue exchange drop into their brains and you know exactly where these character are standing and what they’re doing and how they’re saying these words but that’s all you get. You don’t have much other context and this specific moment that exists only at this time in your headspace??

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“I want myself to myself”

Saw that Tumblr destroyed of the formatting for this. So here is the version I made for Instagram.

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hitch your heart to one small thing

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Some of you out there are fantastic worldbuilders and it shows!

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You ever thought about a big plot point so much that it loses it’s effect on you and thus think it’s shit. But you have to remember that readers aren’t in your head and will react the same way you did when you first thought of it. Completely mindblown.

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no trope fucks me up more than when person A watches person B with softness and wonder, all while person B is unaware

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I love hummus.

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how does being punched in the face feel like

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Leaving Holes

Your story is 50% reader. It’s that mixture of reader and writer that makes the magic.

Which means your story needs to have holes for the reader to fill in. You need that negative space for the puzzle pieces to fit.

I’m not talking about plot holes, I’m talking about giving one sentence the power of two. A book that means what it says is a mediocre book. A book that means more than what it says is a great book.

Don’t over-develop your characters, having them analyze every feeling, or spelling out what every character in a scene is thinking. Don’t follow up a powerful line with an explanation with what makes that line powerful.

Let your words imply as much as they state.

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is this metaphor good or really fucking pretentious, a novel by me

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an excerpt

the idle street sightings recounts the events that follow a UFO crash in a white-picket suburb. two young teenagers are tasked with taking care of an alien life form while wondering what brought her there.

“Should we go out now?” asked Simon as he peered out the window.

“Let’s wait ’til it gets dark,” Jane replied. “I need some time.”

“Okay.” He drummed his fingers on his knees, seated on the floor at the foot of her bed. A silly thought passed through his head: “You guys wanna do some homework in the meantime?”

Jane and Twyla both rolled their eyes. Sure, they could do that. They could also talk about the twisted triangle between them, or about how bizarre their midnight plans were. Twyla was afraid of being irreparably lost; Simon was afraid of what he might see; Jane was terrified of what she might not see. There were no guarantees hiding between the leaves of Lux’s word salad. No matter what, though, it’d be hard to forget. The three might even come of age through the experience.

Twyla scooted over on the floor so she was next to Simon and rested her head on his shoulder. Behind him, he heard Jane scoff and bury her face in her single pillow. He didn’t know what to do that would make both girls happy, so he approached the boom box and found, to his delight, that Ziggy Stardust was still in the CD player. He turned it on, adjusted the volume to a calm lullaby level, and half-smiled when he peered out the window and saw that Lux was flashing bright green and sparkling silver to the beat of the music.

The three listened to the whole album, all eleven tracks, with barely a word shared between them. Simon was apparently the only one who felt like dancing. Not that the girls didn’t want to… but three was such a difficult number. Jane knew Twyla liked him more than she did, and that her own starvation for human touch wasn’t anyone else’s responsibility. Nobody wanted to touch her, and she didn’t want to make them. She stuffed her sorrow deep into her brain and wrapped her arms around herself, squeezing tighter and tighter to feel that comforting pressure. Twyla wouldn’t dance with her alone. She probably never even thought to. They were too old for that now.

As the violins on the final track played their last note, Jane rubbed her eyes. “It’s dark out.”

“The sun set awhile ago,” Twyla replied. “Should we—?”

“I guess.” Jane opened the window and stuck her head out. “Looks like Lux is waiting.”

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it's too noisy on here. everyone get out your books we're doing some silent independent reading.

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an excerpt

burning the garden follows the new girl in town as she acclimates to boarding-school life, trapped in a friendship with a couple of very frightening juniors.

In the courtyard, perhaps one of the last sunny days of the season, Meredith sat beneath her favorite tree—the big oak, shadier than the rest—and played a medley of sweet acoustic covers. Not just the Beatles, either. Meredith was fond of singer-songwriters and aspired to write her own stuff in between practicing the Regina Spektor, the Ingrid Michaelson…

Julie watched her from the window. Girls flocked to her like moths to a porch light and sat with galaxies’ worth of stars in their eyes, swaying to the music, some singing along.

Something in Julie’s hand snapped into pieces. She looked down at her hands, red with exertion, and saw that she’d been holding one of her dolls (of which she had a collection lined up on her dresser), running her finger along its hair, and without even thinking, she’d snapped its head off.

She opened her top drawer and put the head and the body away. She’d have to fix it later.

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