literarynecromancy - Tumblr blog

[literarynecromancy]

deeply unlikeable and unpleasant female characters are actually so important for the ecosystem and also as a good litmus test over if a person is Weird about women or not

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Leave me and my weird names in peace

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One of my favorite phrases my Creative Writing professor had for when you’re writing fantasy is ‘giving your story a Flux Capacitor’.

Because it’s not real, it doesn’t exist. But the way it’s thrown into Back to the Future, at no point does it throw the audience off or suspend any more disbelief than time travel would. You believe Doc when he says he created the Flux Capacitor - the thing that makes time travel possible, because the universe never questions him. 

So it essentially means like, there are going to be elements to your universe that are just not gonna make any sense, even if you set up a whole system based on it. And the only way to make it work is completely own it. You cannot second-guess your system or else the reader will too. You can give it the strangest explanation, but write it like you own it.  

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i know it’s been said before, but it bears repeating: a big, big part of maintaining your confidence & self esteem as a creator is fully embracing the concept of “you don’t have to be good like them.  you can be good like you.”

for example, i’m not someone who’s particularly good at coming up with complex, elaborate plots or incredibly unique ideas.  it’s just not how i choose to write.  and it would be easy for me to look at someone with an elaborate, super unique plot & decide that because i don’t write like that, i’m not a good writer.  after all, unique plots are good, and my writing lacks those, so my writing must not be good, right?  well, no, actually.  i just have different strengths, like taking a simple premise & digging super deep into its emotional depths.  that’s what i do well & it isn’t any better or worse than people who do elaborate world building or come up with really creative and unexpected plots.

your writing is never going to be all things to all people.  it just isn’t.  inevitably, you’ll have to make creative choices that favor certain aspects of writing over others.  there is truly no getting around that & it’s honestly a good thing, because it means you’ve developed your own style.  but you’ll always encounter other creators who posses strengths that you don’t.  it doesn’t mean one is better than the other or that your writing isn’t good enough. 

comparing yourself like that would be like taking a piece of pizza & a cupcake & going “oh no, that cupcake is so sweet & my pizza isn’t sweet at all.” or “gosh, the garlic crust on that pizza is delicious and my cupcake doesn’t have ANY garlic.”  obviously your pizza isn’t sweet.  obviously your cupcake doesn’t have garlic.  a food can’t have every single delicious flavor at once.  the cupcake is good like a cupcake.  the pizza is good like a pizza.  so you don’t have to be good like them.  you can be good like you.

[literarynecromancy]

How To (Realistically) Make A Habit Of Writing

To clarify: Works with my autism. WORKS WITH MY AUTISM!!! I’ve been meeting my goals since I made them my New Year’s resolution! Anyway I’m so sick of all those ‘how to’ guides that don’t actually tell you what the process is they’re just like ‘just do it, but don’t burn yourself out, do what’s best for you!’ because you’re not telling me what I’m not supposed to be burning myself out over but okay, so I made my own. Hope this helps

1. Choose your fighter metric. What works better for you as a measurement of your progress; time spent writing or your word count? Personally I get very motivated and encouraged by seeing my word count go up and making a note of where it should be when I’m done, so I measure by that. At the same time, a lot of people are also very discouraged by their word count and it can negatively impact their motivation to write, and in that case you may be better off working from how much time you spend writing rather than where the word count is

2. Choose your starter Pokémon time frame. How often can you write before it starts to feel like a chore or a burden rather than something fun you look forward to? Many people believe that they have to write daily, but for some people this can do more harm than good. Maybe every two or three days? Weekly? Figure out what fits your schedule and go with it

3. Choose your funny third joke goal. Now that you’ve got your chosen time frame to complete your goal in, what’s a reasonable goal to aim to complete within that time frame based on the metric you chose? If your metric is your word count, how much can you reasonably and consistently write within your chosen time frame? If your metric is time spent writing, how much time can you reasonably and consistently spend writing within that time? Maybe 1000 words per week works, or maybe 10 minutes per day? The goal here is to find something that works for you and your own schedule without burning you out

4. Trial and error. Experiment with your new target and adapt it accordingly. Most people can’t consistently write 1667 words per day like you do in NaNoWriMo, so we want to avoid that and aim somewhere more reasonable. If you feel like it’s too much to do in such a short time frame, either give yourself less to do or more time to do it in. If you find yourself begrudgingly writing so often that it constantly feels more like a chore than something fun, maybe consider adapting things. And if you think that you gave yourself too much wiggle room and you could do more than this consistently, give yourself more of a challenge. Everything needs to suit you and your pace and needs

5. Run your own race. Don’t feel like you’re not accomplishing enough in comparison to others or not working fast enough to satisfy some arbitrary feeling of doubt. Everybody works at their own pace and slower work doesn’t mean worse work. You could be on one word per day and you’ll still see consistent results, which is still one word per day more than you could originally count on. All progress is progress, regardless of its speed

[literarynecromancy]

I love you “unlikeable” female characters I love you rude girls I love you mean women I love you girl interpretations of the “Asshole with a Heart of Gold” trope I love you women who get labeled Cold and Unfeeling I love you girls who lash out I love you women who lie I love you female characters who make people mad just by existing

[literarynecromancy]

how do people plan stories? just asking for a friend (me, that friend is me)

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Ursula K. Le Guin, “Author’s Note” from The Left Hand of Darkness

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god I fuckign love ocs. my characters. my friend's characters. the characters of mutuals ive never spoken to. the characters of artists ive followed and maybe spoken to a little more. the characters of complete strangers I see in passing and think "aw that's cool". if you have ten fans I am one if you have one fan it is me etc etc. I love you

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anyway my stance on "reading the classics" basically boils down to the fact that what is or is not defined as "a classic" is somewhat arbitrary, and therefore it makes no sense to treat "the classics" as some sort of uniform genre that you either like or dislike. Whether you liked Great Expectations has no bearing on whether you'll like 1984 or Rebecca or Pride and Prejudice or East of Eden or Frankenstein or Crime and Punishment. Because those are all vastly different books. "I don't want to read Classics; they're all boring and probably sexist or something." <<free yourself from the arbitrary category of "classic." It just means a lot of people liked the book. You might not. but you might. Treat it as an individual title.

[literarynecromancy]

Mer Prompt!

In Ecotoxicology, one of the testing set-ups we have is with several artificial tiny lakes side by side, each containing different test setups, varying from contaminants to different plants to fish.

Now, consider using Merfolk as test subjects, each on one of the little lakes, too far to help each other but close enough to see the different chemical effects on each other...

The test looks like this. Several round artificial pounds on cement boxes side by side.

[literarynecromancy]

My cat has to wear a cone this week and it made me think of an angel whose halo is a cone.

[literarynecromancy]

Girldick this, boydick that, I’m hunting MOBY Dick

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The devastating difference between how much time it takes to write something vs how fast people read it lol

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Happy World Book Day!

Here are all the books I've written so far. How many words do you think there are all together?

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losing my mind trying to explain how jk rowling isn’t just Some Terf, she was a well established celebrity who brought anti-trans ideology to the general public and that doesn’t compare to public terfs who you’ll only know of if youre in trans or terf circles. not everyone has heard of posey parker but EVERYBODY has heard of jkr. she got to explain trans issues to people who didnt know about it before her so all the convo was on her terms. she is not just some person with a twitter.

[literarynecromancy]

Violins and Violets - Book One

Salzburg, 1784

19-year-old Katharina Schmidt is under pressure to find a husband and settle down. She and her younger brother Hans are musical prodigies who grew up travelling Europe, but now that they're older, Katharina is told to settle down and be ladylike. Hans - now on a solo tour - sends letters encouraging her to keep composing, and she does so. However, as Katharina becomes friends with other young women in Salzburg, she wonders if she really wants the same things as they do: are marriage and children really for her?

Read more about my "Violins and Violets" series here!

Follow my NaNoWriMo progess here.

See my posts about "Violins and Violets - Book One" here.

Progress: 65k / 78k