melwikwrites

[melwikwrites]

My new book comes out today!!! Super excited to see if people will like it <3

If you have any interest, it's up on Amazon, B&N, Kobo, and Bookshop.org.

[melwikwrites]

I think one of the fair folk may be hitting on my roommate? How do I tell what’s them flirting and what’s them speaking in riddles. Or how to tell when it’s both

It's almost always both. Not all flirting is riddles. But most riddles are flirting. Like. The first riddle is kinda reflexive, I'll give you that. But if they keep asking riddles. and not 'answer my riddles three or something terrible will happen' but just relentless riddles nonstop? That's flirting, probably. Or an enemy for life. But the kind of enemy that also flirts with you.

[melwikwrites]

My new fantasy mystery novel is coming out next Friday!

Without a heart, death and love are equally impossible. James's heart has been stolen. He knows because he got stabbed in the chest and didn't even bleed. On the plus side, he isn't dead! On the minus side, whoever has his heart can control him, and until he gets the heart back, he is incapable of feeling love for anyone but the thief. Whoever that may be. He has to get the heart back, and quickly. But with an assassin in the mix, and a vengeful ex-lover, and a suspicious fiancée, and no idea who to trust or where to look, the task won't be easy. Especially when, with a stolen heart, he can't even really trust himself.

It's got a bi main character (though romance isn't actually the main focus), cursed assassins, and a whole lot of flashbacks to my blorbos' backstories, many of them involving murder. Also a witch who's had visions of 53 possible futures for herself... she would have kept going but for extenuating circumstances.

If you're interested... It's out on 12/8/23! And available for preorder now. Or if you're a reviewer, send me a message and I can send you an ARC! I can always use some reviews :D <3

[melwikwrites]

I've noticed that people take writing advice way too literally and then get really mad about it, so here's a quick guide of what the typical "bad' writing advice is actually trying to tell you.

[Note: you don't have to take literally any piece of advice. It's just there for your consideration. If you hate it, leave it and do things the way you want. But the reason all of this advice is regurgitated so often is because it has helped a lot of people, so it's okay if it's not for you, but it may still be life changing for someone else.]

Write Every Day

"Write every day" is NOT supposed to be a prescriptivist, unbreakable rule that dictates anyone who doesn't write literally every day isn't a real writer. It's supposed to be a shorthand way of saying "establish a writing routine. Get used to writing at certain times or in certain places or in certain patterns, both so that you can trick yourself into writing even when you don't feel like it by recreating certain conditions, but also because if you only write "when you're in the mood", you may never get around to finishing a project and you likely won't be able to meet publishing deadlines if you decide to pursue publication."

The point of this advice is basically just to get used to seeing writing as part of your daily routine, something that you do regularly. But if you decide you can't write on Tuesdays or weekdays or any day when you have certain other activities, that's literally fine. Just try to make it a habit if you can.

2. Show Don't Tell

"Show don't tell" DOES NOT AND HAS NEVER meant "never state anything plainly and explicitly in the text". Again, "show don't tell" is a shorthand, and its intended message is "things tend to feel a lot more satisfying when your reader is able to come to that conclusion on their own rather than having the information given to them and being told they just have to accept it." It's about giving your reader the pieces to put the puzzle of your book together on their own rather than handing them a finished puzzle and saying "there. take it."

So if you have a character who's very short-tempered, it's typically more satisfying that you "show" them losing their cool a few times so that the reader can draw the conclusion on their own that this character is short-tempered rather than just saying "He was short-tempered". Oftentimes, readers don't want to take what you tell them at face value, so if you just state these sorts of details, readers will push back against that information. People are significantly more likely to believe literally any information they are able to draw conclusions on without being told what to believe, so that's where this advice comes in.

3. In Medias Res

This one is so often misunderstood. "In medias res" or "start in the middle", DOES NOT MEAN to literally start halfway through your plot. It also DOES NOT MEAN that you should start in the middle of an action packed scene. It just means that when you start your story, it should feel like the world and the characters already existed before we started following them. It shouldn't feel like everything was on pause and the world and characters only started acting the moment the story begins.

This is why starting with a character waking up or something similar can feel jarring and slow. We want to feel instantly compelled by your character, and the most efficient way to do that is [typically] to have them already doing something, but that something can be anything from taking a shower to commuting to school to chopping off a dragon head. We just want to feel like the story is already moving by the time we enter.

4. Shitty First Drafts

The idea that you should let your first draft suck and not revise it as you go is a tip presented to combat the struggle a lot of people have with not being able to finish a draft. If you find you've been working on the same first draft for five years and barely gotten anywhere, you might want to try this advice. The point is to just focus on getting to the ending because finishing a draft can give you renewed energy to work on the book and also makes it easier to get feedback from readers and friends.

That said, if your story is flowing fine even as you go back and make edits, then don't worry about this. This is advice specifically designed to target a problem. Likewise, this doesn't mean that you can't clean up typoes when you see them or even make minor edits if you want to. It just means not to let yourself get completely bogged down by making changes that you never move forward.

A "shitty first draft" also doesn't mean that your story has to be completely illegible. It just means that you shouldn't let perfectionism stop you yet. I see a lot of people say "well, I can't keep going until this first part makes sense", and that's totally reasonable! Again, the point of this advice is just to get you out of that rut that keeps you from making progress, but if you spend a couple weeks editing and then move on or you find the book is still making forward strides while you edit, then you're fine. You don't need this.

5. Adverbs

The idea that you "shouldn't use adverbs" DOES NOT MEAN that any time you use an adverb, you're ruining your story. It just means that you shouldn't *rely* on adverbs to carry your story, namely in places where stronger verbs or nouns would do a lot more heavy lifting.

For instance, you can write "she spoke quietly", but generally speaking, that "quietly" there is a lot weaker than just subbing out this clause for "she whispered". You probably have the word "spoke" all over your draft, so subbing out one instance of it here for a stronger verb in place of the same verb + an adverb makes for stronger prose. This doesn't mean that you'll never want to use the phrase "spoke quietly" over the word "whispered". For instance, if I write, "When she finally spoke, she spoke quietly, like that was all the volume her weakened lungs could muster." In this case, I'm using "spoke quietly" specifically *because* it echoes the previous spoke earlier in the sentence, and it evokes a certain level of emotion to have that repetition there. I also used it because she's not actually "whispering", but trying to speak at full volume only to come off sounding quiet.

So when people tell you to cut adverbs, they're saying this because people often use adverbs as a crutch to avoid having to seek out stronger verbs. If you're using your adverbs intentionally, having considered stronger verbs but ultimately deciding that this adverb is what does the job properly, then there's nothing wrong with using them. This is just a trick to help you spot one common weakness in prose that a lot of authors don't even realize they have.

6. Write What You Know

This is potentially the single worst-underestood piece of writing advice. "Write what you know" DOES NOT MEAN to write only what you know or that you have to put all of your life's knowledge on the page. It just means that drawing from your own experiences and already there knowledge will help you craft a better story.

So, for instance, being an eye doctor doesn't mean you have to write a story about an eye doctor. It doesn't even mean you need to write a story that directly deals with any eye knowledge. It just means that there are likely things you've experience as an eye doctor that can help inspire or inform your story. Maybe you remember a patient who always wore the same yellow shoes, and so you include a character who does exactly that. Maybe you spent a lot of hours dealing with insurance so you decide to write about insurance agents. Maybe your practice was located next to a grocery store so you decide to write a zombie apocalypse story that takes place in a location inspired by that shopping center.

The point is that, as people, our lived experiences allow us to relate to other people and craft more believable worlds. So don't limit yourself to your lived or experience or feel obligated to only write the things you've done, but when you find yourself wondering what to write about next or how to give a character more depth or how to describe this random location, pull things from your life and let what you already know bring a certain level of unique you-ness to your writing.

And the MOST important advice I can give you is to stop looking at writing advice as some holy, unbreakable rules passed down by the gods that you cannot ever deviate from. And if a piece of advice sounds totally bonkers, do some research on it. There's a good chance that whoever's passing it to you has no idea what they're talking about. But even if every other writer swears by a certain piece of advice, you absolutely do not need to take it. Try it on if you want, and throw it away if you don't, but stop making yourselves miserable by letting random internet people dictate your life. Most people giving advice on the internet aren't where you want to be anyway, so don't expect them to be able to guide you somewhere they've never been.

Everything's made up, and nothing matters. Write what you want.

[melwikwrites]

Today's Mermay theme: Zodiac.

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my cartoon for yesterday’s @guardian books

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Another wild Mermay sketch appears, this time with a mountain goat.

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Did a little mermay with some catfishes!

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[melwikwrites]

Playing 梅香如故 on dizi, northern vs southern style

English added by me :)

[melwikwrites]

Two more days on this giveaway. There aren't a whole ton of individuals entering and I'm giving away three copies, so you'd still have a pretty good chance of winning. I'd love to see more ppl downloading from Booksprout as well <3

Ricardo Montero is a painter of great repute, favored by the king of Salandra and chosen by him to paint the ceiling of a temple dedicated to a sea goddess. When he mysteriously goes missing, his friend Beatriz enters a competition to paint the temple in his stead. But when the sea goddess herself gets involved in Beatriz's painting, and in her life, Beatriz finds herself in over her head. Hopefully the woman she's falling in love with can help keep her afloat.

Meanwhile, Ricardo has been kidnapped by one of the king's enemies, a woman who claims the kidnapping is purely to spite the king but who seems obsessed with Ricardo himself. Under pressure and learning secrets he never wanted to know, Ricardo fights to maintain his loyalty to the king and control over his feelings and his life.

With A Wound Like Lapis Lazuli coming out this weekend, I have a giveaway running as part of a blog tour with RABT Book Tours! If you'd like to win a paperback copy, you can enter that giveaway here.

Alternatively, A Wound Like Lapis Lazuli is also up on Booksprout right now for anyone who would review in exchange for a free copy. You can find that here. I have no reviews right now, so I'd love to see reviews of even a few sentences. And of course the review doesn't have to be positive, just an honest opinion :D Even a negative review would freshen up my empty Goodreads or Amazon pages!

...and of course the book is also available for preorder here.

[melwikwrites]

My queer fantasy novel A Wound Like Lapis Lazuli releases today! Super excited.

It's now available here: https://www.amazon.com/WOUND-LIKE-LAPIS-LAZULI-ebook/dp/B0BX4QDGMJ/

[melwikwrites]

Ricardo Montero is a painter of great repute, favored by the king of Salandra and chosen by him to paint the ceiling of a temple dedicated to a sea goddess. When he mysteriously goes missing, his friend Beatriz enters a competition to paint the temple in his stead. But when the sea goddess herself gets involved in Beatriz's painting, and in her life, Beatriz finds herself in over her head. Hopefully the woman she's falling in love with can help keep her afloat.

Meanwhile, Ricardo has been kidnapped by one of the king's enemies, a woman who claims the kidnapping is purely to spite the king but who seems obsessed with Ricardo himself. Under pressure and learning secrets he never wanted to know, Ricardo fights to maintain his loyalty to the king and control over his feelings and his life.

With A Wound Like Lapis Lazuli coming out this weekend, I have a giveaway running as part of a blog tour with RABT Book Tours! If you'd like to win a paperback copy, you can enter that giveaway here.

Alternatively, A Wound Like Lapis Lazuli is also up on Booksprout right now for anyone who would review in exchange for a free copy. You can find that here. I have no reviews right now, so I'd love to see reviews of even a few sentences. And of course the review doesn't have to be positive, just an honest opinion :D Even a negative review would freshen up my empty Goodreads or Amazon pages!

...and of course the book is also available for preorder here.

[melwikwrites]

100% agree

[melwikwrites]

I have a new book coming out this week! If anyone's interested, you can buy it on Amazon here. It's also up on Barnes & Noble and Kobo.

100k words and years of effort and it's finally finished, guys :D

[melwikwrites]

lottie I just finished as meat loves salt and I now need to lie down with my arm laid across my face dramatically for the rest of my life, do you have any more devastating gay historical epics to recommend

welcome to the club of people lying down with their arm across their face emotionally for all eternity! here’s a rec of queer, historical recs (with, probably, a 90% crossover rate): 

sad

weird

war

romancé