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yesterday in economic botany we were learning about plant based oil compounds and stuff and my botany professor was talking about lynn seed oil, which in woodworking is rubbed on over furniture as a varnish. this oil has an exothermic chemical reaction with oxygen, meaning that the reaction creates heat. what often happens, apparently, is that woodworkers will finish rubbing on the oil with a rag and then will ball up the rag and throw it away, but because the reaction is taking place and the heat can���t escape (like it would on a piece of furniture where it can be cooled) it gets trapped in the rag, which gets hotter and hotter until it reaches the temperature where it bursts into flame. apparently many woodworking shops have been burned down by this. the proper way to dispose of rags with this oil is to hang them up on a clothesline, so again the reaction never gets enough heat to start a fire. im telling you this because im a writer and ive never heard of substance that will just…spontaneously combust conveniently like that so long as it’s in a confined space. my botany professor tried it in a trash can in his driveway and it did indeed burst into flame after 45 minutes, which is an exceptionally convenient time delay. im sorry im tying this so fast my laptop is on 2% battery and theres no outlet an

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HE DID IT FOLKS, HE DID THE THING

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this is so rogue but does anyone have the poetry template that went semi-viral on twitter a while back? it was designed for kids but someone gave it to their mother who has dementia and she wrote a really moving poem about her experience.

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your draft isn’t bad. it’s just going through its awkward teenager phase. let it wear a hoodie and slam its door.

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on watching a parent age

i saw somebody say “what if you’re gone and i haven’t become anything yet” and basically that broke me on a random thursday evening

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i am shrunken down and brought to the gnome world and when i attempt to assimilate to their culture I use an acorn cap as a hat and they all laugh cheerfully at my silly mistake of wearing what they use as a bowl like a cap and though this is a transgression that would have humiliated me in my human life I am instead laughing alongside them at my humorous misunderstanding

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What they don't tell you about writing is that as you write, you discover scenes and entire plots that you hadn't accounted for that need to be written. So you can spend two hours writing and editing only to realise you're further away from the finish line than you thought you were when you started

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Thinking of them 🥰

My OCs. And how they'll make each other suffer.

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i write best when i’m feeling slightly unhinged and mildly dehydrated.

peak creative suffering.

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“It is said that, during the fantasy book in the late eighties, publishers would maybe get a box containing two or three runic alphabets, four maps of the major areas covered by the sweep of the narrative, a pronunciation guide to the names of the main characters and, at the bottom of the box, the manuscript. Please… there is no need to go that far. There is a term that readers have been known to apply to fantasy that is sometimes an unquestioning echo of better work gone before, with a static society, conveniently ugly ‘bad’ races, magic that works like electricity and horses that work like cars. It’s EFP, or Extruded Fantasy Product. It can be recognized by the fact that you can’t tell it apart form all the other EFP. Do not write it, and try not to read it. Read widely outside the genre. Read about the Old West (a fantasy in itself) or Georgian London or how Nelson’s navy was victualled or the history of alchemy or clock-making or the mail coach system. Read with the mindset of a carpenter looking at trees. Apply logic in places where it wasn’t intended to exist. If assured that the Queen of the Fairies has a necklace made of broken promises, ask yourself what it looks like. If there is magic, where does it come from? Why isn’t everyone using it? What rules will you have to give it to allow some tension in your story? How does society operate? Where does the food come from? You need to know how your world works. I can’t stress that last point enough. Fantasy works best when you take it seriously (it can also become a lot funnier, but that’s another story). Taking it seriously means that there must be rules. If anything can happen, then there is no real suspense. You are allowed to make pigs fly, but you must take into account the depredations on the local bird life and the need for people in heavily over-flown areas to carry stout umbrellas at all times. Joking aside, that sort of thinking is the motor that has kept the Discworld series moving for twenty-two years.”

— “Notes from a Successful Fantasy Author: Keep It Real” (2007), Terry Pratchett. (via the-library-and-step-on-it)

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editing your own work is like reading a text you sent at 2am and realizing you were possessed by a deeply embarrassing version of yourself

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What's your editing process? I hate going back to read old work, but I know I have to in order to fix it up and make it better. I know that editing helps me improve. I find that generally speaking, I edit as I go. when I finish a chapter, I look back through it to find anything to improve on. But that means that since my author's voice has changed a lot in the past year, chapter 1 reads completely differently to my newer work. But then, when i go back to edit, my mind just blanks on how to make it better. any advice? I'm honestly considering deleting chapter 1 and writing the full thing all over again, but better. I like my plot points and beats in chapter 1, I just don't love the way I wrote it.

i used to edit as i was writing, but i quit because i realised, just like you're reflecting on, that it causes incohesive narration tone (i think that's a thing lol).

now, my editing process is rewrites. for the second draft, i do a full rewrite. i have the first draft open in one tab and the new document in another (using split screen). i find it's way easier to edit like this for the first few drafts because it's much easier to fix plot holes when you know the entire story and don't limit yourself to editing the already existing text. i treat the second draft as a completely new story, pretty much. just with more knowledge of the concept. i don't go into too many details on the linguistics in the second draft.

after i'm done with the second draft i create a third document and do a rewrite again, however, this time, i copy and paste a lot from the second draft (if it sounds good) and start working more on phrasing.

i've never gotten to a fourth draft yet, and idk if it's necessary, but i think once i'm done with my third draft (which i'm currently working on rn on one of my main projects), i'll go back and edit in the same document line-by-line, rather than creating an entirely new doc.

but i would advise against deleting what you wrote in your first two drafts !!! you might realise later you want to keep something or you like how something is phrased, and it's great as a tool for improvement for your future drafts and projects.

hope i could provide you with some helpful insights! good luck with editing !! <333 ⋆౨ৎ˚⟡˖ ࣪

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keep reading this cave for a stunning twist in which i see TWO bulls and, AND, i show you what the outline of my hand looks like  

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i didn’t stop writing. i was marinating. now the flavor is INSANE.

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My own map of Yggdrasil from Norse mythology. Inspired by the art of Hilma Af Klint and Manly P. Hall

Key (in case the writing's too hard to make out):

1. Alfheim. 2. Asgard. 3. Vanaheim. 4. Midgard. 5. Jotunheim. 6. Nidavellir. 7. Svartalfheim. 8. Niflheim. 9. Muspellheim

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everybody should be so so nice to novelists bc when they say they're writing a novel they might actually mean that they've written the novel like two or three times already so what they're saying is they're still writing the novel.