#youd think i would have all the achievements by now but no. one eludes me

[pukei-pukei]

Here's to a thousand more!

[yeoldontknow]

kat! love your all your fics you're an amazing writer! can you share some writing tips for amateur writers out here?

hi anon writing advice tag if youre looking for like...more specific answers? when it comes to writing, its a very subjective experience when it comes to finding inspiration, outline style, word choice, etc but theres a few things i think across the board are important to remember. 

going under a cut to not clog dashes

- consume as much media as you can. ex: books, music, film etc. i know for me personally im most inspired when im consuming art. i literally cannot write without music, like its genuinely so difficult because i pace my writing against the soundtrack of each scene. and the filtering, editing, and direction style of films/tv series i like will influence, in some manner, how the fic looks in my mind. yes, your plot and characters are found/uncovered in your brain and heart, but these other mediums assist in your interpretation of how youd like to express it and will help inspire the way you describe certain things. so dont be afraid to step back from a doc to consume other forms of art. for me, at least, its really important.

- keep writing and dont let yourself stop. once you decide you want to write a fic or drabble or whatever comes to mind, write it. and once that is done, write more. this is how you develop a style. you will notice the more you practice, the easier it gets. OR you will notice the more you write, the more evolved your writing becomes. this is how you form a style. here is an example: 

an excerpt from a series i was writing in 2011 in a different fandom:

No one tells you what it’s like to go insane. No one talks about it because, we, as a society, understand the chemistry and the biology of it, but we don’t understand the feeling of it. Time had started to compress, slipping around me in a computerized metronome of blood flow and heart beats that had started to tell me nothing except that I was still living. They hadn’t strapped me to the bed, but I still couldn’t leave and everything about the room started to feel like a cage. Sleep had eluded me since I was pulled out, and through the exhaustion and the haze of sameness I never knew exactly when I was beyond a date of 2266.

I was craving daylight - not the vitamin D, as I was being given a healthy dose of daily vitamins through an IV drip - the natural light and the natural warmth of it, all over my face and skin. The ceiling lights of the room provided an element of ultraviolet light, but after so many hours the falsehood of an invention began to wear a person down. It’s something you never really think about, the sun, not until you don’t have it, not until you haven’t seen it for one hundred years.

But when one hundred years feels like three days or two weeks, time really stops mattering and then the sun itself doesn’t feel so important.

from Empty Vessels, posted july 2019:

For a while, they do not speak. Minseok looks longingly out over the water, hollowed, as the herbalist regards the dirt on her shoes with an empty stare. In the silence, Junmyeon minutely nods, the bare threads of his patience allowing them space to find their words. Images spring to his mind, all imagined and none wholly formed, each as bleak and battered as the crow in Chanyeol’s arms. He wonders what Minseok has seen, unable to avoid with a clarity bordering on entrapment; he wonders what she has heard, whispers on the wind of a life he thought he’d left behind.

‘The trees are screaming,’ she announces, eyes still downcast though her voice is sharp; blunt as the edge of a sword and equally as unforgiving. ‘They’re in pain.’

It settles over him, slow and uncompromising, the notion that trees could make sound - that they would choose to. The oldest wisdom lingers in their branches, and for one brief moment, he sees her as someone as old as their roots.

i, at least, can see an enormous difference in quality and style and thats because ive been writing and writing and writing for a very long time lmao. in 2011 i was 3 years into writing fanfic consistently; at that time, too, i was still working towards my degrees and writing daily for film analysis projects. the more you write, the more you evolve so please please please dont stop just because you feel you arent experienced enough. confidence and style will come over time, just keep yourself in practice. 

- NOTES MEAN ABSOLUTELY NOTHING. notes on tumblr are a hot take - and while, yes, there is a need for more reblogs and more sharing of content, focusing on statistics will drive you to the brink. joseph gordon levitt released a ted talk last week on how seeking attention is detrimental to your creativity and LORD this is such a good talk because its true. one of the things he discusses is how powerful the feeling of receiving attention - in this case, notes on a fic - drives someone toward output, but is that genuine? now, of course theres always going to be different scenarios or opinions but if you are just starting out with writing please dont post a fic under the assumption or expectation of achieving a note goal. there are so many variables as to what gets notes and what does not - from algorithm to how many people are online to see it to timing to content like you cannot predict what will or will not correspond to x number of notes and x number of followers. 

instead of setting note or follower goals, set word count goals. when i first started writing for kpop i was actually a pretty concise writer. if you look at the early chapters of hero and wyrm tamer, they all would peak around 4 or 5k words. achieving 10-15K on something seemed absolutely ridiculous and impossible to me - hell, 15K was 10K words under my masters thesis count! why would i want to write that much? but now? im shook if i finish a chapter or fic and the word count is just 4K. those word count goals are exciting for me. 

nervous about word count goals? thats fine! set a goal to write a genre. always wanted to try high fantasy? dope! do it! want to write some sexy vampires? fuck yeah, everyone loves those! want to write a fic that helps you release some tension or trauma youve experienced? please do that, writing is therapy and has been scientifically proven to help. 

set goals for making characters, world building, soundtracks, to learn photoshop to make a moodboard. set goals for all kinds of things but pls dont set goals for statistics because these are so variable and very often outside of your control they will very often suck any joy out of your creativity before its had the chance to start.

i hope these help!