#young person literature

[thepersonalquotes]

To become a master at any skill, it takes the total effort of your: heart, mind, and soul working together in tandem.

Maurice Young

[sophosoterica]

I don’t even know who I am anymore. And I fear, by the time it is safe for her to come out, she will have starved to death in the famine of worthiness or suffocated beneath the weight of being known.

In the endeavor to become self-aware, I have forgotten the self to be aware of.

[lanotteviene]

anyway it's funny in an interesting way how the internet turned Kafka into the sad boy with an existentialist + romantic flavour instead of the author of seminal works about alienation & the confusing, painful contrast between what society deems normal and what Isn't. how the rules that establish that divide aren't made clear, how to the marginalized they seem ever-changing, impossible to grasp, surreal to the point of despair.

if you've ever felt overwhelmed by the absurdity of a system that seems legitimately against you instead of for you, if you've had days or months or years where language or cultural barriers have made you feel wrong to your core, if you've dealt with so much stress or mental illness or abuse that you've struggled to recognize yourself in the mirror his work talks about your struggles and would probably speak to you

[thepersonalwords]

Sometimes we meet folks who appear rather plain, yet when they speak from a heart of service, love, compassion, and wisdom, they instantly become respected favorites.

Susan C. Young, The Art of Being: 8 Ways to Optimize Your Presence & Essence for Positive Impact

[kaleb-is-definitely-sane]

Does anyone else just sit and listen to the wind? Sit and listen as the wind whispers, and try to decipher their secrets? What are the secrets of the winds? They pass, hovering over the face of the stoic earth and the chaotic waters; surely they must know something?

Maybe on the winds are the words we leave unsaid. Maybe on the winds are each “I love you”, each “I’m sorry”, each “I’m… different.” Maybe on the wind is each curse, each rebuttle that was muttered in the prescense of oppression but never spoken loud enough to be heard over the wind. Maybe on the wind is the voice of the Divine, reaching out to us, filling us with life and spirit after our souls have been drained by the drudgery of everyday life.

Maybe it is poetry on the wind.

In the wind, I hear the love-filled melancholic poetry lost to time. But not lost forever: we hear. We know. We remember. We are the someone, in another time, that remembers the beautiful love and the desirous sin that we did in our reckless, wild youth of the past. And this poetry breathes in us, transforming us until we too breathe poetry. Until we too are living poetry.

[greenerteacups]

Hi! I am an ardent fan of your writing, and I hope to be as sorted and planned as you some day in my own writing journey.

My question is: you have a keen eye when it comes to planning character personality, dynamics, and such. I've also been wading through your ask replies, and your insights into how you write people and how you make them play off of each other is so wonderful to read. If it's not too personal a q, how did you learn how to write like this? Did you go to school for writing, does it come from years of observing people, do you have reading list recs for "how to write real people and real interactions"?

Thanks! This is a really flattering question. I'll try to answer it honestly, because I wish someone had been brutally honest about this with me when I was a young writer.

I didn't go to school for writing. I started doing it when I was about nine years old. It sucked very badly. I kept writing throughout high school, and it still mostly sucked, but some of it was occasionally interesting. ("Interesting" here does not mean "good," by the way.) I took a break in college, and then came back. I've been writing ever since. Sometimes, I feel good about it. A lot of the time, I don't!

I hate giving this advice, because I remember how it feels to get it, and it's the most uninspiring, boring-ass, dog shit advice you can get, but it's also the only advice that is 100% unequivocally true: you have to write, and specifically, you have to write things that suck.

I do not mean that you should make things that suck on purpose. I mean that you have to sit down and try your absolute hardest to make something good. You have to put in the hours, the elbow grease, the blood, sweat, and tears, and then you have to read it over and accept that it just totally sucks. There is no way around this, and you should be wary of people who tell you there is. There is no trick, no rule, no book you can buy or article you can read, that will make your writing not suck. The best someone else can do is tell you what good writing looks like, and chances are, you knew that anyway — after all, you love to read. You wouldn't be trying to do this if you didn't. And anyone who says they can teach you to write so good it doesn't suck at first is either lying to you, or they have forgotten how they learned to write in the first place.

So the trick is to sit there in the miserable doldrums of Suck, write a ton, and learn to like it. Because this is the phase of your path as an artist when you find what it is you love about writing, and it cannot be the chance to make "good writing." This will be the thing that bears you through and compels you to keep going when your writing is shit, i.e., the very thing that makes you a writer in the first place. So find that, and you've got a good start.

Some people know this, but assume that perseverance as a writer is about trying to get to the point where you don't suck anymore. This is not true, and it is an actively dangerous lie to tell young writers. You are not aiming to feel like your writing doesn't suck. You are aiming to write. You are aiming to have written. Everything else is dust and rust. And of course, you'll find things you like about your pieces, you'll find things you're proud of, you'll learn to love the things you've made. But that little itch of self-criticism, in the back of your brain — the one that cringes when you read a clunky line, or thinks of a better character beat right after it's far too late to change — that's never going away. That's the Writer part of you. Read Kafka, read Dickens, read Tolstoy, you will find diary entries where they lament how absolutely fucking atrocious their writing was, and how angry they are that they can't do better. A good writer hates their sentences because they can always imagine better ones. And the ability to imagine a better sentence is what's going to make you pick up the pen again tomorrow. And the day after that. And the day after that.

Which is what I mean, and probably what all those other annoying, preachy advice-givers mean, when we say: a good writer is just someone who writes every day. It's that easy, and that hard.

[enbycrip]

ID: a tweet by Naomi (blanked out), @naomi_(blanked out)

“My boy is autistic and his drama group have adapted Twelfth Night to write a part for him where he runs on stage and interrupts the dialogue to reel off lists of facts about the play. Knowing loads of facts is his superpower. He loves his part.”

Honestly, I think the Bard would have approved.

(I hate the “x neurodivergence is a superpower” narrative, but anyone having an individual ability or fact about themselves they count as *their* superpower is different, as far as I’m concerned.)

[profanityandprose]

“Secret body of deep liquor, I taste you down to your secret.”

— Li-Young Lee, Always a Rose.

[farahhassim]

If death arrives on my doorstep, I will take her gladly, without sorrow or pain. I will hold her hand as she leads me to the inevitable. Her guidance fills me with hope as she chases away the ascending demons that surround me. The peace that she brings has me chuffed, and I unknowingly long to be closer to her. I tighten my grip on her hand as she pulls me through my past. She tells me that it won't hurt anymore, and with naivety, I believe her. She takes me past a memory of you, and the demons once again threaten to surround me, but she keeps me safe. Death is astonishingly beautiful; I no longer pay attention to the memories, only looking into her intoxicating eyes. She prods me gently to get answers, but all I want is to hear her voice – such a sweet melody to die to. I cling to it; I cling to her and wish for a thousand lifetimes to be by her side.

[quotelr]

Although many things may still need to happen before you identify what your exact work will be, I know that every single person whom you’re meeting and every experience that you’re having is necessary to you discovering your purpose. They are points on a map leading you to the moment where a match will finally be lit and you will be able to see through the darkness.

Jennifer Elisabeth, Born Ready: Unleash Your Inner Dream Girl

[beautifulbookishdisaster]

She survived something big, and when you survive something big, you are always, always aware that next time you might not.

Deb Caletti, A Heart in a Body in the World

[sophosoterica]

there is no life without death

but you can die without living-

and the sky may be forgiving,

but the ground is not.

and for all your faithful, sworn denial,

we both will turn to rot.

[rileyandrogyne]

29 years 💔

[im-goin-mad]

what business did like 12 y/o me have reading a kinky alice in wonderland au

[outstanding-quotes]

Life is the best therapist of all, and it is affordable, accessible, and right outside your door.

Meg Jay, The Twentysomething Treatment

[goblins-and-gloves]

Angry at parents hour!

Undiagnosed autistic fuckers are delulu.