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[the-writing-moon]

I feel like Muir isn’t afraid to tell a story. In the sense that she writes like she doesn’t care what a reader thinks of her.

When I first read GtN, I found it as very average SF/F fare and my heart was barely in it. I felt like the ending was messy with its battle royale aspects and I wrote Gideon off as a standard edgy YA-style protagonist. The narrative sounded so simplistic and I didn’t feel attached to the cast of characters. On its surface, GtN is a very standard high-concept story with a stereotypical summary on goodreads. I was ready to write Muir off as an ok and middling debut writer.

Then I picked up Harrow.

It was like Muir was a sleeper agent and just blew my mind. I could see her skill in her craft and my investment did a complete 180. I had to reread GtN and realized all the things I missed and all the things that were planted from the start that were hidden by Gideon’s ignorance, flippancy, and naivety—the reasons why I wrote the book off. I underestimated Muir because I thought Gideon’s voice was her voice.

The writer is a liar, an illusionist, and a conman and I fell for Muir’s game. And that is so refreshing.

[the-writing-moon]

PSA to all historical fiction/fantasy writers:

A SEAMSTRESS, in a historical sense, is someone whose job is sewing. Just sewing. The main skill involved here is going to be putting the needle into an out of the fabric. They’re usually considered unskilled workers, because everyone can sew, right? (Note: yes, just about everyone could sew historically. And I mean everyone.) They’re usually going to be making either clothes that aren’t fitted (like shirts or shifts or petticoats) or things more along the lines of linens (bedsheets, handkerchiefs, napkins, ect.). Now, a decent number of people would make these things at home, especially in more rural areas, since they don’t take a ton of practice, but they’re also often available ready-made so it’s not an uncommon job. Nowadays it just means someone whose job is to sew things in general, but this was not the case historically. Calling a dressmaker a seamstress would be like asking a portrait painter to paint your house

A DRESSMAKER (or mantua maker before the early 1800s) makes clothing though the skill of draping (which is when you don’t use as many patterns and more drape the fabric over the person’s body to fit it and pin from there (although they did start using more patterns in the early 19th century). They’re usually going to work exclusively for women, since menswear is rarely made through this method (could be different in a fantasy world though). Sometimes you also see them called “gown makers”, especially if they were men (like tailors advertising that that could do both. Mantua-maker was a very feminized term, like seamstress. You wouldn’t really call a man that historically). This is a pretty new trade; it only really sprung up in the later 1600s, when the mantua dress came into fashion (hence the name).

TAILORS make clothing by using the method of patterning: they take measurements and use those measurements to draw out a 2D pattern that is then sewed up into the 3D item of clothing (unlike the dressmakers, who drape the item as a 3D piece of clothing originally). They usually did menswear, but also plenty of pieces of womenswear, especially things made similarly to menswear: riding habits, overcoats, the like. Before the dressmaking trade split off (for very interesting reason I suggest looking into. Basically new fashion required new methods that tailors thought were beneath them), tailors made everyone’s clothes. And also it was not uncommon for them to alter clothes (dressmakers did this too). Staymakers are a sort of subsect of tailors that made corsets or stays (which are made with tailoring methods but most of the time in urban areas a staymaker could find enough work so just do stays, although most tailors could and would make them).

Tailors and dressmakers are both skilled workers. Those aren’t skills that most people could do at home. Fitted things like dresses and jackets and things would probably be made professionally and for the wearer even by the working class (with some exceptions of course). Making all clothes at home didn’t really become a thing until the mid Victorian era.

And then of course there are other trades that involve the skill of sewing, such as millinery (not just hats, historically they did all kinds of women’s accessories), trimming for hatmaking (putting on the hat and and binding and things), glovemaking (self explanatory) and such.

TLDR: seamstress, dressmaker, and tailor are three very different jobs with different skills and levels of prestige. Don’t use them interchangeably and for the love of all that is holy please don’t call someone a seamstress when they’re a dressmaker

[the-writing-moon]

a ghost that comes back loving. the person that it once was you killed yourself. your hands still remember the heat of their blood, the fear and incomprehension in their eyes, and you understood that it would likely soon return as a hateful, vengeful ghost to haunt you. but it came back loving. its emotions have been clipped by the adoration and obsession it feels for you, an adoration and obsession unlike anything in its living life. it wants your happiness, but more than that it wants you. don’t make it leave you. its kiss leaves you sick but it is sorry, don’t make it leave you. its touch burns you but it didn’t mean to, don’t make it leave you. you know it should hate you. you need it to hate you. how can something whose gore you wiped off your face now look at you so sweetly—how dare it?

[the-writing-moon]

it came to my realization that 99% of my fandom related headaches would be cured if everyone understood this

[the-writing-moon]

i need to clarify. the angel of the crows is an ok-ish book. the story was mildly entertaining and the characters are endearing if not somewhat forgettable (if we’re talking about the expanded cast and not the main characters). i love the world-building—it reminds me a bit of The Rithmatist and When the Angels Left the Old Country, and some part of me thinks the book was undermarketed or mis-marketed because while it’s an ok-ish alternate history-fantasy sherlock holmes retelling, it makes a fun and sometimes comedic character-led slice-of-life cozy fantasy. it really doesn’t hit the high-concept fantasy that it was being peddled as and the goodreads blurb tells you nothing about the story.

so going into the writing here: i’ve read four katherine addison books back to back. when doing this, you really get to see her writing crutches, favored tropes and relationship dynamics, and habits. i realized that she does this thing where she she shows and not tells character histories in the most offhand way possible, and often it’s related to character trauma or backstory. she often relies on *telling* when it comes to narrative events and character psychologies, but when it comes to personal histories and character backstories, she leave SO MUCH TO BE IMAGINED ITS ALMOST INFURIATING if it wasn’t so clever in getting the reader interested in the characters and the world

regarding her author’s note in TAOTC, i think it’s fair to say she has a background in writing fanfic and i guess this is why she excels in this regard. it’s like she’s opening opportunities for her readers to tell the story with her or feel for her characters; she’s giving them invitations to write fic or headcanons in the gaps almost.

[the-writing-moon]

Absolutely nobody is ready for the angel of the crows fic i have going on in gdocs, least of all ME!!!

I cannot stress enough how important it is to do silly, frivolous things that serve no other purpose than making you happy.

[the-writing-moon]

I cannot stress enough how important it is to do silly, frivolous things that serve no other purpose than making you happy.

[the-writing-moon]

circling back around to the issue of writers being expected to do all their own goddamn marketing via social media these days, because it completely nixes the possibility of writers being weird shut ins, off-putting eccentrics, or misanthropes. 80% of the literary canon was written by weird shut ins, off-putting eccentrics, and misanthropes. if you weed out everyone who’s the wrong kind of insane to maintain a twitter presence, who on earth is left

[the-writing-moon]

I just discovered foodtimeline.org, which is exactly what it sounds like: centuries worth of information about FOOD.  If you are writing something historical and you want a starting point for figuring out what people should be eating, this might be a good place?

[the-writing-moon]

A note to all creatives:

Right now, you have to be a team player. You cannot complain about AI being used to fuck over your industry and then turn around and use it on somebody else’s industry.

No AI book covers. No making funny little videos using deepfakes to make an actor say stuff they never did. No AI translation of your book. No AI audiobooks. No AI generated moodboards or fancasts or any of that shit. No feeding someone else’s unfinished work into Chat GPT “because you just want to know how it ends*” (what the fuck is wrong with you?). No playing around with AI generated 3D assets you can’t ascertain the origin of. None of it. And stop using AI filters on your selfies or ESPECIALLY using AI on somebody else’s photo or artwork.

We are at a crossroad and at a time of historically shitty conditions for working artists across ALL creative fields, and we gotta stick together. And you know what? Not only is standing up for other artists against exploitation and theft the morally correct thing to do, it’s also the professionally smartest thing to do, too. Because the corporations will fuck you over too, and then they do it’s your peers that will hold you up. And we have a long memory.

Don’t make the mistake of thinking “your peers” are only the people in your own industry. Writers can’t succeed without artists, editors, translators, etc making their books a reality. Illustrators depend on writers and editors for work. Video creators co-exist with voice actors and animators and people who do 3D rendering etc. If you piss off everyone else but the ones who do the exact same job you do, congratulations! You’ve just sunk your career.

Always remember: the artists who succeed in this career path, the ones who get hired or are sought after for commissions or collaboration, they aren’t the super talented “fuck you I got mine” types. They’re the one who show up to do the work and are easy to get along with.

And they especially are not scabs.

*that’s not even how it ends that’s a statistically likely and creatively boring way for it to end. Why would you even want to read that.

[the-writing-moon]

so i work in a well-known library, right, as a part-timer, and it's been great working with the books, they're real friendly and everything. but this is a very exclusive library, right, you have to send in an application and maybe get interviewed to get in because we're dealing with really old archival material here; i've had to dust crumbled paper off of desks and some of the spines of these hundreds-of-years-old books have been replaced with electric tape with their titles rewritten with wite-out from how much the spines have fallen out. i look up and see dead white men glaring down at me from murals and paintings and busts from the ceiling, probably aghast and wondering how a fucking little island girl is handing their precious books and poking at their dutch-painted glass windows with her grimy brown fingers. this is just set-dressing, so you really know where i'm coming from.

anyways, you know those memes that go around writing communities? doesn't matter if you write fics or manuscripts, we've all seen them, liked them, reblogged them.

"writing a slash fic instead of writing i've been googling what jewelry young german women wore in the 1700s"

"i'm pretty sure i'm on the fbi and interpol hitlists because of my search history"

"story prompt: overly helpful serial killer sweetheart x clueless crime fiction writer"

"when you don't know long division but you can talk about the taxation laws in victorian england because you needed to find out how taxes work to make your story believable"

they're memes that make you chuckle, guffaw, and nod because they're relatable! everyone hates the idea of being corrected by a random poindexter who can call you out on your bullshit on victorian tax laws, you uncultured fool, or who happens to know how blood sprays look if you shoot a person a certain way, you gormless coward, not because they were shooting the gun but they were part of the forensics team, pinky promise, i wasn't there on the 15th of november. and it's a bit absurd. like, who exactly knows - or cares - about victorian tax laws? does it really matter to write about reality in all its facets into fiction? majority of your readers probably aren't vampires or other extant immortals so does it really matter if you don't hold history up as accurately as possible in your 30k friends-to-enemies-to-lovers dark academia yuri slashfic? does historical accuracy matter when you're writing about samurais in the heian period in modern english with modern sensibilities? who would even know what stuff was really like back then? some things aren't googlable, and you can't always trust google anyways.

i don't know the answer to all these questions. but i know the answer to one.

so, back to the library.

one day, i'm shelving history books one after the other, listening to an audiobook from a public library using a library card of which i faked my address for me to use. reparations. and way more ethical than piracy in my eyes. support authors, patronize libraries, and all that. when i shelve books, i like to wonder about who reads them and why. what research they're doing. what they're doing here. whether they know how lucky they are. i envy this library where i work. i envy the people who live in this town. i envy the readers. they have all of this because someone recognized the value of hoarding, the value of taking and tabulating and preserving. one could argue it's the colonial way. but enough of that, i'm shelving books, books that i sometimes wonder at, because i never could have imagined so many books on so many topics, and sometimes they are topics that are so trivial and-

and i'm holding, in my hands, a book about the jewelry young german women wore in the 1700s.

being in a university town, you come to understand that academics have their pet projects; the drive to understand the minutiae of their field, of humanity, of nature. think of a topic and there's probably a dissertation for that. you also understand there is a lot of publishing politics, that researchers' papers are paywalled behind exorbitant fees for which they receive no royalties from. you also understand that academia can also be elitist, even when the people inside it call for open access.

to other people, i'm sure i sound incoherent and raving. but i'm sure that there are people out there who understood why i took several moments staring at this book, recalling all those fucking memes about historical accuracy, of people joking that they're looking for things even the internet has no answer for. because the answers do exist. someone's written about them. someone took the time to look at and tabulate and write about german jewelry. someone else, tax laws. some other person, blood sprays, either through study or applied experimentation. the knowledge is out there. they just aren't available to you.

[the-writing-moon]

step 1 to writing is always remember to have fun! in step 2 begins the agony

[the-writing-moon]

I love me a pseudo-historical arranged marriage au but it always nudges my suspension of disbelief when the author has to dance around the implicit expectation that an arranged marriage should lead to children, which a cis gay couple can't provide.

I know for a lot of people that's irrelevant to what they want from an Arranged Marriage plot, but personally I like playing in the weird and uncomfortable implications.

So, I've been thinking about how you would justify an obviously barren marriage in That Kind of fantasy world, and I thought it'd be interesting if gay marriage in Ye Old Fantasy Land was a form of soft disinheritance/abdication.

Like, "Oh, God, I don't want to be in this position of power please just find me a boy to marry", or, "I know you should inherit after you father passes but as your stepmother/legal guardian I think it'd make more sense if my kids got everything, so maybe consider lesbianism?", or "Look, we both know neither of our families has enough money to support that many grandkids, so let's just pair some spares and save both our treasuries the trouble".

Obviously this brings in some very different dynamics that I know not everyone would be pinged by, but I just think it'd be neat.

[the-writing-moon]

🎉 Write characters that you find interesting and compelling.

🎉 Don't worry about making characters too over the top, or 'too much'.

🎉 Write characters who want big things.

🎉 Write characters with conflict between what they want and what they need.

🎉 Write characters who don't realize they are doing harm.

🎉 Write characters who don't know how to communicate well.

🎉 Write characters with people they love in the way of what they want.

🎉 Write characters with amazing abilities who use them in ways that unintentionally fuck them over.

🎉 Write messy characters!

[the-writing-moon]

Finally listening to welcome to night vale and every episode is like a basketful of writing prompts. I have the urge to write about the night vale folk who ignore the rules of the council because normal people only fleetingly care about laws and regulations unless it applies to them; to write about bored kids who use unloaded guns as fidget toys and who dox the classmates they don’t like for fun so often the secret police are tired of it; to write about a dysfunctional family who fight about using gas masks on the dinner table; to write about orphans who have council-assigned foster parents because of how many people die every episode that of course night vale would have a fucked up and creative way of redoing the foster system; to write about the quarantined patients being forced to listen to a home they can never return to again; to write about people who listen to the weather reports in silence, wondering about the meanings of the words the radio people are singing about and what strange lives they live.

[the-writing-moon]

PSA: bot comments are taking over ao3

The above examples have been provided with the authors' permission to demonstrate what these look like.

Basic rundown:

They are all 3 sentences long

Perfect grammar, capitalization, and punctuation

Like absolutely flawless English teacher-style writing with only a single exclamation mark, ever

No mentions whatsoever of character names, settings, situations, or anything that could be tied to the story

The usernames may be identical to people who exist on ao3, but the name is not clickable, and no profile is associated with it EXCEPT when you directly search for that name. What this means: the comments come from an unregistered (not logged in) reader, bots scrape the site for real usernames, attach that to the comment, and post

Please spread the word about this so authors can filter comments and report them accordingly

There has been some speculation about why this is happening at all, and the best guess is that this is a feature that AI-training story-scraping tools are implementing to try and make their browsing traffic look legitimate

[the-writing-moon]

I made these as a way to compile all the geographical vocabulary that I thought was useful and interesting for writers. Some descriptors share categories, and some are simplified, but for the most part everything is in its proper place. Not all the words are as useable as others, and some might take tricky wording to pull off, but I hope these prove useful to all you writers out there!

(save the images to zoom in on the pics)