tryslora

[tryslora]

sorry, closed anon messages....

I am very sorry that I have closed anonymous Asks. I have been getting sometimes 2-3 bot messages begging for help a day, and I'm kind of tired of my Tumblr experience being spending my time reporting things rather than attempting to interact. Literally reported two this morning, and just came here to find a new one waiting.

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today my bf and i were talking about visiting my home for the holidays and i was (sadly) wondering aloud if i should cut my hair and our kid was like "why would you cut your hair??? your hair is cool" and not knowing how to explain it to him i said "my family doesnt think boys should have long hair" to which he went silent, wordlessly pulled out his phone and then swiftly held it out with a picture of keeanu reeves on his phone

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Roundtable: Words to Young Writers

Today (April 10th) is Encourage a Young Writer Day, which struck us as the perfect time for our not-so-young writers to offer some sage wisdom in the form of a roundtable! We asked our contributors, “What would you tell young writers to encourage them to keep writing?” The contributors to this roundtable are: Anima Nightmate, boneturtle, Linnea Peterson, May Barros, theirprofoundbond, Rascal Hartley, Sebastian Marie, Shadaras, Shannon, Tris Lawrence, Nina Waters, Maggie Page and an anonymous contributor.

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Sebastian Marie: No matter how weird or strange or absolutely ‘I’m the only one who could possibly enjoy this’ your work feels like, there is Always a contingent of beautiful weirdos out there who will adore it. And you will find them if you keep writing. So keep writing.

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Nina Waters: It’s okay to take breaks. You don’t need to harm yourself mentally or physically to be a writer. There won’t always be room in your life for writing, and forgiving yourself for the times when you don’t write is critical to finding the energy to go back to it. You can’t punish yourself into doing something you love.

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May Barros: No one else has your voice. Your stories are unique because they are yours, so don’t get discouraged by how other people tackle their process, find what works for you.

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Rascal Hartley: Have fun with it! Don’t worry about some fabled “audience”—your audience is you. The rest will follow.

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Maggie Page: Echoing similar sentiments, a couple of things that would have been good for me to hear when I was younger might help others:

A strict writing schedule does not work for everyone. Using timers, word count goals of different amounts, timed challenges, and other tools is great. Even if it takes using multiple motivators at once or a rotating array of methods—whatever works for you is great. Don’t beat yourself up if finding the right process is a struggle. Like unforth said, breaks are not the enemy.

If a topic feels meaningful to you, it will feel meaningful to others even if other voices have told similar stories before. And meaning can be found in lots of places. Writing to convey something beautiful, something humorous, something fun, and all the possibilities you can think of is no less worthy than the Dead Serious and Significant stuff a teacher might have told you that you should be writing.

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Anima Nightmate:

Don’t feel like you have to write your work in the order it’ll be read. If you’re that kind of writer, that’s great! But plenty of us write the scenes that come into our heads and then work out where they go in the larger plot, then write connections between them. No-one needs to care how you got there to enjoy the results!

Having said that, enjoy the process of writing, of uncovering what your brain is bringing into the world. Marvel at the worlds and people you can piece together.

I would also tell them this quote by Jenny Elder Moke: Y’all stop calling your first drafts garbage. Garbage is what you throw out when you’re done with the meal. What you have there is a grocery run – a collection of items that will eventually make a cohesive meal once you figure out which flavors go together.

So the proper terminology is “omg please read this grocery fire of a WIP and tell me how to fix it”

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Shadaras: Thinking specifically about young writers: You don’t need to be the best writer, or the fastest writer, or even the writer with the best spelling/grammar/vocabulary. Write at your own pace! Write with the words that work for you! Don’t worry too much about if it’s “proper” English (or whatever language you want to write in). So long as you’re using written words to share your ideas, you’re a writer.

Plus, you don’t need to do this alone! Maybe you write best when you’re talking everything over with your best friend. Maybe you need someone else helping you with spelling and grammar. Maybe you want to narrate your story while someone else (or a text-to-speech program) writes it down for you. All of those are great ways of writing! Find friends to write with! Share your ideas, brainstorm together, have fun being excited about each other’s words and worlds!

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Anonymous: A lot of things have been covered already, so onto more niche topics:

If you’re worried about how to add deep, meaningful themes to your story, set that worry aside for the second draft. In my experience, trying to add deep, meaningful themes to your writing from the start tends to be much harder than writing something you personally thought was funny or interesting, and then seeing what themes you can bring out in draft 2. As a general rule, if you care enough about an idea to write it down, you’ll find that it already contains meaningful themes. You’ll just need to polish them and make them more obvious in the second draft.

Spite is your friend. If you’re mad about something, you can channel that rage into writing and end up with something that is both dripping with emotion (because you were full of spite) and really well-articulated and well-reasoned (because you must explain your spite to the reader and get them on your side).

Editing is so important. It’s hard, time-consuming, and really annoying, but it is key to your continued growth as a writer—and, perhaps more importantly, to your ability to present your ideas in a way that makes other people as obsessed with them as you are.

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Linnea Peterson:

Have fun with it! The first several things you write won’t be published, so don’t agonize about quality at first, and don’t listen to the writers who talk about how they hate writing and only like having written, or how the only thing more miserable than writing is not writing. You can stop if you’re not having fun.

The best skill in a young writer is perseverance. Take the breaks you need, but know that coming back to writing again and again is the biggest part of eventual success—having the most beautiful prose or the wittiest dialogue only gets a person so far if they never finish anything or if they quit writing altogether.

Write things that you enjoy writing, or that you find cathartic to write, or that you’re proud to be writing. That can be fanfiction, short stories, poetry, music, comics, essays, etc. You don’t have to specifically be a novelist to be serious, and skills you build in one realm can inform your work in other realms.

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Shannon:

Try different mediums! When I was starting out I was convinced I was only going to write longform prose. But I am also full of poetry and stage/screenplays and I never would have known that if I hadn’t tried! If you like writing, give yourself the space to experiment with all the different kinds of writing there are.

Cultivate a writing group or buddy if you can. This is something I struggled to do in the pre-internet era but it really opened up my world once I found my people—from book recommendations to group writing exercises or just a cheerleader, having folks who love your work are so crucial at every stage, but especially when you’re new. Try to find writers who will grow with you.

Celebrate the wins. Finish a draft? Win! Finish a tough chapter? Win! Figure out something you’ve been struggling with? Win!

Also—read widely. This advice from John Waters was for filmmakers but it applies to writers too. Just swap out films for books/short stories/poems/whatever beautiful thing you are writing.

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Tris Lawrence:

Learning how to write can be like learning how to cook. There are a lot of recipes out there with “how things should be done” and you can try those out and figure out what works for you. But the more practice you get doing things the way other people do, the more tools you’ll have in your toolbox, and the better you’ll be able to figure out what feels/tastes right to you.

It’s okay if it’s not perfect on the first try. It’s okay if you feel like you need to completely rewrite it. It’s okay if you think it IS ready to roll after one draft. All of these are excellent ways of being.

Take joy in your words, and remember, every word you write—whether you keep it or throw it out—is another step on your journey. Roll around in the words, and fall in love with them. Because writing is a journey, as long or as short a one as you want to take, and there can always be someplace new to go, and something new to learn. Be open to the changes, and have a blast on the way.

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theirprofoundbond: Your first draft doesn’t have to be “crappy,” nor do you need to hate it. Editing as you go and creating something you love is as valid a writing process as getting down a really rough first draft you don’t love and then rewriting it until you do. Whatever actually helps you get the words down, do that. Whatever stops you from getting the words down, don’t do that.

(This advice brought to you by: When I was writing my first story, I didn’t have as much fun with it as I could have. I thought I was doing something wrong because I was editing as I went, and because I really liked what I was producing. I questioned myself the whole time, but I should’ve been embracing what seemed to be working for me!)

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boneturtle: Just keep writing.

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What advice would you give to young writers?

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Do you have Libby? Want access to more queer books? Sign up for a library card on Queer Liberation Library. Link it to your Libby app and your all set

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I think kafka’s diaries are the strongest evidence that journaling is not necessarily good for your mental health

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How do you make people fall in love with you

challenge them to a duel 

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people who write fics. how do you feel about comments on super old ones you wrote like 2+ years ago

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Pre-Order “The Salt in the Sea” by J. D. Rivers Today!

The pre-order campaign for our next novella, The Salt in the Sea by J. D. Rivers, are open NOW through 8 a.m. Eastern time on April 15th!

A downtrodden ex-soldier. After leaving the military, werewolf Victor is shunned in his civilian life. Money is tight, so when an ex-comrade offers him an easy job—getting a package from an island—he jumps at the chance. A lost inn-owner. When Selkie Thoma opens the door to a knocking patron, he wants to close it again immediately. Standing before him is Victor, his one-night stand from three years ago. The last thing Thoma wants is to have to explain why he left that night. As Victor and Thoma cross paths unexpectedly, emotions flare anew. But Victor is only on the island for a week, and Thoma can’t face his past, the consequences of his decisions, or the resulting condemnation from his sea-going selkie family. A dead body in a post office. When a corpse is discovered, fingers throughout the community point at Victor. With time running out before justice is served, it’s on Thoma to find out the truth. Because on the island justice is deadly.

Learn more about this awesome m/m fantasy mystery novella and get your copy today!

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I have such an incredible, intense fondness for this series.

I fell in love with it from the first book (also, picked my ship VERY early on, and was delighted with how the series went after that :D ).

I wrote fic for this series--multiple times.

It was everything I was looking for--a magical school in a university setting, with fantastic characters. Also queerness and gender.

I'm excited to get the omnibus edition. There are other options as well, so check it out!

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Passing this info along from Bluesky at the request of a tumblr mutual who’d like to reblog it since a bunch of us found out today via some reporting in The Atlantic (which included a search link to the LibGen database) that we had at least one novel or other book stolen:

IF YOU FOUND YOUR NOVEL IN THE LIBGEN DATABASE, YOU MAY BE A CLASS MEMBER FOR THE KADREY ET AL V. META CLASS ACTION

Law firms you can contact if you're a potential class member:

Joseph Saveri Law Firm, LLP

(415) 500-6800

jsaveri@saverilawfirm.com

Mathew Butterick

(323) 968-2632

mb@buttericklaw.com

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Read Our Favorite Queer Poems for World Poetry Day!

Happy World Poetry Day! Poetry is a gorgeous, versatile, evocative medium, and we’re delighted to share some of our favorite queer poems with y’all. Note that some of the links below are to the poem’s full text, others to the source book; we did our best to provide useful links, but sometimes finding the link for a specific poem out of a collection is challenging. The contributors to this list are: Rascal Hartley, Sebastian Marie, YF Ollwell, Meera S., Shannon and an anonymous contributor.

If Amram’s Son by anonymous from The Book of Tahkemoni: Jewish Tales from Medieval Spain by Judah Alharizi

someone will remember us, I say, even in a different time from If Not, Winter: Fragments of Sappho by Sappho

How to Watch Your Brother Die: A narrative poem by Michael Lassell

Great Goddesses: Life Lessons from Myths and Monsters by Nikita Gill

The Torso by Robert Duncan

Many Loves by Allen Ginsberg

If Your Heart Is Burning: Selected Poems and Artwork by Felix Vanasse

The Inn of Dreams by Olive Custance

I Want A President by Zoe Leonard

The Humbled Heart by Siegfried Sassoon

Jesus at the Gay Bar by Jay Hulme

The giver (for Berdis) by James Baldwin

I Watch Her Eat the Apple by Natalie Diaz

Wanna chat queer poetry and books? Come, join the Book Lover’s Discord server!

Can’t get enough poetry? Check out our post from two years ago for poetry month, with Tiktok recordings of us reading a few of our favorites, and last year’s roundtable chat!

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the idea of a clutch purse is nightmarish to me. the whole point of bags was so we could escape the torment of holding things. and now u gotta hold a bag.

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Pre-Wenclair. One morning, Enid wakes up from the most restful night’s sleep she’s had in years.

Enid: *stretches with a bright smile* Moon above, I feel freaking amazing!

Wednesday: You’re welcome.

Enid: *pauses mid-stretch to look over* Huh?

Wednesday: *dragging something to the door* I said you’re welcome.

Enid: I heard you. I mean like why are—

Enid: 😨

Enid: Uh. What’s in the body bag?

Wednesday: The remains of your sleep paralysis demon.

Enid: 😱

Enid: What? How?! WHY?!

Wednesday: The source of both your intermittent snoring and a significant portion of your nightmares. With a garrote woven from shattered dreamcatchers. And—

Wednesday: *bares teeth* —because they dared attempt to perch upon your chest at night so they could watch you sleep.

Enid: *shocked* W-Wow. Um. Thanks, Wednesday.

Wednesday: *shoulders the door open* It was nothing.

Wednesday: Besides, there’s only enough room for one… and I’m not known to share.

Wednesday: *slips out with the body bag*

Enid: ☺️

Enid: 😐

Enid: 😯

Enid: *squeaks* Share?!

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is the world really such a terrible place? yesterday i asked if oat milk was extra and the barista said yes so i said ok just regular milk then and when she gave me my chai latte she whispered “i used oat milk ;)” doesnt that make u want to live another day?

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Recently finished…

Comics or Manga: Read two, both borrowed from the library. I finished Go with the Flow by Lily Williams and Karen Schneemann and I really adored it. I also read Jo: An Adaptation of Little Women (Sort Of) by Kathleen Gros which was queer and cute and made me happy.

Currently reading…

Audiobook: A Court of Wings and Ruin by Sarah J. Maas. Which I complained about last week, but it improved shortly after that. We’re back to the political intrigue and battle and a strong Feyre. I was intensely pleased when the story shifted between courts and HOW it happened (since it addressed one of my irritations about the start of the book).

Ebook: Still reading The Apothecary Diaries (Light Novel) volume 12 by Natsu Hyuuga. My brain has wanted to play comfort games more than read on my phone lately, plus weekend life has been waaay too busy.

Physical Book: I am this close to done with Aim For the Heart -- I have one story left after my lunchtime reading. I started When the World Tips Over by Jandy Nelson because I like to start a new book as soon as I finish one, and I didn’t want to have to carry both. Weird quirk. Caused by COVID. Messy psychological BS in my brain. ANYWAY. I’ve been enjoying Aim For the Heart immensely—kudos to all authors there.

Comics or Manga: I started Mismatched: A Modern Graphic Retelling of Emma by Anne Camlin and I am… irritated by the main character. We shall see how this goes. I’m hoping he grows.

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Most-used word in each US state.

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Normalize leaving unhinged comments on ao3 fics you like. I'm tired of being the only one brave enough to write "I am chewing on this fic" in the comment section. Be weird. Authors will love you for it