anotheranonymousquill

[anotheranonymousquill]

This is a dangerous sentiment for me to express, as an editor who spends most of my working life telling writers to knock it off with the 45-word sentences and the adverbs and tortured metaphors, but I do think we're living through a period of weird pragmatic puritanism in mainstream literary taste.

e.g. I keep seeing people talk about 'purple prose' when they actually mean 'the writer uses vivid and/or metaphorical descriptive language'. I've seen people who present themselves as educators offer some of the best genre writing in western canon as examples of 'purple prose' because it engages strategically in prose-poetry to evoke mood and I guess that's sheer decadence when you could instead say "it was dark and scary outside". But that's not what purple prose means. Purple means the construction of the prose itself gets in the way of conveying meaning. mid-00s horse RPers know what I'm talking about. Cerulean orbs flash'd fire as they turn'd 'pon rollforth land, yonder horizonways. <= if I had to read this when I was 12, you don't get to call Ray Bradbury's prose 'purple'.

I griped on here recently about the prepossession with fictional characters in fictional narratives behaving 'rationally' and 'realistically' as if the sole purpose of a made-up story is to convince you it could have happened. No wonder the epistolary form is having a tumblr renaissance. One million billion arguments and thought experiments about The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas that almost all evade the point of the story: that you can't wriggle out of it. The narrator is telling you how it was, is and will be, and you must confront the dissonances it evokes and digest your discomfort. 'Realistic' begins on the author's terms, that's what gives them the power to reach into your brain and fiddle about until sparks happen. You kind of have to trust the process a little bit.

This ultra-orthodox attitude to writing shares a lot of common ground with the tight, tight commodification of art in online spaces. And I mean commodification in the truest sense - the reconstruction of the thing to maximise its capacity to interface with markets. Form and function are overwhelmingly privileged over cloudy ideas like meaning, intent and possibility, because you can apply a sliding value scale to the material aspects of a work. But you can't charge extra for 'more challenging conceptual response to the milieu' in a commission drive. So that shit becomes vestigial. It isn't valued, it isn't taught, so eventually it isn't sought out. At best it's mystified as part of a given writer/artist's 'talent', but either way it grows incumbent on the individual to care enough about that kind of skill to cultivate it.

And it's risky, because unmeasurables come with the possibility of rejection or failure. Drop in too many allegorical descriptions of the rose garden and someone will decide your prose is 'purple' and unserious. A lot of online audiences seem to be terrified of being considered pretentious in their tastes. That creates a real unwillingness to step out into discursive spaces where you 🫵 are expected to develop and explore a personal relationship with each element of a work. No guard rails, no right answers. Word of god is shit to us out here. But fear of getting that kind of analysis wrong makes people hove to work that slavishly explains itself on every page. And I'm left wondering, what's the point of art that leads every single participant to the same conclusion? See Spot run. Run, Spot, run. Down the rollforth land, yonder horizonways. I just want to read more weird stuff.

[anotheranonymousquill]

rb to give a flower to the person you rb this from

[anotheranonymousquill]

“Public libraries are such important, lovely places!” Yes but do you GO there. Do you STUDY there. Do you meet friends and get coffee there. Do you borrow the FREE, ZERO SUBSCRIPTION, ZERO TRACKING books, audiobooks, ebooks, and films. Have you checked out their events and schemes. Do you sign up for the low cost courses in ASL or knitting or programming or writing your CV that they probably run. Do you know they probably have myriad of schemes to help low income families. Do you hire their low cost rooms if you need them. Have you joined their social groups. Do you use the FREE COMPUTERS. Do you even know what your library is trying to offer you. Listen, the library shouldn’t just exist for you as a nice idea. That’s why more libraries shut every year

[anotheranonymousquill]

You know the Grimm version of Snow White makes more sense than most versions if only because in that version Snow White was like 7 years old.

[anotheranonymousquill]

Well, first of all, even in the darkest of times the world is full of love and kindness, and you have to do everything in your power to retain your willingness and ability to see and accept it, so jot that down.

[anotheranonymousquill]

Well, first of all, even in the darkest of times the world is full of love and kindness, and you have to do everything in your power to retain your willingness and ability to see and accept it, so jot that down.

[anotheranonymousquill]

story featuring a city where it’s cloudy and rains almost all the time but instead of being stereotypically gloomy and grim, it’s lively and colorful and people party hard indoors and decorate the streets with colorful strings of lights. umbrellas are major fashion accessories and nobody is caught dead without one. festivals are all held indoors except for rain parades. everyone has massive gardens. its awesome.

[anotheranonymousquill]

Talking with writers online

Their stories: Amazing grammar, soaring vocabulary, beautiful imagery and prose which flows like a river.

In chats: no capitalisation or punctuation, swears like a sailor, misspellings everywhere, acronyms and abbreviations every five words, idek

[anotheranonymousquill]

we’ll we’ll we’ll if it isn’t autocorrect

[anotheranonymousquill]

yes

i am full of love and also fatigue

[anotheranonymousquill]

the fact I read this as problem solver and wasn't sure how it was relevant....

Second read was humbling.

ADHD Dyslexics of the World UNTIE!!! ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ 

SHOP NOW

[anotheranonymousquill]

Why do I stay up late writing when I know I'll feel like ass in the morning? This is ridiculous! Absolute bufoon behavior!

(It will happen again tonight)

[anotheranonymousquill]

The point of fiction is actually to put that guy in a situation™️, and he might try to tell you the point is to then get him out of the situation, WRONG, second situation

[anotheranonymousquill]

I love unflinchingly good characters. Characters so resolute and unbending in their convictions. Who put the weight of the world on their shoulders and refuse to let it slip. Who wake up every morning and choose to be good, to do good. I love it when their morals get tested but refuse to compromise. I love characters who try to be good and keep trying no matter how many times they stumble. Who see their failings and grow from them. Who make mistakes and learn. I love characters who see the error of their ways and devote their life to fixing them. Who seek atonement knowing it may never come.

I love characters who choose kindness.

[anotheranonymousquill]

i think we should be talking about the semi-recent advancements in cystic fibrosis treatment like all the time every day. there hasn’t been a drug like this since AZT medications for HIV infection it is truly fucking miraculous and very important

[anotheranonymousquill]

I can behave normally around books

[anotheranonymousquill]

A greeting for negligent penpals and procrastinating authors. Postcard from my collection, 1911.