bryanastar

[bryanastar]

#All the Light We Cannot See #If you want a story about sympathetic Germans during the war #Just watch Jojo Rabbit #How did this book get a Pulitzer Prize while Taika Waititi almost got canceled for directing Jojo Rabbit? #I’ve never suffered more through the last thirty pages of a book #at least the writing was pretty

Reblog and put in the tags the worst book you've ever read (that isn't part of a mainstream series).

[bryanastar]

Reblog and put in the tags the worst book you've ever read (that isn't part of a mainstream series).

[bryanastar]

News Headline: Florida girl with shit dating options falls in love with an owl

Is there a "badly explain something about your wip" tag game? Because I kind of want to see everyone badly explain stuff about their wips. Plot, character, theme, anything! Terrible memes encouraged.

(Consider this an open tag if anyone wants to hop in!!)

[bryanastar]

Short Story Introduction - Judith was Never Adopted

She should have married well—married the son of an oil tycoon or a politician—a prince who jumped from the creased yellowing pages of an old classics book from the back of the school library. That’s what the books said happened to girls like her. The books, the movies, the musicals, the TV shows.

But Judith was never adopted, and she never married well.

———

Howdy Tumblr! Enjoy my mid-story excerpt? I know I usually post the first paragraph of the thing and not something in the middle of the piece, but I wanted an excerpt that included the title, so I chose these two paragraphs!

This is a story I never thought would ACTUALLY be published, not because I thought it was bad, but because the decision to get it published was a pretty impulsive on-the-spot decision in the first place.

Any way, enough of my waffling. Read the rest of the intro under cut.

Genre: Flash Ficton/Literary Fiction

Word Count: 890

Publisher: Rhodora Magazine

Musical Inspiration: Somewhere Over the Rainbow

Synopsis:

A veteran recollects on an old friend from foster care and a promise he made to her that was never fulfilled.

Project History:

This story started as me trying to complete one of the daily challenges for The Young Writer’s Initiative discord camp. I don’t quite remember what the challenge was, but I believe it was to write a short story based off a song you liked, and I chose Somewhere Over the Rainbow from the Wizard of Oz. The story wasn’t quite based off the lyrics per se, more so the vibes that the song gave me—the soft yearning for something more, something better, in a dark and gray world.

The initial draft ended a few paragraphs earlier than where it does now—mostly cause I didn’t have time to make it a full fledged story. I posted it to the feedback channel, got a few compliments, and then didn’t think much about it for about a month.

Flash forward to late July, and I really had an itch to submit something to a literary magazine. I submitted a different short story to three different magazines, but it wasn’t one that I thought was likely to get accepted (until it was) and it wasn’t something that reflected my current style or fiction interest. I thought back to the piece I wrote for the first writing challenge I did for the TYWI discord camp, and—on a whim—decided to finish, edit, and submit it to two different literary magazines.

Mind you, this all how happened in the span of maybe a few hours in the late afternoon. That story was hastily finished and edited. This isn’t a strategy I recommend because, most of the time, it ends in failure and regret. I’m honestly still flabbergasted it got accepted at all—considering that magazine that I submitted and ultimately got accepted by IMPLORED all authors to not hastily edit and submit their work. I guess, because it was a flash piece, there were less problems that needed ironing out than in a longer story, but it was still kind of funny and bizarre.

Quite literally, the DAY after I submitted, I was ACCEPTED to the first magazine I submitted the piece to. This means that the story hasn’t been rejected once, and that they read and accepted it pretty much only a few hours after submitting (since it was, like, eight in the evening when I did). That day, I’d also had a different story accepted by a different magazine (the one that I thought would never get accepted anywhere). From that alone, it was already the best day of my life, but that wasn’t all.

The acceptance letter for my short story may just be the nicest most thoughtful response I’ve ever received for a short story ever.

I’m not gonna even bother summing up what they said, and instead just copy-paste it:

“That was an emotional read. It is wonderful how you have captured the devotion of the narrator. Your insights into the psyches and circumstances of foster children are beyond impressive. More points to you for equipoise and compactness, crucial aspects that prevent a work from collapsing under its own weight.”

Emotional. Wonderful. Impressive. That’s what they called something I wrote. Something I loved and put my heart in—albeit fleetingly. This magazine adored the story that I wrote. And this wasn’t a teen magazine where they had to go overboard in their adulation. This was a real adult magazine. I was competing for space with grown writers, and they showered my piece with praise.

It was about then that I, for the first time, had felt like a real author. Not a writer—which I’ve been for years—but an author, and a good one at that.

Still, I didn’t fall in love with the story until I made the cover for it. Because I’d never planned to do anything with the story before submitting it on a whim, it never had a planned cover or introduction prepared beforehand like all my other pieces. It took about five minutes for me to make the cover (after letting myself be distracted by victory music). It’s technically a very simple composition: some golden stars across a navy sky with neon-sign-like writing for the title and my name. It’s actually, in my eyes, a tad generic. The Lonely Hearts Hotel by Heather O’Neil and my copy of The Great Gatsby have very similar covers.

But the minute I saw my creation, I fell in love both with it and my story at the same time.

Even now, I still don’t consider my story a masterpiece, despite all the heaps of praise it’s been given. I don’t actually have any specific problems with the story itself, I just think I can do better. But I do love this story for what it represents. This type of story with this style of writing is where I want to go with my writing career in the future, and to see my first piece like that debut witch such fanfare is a really promising sign for my future prospects as a writer. Is it perfect? No. In fact, I’d say my style and concepts are still quite unrefined. But this story is still the beginnings of my future career with both, and for that I will forever love it.

Here’s the link to the piece. I hope you enjoy it.

That’s all for now. See you next week Tumblr!

[bryanastar]

Me, who CAN’T write scenes IN order to save her life: 👀

[bryanastar]

Getting a Creative Writing Internship: Writing Update 13

Howdy Tumblr! So, from the title, you can probably tell that I’ve been busy this week. I already mentioned briefly in the last post that I was writing a story to try and get a writing internship, but I actually only officially became a part of the team, like, last Saturday. More information down below.

Novels:

N/A

Short Fiction:

So, for this internship I had to write basically a flash piece (the word count was between 600 and 1000) based on a social issue that the organization had yet to cover, and I chose… human trafficking. Don’t ask me why. I really don’t know.

Specifically, the aspect I wanted to cover was how our most vulnerable and voiceless members of society (the poor, immigrants, undocumented, etc.) were the ones most at risk of exploitation because they’re very easy for society to forget they exist.

It was, to be frank, quite a heavy topic to cover in under a thousand words (which is of course why I had to go over and ended up with 1100). Still, I was quite proud of the story when I finished, even though I wrote it in basically two days on my notes app. It was also, admittedly, hastily edited, and I was more concerned with getting the word count down than making sure the story read well (or even making sure I didn’t make any basic typos or grammar mistakes).

I sent the story in on Saturday in the evening, and heard back from the founder the next day in the morning. She absolutely loved the story, and the prose itself, as well as how I handled the social issue within the piece. She heaped a level of praise that was on par with the acceptance letter from Rhodora Magazine. It was great.

After that, the head helped me get set up on the site itself. I set up a Wix account, changed my username, and edited my role in the organization (they call writers here Storytellers, which is just… so fancy and bougie and I love it!).

From there, she talked about the organization itself, and we basically just had a pretty casual conversation about my role going forward (she said she absolutely was not letting me go after the trial story because she was that happy with my piece) and her own experience as a young writer (she got a novel published at 14, which is just… like, literal teen writer goals). She also said that we’d have another meeting in, like, two weeks to introduce me to all the other teen writers (which I’m super excited about).

So yeah, I’m a writing intern now, and I’m super excited for my future with this organization. Apparently, they have a reach of twenty-one thousand people! How crazy is that?! This could really be how my audience begins to grow, and I hope it is the start of a life-long writing career.

That’s all for now. See you next week Tumblr!

[bryanastar]

Despite my last two published short stories being ”sad supernatural slice of life story” and “surreal not-horror anecdote” my favorite genre in the whole wide world to write is dramatic and sad contemporary fiction (I even have a story that fits that exact bill forth in the next issue of Rhodora Magazine).

Hi, yes, I’m doing this again.

If you are a writer and either:

primarily write for genres outside of Sci-Fi / Fantasy

have an ongoing WIP that is a genre (or genres) outside of Sci-Fi / Fantasy

Reblog this post and tell us what you write, in the tags or however you feel. Contemporary, Literary Fiction, Horror, Historical Fiction, Romance, etc. Just anything outside the realm of SFF. I’m so proud of and adore the endlessly talented SFF community here, but it’s hard for writers who write outside of SFF to find each other.

(SFF community feel free to boost too!)

[bryanastar]

Workshopping the First Chapter of a Novel: Writing Update 12

Howdy Tumble! Yep, you read that right! I actually have some novel news to share! So I’ve been in a summer camp for novel writing where we were supposed to write the first three thousand words of a manuscript, and I got mine workshopped Sunday! More of that in the actual post!

Novels:

So for a summer camp, I wrote about a thousand five hundred words of a WIP called The Summer that Ginger Ale Armstrong Went to Mars. I’m aware the title a mouthful, but it’s the best idea I had at the time. Anyway, the excerpt I presented to workshop wasn’t a full chapter… because I hadn’t finished it. As you may know if you’ve been following this blog for a while, I was mostly focusing on my short fiction throughout the summer, both trying to write it and trying to publish it. I also traveled a bit the week before school started. Just getting the short fifteen hundred word excerpt done was a rush job, and I barely had any time to revise because by then the story was late and I had to turn it in.

So yeah, due to the hatch-job nature of what I turned in, I felt pretty nervous going in to workshop. I had to read a section aloud and felt super anxious while doing it, then we got through to the critique.

And it was actually really good!

They complimented me on my character work! On my writing style! On my dialogue! On my humor! On my ability to handle dark subject matter in a way that doesn’t utterly murder the tone! Pretty much the only thing they critiqued me on was adding more expository and sensory detail (which I expected since I wrote this in such a rush).

The day after, I got to sit with the teacher who ran the class/camp and talk about my novel, and she gave me some advice on how to balance writing the project, plus my short stories, plus my school work. I didn’t want to put pressure on my novel to be the thing that I write and get published at a young age. I want to take the time to do this project well. If I really want to impress people with my writing, I got my short fiction to do that. She agreed that, if I didn’t want it to be the main thing that I focused on that it didn’t have to be. I should just let it be my back burner project.

Basically, as much as I love this project and it’s concept, don’t expect too many updates besides the occasional “I got a chapter done!”. This really is just in the background for me right now, and I don’t want to get your hopes up and make you think I’m writing something big when I’m not.

Short Fiction:

So, this weekend I wasn’t really working on short fiction much (cause, y’know, I had my novel) but that doesn’t mean I was doing nothing. Recently, I was chosen for this trial internship thingy to become a content writer for this online fiction blog based on social issues. The story has to be between six hundred and a thousand words, and I basically have a week to get the story done. Obviously, it has to be based off a social issue, one that the team has yet to do.

I’m almost done with a first draft of a piece, and I already have to cut it down for word count.

I’m actually really happy with the draft so far and it’s writing style, but I have to edit it some to make the themes I want to present more obvious. The story is about human trafficking (because… of course I’d choose the darkest thing I could think of short of murder) but it’s specifically about the lowest people in our society (immigrants, the poor, the undocumented, etc) are often made the victims due to not really having a voice and nobody knowing that they existed or that they disappeared. They’re made the “marionettes” (it’s called The Marionette’s Tale and dolls and puppets are a big motif) of powerful people who use and abuse them because society doesn’t even realize they exist.

Basically, I have a whole lotta stuff to cover in under a thousand words.

One might say it’s unwise to try to cover such lengthy themes in what is basically a flash piece, but screw it! Those were the limitations I was given, and I’m gonna write this story cause I’m proud of it! If I do somehow finish it and they decide to publish it, I’ll give the story it’s own special short story introduction based on the organization I’m interning with. I hope I finish it and I hope they like it!

That’s all for now. See you next week Tumblr!

[bryanastar]

Short Story Introduction - The Lotus Motel

No light ever crept through the barred windows at the reception area of The Lotus Motel, and there was no electricity to luminate the shattered bulbs. The motel owner had only the glow of dim candles to guide him in sweeping the floors and dusting the front desk. The room was small, so small in fact that it could barely fit the desk and the chair, Still, it took him the better part of an hour to clean the whole room, or at least he thought it did. He could clean for days, and he’d think only minutes have passed.

———

Howdy Tumblr! Here we have a decently different short story except than what you all may be used to. Very reminiscent of my old writing style (back when I thought this was the height of description and atmosphere lmao). That isn’t to say I’m not proud of it. It’s just... unlike any projects I have on my roster currently.

With that out of the way, let’s get on with the introduction! (Full post and story link under cut)

Genre: Mystery/Surrealism

Word Count: 1340

Publisher: The Graveyard Zine

Musical Inspiration: Hotel California

Synopsis:

A mysterious man who runs a strange motel supposedly famous for it’s intoxicating tea welcomes three new tenants for the night, along with a cup of his lotus tea.

Project History:

I first wrote this story for my English I Honors class in Freshman year of high school. We were doing a unit on The Odyssey, and the final project was to either make a video/mini-movie summarizing part of the epic, or rewrite a portion of the story from the villain’s perspective.

Obviously, I went straight for the latter.

The story I chose was “The Lotus Eaters”, though the rewrite itself was only a very loose retelling (which I’m sure you’ve already gathered from the title, cover, and synopsis). Still, because I kept the core elements (that being x thing being consumed makes Odysseus’s men have amnesia and never want to leave), I still got full points (with my teacher even complimenting my writing style and humor).

At the time, this story was the best short story I’d ever written, and, even now, it’s still one of my strongest pieces. It’s one of the first stories that actually gave me the confidence to continue writing and to try to actually do stuff with it. It was also one of the first times I’d ever gotten complimented for my writing (outside of my family of course). Plus, I was just passionate about the project in general, even if I (at the time) didn’t plan on doing anything with it.

Fast forward to 2021 when I actually become serious about trying to get my writing published and I finally decide to try and get this story published. I at first planned to just leave it in the drawer since it wasn’t at all what I was really interested in writing now, but then I just went “screw it” and decided to start submitting it. I first impulsively sent the piece to a literary magazine called Body Without Organs Journal... whom I never heard back from (I ended up withdrawing the piece regardless). I don’t think they got my email, which is pretty awkward, but I do plan to keep this journal in mind whenever I have another piece that fits the word count.

The second journal I sent this to was Juven Press, a literary magazine run by teens for teens, during their 24 hour submission period where I’d learn whether they accepted or rejected me 24 hours after submission. The theme was untold/retold, and, considering my piece was a retelling of The Lotus Eaters, I thought my piece had a pretty good shot.

Yeah. It did not.

I actually got feedback for this piece from Juven Press, and they actually didn’t have much to say (other than that they really enjoyed the story and thought it had a pretty good chance of finding a home somewhere else). They were mostly confused on how the story fit the theme of untold/retold, which actually reveals a tiny problem with the piece.

If you removed any mention of the “lotus” in the story itself, it would definitely be impossible to tell that it’s supposed to be a Lotus Eaters retelling. Due to that, it’s been very hard to market in the short fiction market as I don’t really know what genre to put it in. It’s certainly genre fiction, and has a lot of surrealist elements, but it’s not exactly a surrealist tale. It’s not a mystery (or at least not one where the mystery gets resolved at the end). It’s not horror, even if the concept is kinda creepy. It’s just a very strange anecdote in a very strange setting with very strange characters. Not that that’s a bad thing. It just makes it hard to market and know where it will fit.

So yeah, I shopped this story around for a good long while. After I withdrew my piece from Body Without Organs, I sent it off to a magazine called Theme of Absence. I did hear back from them after a month had passed and I queried about my submission. They said I should hear back in at least three weeks.

Then another month passed and I still heard nothing.

After that, I decided “to hell with the ban on simultaneous submissions!” and submitted my story to two more magazines. I didn’t think much of them and a day passed. I was scrolling around on this app called RoundPier (think LinkedIn but for overachiever high schools kids trying to get into T20s) and I saw this submission call for this new literary magazine called The Graveyard Zine. They were student-run and had only published a single poem.

I sent my story in purely for the name alone.

I heard back from them literally the next day. They said my piece would be published in 1–3 days. I made an Instagram post on it. They commented and added me to their story. It was pretty nice and chill. They’re a super cool bunch of people and I really hope their magazine blows up in the near future.

After I got the news that I was being published again, I immediately sent my Freshman teacher a text to tell her the news, and, welp, she was proud. I was on the moon for the rest of the day (especially because I got a different email for a different short story that had been accepted).

I was super excited to see it get published, because I never thought it would due to being more genre fiction than literary fiction. For the longest time, I thought it was forever cursed to be cast by the way side just because it didn’t fit the standard convention of what a literary story was. It’s a great reminder that there is ALWAYS a home for your short story out there, regardless of it’s genre.

Here’s the link to that piece. I hope you enjoy it.

That’s all for now. See you next week Tumblr!

[bryanastar]

I Got Two Short Story Acceptances in One Day: Writing Update 11

Howdy Tumblr! So, here’s that promised post on how I got TWO short story acceptances in one day. It’s not a very long one, but I think it’s a fun one. Besides that, it’s also a very general writing update talking about what I’m writing right now and my plans for the future. There probably won’t be much to talk about on the second front since I’ll probably be on vacation when you’re reading this but that doesn’t mean there won’t be anything to update ya’ll on and plan for.

Enough waffling. On with the post.

Novels:

I mentioned in my last post that I’m working on a book for this creative writing summer camp. By the time this post is made public, I’ll have a little over a thousand words finished and workshopped. I don’t want to say more than that since I don’t want to hype up my followers for a project that may not ever come to fruition. It may be something I keep working on in a creative writing class though, so stay tuned for that!

Short Fiction:

Just like the title said, this update will be mostly focused on how I got two short story acceptances in one day in late July. It’ll likely already be August when you’re reading this but I’m only writing this a day after the fact. With all that rambling out of the way, let’s jump right in!

So the day before I got the acceptances, I on a whim decided to submit a story that I wrote back in Freshman year of high school BC (before Covid) cause it was a piece I was still really proud of and that really meant a lot to me since it was complimented by an English teacher I really liked who was also one of the few people outside my family to really read and review my work. I’d already submitted the story to two different magazines two days prior, but I felt like this magazine vibed more with the piece. So, I submitted the piece and didn’t think nothing of it…

Until later that afternoon when the itch to submit was still scratching my back.

Randomly, I decided to finish and hastily edit a flash piece I wrote for the TYWI discord young writer’s camp and submitted to two different magazines. Neither were teen magazines—both run by and for adult writers. I didn’t expect much from either considering I was competing with more experienced adults. I submitted mostly because their vibes sorta fit my piece and their max word count was a thousand (mine was 890). I didn’t expect that hear a response at all, and if I did, I expected rejection.

I heard back the very next day.

The first magazine I got accepted by was The Graveyard Zine, to whom I submitted the story from Freshman year. I did kinda expect this acceptance since they were a teen run magazine and kinda new kids on the block in the literary world. They don’t have that many pieces on their site yet, so I think they were more willing to take a chance on a story that was just as new and rough around the edges as they were (in a good way—seriously, please support this magazine!).

I’d gotten that acceptance in the early morning, so I was still pretty groggy and made a post about it on my Instagram without much fanfare (besides the magazine editors adding me to their story which was really sweet :3).

I didn’t really expect any more good news that day. Then, at exactly 9:05 AM, I received an email from Rhodora Magazine (one of the magazines I submitted the second story too).

This acceptance letter may just be the NICEST acceptance letter I’ve ever received from a literary magazine, ever. I’ve never received such high praise of my work from LITERAL STRANGERS who have no reason to exult me or keep my feelings in mind. I have a snippet of the email itself in the actual post I made on this story, which will be coming out when the piece is actually published sometime in September, but—to give a quick sneak peak—they call my story emotional, wonderful, and impressive.

So yeah, I was both celebrating and in complete disbelief, especially when I realized that, because I submitted this story in the evening and I received my acceptance at nine, the editors of the magazine for the second story didn’t even wait half a day before sending me my acceptance. It was wild!

A day later (which is actually when I’m writing this) after having finished both short story introductions, I decided to take a quick looks at the bios of the people submitting to Rhodora Magazine. All of the writers were adults. The youngest was literally eighteen. That wasn’t surprising, nor was it what stood out to me. What was surprising was the content of the bios themselves. Most were college educated, either majoring in creative writing or a related field, with many having MFAs. Most also had previous publications as well. Many were also editors themselves, or winners of important-sounding writing awards (or at least nominated for them).

Reading this, you might expect me to say that it made me feel major imposter syndrome, but it was actually the opposite. Reading also those bios and seeing all those accomplishments… it made my heart swell with pride. All these amazing writers with all these amazing stories… and the editors of this magazine think I’m good enough to be among them. Me, some random teenager from Florida whose barely about to be a Junior! I’m somehow already good enough to be among them!

To anyone who ever submits to a literary magazine and ends up getting published, never get intimidated by the bios or feel any sort of imposter syndrome. They don’t mean you aren’t good enough to be there. They mean that you’re about to rise very high in the world very, very soon.

You are a pre-successful rockstar (to quote Jason Mendoza)

That’s all for now. See you next week Tumblr!

[bryanastar]

How I (Accidentally) Write About Dark Subject Matter: Rough & Tumble Ramblings (Bonus Post)

I don’t like writing content warnings, not because I’m one of those losers that think they aren’t needed (because, believe me, they definitely are) but because it means I have to step back from my work and think about what the hell I just wrote. Now, in my teen writer eyes, there is nothing more embarrassing than thinking back to what you wrote and realizing that you need five different content warnings to fully prepare the reader for your work, and also remembering that you’re barely a rising Junior in high school. I end up having an out of body experience where I see myself and my work as a long and beleaguered r/I’m14andthisisdeep post, and it can make it hard to read back over my work to edit and submit.

Not that there’s anything wrong with darker subject matter. In fact, some of my favorite work to read contains some particular dark and disturbing content. But when you’re a young writer trying to submit your stuff, it can feel… a bit embarrassing. You feel like the stereotypical edgelord teen writing about edgy stuff for the sake of making the adults cry with your edgy edge.

The thing is, I don’t even intend to write about dark subject material ninety-nine percent of the time. It’s just a natural consequence of my intuitive (and rather impulsive) writing process.

I feel that—when it comes to writing about heavier content as a teen writer—there are two types of people: the ones who write about dark content on purpose, and the ones who write it by accident.

I think @shaelinwrites said it best when she wrote in a blog post that teens are often attracted to darker subject matter due to being at the age where we realize that the world is a far darker and scarier place than what we saw as children. Writing, therefore, is the safest way to explore this newfound knowledge and come to terms with it. This is why young writers who write dark subject matter on purpose do it.

But some, like me, do it on accident.

Let me explain. So I’m rather sheltered, as I suspect a lot of teen writers are. I’m not exactly the most world-weary person, despite knowing that the world is, objectively, pretty screwed up. Due to this, I can often add, on accident, some pretty screwed up material just for not thinking it through deeply enough.

For example, here was was my general thought process for my short story “Judith was Never Adopted”, a story that is, objectively, a about a young teenage girl getting left behind in the foster care system due to going through puberty and not being “adorable” any more, getting sexualized while in puberty, getting forcibly married to an older guy who sees her as an object, all the while desperately trying to reclaim the childhood she’s lost and feeling lied to by all the media that claimed that she’d have a lovely and charmed life after being adopted by rich and happy parents (also, spoilers):

“Gee, isn’t it funny that orphan girls in children’s books are often adopted by nice, rich families and get whole musicals dedicated to them, while orphans in YA and Wattpad books are often paired up with the older, assholic, ‘bad boy’ and probably have their lives ruined?”

“Wait… that’s a cool idea for a story!”

“How do I make the villain as awful as possible…? I know! He’s a twenty year-old gangster who has no scruples when it comes to hitting on teenagers, and he also has no problem with busting the kneecaps of literal orphans! That’ll really emphasize how crappy he is!”

“Why did the main character never come back for Judith? Uh… he was in the Iraq War? But why would he willingly join that conflict? Oh right! To pay for college! And he loses an arm, because the war has to have some consequence.”

“But why doesn’t he go to find her when he gets back? Well, uh, his foster mother is dead and his foster siblings are gone, so he has bigger crap to worry about first cause now he’s homeless. Also, the gangster left the city anyway and took Judith with him, and nobody really knows where they went.”

“There! Now to look over the draft! Wait… what the fuck have I written?!”

If this all sounds thoughtless… it’s because it is. To be fair to me, I usually realize pretty quickly that what I’m writing is dark and messed up (by, like, the second paragraph of this story, I really thought long and hard about it’s concept and went “oh shit”).

From there, I usually try my best to do right by the themes and concepts I accidentally introduced, mostly because it’s content that usually gets glossed over in other books that include it, or that is otherwise even romanticized! In fact, it’s anger at these storylines and characters not being treated well that usually inspires me to write the story in the first place!

I’d actually say I did a pretty decent job with this story considering that the first magazine I submitted it to accepted it a day later and praised the piece for its “insights into the psyches and circumstances of foster children.” And this was an adult-run magazine too—with adult contributors with MFAs in creative writing that should be able to write circles around me and my story ideas! They had no reason to be more forgiving of my piece just because I was a young writer! They had plenty of adult ones to pick from!

So yeah, I can be pretty blind to my own story’s content until it’s time to write, at which point I usually stubbornly try to stick with it. Part this is, again, just because I’m sheltered, but I think another reason I do this is because, like I mentioned earlier, I write about stuff that is usually conveniently ignored or downplayed in other works—especially children’s stories.

To give an example, let’s look at one of my favorite childhood movies: Matilda. Objectively, the plot of Matilda is about a severely neglected and abused kindergartener overcoming her abusive family with her equally abused and traumatized teacher, all the while forming a tiny found family with said teacher and moving on from their dark pasts together. Remove the magic and this isn’t a children’s movie; it’s a litfic novel that I know at least one person on this goddamn hell site it writing (not that that’s a bad thing).

Part of the, I guess, novelty of the work that I write is that I enjoy writing about tropes commonly found in children’s stories and contrasting them with I see as toxic or harmful tropes found in works for older teens. As a person who basically went straight from reading children’s literature to adult litfic, I’m fascinated (and somewhat horrified) by the difference in themes and ideas presented to children versus older teens—especially since those same themes and tropes seen in children’s fiction seem to bizarrely reappear in work aimed toward adults (A Man Called Ove is basically UP but without the magic—change my mind). The main difference between how adult fiction treats these subjects and how children’s fiction treats them is that adult fiction fully shines a light on how messed up these subjects are, while you can get away with writing about literal Nazis and genocide in children’s fiction (*cough* Avatar the Last Airbender *cough*) and have no one think it’s too dark or try to tone it down.

Due to this, I think I’ve already been conditioned to not see these subjects to be as bad as they really are, until I sit down to write about them and start to think about them more deeply! Looking back, I’m sure I could’ve written about the subjects outlined in my short story in a way that’s conducive to children’s fiction. Heck, you already have some of the base tropes: over-the-top villain, sad wittle orphans, and deep childhood friendships. Written in another way, I could’ve been the next Roald Dahl!

I’d also like to point out that I have nothing against these themes being explored in literature for younger audiences—in fact I think it’s necessary to teach children about these issues early. But I do think how we perceive certain media to be “kid-friendly” can cause us to forget how deep and nuanced the content in this “kid-friendly” media usually is, mostly due to much of the content having to be toned down as to not scar younger audiences (which is also important). The problem isn’t that this media is included; the problem is that we can sometimes forget how important these issues really are because they’re such common tropes in children’s fiction, which is a great disservice both to these issues and to the stories that include them!

This is also an issue present in YA media, but in a different way as some of toned down issues present in YA are executed in such a way that is actively harmful to teenagers (from the abusive and controlling “bad boy”, to the toxic “not like other girls” character that disparages femininity and promotes competition rather than support among girls). These are my favorite tropes to explore and tear apart in my own work because, when not viewed through a glorified or romanticized lens, they can actually form extremely compelling fiction due to the fallout caused to surrounding characters who have to deal with the bull these tropes and characters cause.

Of course, playing these tropes for what they are tends to lead to darker fiction by consequence, but, due to so many of these tropes being ironically extremely present in children’s and YA literature, many teens that aren’t myself also end writing about them because, really, they’re just writing what they know. This is how an entire generation of teen writers, including myself, ends up writing about content far darker than they realize by accident. We’ve been reading about these subjects for a long time, and now we’re just copying from the masters.

Wow, that was a long rant. Was any of it sensical? I don’t really know, but I still enjoyed writing it!

That’s all for now! See you next Tuesday for your regularly scheduled writing update!

[bryanastar]

You know… I made an entire fancy, schmancy post announcing my return from hiatus, but then I accidentally deleted it. So screw it, I’m doing this instead.

Hi followers! In the time I was gone, I started writing a book, submitted two short stories that got accepted (all in two days) and wrote an article on The Power of Gen-Z that’ll be published at the end of the month.

Also, howdy dear mutual @authorlaurawinter! I wanted to give you the news of my recent miraculous achievements personally but… I thought this was funner lmao

Anyway, normal updates start back on Tuesday! Believe me, there’s a lot to catch y’all up on!

See you next week Tumblr!

[bryanastar]

Editing is Hard: Writing Update 10

Howdy Tumblr! Happy tenth writing update! If you’ve been following this blog from the start, you’ll have seen my journey from starting a novel, to getting stuck on said novel, to abandoning said novel, to writing short fiction, to getting said short fiction published. I don’t know why I’m so grooved by a tenth writing update, but I just think it’s cool.

Anyway, this is not a blog post about my writing blog. This is a blogpost about my writing progress, so let’s get on that!

Novels:

I didn’t any novel writing last week, but I did make a cool book cover.

Short Fiction:

My main project over the last week has been trying to get a short story of mine edited. It’s been hard without any outside critique, so I’ve had to rely on pure intuition to get it done. Now, editing a short story often means breaking said story, causing it to look worse before it looks better, so currently, my story has actually come undone once more and I have to refinish it.

Mostly, I’ve been working the flow between the meatier sections of the story and the points in between that serve as the connective seams. The individual sections of piece itself, I feel, are really well written, but as a whole cohesive piece, they feel to me a bit stitched together. The seams are all obvious to anyone taking more than a cursory glance, basically. Once I finish this edit, I will hopefully finally be able to send it out for publication (though I might have an outside reader look it over before I send it out). I’m super excited for this story, since I genuinely feel like it’s one of my best, and I see some great potential in its future!

That’s all for now. See you next week Tumblr!

[bryanastar]

Finishing Another Short Story & Starting Summer Camp: Writing Update 9

Howdy Tumblr! Sorry for the hiatus (it was actually just because I forgot to make a post lol!) I did at the very least have a bonus post prepared and I did improve my navigation on the blog, so I didn’t completely leave you guys hanging (which is good since I recently gained two new followers that were actually real people for a change). Anyway…

Novels:

I do actually have something to report for this section for once! I started work again on Once Upon a Creekside, changing the structure to make it more vignettey. I don’t work on it often, but when I do, I often get a lot done because of how short the scenes are. I have no idea if this book will be very long or very short. It could go either way. I’m still planning on writing another book on the side so we’ll see which one takes precedence.

Short Fiction:

Welp, I finished another short story, and this one might be my favorite yet. Don’t get me wrong, it is still monstrously underdeveloped, but the current draft isn’t actually too shabby all things considered, plus the language is gorgeous, despite the story taking place on an ugly dingy bus. I really went hard on the prose style with this one, and it really shows. Somehow, the language isn’t at all overwrought, which really speaks to my weakness with pretty writing.

Besides the language, my favorite thing about this story is the main character. She���s just… so very sad. She deserves so much better than what I gave her. Like, why did I decide that she has to go on a wild goose chase to find her missing and possibly dead mother? Which somehow leads to her riding a bus in the dead of night with a serial killer? And having a really quippy passive-aggressive conversation with him where it’s a coin toss as to who tries to kill who first? Honestly, I think she could be great friends with Murph (the main character from my only published short story). She has the same general energy, and is just as much of a workaholic as he is (only she is specifically a workaholic for the people she loves—her mother especially).

The final bit of news I have is that today (Tuesday) is the first day of The Young Writer’s Initiative online summer camp, which I got in for fiction. It’s free, it’s for the whole summer, and jam-packed full of events. This camp will be a great way for me to meet other writers and improve my craft! In fact, I’ve even started a flash piece today due to the daily challenge! And I’m almost finished!

In summary, this summer (see what I did there) is that one will be absolutely filled to the brim with writing and I am here for it! I hope you guys join me for this summer of fun!

That’s all for now. See you next week Tumblr!

[bryanastar]

Bonus Post: Word Tag Game

Ah!!! I’ve literally never been tagged in a word game before! Thank you so much @authorlaurawinter for tagging me!

I actually had to look through several WIPs to get all the words because I haven’t written enough of each of them to only use one WIP (oops!), and even then I couldn’t find an example for each word (why am I like this?!) So yeah, one word is a synonym rather than the exact word lol! (And, unfortunately, I couldn’t find anything for voice or a synonym).

My words: Voice, Care, Sink, Busy

Care - Belle Night (Short Story):

Don’t swear. Swearing isn’t ladylike.

“I serve who I must,” you tell the man. “But my true loyalty lies with the people I care about.”

“And who do you care about?”

Only the mother who disappeared without a trace.

“I care for a few people very, very deeply. They’re why I’m making this trip in the first place.”

Fall (In Place of Sink) - You Live in a Fishbowl in a Victorian Decor Catacomb (Short Story):

The room grew dark. There was an outline of a monster outside the bowl. Mother screamed.

But you couldn’t see it, at least not very well. Your fishbowl was all fogged up. You could hear things. You could hear your mother cry. Hear a porcelain doll fall from a shelf and break into a million pieces. You thought you heard it screech. Your mother cried harder. Your father berated her. You heard it all, but you couldn’t see anything. Nothing but the vague outlines of a neon monster, like an angler fish stalking prey outside its aquarium. The colors looked so pretty, the way the cyan and sea-green swirled; the way they blurred together.

You oh-so wish you could see it.

Busy - A Bar for Old Ghosts, Among Others (Short Story):

“Murph,” Gertrude warned. “Don’t overwork yourself.”

“Overwork myself? I’m dying! Who cares if I overwork myself?”

He’d been overworked since day one regardless. When Derrick had called with the news he had lung cancer, Murphy was busy collapsing from breaking up a goblin fight.

“Bartender!”

He tugged at the bridge of his nose. “Coming!”

And that’s all of them! For the next round, I’m tagging @paritheauthor, @bristokeswrites, and @ravens-scripts.

Your words are: Power, Vanish, Sloppy, and Passion (thank you random word generator)

[bryanastar]

Finishing a Short Story and Sending Off a Different One: Writing Update 8

Howdy Tumblr! Wow! It’s been a while since I’ve done a writing update, hasn’t it? My last post was a short story introduction for MY FIRST PUBLISHED PIECE OF SHORT FICTION. If you haven’t already, go check that post out and maybe read my piece while you’re at it. Otherwise...

Novels:

N/A

Short Fiction:

Despite being in between AP tests and my Create Performance Task for Computer Science, I somehow finished one short story, one of my longest thus far at over three thousand words. I felt really good about the story as I was writing it, especially the language, and I still feel very good at it now. My only problem with it is that it feels WAY too dialogue heavy.

Now, dialogue is one of the things I’m better at as writer. It’s often short, it’s often quipy, and often realistic without sounding stupid. Due to this, I can often fall on writing a lot of dialogue when writing a scene, which is a problem because I feel that most of my dialogue works best when it’s peppered into the story in small quantities. Too much of a good thing can make it feel cheap rather earned, especially since my vision for this piece is more vignette and description-based.

Likely, I’m gonna have to go back and edit out seventy to ninety percent of the dialogue and replace it with more short, character-building vignette paragraphs to make the dialogue that I do want to keep stand out more (and believe me, there are a few passages in there that I feel really proud of and deserve their time in the spotlight).

Besides finishing a short story, I’ve also sent an older one out for publication, one that I wrote for English class in my Freshman year. This story is super hard to submit because... well, it’s certainly genre fiction, but the genre itself is very hard to place. If I really has to describe the genre, I’d say it’s mostly surrealism with a bit of mystery/horror elements (and those are super light). Because my piece isn’t literary fiction, it doesn’t really vibe with most magazines. The few magazines that do publish genre fiction tend to be hard fantasy, sci-fi, horror, or mystery, and my piece only has a few sprinklings of those elements. It’s just... a weird anecdote that happens to a weird person who makes weird tea. It’s a really good... that, but it makes pretty hard to submit.

It’s actually kinda depressing how hard this story is to submit cause, despite it being old, I actually consider it one of my better, if not my best, short story to date. I really like, and feel really proud of it, and I want it to find a home at a good literary magazine. As my first short story that someone outside my family complimented, it has a special place in my heart, so I feel it deserves for me to find somewhere to publish it, as a way of thanking it for being the first. Does that sound sappy? Probably, but who cares!

That’s all for now. See you next week Tumblr!

[bryanastar]

All of My Writing

Howdy Tumblr! And Instagram (if you came here from the link in my bio). For the sake of your convenience, here is a master list of all of my currently published writing . Click the name of the short story if you want to know more about it before digging in (it’ll link to a tumblr post I made introducing the story which also contains a link to the story itself). Or, if you’d rather get to reading immediately, click the name of the publication right below it to dig right in.

Note: The list doesn’t include any forthcoming pieces (because then the only link I could share is on the introductory post to the story, which I don’t share until the piece itself comes out)

Short Fiction (Online Publication) -

A Bar for Old Ghosts, Among Others

— Outlanderzine

The Lotus Motel

— The Graveyard Zine

Judith was Never Adopted

— Rhodora Magazine

The Marionette’s Tale

— An Insipid Board of Ideas

A Conversation With Aunt Willow

— An Insipid Board of Ideas

In Ten Minutes, I’ll Be Dead

— An Insipid Board of Ideas

Sunshine Over Moonshine

— Le Château Magazine

After Christmas

— An Insipid Board of Ideas

Winter’s Peak

— An Insipid Board of Ideas

Whisper-Speaking

— An Insipid Board of Ideas

Life After Death

— Le Château Magazine

Longing Primavera

— Block Party Magazine

55 Bucks

— An Insipid Board of Ideas

Sunset Flower

— The Literary Canteen

Chipped Blue Paint

— Novus Literary Arts Journal

Don’t Choose Your Own Adventure

— io Literary Journal (Refractions)

Robots Writing Prose on Love

— The Talon Review

Opposite the City Across the Ocean

— White Wall Review

Summer Spirits

— Birdie Zine

Aurora Memorialis

— Fulminare Review

Salt Lore

— Occulum Journal

Crane Cage

— Same Faces Collective

The Good It

— Caustic Frolic Magazine

Before ‘84

— Art for Life Magazine

Frankenstein, Revisited

— As Alive Journal

The Preacher’s Skull

— Twin Bird Review

A Public Space

— Vagabond City Lit

Short Fiction (Print Publication) -

Imaginary Ghost

— Pile Press

A Payphone, Just Outside Helena

— Payphone Calls from the Road

Creative Nonfiction -

My Family Once Told Me

— Ninetenths Quarterly

Poetry -

When My Mother was an Elephant

— Irshaad Poetry

Essays/Articles -

It’s Easier to Sympathize with Real People

— Youth Be Heard

Growing Up Too Fast: How Teens and Teenagehood is Adultified and Sexualized by Popular Media

— Cordelia Magazine

Opinion - Russian War Crimes Only Strengthen Ukrainian Resolve

— Blue Blood International

Interviews -

Writing the Immersive, Haunting, and Raw with Pushcart Prize Nominee Bryana Lorenzo

— Outlanderzine

Other -

Out Where the Bluebirds Flew

— Novelly