#as of the last two days i have like twelve new drafts my writer brain is So Frustrated with the show for all the characters as of the finale

[izzy-b-hands]

Izzy Hands cosplay is far from perfect (my grey hairs are still too few and don't show well, and I need actual leathers someday that eventually I'm gonna be able to save for dang it) but! It is v comfy and it's nice to dress up for the holiday

Bonus Izzy pumpkin that Housemate helped me carve bc they Get It re: characters that live in your bones after the first time you see them and when something frustrating/sad/etc happens to them. They helped get the lil tattoo looking much better!

[roger-that-cap]

brand new eyes

wanda maximoff x fem!reader

summary: having a penpal in the sixth grade was overdone, in your opinion. and handwritten letters just weren’t convenient. you weren’t happy at all to start talking to some random girl your age across the sea, but once you started, neither of you could find it in you to stop.

warnings: fluff!!!! mutual pining. badly written letters (actually the whole one shot). brief battle with sexuality. a seriously strong connection between two characters (almost soulmate territory here tbh). every single mistake here is 100% mine!

word count: 8.7k!

At first, you were sure that the pen pal letter suggestion for extra credit was stupid. Why would you handwrite a letter when you could send an email? Why would you send a letter by mail that would take much longer? It took two weeks for a handwritten letter to arrive, and only seconds for an email. It didn’t make any sense.

And then you got your first letter.

You realized very quickly why handwriting was what your teachers asked for. You never knew that handwriting could be so vulnerable, so open. You had never seen letters that were so loopy, so delicate. That letter was written so neatly and so personally even if the girl who had written it hadn’t meant it to be that way, and you knew that a computer even with all of its special fonts wouldn’t be able to do that.

You understood why the handwritten rule was there.

But you didn’t like it when it was your turn to craft something so beautiful.

It wasn’t a competition by any means, but you didn’t want your letter to look anything like the words you scratched down into your notebooks. You wanted them to be neat and pretty and most of all understandable for the girl behind the pen and across the sea, because she had done the same for you.

By the time you stopped ogling over the letters and started actually reading the words that the girl had written, you learned her name. You learned it within the first line, actually.

Wanda Maximoff.

She was obviously from Sokovia, she spoke English as her second language, and she had an older twin brother that she both adored and was annoyed by. She was in the equivalent of your grade in her country, and she liked to cook with her parents. The letter was basic and slightly elementary, just an introduction to what she was willing to share with a stranger that lived thousands of miles away.

But that didn’t make it any less special.

You started on your return letter minutes after you let her pretty words sink in.

You drafted your letter and let it sit for an hour without you looking at it, and then came back to it only to cross things out and revise it, and then put it on the expensive paper that your mother had bought for you. It wasn’t perfect, but it was yours. It started with a greeting, your name, and then into the same sort of things that she spoke about in her own letter, the things that people that went to school with you had learned in passing over the years.

It felt like giving someone the rundown of your uneventful life so far in the simplest of ways. It felt like someone getting to know you as you wanted them to, because you were telling your story. There was no other side, or truth, or lie, just what your pen and your brain decided to write. It was controlled chaos. And you adored it.

Your print was easy to read. It wasn’t loopy like hers or as “girlish”, as one of your classmates said when you brought both letters to school to get an extra one hundred. It wasn’t fancy and alluring like hers, but there was still something magical on the pseudo-aged parchment.

You sent it off to the post office the next day, and you put her letter on your desk. 

§§§

By the time that your third letter from her came, you already were drafting your own. It came straight to your mailbox and when you checked the mail that morning, you were ecstatic to see it waiting for you, like a pet waiting for it’s person to come home. As usual, it started off with the gentle scrawl of your name, just a bit larger than all of the rest of the words that were on the page.

I can’t believe that it’s already been weeks of us writing. We started in August, and it’s nearing the end of October. Speaking of, is it starting to get cold there for you? It’s already cold for us. Our grandmother always makes us the best tea and soup when it gets cold outside, and I could send you the recipe if you wanted!

My brother and I are curious about one thing, and we hope that we get your answer in time, but, is Halloween really a thing? We have both heard of it, but we’ve never done it here. It sounds magical. I’ve always wanted to dress up however I wanted and get candy for it. If I were to do it, I would probably be a Disney Princess, maybe Merida. Sadly, we don’t do that here. Does it really happen in the United States, or is that a movie thing?

Hopefully you don’t mind my questions much, or my short letter. Pietro likes to read over my shoulder while I write and receive the letters, and I like to write at the kitchen table. There’s no escaping him. You’ve never talked about siblings, do you have them?

The rest of the letter was like that, aloof yet curious and bouncing around all the same, and then signed with her always rushed conclusion, which was nearly the same every time.

You read it and put the letter in the box that you had bought from a thrift store, a box just big enough for the size of the neatly folded and tied off letters that she gave you. You clipped the box shut and put it back under your desk, and then started working on your response.

Instead of just a letter, you sent her a letter in a small box that had the candy that you had gotten on Halloween night, and the mask that went with the rest of your costume. It wasn’t the Disney Princess that Wanda wanted to dress up as, but it was something. It was your something.

§§§

As the December portion of your letter writing, you and your penpal were supposed to learn of the other’s traditions during the Holidays, whether you or them celebrated or not. A huge slide show about the culture of your Sokovian friend was supposed to be shown, and you knew that there would be a lot of the same PowerPoints, a lot of the same pictures and sayings and explanations. You wanted something different. You also had no idea if Wanda did Christmas, but you had to ask.

Wanda,

I’m sure that you know that our assignment now is to present a slide show about what our penpal does during the Holiday season, but because I don’t know whether you celebrate Diwali or Christmas or Hanukkah, I’ll start with asking you about New Years, because I’ve never met a person who didn’t celebrate New Years.

What do you do on New Years Eve? I’ll start by telling you that I watch the ball drop with my family, eat food, and drink cider after it hits midnight. It’s a big deal here for us, because the new year is a time for self revolution, apparently. I’ve never done a New Years resolution, but maybe I’ll do one this year. Have you ever done one?

I know that food is very big over in Sokovia, so what kind of food do you traditionally have when you’re celebrating? Do you like it? Can you cook it yourself? Because I know that you have the same questions for me that you have to put in before you leave for Winter Break, I’ll answer my own questions.

And you did. You were thorough, partly because you thought that it was kind of you to do so because she should get a good grade, and also because she had written that she was thankful for your descriptions on multiple occasions. You had noticed that she was the more whimsical writer and that you came off as the more grounded one, and it intrigued you.

You wondered if you two would come off that way in person to other people, if you ever got the chance to meet.

When her letter came two weeks later, wrapped in aged string as always, you skipped to your bedroom, already pulling the box out from under the table and starting to read it. You smiled through the whole thing.

In her own way, not as precise or even in order as you, she had told you everything you needed to do a good slide show about Sokovia during the Holidays.

§§§

You were emotional at the end of the year. Not because you were leaving the sixth grade and going to a new building in the school and leaving behind your kind teachers, but because the pen pal assignment was over.

No other assignment had been so important to you, or eye opening. You were only twelve years old, but you were old enough to know that you had never found a friend like you had in Wanda, who was still thousands of miles away. No one else, not even the people that stood feet apart from you, offered you friendship like Wanda Maximoff did.

You couldn’t stop writing to her.

It was your turn to send a letter, the final letter that you were supposed to send, and then her closing letter was supposed to come two weeks later. You couldn’t just close it. Your entire mind was screaming at you to not close the book that you had hardly started yet.

So, as your pen rested on the parchment paper (without drafting first), you lifted it up, and changed your mentality from a “goodbye” to a hopeful and questioning one, as you hoped that she felt the same and wanted to talk just as much as you did.

Wanda,

It’s the end of the year. Technically, we should be done with our letters because it’s the end of the year, and the assignment is graded. This should be a closing letter, but I don’t think that our friendship was ever dictated by the grades that we got. We were always closer than all of the other pen pals at school that I knew, and I was hoping that you would want to continue writing.

You couldn’t write much more after that, because your pen was shaking and you were starting to get in the danger zone of dropping tears on the paper. If this was your last letter to Wanda, you wanted it to be pretty. Just half as pretty as she always made hers, if you could manage it.

You sent it off the next morning after finding an old string that was nearly the same colors as hers and getting your friend across the street to hold it down and color the outside of it for you.

§§

A part of you wanted to say that you wouldn’t have been expecting to still write handwritten letters to a girl in Sokovia in the ninth grade, but you certainly were. While everyone else in your class had lost contact after the assignments were done or tried and failed to keep contact afterwards, you and Wanda continued talking all through the years.

It astounded your parents, who were sure that in the beginning, you were just obsessed with someone who was your age and who wasn’t exactly like you. They thought for sure that you would have lost interest in talking to Wanda, but after three straight years, gas spent taking you to the post office, and money spent on special stamps and the same paper, they were starting to finally get the hint.

Because you were so close with Wanda, you hardly had close friends in your neighborhood, and maybe two or three at school. There was no one that knew you like Wanda did, and no one that knew Wanda like you did. One particular letter where you confessed probably the worst thing you had ever done to her that no one else knew was what finally let you know that she was the most judgement-free person in the world, and that you would do anything to keep her. You would never forget how the letter went, and how her response sounded. 

Wands, 

I’ve done something terrible. I may have accidentally gotten involved with a boy who already had a girlfriend, and I had no idea. I had literally no idea, and today she just called me out of nowhere and started crying over the phone to me, and I had no idea that he was with her. At all. It was so pitiful, and she’s not mad, and she says that she won’t tell anyone it was me, but still. She seemed to really like him, and I think I may have just ruined a relationship. I have no idea what to do, and all I feel is guilt. Nothing more or less. Should I send her something? Give her a gift card? I feel terrible because she was just so sweet about it.

The letter went on and on with your scripted rambling, so repetitive and panicked that you were shocked to know that Wanda had, in fact, read the entire thing. She got a message back to you rather quickly, and that made you both nervous about her verdict and glad, because you felt like with an answer so quick, she must not have judged you too harshly. You remembered opening it with shaky hands, and inhaling and exhaling when her first words after your nickname were “breath in” and “breathe out”. 

Wanda once said that writing to you was like writing to a diary who always wrote back, and you couldn’t agree more. She knew everything, and she never judged. And, when the time came for her to put all of her eggs in your basket of trust, you did the same for her. 

You distinctly remembered getting the few letters that you kept at the bottom of your letter stack, even though you liked to have them in chronological order. In the eighth grade, Wanda was having a crisis over her sexuality. Being anything but straight in Sokovia wasn’t the best thing to be, and you knew that. The first letter she ever sent you about her sexuality had dried spots on it, where she had obviously cried. Her handwriting wasn’t anywhere as neat as it usually was, and it sent you into a state of panic. 

We talk to each other about everything, so here I am asking for your advice because I won’t be getting anything here. I know that usually we keep our letters formal for aesthetic purposes, but I can’t this time. Also, no one other than you can read this. 

From there, she told you that she was sure that she liked women, and that she was even more sure that her parents would be upset at her. She told you that she had been dwelling on it for a while, thinking about it and having it weigh heavily on her mind. She was all over the board with it, from her parents being upset to her being afraid that you were going to be opposed to it as well, or tell her that she was “too young to think that way”. She ended the letter by telling you that you were the first person that she had ever told. 

You started your letter with your own confession, and Wanda Maximoff was the first one you ever told, too. You were past having your crisis, though, and you helped her through hers without a second of complaints. You always wished that you had someone to help you when you were down and questioning yourself, so you knew that you would be that for Wanda without hesitation. 

You two grew together even more, and by the ninth grade, you both knew that there wasn’t going to be anything in the world that could stop your letters. 

You came home one day after a long day and checked your mailbox out of habit, knowing that a letter wasn’t due for a few more days. But there it was, wrapped and sitting pretty for you. Your name was scrawled beautifully on the front in the handwriting that got better and better with every year, but you would recognize it anywhere. A smile grew onto your face as you walked to your front door, unlocking it and rushing inside to get to your desk. Of course, your name came first in the loopy letters.

I hope you’re doing alright! Things have been busy over here on my side of things, but never busy enough to not write you back. I just wondered, have been wondering for a while, really, if we were ever going to meet. We’ve been writing to each other for years, but I’ve never seen a picture of you. I know everything about you, but I’ve never met you. You are my best friend in the entire world, but I’ve never heard your voice. One day I would love to finally meet you. Would you be open to thinking about one of us flying out? Maybe after school is over for the both of us, we could make it happen. Number  

It was much longer than that, but that was what caught your attention, more than her description of her busy week did. You read the letter three times. And then again. Your heart thumped in your chest as you tried to get a grip on yourself, irrational nervousness gripping your throat like an iron fist.

You knew the day was coming. You knew that it was. You two didn’t know what the other looked like at all, and neither of you had ever asked. Sometimes, you thought about it, but other times you found that it really didn’t matter. It didn’t matter what she looked like because she was the best friend you had ever had, so you forgot about it. But that wasn’t what worried you.

The thought of meeting her nearly put you in cardiac arrest. You couldn’t meet her. What if you met and you two were totally bored of each other? What if how close you were on paper didn’t reflect at all in real life? What if you two found roadblocks in conversation that you never saw before? You didn’t want to meet her, not at all. You were terrified of it.

Because if you didn’t connect with Wanda on sight, then you doubted that you would ever be able to connect with anyone else. If you were wrong about Wanda being your person and her being yours, you would be crushed. If you figured out that the person who you gave your all for didn’t like you anymore after meeting you, you would die on the spot. You couldn’t afford to find it out.

You sat at your desk for an hour after reading her letter, smoothing your hand over the paper like you always did before you wrote your response. You knew what you needed to say, you just didn’t know how to say it.

What she had already written helped you, too. She was implying that they met up after graduation, which was still years away. You had time to hold off on it, to not talk about it for a while. You had some stall time in the bank, for sure. And you were going to use it.

§§§

You made the mistake of not putting the letter in your box.

Your mother came into your room, and she saw the letter. Your desk was typically off limits, so you were upset that she read it anyway, but what she said led all anger out of your body and made way for fear.

“You should totally go see your friend, sweetie!”

“What?”

“I’d pay for you to fly out,” your mom said. “I’d come with you, but I would pay for you to fly out and see your friend. You’ve been writing each other for three years now, and you’ve never seen each other. You guys should do it.”

“You’d fly me out to Sokovia?”

“You’re a great kid, of course I would.” You took the letter from her hands gently and put it in the box, and she gave you a look. “You don’t want to go, do you?”

You didn’t answer.

“Why not?”

“I’m scared to meet her,” you admitted plainly, and then your mother gave you a look.

“She seems so excited to, after all these years. She’s such a sweet girl, what are you worried about?”

You couldn’t answer that. Your fears were your own, and they sounded ridiculous out loud. They made no sense to everyone else, and sometimes not even to you. Wanda Maximoff was nothing but sweet and kind and a good friend, and there you were, trying to blow her off because you were scared of a possible lack of face to face connection.

“Can we just drop it?”

And you did. In fact, all four of you did, until later.

§§§

By the end of your junior year, you were done for. Not because of tests or applications or any of that, it was because you realized that you were in deep for Wanda Maximoff.

It all made sense. The need to keep writing to her, the excitement you had felt getting a letter since sixth grade, the way you marveled over her penmanship and loved everything that she said and did. You were so in love with her, and it was irreversible. You were in love with her and what the two of you created together. 

And you couldn’t lose that because of a bad meeting. 

You avoided the topic of going there or Wanda coming to you, and you finally got each other’s numbers so that you could text on some international texting app, but primarily, it was still the heartfelt letters with the occasional heart stamps and constant string coming your way. And you wouldn't haven’t wanted anything different. 

 You sat at your desk on the last day of school as you wrote to her, writing about how you were about to watch some of your slightly older friends graduate in a few days. You also mentioned how you were excited to be a senior and get through your last year of high school just so that you could go and do whatever it was that you wanted to do, because you were only seventeen, and you didn’t know anything. 

 Sunshine, 

I can’t wait to get out of high school. It’s not bad, just boring. I wish the people here were like you, and then maybe I could actually carry a conversation with them. Have you told your family yet? I told mine. My mom was… shocked to say the least, but she was fine with it. I think she might have suspicions about us writing to each other now, but who cares? I want to know if you’re alright. 

How’s your new job going? I know you were excited to get one, so I hope it’s treating you well. It’s funny that you and Piet work across the mall from each other. I knew it was gonna be like that, even though you said it wouldn’t be! You two are inseparable, it’s so cute. Does he have any idea what he wants to do after we get out of school? 

 I kind of think that I want to start my own business. A flower shop, maybe. You know how I sort of have a green thumb. I think it would be good for me to own something. What do you think? 

You wrote for about thirty minutes more, answering the questions she had asked you in a previous letter and signing your name at the bottom, a small smile on your face as you thought about her and her brother making food together like they always did. 

You loved her. You really did. 

§§§

 It was in the middle of your senior year when you realized what the problem with her coming was. You had been keeping it so far in the back of your mind that you didn’t even realize that the alarms were blaring in the back of your head. 

  You knew that if you saw Wanda in person once that you would never be able to let her go. You would have to pick up and move to her country or she would come to yours, and it would kill your mother for you to move. So, that would mean that you would be asking for Wanda to leave her own family to be with you, and you couldn’t be selfish.  

 So, you would be selfish in a way that was also selfless by holding off on seeing her. 

 You hadn’t told her that you loved her, and you planned on never admitting it. You were sure she kind of knew, even just a little, but she never said anything. The way that you were holding onto the idea of her probably said enough for her to know. You just hoped that she knew that you were in love with her as a friend, at least. Wanda was the type who needed to know that they were loved, and she so was. 

 You loved her without even knowing what she looked like. You loved her without knowing whether she had a nasty habit or if she was a neat freak. You loved her without seeing her in a dress or in your favorite color or even looking into her eyes. You had never even heard her voice before, but that didn’t matter at all. You fell in love with her hand writing, then the way that she wrapped her letters, and then her words themselves. And then, you just were in love with Wanda Maximoff. All of her. All that you knew. And the things that you didn’t.  

 You thought about a confession letter for a long time. You were terrified of it, to say the least, because what if it backfired? What if she thought that you were only interested because she came out to you? What if she thought that you didn’t mean it at all? 

Or worse, what if she just completely didn’t feel that way at all? What if the feeling she got when she wrote to you was nothing but platonic? That would be the biggest nightmare of all, and you had no idea how you were ever going to be able to pick up your fancy pen and put it to your special parchment after reading that. 

By the time that you finally stopped wrestling with yourself about whether you were going to tell her that you were in love with her, you got a letter in the mail. A heart stamp was on the outside and it was tied with the string it always was, and the familiarity calmed your racing heart. You opened it gently, like you did with all of the letters you got, and then you saw her familiar scrawl. 

How could someone’s handwriting feel like home? 

Moonlight, 

I would love to tell you about everything that’s been happening here, but I believe that it’s rather boring compared to what’s been bursting at the seams in my own mind. With every letter that I’ve ever written to you since we were thirteen, I’ve hesitated with my pen over telling you what I know has been true for years. I think that, finally, I know that I have something to say to you. I’ve always wanted to admit this to you, ever since the seventh grade. 

 I think that I fell in love with you, a long, long, time ago. I think that I know I did. I haven’t told you, and I never intended to tell you, because I was scared. I’m still scared here, as I write this letter, but I can’t keep it to myself anymore. 

  Pietro already knows, but he knew before I even did. I’m sure it has something to do with us being so in sync, that he knew where my heart, love, and loyalties were before I even knew myself. I tell you everything, and something as monumental as falling in love with someone, I believe that you should know. But I couldn’t tell you. Not in the beginning, and apparently, not even after a year or two. 

  I’ve never seen you or heard your voice or held your hand, but I don’t need that to know that I truly have fallen in love with the person that you are. You are a beautiful person with the most gorgeous soul I have ever had the privilege of talking to, and I think that we have stumbled upon a connection that we may never see again, if you feel the same way. 

 If this made you uncomfortable in any way, please tell me. I’m sorry if this came on too strong, or too up front. I never want to make you upset. 

 It’s okay if you don’t want to carry on writing to me after this letter. I just thought that I needed to tell you after all this time. We never lie to each other, and I think that this lie to save me from possible embarrassment or losing the greatest friend I have ever had has expired. Thank you as always for reading, Moonlight. 

 Your Sunshine, Wanda. 

Your jaw was slacked, and your mouth was open. Your heart was beating so quickly, but it wasn’t frantic. Your mind was going at a thousand miles a minute, but you were calm. You were supposed, but you weren’t. It simply felt… right. It felt like you had secretly been expecting it all along, like your soul had known the whole time, or maybe even like it had known that you felt the exact same way. It felt like you were receiving news that you had already heard about. 

But that didn’t take away any from the pure elation that you felt. You set the letter down so that you didn’t accidentally wrinkle it, and then put your head in your hands to hide your smile and think, like they would help you any. 

  She loves me. Wanda loves me. And not in the way that friends loved each other, that’s not how she loved you. She felt what you had been feeling, a bond so strong that it could be felt on paper. 

  Your hands shook as you reread the letter. You scanned over it for a second time, a third time, and you were tearing up by the fifth, finally setting it down again and leaving it on your desk. It didn’t deserve the beautiful darkness of the box where it’s predecessors went, not yet. Probably not ever. You would have framed it in the moment, if you could have. 

  Part of you was glad that she admitted it first. You were going to, one day, maybe. But the worst part was the hypothetical wait for the letter to cross the pond. Whoever sent the confession letter would have to wait about two weeks for a response, and that felt like forever. You knew that just as much as she did, and she still took the chance to do it. 

So, with the most fond and gentle smile on your face, you took out your special pen, wrote Sunshine as the entrance, and then professed your own love right back at her, trying as hard as you possibly could to make it as beautiful and raw for her as you felt on the inside, and as the one that she gave you. But, all you could think of were the first two sentences, but you knew that you were going to go for much longer than that. 

  Sunshine, 

Oh, Wanda. How I wish we were both brave enough to do this earlier. 

§§§

 By the end of your senior year, you two were dancing around each other, taking it slow, as if you both hadn’t professed your love for each other. You kept writing your steady letters to each other, the same nicknames, the same doting words and pretty scratched across the paper with dark ink. 

For the most part, nothing changed. But neither of you could deny the way that you wanted to see each other. And so, your time was up. You had to stop messing around. 

  The first time the two of you planned to see each other, it was supposed to happen over that summer break. It was supposed to be a nice experience for everyone, at a time that was actually pretty convenient. 

  And then, right during the week she was supposed to come, her aunt passed away, right in her sleep. It didn’t even come to your mind to think about rescheduling so fast, and that was the first time you had ever gotten an email from Wanda. She emailed you the morning that she found out, saying that she would rather send the first email than have you show up at the airport upset because you didn’t know she wasn’t coming. She was able to resell her ticket and you assured her that it was totally okay for her to not be coming, and you gave her condolences, as well. Wanda was very close to her family, and you knew that she felt that loss. 

  The next time the plans fell through, it was because you were going to surprise her. Your mom paid for your ticket, and you had finally grown out of your own mind and realized that it was going to be what it was regarding meeting Wanda. But, when you emailed her two nights before, spilling the beans because you didn’t want to just go to the airport without knowing how the hell to get around, you got a quick response. Turns out, she wasn’t anywhere near her house, or the airport. She was on a marine biology trip in some waters off the coast of Romania, and she hadn’t gotten the chance to write you all about it yet. You begrudgingly canceled the trip and told her that of course, it was alright. That night, your mom assured you that the two of you would just try again later.

 But then life happened. You went off to culinary school, a last minute yet sure decision after Wanda had taught you that there was so much more to love about food other than the taste. She had your new address and you had hers, because she moved from Sokovia to Italy for her marine biology major. The letters came and went faster, with the smaller amount of mileage. 

   Long story short, neither of you had enough money to go and spend thousands on a trip, and not even one helping the other out or splitting the cost helped much. Wanda was getting increasingly nervous about whether it was ever going to happen, and though she never stated it directly, it was very obvious. You were getting there, too. 

 The thing that kept you going was the letters. The same as they had always been on her end and yours, they were the one constant in your life. Wherever you went, you knew that her letters would follow you, and that you would still write from your heart and send your own across the sea over to some place in Europe. You knew that as long as her letters were lengthy and detailed and that if she took the time to wrap them as gently as she had been, that you two were strong. And as long as you kept giving advice and writing her entire short stories about you week, she knew that you were still hers. 

  You would be hers until your heart stopped beating, and long after that. You were there for her for as long as she wanted you to be, and that was widely known. 

§§§

It took four years for you to get back home and in a place where you could afford a ticket in or out. Wanda took a little longer, but that didn’t matter. It only gave you even more time to save and plan for when she came, and the date came. 

You were both twenty two when you bought her the winning ticket. You were flying her out to Florida for a week and a half. The Keys, to be exact. You knew that she was going to love it and the beautiful waters that came with it, and it was away from the meddling eyes and mouths of your family, the ones who had been routing for you from afar (and in the beginning, behind your back). It was just going to be the two of you in a condo, and you knew that it was going to be heaven on earth. 

 Now, hell on earth was the anticipation of waiting at the airport. You had no idea what Wanda Maximoff looked like, partially because it didn’t matter while you two wrote, and also because you wanted to see her for the first time in person. You two had a flare for dramatic romantics, another reason that you two clicked so well. 

  You stood with a sign that you had made the night before with paint that you had mixed yourself into her favorite shade of red, a scarlet, almost pink color. You were in a sundress because it was sweltering outside, and you were almost nervous about how she would take the heat after being somewhere so cold all of her life. You were rocking back and forth on your feet without even noticing, and your stomach growling was the last of your worries. Your heart was racing and your hands were shaking, but you willed them to stay still so that she could at least have a chance of reading it. 

  You were sure that you were about to pass out. It seemed like it had been millennia and a day all the same with her in your life. Everything that you had written each other was really about to come to life, after ten long years. You felt almost like it wasn’t real at all, like you were about to be woken up by your alarm back in your apartment over at your old school. But it was very, very real, and all the receipts and your racing heart advocated for the truth in it all. 

The gates opened, and all of a sudden, people were lazily walking out, as one would do after a long flight. You were certain that the woman who was standing next to you could hear you start to slightly hyperventilate, but you didn’t care. The only thing that mattered to you in that moment was Wanda. 

  A man came up from behind you and bumped you, and he said his apologies while you bent down to pick up the sign. Despite your nervousness, you stopped to tell him that it was okay, sign still face down on the floor. He grinned at you and then frowned when he looked up, causing you to mirror his expression. 

 Your name. It was clear as day, accented, close, and sounded like a sigh of relief and wonder floating in the wind. It came from a woman you didn’t know the voice of, and just like that, you remembered what you were doing. You left the sign on the floor, stood up, and turned around as fast as you could, eyes slightly wild as they soaked in everything about the woman standing in front of you. 

  Her hair was almost a cross between light brown and light red, even in the fake lights of the airport. She had light makeup on and she looked a little tired from the flight, but the look of elation on her face wiped it all away. Her pink lips were curved into an open mouthed smile, like she had forgotten the words while they were already halfway to her tongue. Your heart raced as you looked at her, and you didn’t even need to question who she was. Or who she was to you. You couldn’t look at anything but her face, the face you had been missing so achingly without ever seeing it before, the face that you knew was bound to give you comfort that you had never felt one in your life, until the end of your days. Her eyes were wide and a clear blue as they stared back at you, reflecting your exact expression, and you sensed that the two of you had already synced up and gotten on the same page, just like you had both predicted.

 “O-oh my god,” you breathed out, just inches away from her. “Wanda!” You went in for an embrace at the same time, both of you somehow knowing which way to lean your head to avoid collision, and just where to put your arms. You fought shaking when you held her, your nerves completely shot at it finally happening. You were actually with Wanda, in an airport, hugging her like there was all the time to spend in the world. “Oh my god,” you repeated, and you felt her squeeze you a little closer to her. You could have cried in that moment. 

 “You,” she pulled back from you to take your face in her hands, her blue eyes scanning over your face like she was studying priceless art. In the back of your mind, you wondered if it was the way she looked when she watched the animals underwater. She shook her head slowly, eyes welling up with the thinnest layer of tears as her lips turned up into a smile. “You are beautiful.”

  Your heart skipped a beat as you looked downwards, feeling yourself get hot at the bold and sincere compliment. You knew that anything more than about three words was going to smoke you stutter “Wanda, have you seen yourself?” She laughed, a soft sound that you had imagined hearing so many times that you almost thought you had made it up, until you saw the upturn of her mouth and the mirth in her eyes.

 “I’m- I can’t believe I’m actually here,” Wanda breathed out, and you felt the same exact way. How had you pulled it off? After nearly a decade of pining that was mutual and writing to each other about every little detail in your lives, she was finally right in front of you, where you could see her and touch her. 

  “How’d you know it was me?” You asked after a second of grappling for something to say. “I didn’t have my sign up when you came.” 

 The smile that was on her face went from being flat out joyful to content, almost peaceful. It rubbed off on you immediately as you leaned back into her touch, ignoring all of the people bustling around in the busy airport. “I just knew that it was you.” 

§§§

For the entirety of the day Wanda arrived, all the two of you did was stare at each other and hold onto each other, like you were both equally terrified that the gods were going to come down from wherever they resided to split you up again. There was hardly even any talking when you arrived at the condo, and it felt natural. The two of you had already spoken so much, and now you needed to catch up on just seeing her. You’ve seen her soul, her mind, her heart, and now you were seeing her face. It felt like you had always known it. 

 But you were the first one to speak as you held hands on the deck, her thumb drawing subconscious hearts on the back of your palm. “You have a way with words, sunshine.” The name contrasted to the sky, which was dark but illuminated with an almost full moon and stars. The city was mostly behind you, so the natural light was what you got. It was all that you needed. 

 You felt her content fade into joy. “Really?” 

You knew that she was nervous about her English, but to you, it was perfect. From her accent to the way that she sometimes missed connotations that were specific to the language to the idioms that accidentally slipped into your letters, you loved it. “Mhm,” you hummed, leaning your head on her shoulder. “And I never would have imagined that you sounded so… sweet.” 

 “Sweet?” She parroted, and you smiled even though she couldn’t see it. Somehow, you knew that she could feel it, in some strange way. “Can I ask you something?” The answer was yes. It was yes, and it always would be yes. So, you said that. She cleared her throat, a quiet sound that you stored in your memory to keep, simply because she made it. “Did you… did you mean what you wrote?” 

 You were stumped. There had to be hundreds of letters between the two of you, and thousands upon thousands of topics. But you couldn’t question yourself for long, because then you knew exactly what she was talking about. 

  Did you truly love Wanda? The question came up a few times between you and your mother when you were in your first year of culinary school. Were you in love with Wanda Maximoff, or were you in love with the idea of Wanda and the mystery she brought? The question had been brought up, many times by your mother, who was only just making sure that you were being smart, and the answer never once varied. Yes. You loved Wanda Maximoff with every breath you took, every stroke of your pen, every glance at her pretty script. You knew that Wanda was it for you, and seeing her only solidified it. The way your hand fit together like they were the missing parts of a lost artifact made it concrete. The way she gave you everything back and the way you did the same told you everything you needed to know. 

  You leaned off of her shoulder and turned to face her, a soft smile on your face as the moon came out from behind the singular patch of clouds in the night, illuminating her features. You saw her face and her spirit through brand new eyes, and it was wonderful. It was all you could ever ask for. “Wanda,” you started, your voice quiet enough to not disturb the moment, and the sound of waves crashing not too far away. “I’ve loved you since I knew what love was, and I have been in love with you for as long as I knew what the difference between the two really was. Everything that I have ever sent to you, every word, I meant it all. And I’ll mean it for the rest of my life.” 

 She was staring at you blankly, with only a bit of something lingering in her gaze. Then, as soft as a breeze, she was muttering something under her breath in her mother tongue and putting her hand on your face. “Can I kiss you?” 

You ignored the way that your heart surged in your chest. The moon was still out and bright, shining down on the two of you like you had paid for it to be a spotlight. “You never have to ask,” you said, and then, as fluidly and gently as humanly possible, she tilted her head and leaned forward, and you met her halfway. 

§§

You had never been scuba diving before, but Wanda was in her element. She helped you suit up after she told the instructor that she was certified, and then rolled her eyes playfully when he checked behind her work. You cracked a smile. The entire time he was instructing, she was nearly bursting at the seams to get into the water, and the second he said that the two of you were allowed to go, she was holding your hand and asking if you were ready. 

 You never thought that Wanda could look more beautiful than she already had, but in and near the water, she was something else. She was in a state of grace and peace all the same, and you wanted nothing more than for her to be so tranquil, for the rest of her life. All you wanted in return was to be privileged to see it. 

The gods that made you fear a bad trip were actually on your side, because Wanda excitedly pointed out a group of migrating sea turtles, not even paying either of you any mind at all, carrying about through nature. You smiled at them and at her, unable to decide which one was going to be the apple of your eye at the moment. You chose her. 

§§§

You got out of the shower, your skin still slightly damp and the air humid from the heat of the water. You smiled at Wanda when you caught her looking at you, giving you that same blank stare that she had the first night the two of you got there. You stopped in your tracks, giving her the encouraging look that you knew she needed. “You okay, Wands?” 

 “I love you.” 

Your breath hitched. It was the first time she had spoken the words aloud, and you both knew it. The weight of the words and the confession felt so true, so genuine, that it went straight to your heart and made it swell with warmth. A small yet generous smile stretched onto your face as you felt everything fall into place. “I love you, Wands.” 

  “More than I’ve ever loved anything,” she continued, like she hadn’t even heard you, and you looked back at her with a doting expression. “And, I’ve been holding off because I don’t know how to say that,” she paused, and then she fell into deep thought. 

 You took a step closer, assuming that the small language barrier had come up. When it took her more than a few seconds and you saw the little scrunch of confusion between her brows appear, you spoke up. “There’s no rush,” you said gently. 

“If other people were to look at us, they would say that we have only known each other for three days,” she said, and you nodded. “But, I feel that we’ve known each other for thousands of years. I feel that we were made to meet, and that we were always going to no matter what came up. Why else would we both be so focused on talking to each other? I have always seen you as someone special to me, always, but now that we have finally seen each other face to face, I think that my… heart is recognizing you as it’s other part.” 

 You had no words in your mind at that moment, because they were all in your heart. You couldn’t open your mouth to convey the pure shock and relief that you felt at her admitting something that you had been feeling the whole time. You swallowed and felt your eyes burn with tears, but before they could fall past your cheeks, Wanda stood up and wiped them from your face before pulling you close. 

  Nothing mattered. Not the fact that you were still wet and she was in her pajamas, not the fact that you were in a towel, not the fact that the pizza man was knocking at the door. It was you and her, like it always had been in your mind, and Wanda’s too. 

  You were it for her, and she was it for you. And while you hugged it out in that beautiful condo in Florida, you silently thanked your sixth grade English teacher for making you write to a random girl your age all the way across the Atlantic, and you thanked Wanda for being the one who wrote her way right into your life. 

so. uh! hiiii! i hope y’all liked it! i loved writing it, even though she was a lil bit of a challenge, not gonna lie. feedback is always appreciated!!

[dropofgoldensun]

omg hiiiii i am here from cat (@luvdsc) wondering if you could offer any advice about college apps 🙏 especially about the uc piqs? thank you so much i hope ur doing well!!!!!!!!

yes yes hello friend !! 💝 miss cat directed you to me because i did my college apps last year !!! (yikes one year passed already?? why does that feel ages ago 🤧)

first of all, congratulations on making the decision to apply to college !! i know it’s been hard for a lot of people our age to figure out the college situation recently, so i’m proud of you for choosing to take the extra step this summer to buckle up and write those essays 💞

i’ve compiled a few tips on answering the PIQs (i was actually in the middle of typing this up when i received your ask haha), but some of them can be applied to other essays, as well !! they’re all under the cut (because, unfortunately, being brief is not my forte) 😊

(and for reference, the prompts i chose were #2 (creativity), #6 (subject), #7 (community), and #8 (anything) !!)

tip #1: understand the prompt.

before you even begin writing, it’s important to understand what the question is really asking. for the UC PIQs, this will look different depending on which four prompts you decide to do.

in question one, for example, they want to know about your skills in leading others, but notice that they’re also curious about your resolution abilities and teamwork experience. or in question two, they don’t want to know that you paint and that you love painting—they could be asking how resourceful you are, how you think outside the box when you have an idea.

once you know the question you’re going to be answering, you can move on to brainstorming!

tip #2: write down three (3) key takeaways.

these are like the most basic, not-even-a-sentence answers you would give to each question. so for me, in response to question eight (“what do you believe makes you stand out as a strong candidate for the UCs?”), my answers were perseverance, courage, and character. i had a story about that, so i wrote about my experience with martial arts.

i recommend you do something similar. decide on three things that you want to communicate to your audience, and write them in the footnote of your document. your goal is to cover all three points so that, if anyone were to read your essay, they would walk away understanding those three things about you.

i found this strategy really helpful for keeping my essay streamlined while writing—if a sentence didn’t relate to any of those main points, i would cut it since those words would take up valuable space in the word count. stay focused on what needs to be in this essay, and if you have extra words left in the word count later, you can add those details back in.

and once you’re done with your essay, make sure to refer back to your takeaways and check that you covered all of them sufficiently!

tip #3: highlight your stories.

i sent cat an ask a couple days ago with a few pictures of my response to an end-of-year college counseling survey that referenced this tip (you can find it here). basically i said that, when choosing what topics to write about, pick things that interest you! if you get excited talking about it, your audience should get excited about reading it, because they’ll pick up on the passions you have and then everyone’s excited !!! :D

i’ll tell you a secret: everyone you meet, everyone you see, has countless unique experiences that few others may have. me? i spend hours making mashups out of kpop songs. i earned my black belt years after a traumatizing experience during training. i get russian harry potter and spanish dr. seuss books from the library. and i created a collaborative online google photos album for my classmates that now has thousands of entries. although these aren’t necessarily unique to only me, they’re still special enough to the point where, when you put them all together, you get a better image of the person i am, and what i value.

so find a story, a habit, a hobby that makes you different, because i believe that everyone has them. give them some food for thought, or that one-liner that sticks in their brain and won’t go away. and remember: these stories don’t all have to be extraordinary—they should be about people or moments of special value to you, because that’s what matters.

personal tip: when i was brainstorming ideas, i decided that the best way to get ideas out there was to go on a rant (because sometimes it helps to just have a conversation with yourself !!) and i recorded myself, so i could replay what i said !! this was so so crucial to me finding my own voice for writing essays. notice the way you word things when you talk—a good line or two may make it into the final draft :)

i found it helpful to read sample essays as well! they give a lot of great ideas on the kinds of topics people write about. (also, it’s kind of fun, because who doesn’t love a good story?)

but the people reading your essay won’t be there to just enjoy your story; what they really want you to do is to tell them what you learned from your experience. they want to know whether you’re teachable and willing to grow both as a student and as a young adult. so make sure to take note of the life lessons you learned, experience you gained, character you built, etc.

minor tip on ending your essay: if you’re telling a story that happened in the past, then close with what you learned and how you can apply that to your life moving forward. if you’re telling a story that has no definite end yet (like a passion or dream you have), you probably don’t have everything figured out (and you can say that in your essay!), so it might be better to close with your hopes for the future.

tip #4: ask your family for help.

peer-editing is one of the most effective ways to detect errors and inconsistencies in your writing, because, after staring at your essay for so long, you might gloss over glaring contradictions. for all of my essays, i printed them out and asked my parents to help me revise them. we’d meet every other night (or every night, depending on how much time was left) to review and discuss improvements.

i actually kept some of those printed drafts (only the first and the final ones for comparison), and let me tell you from experience—you’re probably going to have a lot of drafts (i think the most i did was seven? but you don’t need to go that far!). this part of the process does take some time, so remember to be patient and kind to yourself :) these essays won’t happen overnight!

enlisting the help of others also helps keep you accountable. one of the struggles many seniors face while writing essays is just... setting aside time to do them. and even though the constant reminders from your parents will definitely get repetitive and a bit stress-inducing, i can tell you from personal experience that i’m so glad they did; otherwise, i don’t think i’d have my essays done in time :’)

while writing college essays is challenging, your family will be there supporting you each step of the way. chances are that they’ll have their own pointers to pass on to you, since they probably remember doing this process themselves! and, out of everyone in your life, they probably remember the most about you (because you probably don’t remember much when you were four or five), so they might have a couple starter ideas for topics when brainstorming. you can rely on them for their advice and their experience.

tip #5: self-editing.

here’s the part that takes the longest time.

use action words. this is probably something you’ve heard all throughout elementary school where they didn’t like you to say “said” because it was “boring”… but honestly, the difference between “doing my own version” and “infusing it with my personality” could go a long way. also, use words that you would actually use in an essay—then it’ll have your own special flair, and not sound like it’s taken from some stuffy 80s textbook!

here are some of the words i used (once again, you shouldn’t use these words if they don’t sound like something you’d write/say): potential, overlay, wrestle, launch, analogous, weave, infuse, experiment, outlet, revel, fascinate, satisfaction, pursue, expand, distinction, capture, range, archive, engage, beyond, build, adversity, cultivate, preserve, commit, explore, convey, naturally

also, be on the lookout for repeated words. i once wrote an essay without noticing that i used “hope” three times in the same paragraph. don’t do that! use synonyms :) personally, i tended to run short on synonyms, so i always kept a tab or two open on my computer reserved for searching up new words.

side note: unfortunately, during my search for synonyms, i discovered that thesaurus.com just didn’t give me what i was looking for. i highly recommend using wordhippo instead; it has so many more options and they’re grouped by the different definitions of your word! i found the synonyms i needed really quickly and it was very satisfying!

avoid the passive voice! my teacher gave me this tip for theses or any other college-level writing. here’s an example of the passive voice: “there was a large part of me that wanted to turn back.” that’s twelve words taking up precious space in your word count! instead, say something like, “i considered turning back.” you’ve just freed up eight words :)

tip #6: final revisions.

this is the step where you fine-tune your essays. meet that word count.

read your writing out loud. does it sound like you? it should. every writer has a different voice, and you need to ensure that yours is pervasive throughout your essay. feel free to use contractions—not only do they reduce your word count (this was a good thing for me, since i had a problem with getting under 350 words), but they also give a more casual tone to your essay, as if you’re telling a story to someone in the room.

next, pretend to be an admissions officer and have someone else read your essay to you. do you get excited hearing about this student who shares your name? if you do, there’s a good chance the real admissions officers will love your essays, too. this also gives you a chance to review to your essay as a whole. pay attention to the overall flow. is there a clear beginning and end? do you resolve the issues and overcome the trials you brought up? listen to it as if it’s a story, and take this time to enjoy what you’ve written. you worked hard!

final thoughts / encouragements.

oh my goodness, did we make it to the end? honestly if you did, thank you so much 🥺

okay but despite my relatively optimistic tone throughout this post, i’m still going to be honest with you—the college essay writing process is difficult. it requires you to look inside yourself and analyze the “why” behind some of the things that you love, and that isn’t easy to do at all. it’s intellectually and emotionally challenging, because not only do you need to use so much energy writing, but you also have to dig deeper to understand yourself, and that’s not easy, either.

but i wanted to encourage you, too. no matter what you may think of yourself at 12am, 2am, 4am writing these essays, believe you have a personality that others love and will love when they meet you. you are an interesting person with unique experiences who deserves to share your thoughts with others. you have so many people behind you, supporting you during these next few months. and when you find that you can’t write any more, remember to take time to care for yourself. have a warm shower. go to bed early. i could go on and on about why sleep is good for your brain but i’ll spare you the details in this post 😉

one last thing: keep the bigger picture in focus. remember, by december or january, you will be finished with most of the application process. that’s no small accomplishment. you can do it. 💝

i really hope you found tips that you were looking for, and that they’re applicable to your own PIQs and other essays !! if you have any other questions, feel free to send in another ask (i promise my response won’t be this lengthy LOL) 💘💓

oh, and if you feel comfortable enough reaching out about anything in particular, i’m only a DM away 💕 i wish you the best of luck on writing your essays and i hope you enjoy your final year of high school !! 💗🌸💟💖

[aitarose]

my gaang for nationals part 1

contains: permanent appreciation post for some of my really really close friends/mutuals (if you’re not in this i’m sorry, but i’d love to talk more if you’re interested!) in no particular order. where they fit in the scenario in which we’re all in haikyuu

notes: i love making these and i love you all, so here’s something that randomly came to mind when i read hesther’s love fest :) also, i’m clearly a libero asdjfkl. oh and there will be a part two to this for my other mutuals, but i’m tired and want to stop typing sooo that’ll come tomorrow maybe

↳ directory

+

@firelordhesther​: hes

↳ general words: 

hello mother, i’m rewriting this paragraph because i’m pretty sure you managed to read the first draft and i wanted to surprise you so here’s something new. i’m going to be nice since this is a public post and i don’t want strangers to see how much ~love~ i have for you. you’re the only one who can tell me what to do, like i actually listen to you which is weird..i don’t even listen to myself usually. ngl you scare me sometimes, but it’s a good kind of scary. ily..i guess. see you whenever i decide to drive down to the yeehaw land.

↳ team position: captain

besides the icky stuff up there, i think that you’d be the team captain if we were on a volleyball team. you have a way with words in which you can reign chaos in with a simple paragraph. you’re also very authoritarian, whether you mean to be or not, and then you give everyone advice in a nice way that doesn’t make us feel stupid. i’d listen to you if you were my captain, and i think everyone else would too.

@nekomabvc​: lina-chan

↳ general words: 

you’re my favorite person to harass. you’re literally me but in a nicer and whiter font. i really like making obscure memes about you and then emailing them to your personal email. that’s funny—besides all of that you’re like my bff lina-chan..my internet bff. my irl’s get really annoying sometimes and it’s nice to know that i can just text you and you usually answer, unless you’re doing your million step bathroom routine. and whenever i’m on the phone, ella always thinks i’m talking to you and it’s really annoying because i don’t like you..but also like..aishiteru. 

↳ team position: setter

you always say that setter is the only position that you’d physically be able to play, but i feel like you fit the position personality-wise as well. you’re very in control with everything around you, you like things to be a certain way and get frustrated when they’re out of place. you think logically over creatively, and would take control of the team in a way that no one else could. when you get in the zone, you can be really motivating and you’re good at guiding steps and practice. you’d be a really good setter.

@calcifers-newjersey-accent​​: ella

↳ general words: 

hello. i hate you. cancel quesadillas.

↳ team position: middle blocker

first of all, you’d be total middle blocker perfection considering your height and stature. bitch be literal tsunami in femal forme. you’d be jumping and popping and going BOP BOP to all those balls, and everyone would be like woah! she’s really good! anyways, you’d be a good defense because you’re always ready to help someone in need, whether that’s physically or emotionally. that’s it. my brain hurts from saying nice things.

@agniikaii​​: kyle (kaail)

↳ general words: 

kyle you’re my favorite asian, other than my little irl asian bitch named after a fucking spice, and i love calling you kyle and making frat references that you don’t understand. you’re very funny and i really like horny hours because i get to see all of the hot men that you like, even if they’re blonde..ew. you’re twelve hours ahead of me, and that twelve more hours that you have to do calculus homework, and that sucks..deal with it ig. find that derivative!!

↳ team position: wing spiker

you’d 100% be on offense. you’re like hinata, you’d bounce around and just pop those balls down to the floor. you’re small and probably fast if you really tried?? i don’t know how online gym works, but i bet you’re killing it girlfriend! you go! keep those boys thirsty! i’m laughing at myself idk what else to say. you have an aggressive side sometimes, and i can just imagine you bringing it out on the court.

@pxnk-velvet​​​: angie

↳ general words:

angelina argentina anal michael. you are so very talented in the creativity it astounds me. you’re such a good artist and have so much potential as a writer it’s just, augh, so proud. you make me laugh when you say Periodt! with that peppa pig meme, and you always send it even when it makes no sense in the conversation and it just makes me giggle hehe. 

↳ team position: ace

i don’t know if you know what the ace does yet, but they’re basically the powerhouse of the team. you definitely DEFINITELY have an aggressive side, and we’ve seen it come out a couple times and you would be perfect for this position. mwah. just perfect. with you as our ace, we’d never have to worry about that stupid wall and you’d just be the best. that’s it. the best.

@councilspectres​​​​: my new wife (just married)

↳ general words: 

HELLO HANNAH. i don’t know if you’re ever going to see this, because you never saw my last one pain, anywho that doesn’t matter. what matters is you’re very nice and funny, also horse girl, and you pop in at fun times. i can’t wait to go on our honeymoon to wyoming and have a great time with those horses. love u.

↳ team position: teacher advisor

i don’t think you watch haikyuu, and this is obviously not an actual position on the team—but you give off such takeda energy it’s crazy. he’s such a nice guy and just wants the best for everyone, he’s always there for them when things get tough, but also doesn’t hover. you’d be the best teacher advisor, and all the other clubs would be jealous.

@probablydisgusting​​​​​: sophia

↳ general words: 

hi sophie. your dog is super cute and i added myself to the private story today, but besides that you are very VERY funny and i really enjoy listening to your tangents, because it feels like i’m not the only one who can talk forever. you were the very first person to interact in the original chat and that’s really cute and i miss those days even though the snap gc is much better.

↳ team position: pinch server

you definitely don’t watch haikyuu, but if you know anything about volleyball you’d know that the pinch server is someone that the entire team relies on to change up the game. they come in when the team is at their wits end and save the say, which is just like you when you randomly pop into the chat and entertain us! you’d be a fire pinch server and would cheer SO loudly from the sidelines.

[bellablue42]

Myself as a writer and Death of the Author

I’m trying to write a novel, and it’s really hard. I feel like I’m not getting anywhere, I’m on my fifth draft and trying to create a lengthy enough narrative that doesn’t feel like filler. It is difficult, to say the least, and I really admire people with the ability to write quickly and well. 

But there’s a lot about She-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named going around again, and it made me think. We all know that she’s not the best person, but she is a writer, and she is a creator, and her works are widespread. And that... causes problems.

Is it ok to consume her work? How much do her opinions reflect in her work, and can we spot it? I have no idea, but here’s my best shot, as an aspiring writer and a high-school literature student.

Please be warned I have no experience, and I’m kind of making this up as I go along, but here we go.

Last year, at the start of the school year, in Literature, my class watched Midnight in Paris. The movie was written and directed by Woody Allen, who is... well-known for all the wrong reasons, namely allegedly assulting seven-year-old Dylan Farrow. One of the girls in my class pointed out this fact, and my teacher nodded and said that we were discussing Death of the Author.

Death of the Author is an interesting topic. It holds that an author’s intentions and background should have no impact on interpreting a text. It is interesting, and it is really bloody hard to do.

Keep in mind that if you pick up a book by a relatively famous author, you will know something about them. If you take Mrs Dalloway, for example, if you’ve ever heard of Virginia Woolf, you will doubtless know that she was a writer and that she committed suicide, even if you know nothing else. The fact that she did commit suicide will influence the way you read Mrs Dalloway.

If you read Lady Lazarus by Sylvia Plath, for example, you will probably know that Plath was not mentally healthy and committed suicide by sticking her head in an oven. And that will influence the way you read Lady Lazarus. If you read any of Lovecraft’s work, you will come to the conclusion that he is a racist. It’s not hard to figure out.

Death of the Author means separating these facts from the way you interpret a work. It is really hard, trust me.

Because we look for links, everywhere we look for these links. We know that Sylvia Plath committed suicide, so when you read Lady Lazarus, you make connections. Go read Lady Lazarus now, go read it knowing that Plath committed suicide, and keep that fact in mind. Here’s the link: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/49000/lady-lazarus

Now read it again, and try to forget it, all the connections you made knowing that Plath stuck her head in an oven. It is really hard to do, because you know, and you remember. Death of the Author is forgetting the context of the author, forgetting their impact on the text.

Here’s a thing, I write a lot. Like, a lot. Not published, obviously, but I write about as much as I read, and that is a lot. And I believe, that when you write, you put a bit of yourself into it. It doesn’t have to be obvious, maybe just the way you connect to a character, or your views on a topic. I can’t say I don’t do this - my main character is an asexual lesbian who panics a lot and loves her girlfriend. Her competence doesn’t come from me, but the gender, the sexuality, the panic? All of that is inspired by, you know, me. My experiences, my opinions. I am conscious in my word choices, I’m trying not to use gendered language for the soldiers, because they are men, women, non-binary, genderfluid and others, all together, so my main character can’t call them her men, they are her soldiers. It’s hard. I’m aware that I have biases, and my reading experiences are usually texts that ... do not do this. 

Sorry, I’m rambling, and no-one wants to know. 

But I as a writer, put a bit of myself in my work. And I think that’s what makes Death of the Author so hard to do, so hard to remember. 

And now onto HER. I can’t remember what brought my attention to her in the first place, maybe a post about a Harry Potter tv show?

The problem about JK Rowling is that she wrote Harry Potter. And Harry Potter is... huge. The problem is that we grew up on Harry Potter. 

Looking back, there are big problems with the series; plot holes bigger than my fist, a lack of original plot lines, and little creativity. Harry Potter is a mishmash of already well-established genres and archetypes, and it... doesn’t fit together particularly well. 

(Take Dumbledore, at once the mentor archetype from the fantasy genre and the authority figure in the boarding school genre. The problem is that being both causes a bit of dissonance. He mimics the typical ‘wise old mentor wizard’ from fantasy, like Gandalf, but he is also a school headmaster. He is a grandfatherly teacher who takes an interest in the son of two of his past students, nothing particularly new, but at the same time, he’s a figure out of legend, an incredibly powerful man, both magically and politically. It is hard for my brain to fit them together well because they are two different archetypes and they don’t mesh. They belong in different genres, because the way he is written can’t seem to decide which one he is. I might write more on this later if anyone’s interested)

But Rowling’s a TERF. And she’s been on Twitter and said all sorts of bizarre things about the odd mish-mash of genres she’s created. I’m not really a fan of Harry Potter anymore, I grew up with it. I have seven books in a shoebox under my bed. I have read far better books, I have read many, many books with more interesting stories, better internal consistency and characters with actual depth, who don’t need fandom to be interesting. 

And yet I still have all seven books in a shoebox under my bed. It’s hard. I genuinely liked the books - when I was twelve. I’d sooner recommend the Discworld books by the late great Sir Terry Pratchett than Harry Potter, and not just because of HER. They’re better books. Harry Potter is average. 

But we loved them. 

And Rowling’s a TERF. Her views on trans people are... not okay, by any measure. I don’t have words for ... how great the cognitive dissonance is. She wrote a series, a seven-book, eight-movie series, about the power of unconditional love. Over a million words, just under 20 hours about acceptance and tolerance. And yet she doesn’t believe that trans women are women. 

The problem is that it is hard to apply Death of the Author. Once you know that JK discriminates against transgender people, it is hard to read Harry Potter without remembering that. 

Then you get into other issues about how all of the endgame couples are straight. And Dumbledore’s only gay when the series is ended. And there’s a lack of diversity in the books and the movies. And once you start reading into it, it gets ... iffy. Because it’s not meant to be read into, not meant to be analysed. It’s a children’s series. But it’s problematic, not for the things it says, but fo the things it doesn’t say.

The thing is that SHE is impressive. As a writer, at least, not as a person. Because it is hard to write, and she managed an extensive, relatively-coherent storyline across seven books, released over ten years. But her first book got rejected, again and again. 

Her net worth is somewhere between 650 million and 1.2 billion. And she earns all that money off a book series whose main themes are friendship and love. And she’s a TERF.

I can’t say I hate her - I don’t know her. She might be a genuinely nice person, but she’s a TERF. She doesn’t believe that trans people are the gender that they say they are. I cannot understand how you can believe that, but. She does, apparently. She wrote so much about love conquering all evil, and friendship saving the day, but she doesn’t think that trans women should be allowed into female bathrooms.

I hate her ideology. 

Go read Discworld instead. Think about Death of the Author, then read Night Watch. It’s a great book. Or go read Good Omens, because Pratchett co-wrote that. 

The thing about Discworld is that you can tell what Pratchett thinks is worth paying attention to. Small Gods is primarily about religion, about belief, and about people. The last one is the most important, because Pratchett believed that the greatest thing you can be is human and kind, and he’s right. The witches on the Discworld are... perhaps not nice, but they are decent, and they are fundamentally people. They are human, and they are kind, and that is what makes them good people. 

The thing about Harry Potter is that “Muggle” sounds like a slur. There’s all this attention paid to the whole “mudblood” thing that people forget that behind all the blood purity nonsense - which sounds a lot like eugenics - the purebloods, the rich entitled kids, believe that non-magical people are less than animals. The Wizarding world is stuck in the Middle Ages, not even the bloody Renaissance. Human history has passed them by. It is so hard now to read Harry Potter without finding problems, like how all the magicals are fundamentally stupid, how a literal one-year-old is praised for supposedly killing an extremely powerful mass-murdering psycopath. A one-year-old. The Wizarding World is not a functional society, and it’s not meant to be. It’s not meant to hold up to scrutiny.

Look, Harry Potter is average, at best. Ask me for good kids books and I will point you in a dozen different directions, and I will point you in a dozen different directions - but not there. 

Because Death of the Author is hard. Not taking the creator’s intentions and background into account when interpreting a work is hard. You can know that an author is queer, or a person of colour, or of a certain religion, but once you know it, it is hard to not see it. 

You see, all the main characters in Harry Potter are white. They’re also all straight. Everyone not Harry Potter is flat. There is very little depth to anyone in those books, because they don’t matter. Hermione is defined by her relationship with Ron because her relationship is the most debated part of her character. Ron - in the movies at least - is seen as stupid because he is written stupid, he is written as comic relief. Book-verse Ron is a strategist, but that’s only really shown in the first two books. They’re not written with depth, they don’t need it. Harry’s the protagonist, Hermione’s the smart one, Ron’s the dumb-but-loyal comic-relief best friend. Ginny is the love interest, Luna’s the crazy one, the twins are comic-relief pranksters. Draco is the racist antagonist, Voldemort is a more extreme mass-murdering version. There are exactly zero trust-worth adults in a whole seven-book series, there are three? characters with depth in the whole series, everyone else is defined by a role and a single characteristic.

It is so hard to look critically at Harry Potter and not see everything that relates to Rowling. It is problematic as a series, and problematic as content created by a TERF. It is problematic as literature in the first place. It’s written as a kids book, but for all its ‘adult’ themes, it can’t stand up to scrutiny.

This got long - I got a bit carried away. Sorry.

Tell me what you think, tell me your opinion. I’d love to discuss this with you because it so hard to write about. Argue with me, tell me I’m wrong. Tell me I’m right if you think I am. Have I said anything problematic? Please lets start talking about this because it’s interesting and a difficult topic, and I think we need to start looking closer at authors and content creators. 

[hahahafangirl]

To My Muse (Solangelo!AU)

Hi everyone it seems like I’m on team Solangelo now. To My Muse

Pairing: Solangelo (Nico di Angelo/Will Solace)

Rating: K+

Summary: At this point, all Nico di Angelo wants to do is to finish the draft of his final book. Also at this point, all Will Solace wants to do is works through the summer to stay alive. Perhaps there are many things else that they also need, but they aren’t aware of them, yet. Okay, maybe they just need to do it step-by-step, and thus that first step is at The Flying Ship. To @fangirlingatthreeam, whose prompt inspire me greatly to start writing again (lol) ------------------------------------------------------ 1. Maybe it’s time to get out of your room.

Nico di Angelo was not amused. At all.

His mornin-- afternoon. Yes, afternoon, started at precisely 5:30pm by the immense sunlight pierced through his window; which, was properly shielded by his thick, charcoal-colored curtain, promptly designed and positioned so that this particular, specific, discrete, exact, distinct situation could be avoided. Impossible. Absurd. Insurmountable. Irreparable. Futile. Impervious. Out-of-question.

Gods, if only his bursted brain cascaded this much vocabulary in the last week, then this blasted situation would have been avoided.

Let's not get ahead of ourselves. The exact cause of Nico's sudden awakening from his beauty slumber, beside the fervently scorching Californian sun, was Jason Grace - his saving grace, most of the time, but currently, his greatest curse - enthusiastically threw out his arms and let the curtains flew over to two sides, deliberately letting the raging shines engulf the enchanting darkness of sleep in his one, single attempt to wake Nico up. Jason's answer, if he was ever be interrogated for his profound crime, would be "I ran out of shit to give." It doesn't matter that Nico had already slept for sixteen hours, gods, he haven't had a proper rest in the last seventy-two hours that lead to such state, but it was not the time to be awake yet. Time is an illusion, and the only clock Nico followed is his own heart.

And thus, Nico fought. Intensely, passionately, fiercely, for his liberty, his right to continue to fake his ineluctable death by simply closing his eyes for an immensely short period of time in a dark room.

"And what the fuck was that, Grace?!"

"The sun has risen, Nico, around twelve hours ago, and was about to finish his shift. I just want to make sure that you're not dead -- well, you have a book to finish afterall. By the way, Piper wants me to remind you that the next checkpoint is three weeks away from now."

"Well, yes, thank you for your tremendous, most genuine concern. I'm sure that Ms. McLean would not be pleased to find out that I died in your merciful care."

Oh, did Nico mentioned that he is a writer?

Yes, he is a writer. Yes, his series is a hit. And yes, Nico doesn't live with a roommate for sheer economical purposes, but for humanity's sanity over making sure that he is alive and shield the paparazzi's attempt to convince T*mblr and Tw*tter that Nico di Angelo, author of the successful "Dystopian 20.48" series, is indeed a vampire. Just,... no.

He spied, with his tiny crack of eye-openings due to the need to sleep, that his blond roommate just rolled his eyes. "I appreciate the... appreciation, Nico. But seriously, you need to stop this."

"Stop what? Sleeping? Working? Writing? Being an author? Breathing? Make yourself clear, Thunderboy."

"I swear to the gods, Nico, that thunder after my speech in eighth-grade was a coincidence-- and by 'stop this', I mean 'stop your dysfunctional sleeping schedule and fix it.'"

"How so, Grace? Didn't I just slept," Nico paused, turning his head slightly to look at the clock on his desk "through the evening?"

"I don't know, Nico, you are 23," Jason dramatically paused, massaging his temple "you ought to know how to take care of yourself by now."

"Don't bring ages in here, Mr. I'm-a-25-year-old-mother-hen-that-sleep-in-my-Superman-themed-bed."

"Nico, the point is, you can't just not working in a week and then just rushed yourself the next three days writing and not doing any, anything else." Jason flung his arms out, again, slightly forwarded his body and glance his blue eyes around the room, trying to make a point "I know you got writer block and sometime need to rush for deadlines, but Nico, take care of your health for once."

This is a speech that is too familiar to him, Nico silently thought, a variation of a multitude of scolding he received from this exact Jason Grace, started from seventh grade, when Nico started douse himself to the idea of writing books, to now, this very moment, and perhaps will continue for the rest of his ephemeral life. Nico knows he was being melodramatic, but whatever.

Still, he got what the older boy was trying to say, and kind of regretting his life choices. Surely he would not live, functionally, this long, without the saving grace that is the care of Jason. And even though Nico was pretty sure that this situation will happen again, at that moment, he almost promised to not project himself into this kind of working habit again. Jason seemed to pick up on it, too - Nico's penitent aura, that's it. He sighed, long and tired, like a mother just finished scolding her premature son for some misdemeanor he committed again and again despite her reasoning.

"Fine, just... get out of here, your room, the apartment, I mean. At least go to the new coffee shop right across the street and tell me how the drinks tasted like. I heard that they served pastries, too."

"Fine, Mom." Nico answered, sarcastically, and went to the bathroom door, right at the edge of his room that is connected to the one, single bathroom in the apartment. Bless the designer, for not making Nico to walk out of his room for his humanly need, or at for least giving him that illusion.

Afterward, Nico did just that. Walked to the coffee shop, laptop in his messenger bag -- at least he got outside and attempt to be productive, Jason cannot disapprove of that -- and calculate how much his conversational word-limit should be.

"Good afternoon, welcome to The Flying Ship, how can I help you today?"

Well, that was before how breathtaking he realized the barista was.

The first thing he registered through his eyes was the kid's blinding smile -- toothy, genuine, immersed in sunshine, charm and happiness -- then the curly mop of hay-colored hair hidden in his dark green cap. Hay-colored perhaps was not the best, nor the most accurate narration Nico ever made in his life. His hair was the color of hay, drenched in the lavish, divine golden hue of the sun -- just like how Nico captured the shade of the rice fields of that August he spent with his family, with the early afternoon fire dancing through the land, sneakily give kisses to his olived skin and the grains, along with the soothing warmth of Bianca's hand safely engulfed his palm. The safety and peace assured his yet to be tainted soul. His eyes, sky blue, Nico noted, were different. They sparkled through the fluorescent, blinding light of the shop, tranquil and limpid as the summer sky yet so passionate, as if the vast blue outside was actually a part of the orbs. They reminded Nico of no memory in particular, though sent him a feeling he longed to embrace - a specific kind of equanimity that even his words can't yet to described, a passion so distinct that no matter how much he tried to tune the color wheel again, the hue produced never, ever precisely transcribed that feeling.

The boy behind that counter was his blessing and curse at the same time, though this situation is different than Jason's case. Jason was with him long enough for his case to be practical, and the stranger in front of him only sent emotions and feelings. The boy was peace and passion, simultaneously. Yet, the brighter shade of his physique reminded Nico of calmness and the quieter shade reminded him of raging emotion.

Gods, had he already fallen for the boy that hard?

Nico realized, after finishing his dramatic depiction of the stranger, that he must looked like an idiot after standing still, eyes gorged on the sight of the worker right in broad daylight. He must flee now, Nico thought, about to chicken out another potential human interaction, before reminded himself of cakes and coffee.

It's not Jason's fault that the good coffee at home ran out, he reminded himself.

Robotically, Nico moved toward the counter, though leaving some space in between to signal his attempt to read the menu first before ordering. He hoped that the barista would not mention, or better yet, noticed, the awkward situation that was Nico di Angelo staring at his face several seconds ago. He settled for macchiato, and told the boy such:

"One expresso macchiato, please, with no sugar and a bit more cream."

"Yep, and may I please ask for your name?"

"Nico."

"Alright, 'Staring-doe-eyed-boy'"

"What?" Nico can felt his face becoming more of a tomato-hybrid, the summer heat become bit by bit tenser.

"Nothing, Nico-sir."

"Seriously, drop the 'sir', and what did you just call me again, before that?"

"Seriously, dude," the barista -- Will, his nametag said -- let out a small laugh "You can't just blatantly stare into anyone's face and expected them not to notice."

This time, Nico allowed his face to blush, full-force; no, more of that Nico can't stop the crimson to flood to his cheeks, red the shade of embarrassment and awkwardness.

"No problem, though," Will, the Golden Boy, had a wash of guilt over his freckled, tanned face "People gaze a lot once they stepped foot in here. It's not a typical shop, after all. Though I do appreciate you taking in my... visage, first of all things." Will smiled over the purposefully cringy French accent, the corner of his lips turned mischievous and playful "Is that all for you?"

Oh, yes, the order. He forgot "Can I get the blueberry mousse, too? And... one chocolate cake pop."

"No probs, Staring-Guy," the teasing smile was at it again "Your total would be $14.30."

"That's... quite nice, compare to most place these days." Nico noted, his eyebrows raised in an amusing surprise, and fished out the bills from his pocket

"Well, we tried our best." Will cheerily smiled, accepting the money and clicked a few more button on the cash register. His long, delicately shaped yet calloused and strong, carefully picked the change; then, with his unwavering smile, drop the coins to Nico's hand. "Your order should be finished by several minutes. Enjoy your time!"

Nico silently nod, though his facade cannot completely hide the steaming embarrassment left over from several minutes ago, nor the fact that Will's pure, blinding smile melted at least some frost in his lonely heart. They were probably just "customer service smile", Nico reminded himself, try to keep his heart from preaching to high to the sky, though the fact that he felt the need to control such feelings was enough to judge how... infatuated he was with the barista.

If Percy Jackson was here, he swore, that boy would have already made a "your type" joke, just for the sake of relieving the high school nostalgia.

With Will temporarily out of his sight (such unfortunate), Nico had his time to give The Flying Ship a complete, thorough look. The concept is not foreign, yet fairly new in this part of the world -- a book-themed coffee shop. The Flying Ship -- though at this point Nico would like to shorten it to 'the Ship', or 'the Boat' if he decided to be less nice -- the interior walls were painted by a faint, bright yellow, shining enough to pop-out the color of the shop, yet translucent and just light to ease the soul. Along the walls are flimsy notes drew by markers and ballpoint pen, as if the shop deliberately encourage clients to leave lovely words on their walls (though, some little shit will decided to sabotage the nice intention by carving some vulgarities, just like how we was in high school). Strangely enough, there were pure white clouds painted on the walls, as if the sky is truly in a pastel-yellow shade and the blue out there was just an illusion. Along the walls are bookcases -- at least ten of them, Nico estimated, each were brimful with covers and words. Half of those are teen and young adult novels, it seemed like, though there were a mysterious number of equally intriguing thick books, as if people are really about to read Les Miserables at a coffee shop. How did they got such tremendous amount of books, Nico doesn't know, yet soon after he spotted the poster near a bookcase: SELL YOUR OLD BOOKS AND RECEIVE COUPONS! written in bright neon sharpies and elaborately decorated, the arrow pointed to the register.

At that very moment, Will's beaming voice entered Nico's mind, not fake, overly sweet yet bear the candied taste of nectar (or what he imagined that taste would be). Will was calling his name, since apparently his order was completed. Nico was so lost in thought and his observation to judge how fast or slow the service was, but that's not really important. He quickly picked up the tray, tried to not make any awkward, unnecessary eye contact while also tried to balance said tray by his two hands; he was careful not to spill the coffee, and picked the elevated area of the shop. Said seating space looks quite cute and inviting, perhaps since it was foreign as well, and people tends to examine and taste the flavor of the exotics; especially if it was something as simple as a seating style, completely, reasonably within one's comfort zone. For all intents and purposes, they traveled and get thrilled in every small, strange and new aspect of life. That's being said, the table was very, very comfortable: the table is low, kotatsu-styled, in which one the only fluffy object between their butt and the floor is a cushion pad. It was adjacent to the glass wall, which was bestrewed here and there with cute, tiny doodles on the rainbow-colored rows of post-it notes. He could see the busy, hectic street outside yet completely removed from it; as if for once, one would enjoy only witnessing life through their safe glass boundary, completely invisible and out of touch with the frantic beat of life outside the glass. Two separate worlds; an audience beholding a manic yet melodious and graceful play. As if the intense heat from frictions outside was translated to warmth, filtered through the glass, and percolate into his heart; pure energy without the chaotic side effects. And that's why it seemed very, very comforting.

His choice of seating did not take into consideration that it was the place that enabled him to most conveniently seeing everything that Will does behind the counter. Not at all. If asked, it was because "I had a lot of stuff on my tray and don't want to risk it."

He also didn't bargained for the eloquently flowing river of words inside his head, nor the fact that his "writing" style has gotten quite sappy inside his brain. Not at all. If asked, he would answer that "Maybe Jason was right; getting out of my room was a good idea!"

He opened his laptop and began to write the next part of his story. He got an inspiration.

Two lovers, in an abyss of a dystopia; the make-up camping site, the quiet, atypical moment of freedom and a project of destruction. ----------------------------------

Hope y’all enjoy this mess lmao it had been a while since I stopped writing. Btw, the book that Nico is writing in this fic is currently parts of a series that I really, really wants to work on in the future, so I’m hoping that one day I could bring myself out to write it haha. If you reached this point, thank youuuu so much for reading this fic, and please support me so that I can be motivated to not dropping this fic off. <3 All criticisms are welcome, I would absolutely love it if y’all have any comment on anything about this fic.

[thedaywebuiltthefort-blog]

No 95 - Become A Published Author (a work in progress)

When I was little, my primary school English teacher told my parents that I was a very good writer but that I should stop trying to write in other genres and stick to shawls and petticoats.

In retrospect, as annoyed as that made me at the time, he was probably onto something. The majority of my characters these days do in fact wear shawls and petticoats - mostly the female ones but not always.

Just to be clear about this, I have always written. There is a huge difference between someone that writes and someone who is trying to be a writer. In my case, the shift from one to the other has been quite recent. I wish I had done it a long time ago.

In my head though, there was always this image of what I believed an author should look and sound like. Sometimes I feel like I ought to be more thespian like, more academic. I should extend my social circle to include a variety of artistic, creative types that sit around coffee shops discussing theology and Greek tragedy. I feel like I should own a lot more scarves.

I’d like to join a writers circle or club but I’m too paranoid that when I get there they’ll want to ask me questions about Tolstoy or get me to give my opinions on neoclassical literature. My favourite author is Steven Pressfield. The last thing I read was Yahoo news.

I don’t have a beautiful antique desk upon which my manuscripts sit in neat piles. I don’t spend sunny days sitting in the garden drinking tea and scribbling genius ideas into a notepad. I tried to use a typewriter once and spent three hours trying to type one word.

In comparison to the image in my head, the reality of writing is much less glamorous.

Most of my work is done at the kitchen table, empty red bull cans wedged between piles of washing that has been sitting there so long I can no longer tell if it’s dirty or clean. Every ten minutes I have to remove a cat from my keyboard. As far as the sun goes, unless I have something particular to do, I often go days without seeing it. It seems like the ideal time to write is at about two thirty in the morning after twelve cups of instant coffee.

I have become a master of midnight editing, sitting in bed on my phone and saying things like ‘what the hell does that mean?’ and ‘what was I thinking?’ whilst trying not to wake up the rest of the house. Writing seems to amount to spending 20% of your time typing, 20% of your time lamenting over the awfulness of your work and the rest of the day googling things like ‘do frogs have toes?’ and ‘when were kettles invented?’ for research purposes.

Every day I seem to stumble across some new rule in the idiots guide to becoming an author. Rules that I had no idea existed. Things like the fact that you’re not allowed to use most of the words that exist in the English language. Even then you find most of the words you can use, have been used incorrectly.

It is all ridiculously complicated. Traversing the murky waters of editing, querying and getting work out there is akin to trying to find your way out of a dark room with your face covered in mashed potato. Working out what you should and shouldn’t be doing is like a Lord Of The Rings-esque quest. I feel like I need to spend eight hours walking across a mountain landscape so that I can fling my manuscript into the flames of Mordor.

I’m expecting a response via ork in twelve to sixteen weeks.

Several months after my first submission I can confirm I am no closer to being the next literary sensation than I was when I started, although I do now have much less memory space on my laptop. I have three and a half completed manuscripts in various stages of editing. The folder on my desktop contains roughly 480,000 words of my pure unbridled genius. It contains a further 500,000 words of total garbage.

The first novel, a fantasy adventure, is in the process of being beta read. I have convinced myself several times now, that it is in fact completely finished. That idea has turned out to be very much incorrect. I have put it out to agents and the response has been the same from each. It’s not what they’re looking for at the moment. I suspect I am getting stock answers but at least none of them have told me to never contact them again, or taken out restraining orders. There has actually been one or two that have in fact been quite encouraging.

Writing a novel is easy. The difficult bit is writing a novel that is a) actually good and b) people will want to read. Anyone can vomit words onto a page – something that I have proven consistently for the past year.

My first novel was written in a matter of several weeks. Granted, over those several weeks I was sitting hunched over the kitchen table for eighteen hours a day and my fingers ended up like gnarled flesh stumps, but still, it was done pretty quickly. It has since been rewritten at least twenty times. I’m still not happy with it.

I once read somewhere that a first draft is like shovelling sand into a box so that you can build sand castles with it later. If that is the case, editing feels like trying to bail out a waterlogged sailing boat with a teaspoon. You know there’s something salvageable in there somewhere, but you get the horrible feeling it’s going to sink before anyone else can see it.

I’ve started putting out some of my work on Wattpad, which is a way for writers to publish their work online for critique and feedback. The novel that is on there is one that has been knocking around in the back of my brain for about three years.

Unlike the fantasy novel, this one is turning out to be much tougher to write. I can feel it crawling around under my skin, but it seems to be like one of those itches that you can’t quite scratch. The minute you know where it is, it moves somewhere else. All of a sudden I am much more aware of what is going into the story. I find myself scrutinizing every word obsessively. I hate it all. A few hours later I love it again.

Mostly I am just worried that I’ve made a horrible mistake. It is one thing to sit at your kitchen table pouring your soul into something only for it to sit on your computer screen where only you can see it. Putting your work out there for other people to read and judge feels like standing at a precipice waiting to fling yourself over the edge.

I wake up in the morning and my first thought is about writing. As I fall asleep my last thoughts each night are about writing. It has consumed my life and is both wonderful and exhausting in equal measure. I am no longer just me. There are dozens of characters living and breathing inside my head. I know them, I feel them. When they get hurt, when they feel something – I feel it too. Maybe that makes me crazy. Perhaps it makes me passionate. I’m not quite sure yet.

Either way, it is that more than anything that drives me to keep going. It is an overwhelming need to bring life to these characters. I need to make them real. I need to tell their stories.

The truth of the matter is, that in the end, it doesn’t really matter if I get published or not. It would be amazing if it happened. But I don’t know that I’m good enough for that. I don’t know if I can compete against the millions and millions of people putting work out there, fighting for a place at the table. People ask you what’s special about you, what’s special about your work. I can’t answer that. I don’t know the answer. It’s probably nothing.

All I know is that these are my stories and writing them feels like breathing. Every time one of these characters moves from my brain, through my fingers and out onto the page, I feel like I have become a little more of myself. Each time I complete a project, it completes a little bit more of me and I feel like a better person for it.

I know I may come to regret some of the choices that I’ve made in recent months further down the line. I’ve given up an awful lot to do this (mostly money). The sensible part of me keeps trying to tell me that I ought to go back to working nine to five, and just write as and when I get the time.

The last decade of my life has been spent pursuing one horrible, spirit-crushing job after the other, each time convincing myself that I was climbing the ladder only to find myself unceremoniously shoved back down. It wasn’t until I sat down and poured my heart and soul out onto the screen that I realised how miserable I had made myself.

The best way I can put it is that as each character comes to life, so do I. I’ve never felt that way about anything before. That is why whenever I hear that voice in my head telling me to be realistic, to get on the job sites and start acting like a sensible person, I tell that voice to shut its face. Then I listen to the other voice - the one that says do not stop.

                       Holly