#eighteen Tumblr posts holy moly

[phoewrightnix]

Just found out I gotta defend a rogue I might just quit my job tbh

[goldkirk]

(💚♠️ Part 1/3) I think I remember you saying your writing in Blackbird Singing in the dead of night is better than in Latchkey. But your writing style in Latchkey (and the later fics but it started with Latchkey) I really really love, (I love the way you show difference between emphasis, internal thoughts/monologue and manage weave emotion into sentences. But I actually noticed that after reading Latchkey, when writing my own (non batfam) fics were suddenly much higher quality.

(💚♠️ Part 2/3) and I realised that it's because I've subconsciously echoing your style without realising (because the bits I've echoed flow really well with how my style already is) (sorry?) But because of that for the first time in years I've actually been happy with my style and not immediately hated it 2mins after finishing and/or posting. And I feel kinda bad because it's only gotten better after echoing your style but also I really love your style.            

(💚♠️ Part 3/3) so I guess what I'm trying to say is that your fics are such good quality that they've increased the quality of my own writing but also your style is amazing and reminds me of how I felt first time I read the Hobbit/LOTR. I literally cannot praise enough how great your writing is. But also I find it wild that reading your fic (and all your rambles on Tumblr) unintentionally did more good for my writing skill than any writing class I've taken.             

Anon! Holy moly!

The quickest most direct way to my little writer-y heart is to say you like my writing style/voice and you just WRECKED me with this. WOW!!!! I’m sitting over here basically crying my way through your messages because this is just? SO kind and so amazing and lovely and you like my writing THAT MUCH???? (and the comparison to the first time reading the Hobbit/LOTR I am losing my mind. that is...a really big feeling and I kind of hold up other writing to those books as well, and hearing that kind of praise from someone is Rocking My Socks on like eighteen different levels right now)

And NOT ONLY THAT but you’re living your life doing your OWN writing thing and you took the bits of my style that you loved and have been using them to make your OWN voice come through in your writing the way that you want it to and that is SO BEAUTIFUL that is my FAVORITE THING!!!!!!!! Because let me talk to you for a second here, okay, writer to writer. This is SO cool and so beautiful and SUCH an honor and let me tell you why.

I don’t know what any grammar/writing teachers have told you over the years, but courses generally have this thing where you have to learn the grammar, use the perfect grammar, and piece together your writing via structure and follow formulas and blah blah blah, which is all well and good for learning the fundamentals, but it’s not the WRITING part. Anyone can stick words into sentences into paragraphs and call it a day. Writing is more than that, writing is making the tool of language sing the way you want it to. That’s why we fall in love with authors and not JUST stories. That’s why certain poems speak to us and others don’t. That’s why we change our styles and fall in love with the writing voices of others. Here’s the important takeaway, that is the single most helpful thing I’ve ever learned about writing:

Your writing style grows as you read, because you steal pieces of other people’s writing. And that’s a GOOD THING. You should never, ever, EVER feel bad about echoing someone else’s writing style, because it is a CRITICAL part of finding your own voice. When you read, there are moments where certain sentences or phrases or ways the writing flows just absolutely make your brain go “!!!!!!!!!!”, right? You feel them. Sometimes it’s like being lifted up, or punched in the chest, or holding your breath, or just a general flutter of elated Wow! somewhere in the general vicinity of your head. You know those moments when they happen. They’re all times where someone has written something in just some certain way that startles a laugh out of you, or sounds beautiful, or that feels precisely right for where it’s stuck, or that makes you feel something so deeply you can’t believe it. Sometimes it’s in the way a writer used punctuation and word choice to make the writing itself sound and feel as staccato as the character’s breathing/thoughts, or the way a sentence drifts along like riding an inner tube in a stream, moving faster and faster but ever-so-gentle, ever-so-smoothly, the cadence just drifting up-down with such ease until it STOPS! And you’re jerked to a halt. All of a sudden, as if your inner tube has slammed right into a wall, and that wall is the thing that jolts the character, too, and is exactly what the author wanted to draw attention to. And sometimes, you can’t even pinpoint exactly what it is that makes you love that writing, it just—it just is, and you love it, and it makes your heart sing, and that’s enough.

And your brain, it latches on to all those things. It falls in love. It ruminates on them, in the background, even if you don’t think to consciously ask why you like what you just read. You are ALLOWED to fall in love with ways of writing, and you SHOULD—damn it, you SHOULD—steal all the writing styles you want. Because you’re not stealing someone’s writing. You’re recognizing what YOUR voice wants to BE in things that you read, and in collecting and using those pieces, you’re growing your own writing style. And you’re nurturing it into one that truly is your own and feels good to use and good to write and makes you nod, once, decisively, at the end of a writing session instead of feeling like it doesn’t match the way you think it should sound.

No one starts a garden with just what’s in their own yard. You’ve got the dirt, and maybe a pond or a stream for water. But you don’t have seeds, yet. You don’t have starter plants. You have to go get them! You have to collect them with your own hands from other people’s yards, from the forest, pick them out carefully from the market, only exactly the ones you want. You choose each flower and plant as you want them, and plant them in your own dirt, and they grow to become yours. You nourish them and they grow into something bigger and more beautiful for you. And you can swap them out, if you want, or add more and different plants by expanding your garden as you go. You have nothing to feel bad for. You’re doing exactly what you’re supposed to, as a writer, and I am SO delighted for you.

It’s a massive, massive joy to me, that your heart loved my writing style so much that it latched on to the parts that made it sing and used those to make you love your own writing more. That’s wonderful. I’m so proud of you! I’m so happy for you! I hope you have MANY more years of falling in love with styles and voices and using them to grow your own bigger and brighter and exactly what makes you happy!

I’M SO HAPPY! THIS IS BEAUTIFUL NEWS, THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR MAKING MY DAY.