#if you want experimental fiction recs just lmk

[domini-porter]

hi there I'm new here and I really really like your fic but I was wondering: is there a reason why you don't always use subjects in your sentences? it's kinda cool it's like a thing that makes it stand out that it's one of your stories when it's like that, but I wondered if it was like, stylistic, or if there's some other reason?

Oh ho HO, my day of reckoning has ARRIVED. I was (actually, truly, sincerely) tip-tapping last night and going through and adjusting (ie, removing) subjects from various sentences and wondering if anyone else noticed, and how they felt.

It’s a few things! First, yes, it’s just a constant quirk of my writing style, and it’s what I tend to default to. I find excising subjects helps keep individual units of text (sentences, phrases, etc) more propulsive; I tend to write in long, dense chunks—I also text and talk that way—and while you can pry my beloved triple emphasis from my cold, dead, still-clawing hands, subjects are the easiest thing for me to cut so I can maintain at least some sense of pacing and movement.

Two! I write almost exclusively about lesbians, and there are a lot of scenes where people who use the same pronouns aren’t doing a lot of direct address (with words 😉) and using “she [x]” gets super-confusing, and I find it personally extremely irritating and immersion-breaking when characters constantly use each others’ names as a tool for the writer or reader to keep the action in a scene comprehensible. So I try to find news ways of making sentences; restructuring, shifting information to dialogue, etc. Since I’ve been writing ladies in love for so long, one of my default ways of maintaining clarity is, uh . . . making it seem like it would be less clear? by which I mean training myself away from subjects.

Three (prob most relevant): I was trained up as a poet and experimental fiction writer. Even though I’ve shifted to long-form fiction, those little quirks and habits and preferences are awfully hard to break; maybe a more reasonable and realistic possibility is that I just never learned how to write . . . normal? I’m absolute shit at grammar because as a poet/experimental writer, grammar is more like another tool (like word choice, line breaks, rhyming, etc) than a standard, and even if that’s not necessarily ideal on the standardization front, I have a piece of paper saying I’m a master of writing in my own weird style, which I’m sure didn’t help the ol’ creative ego.

Three (A): When I was in grad school, one of the instructors (a very well-respected poet and editor) did a whole lecture on his hatred of the word “it” and while that’s not exactly what you’re asking, he instilled in me an aversion to using the word “it” in favor of more specific language, which sometimes means sparser language. That talk burrowed into my brain and has remained there, hissing but what is ‘it’ for the past fifteen years.

Also I really like Cormac McCarthy.

Anyway, I’m glad you think it’s cool! I also think it’s kind of cool. Fun and zippy or breathless and intense. Hopefully not too distracting!!

[nulfaga]

hi, I'm trying to get into reading after so many years of letting the hobby drop, and I was wondering if you'd have any book recs to share... I honestly couldn't point you to what I'm looking for, besides perhaps a strong preference for fiction. I'd love any book recs you yourself hold dear to you :) thank you!

Oh woww um <3 my first instinct was "i'm not qualified to answer this" but i assume you sent this ask to ME because you want me to speak from my own taste lol

i think everyone should read james baldwin, period. My first baldwin was Giovanni's Room (which I recommend to anyone at any opportunity), and im also partial to If Beale Street Could Talk, but there's really no way to go wrong with baldwin, he's approachable and sage and gorgeous

I also read tobias wolff's Old School recently and i consider that a must-read, too. I really could take or leave the setting but the author's voice is Fantastic

if you want something more speculative, i'd recommend Kindred by octavia butler (though again she's one of those "can't go wrong" authors) or The Scorpio Races by maggie stiefvater (an embarrassing choice for sure, SCREAMS of YA, but something abt the setting appealed to me tremendously. Also if you happen to be a horse girl it's a must must must read.)

There's a lot of world literature and classics and experimental novels and whatever i could recommend but i imagine if you're just getting back into it that you don't want to slog thru those. Lmk if you do though because that changes my whole list