#its so much easier to do tags on desktop I'm just never on my desktop anymore!

[gryfon-spanish-werewolf]

ah lads... help

New Years resolution

go through my drafts

[novella-november]

Saw your post about dictating your novel instead of writing and wanted to ask more about your process if that's okay!

Do you find that when you dictate, most revisions you make are mostly grammar-related, etc? Or are you also doing line-level revisions?

My hesitation with dictation is that I'm a far more eloquent writer when I type. When I dictate my story, the quality of my writing takes a massive nosedive, and I rewrite most of it. I'm unsure if this improves with more practice or if it simply indicates that diction isn't for me.

I'd love your thoughts on this!

Most of the errors I am seeing with the dictation method is the lack of "quotation marks" around dialogue, excessive or inadequate punctuation, and a few words being misheard by the voice recognition and coming out as an incorrect word or name.

Especially while I am dictating I am making sure to include dialogue tags so it'll be easier to go back and edit for proper punctuation and word choice later on, most of the words coming out incorrectly are easy to sound-out, or I'll fix them as I spot them.

For me, the hard part is writing it down to begin with, so even if I do rewrite an entire paragraph later that was originally written with voice to text, that's still a lot easier for me than never having written it in the first place :)

Before I even consider beta readers my entire first draft is going to be very heavily edited and proofread, so a few errors now that are easy to fix later are worth being able to write so much so consistently in my free time!

As for eloquence of typing vs dictation, it is probably simply a matter of practice, perhaps using a software that is able to learn from your voice (just make sure you check any privacy policy to make sure its something your comfortable with using!) and of course, nothing has to come out perfect the first time, and its perfectly fine (and normal!) to rewrite scenes and entire sections of your story, practice makes perfect!

Your preferences will really boil down to "Write a lot faster in a span of time with slightly more editing time down the line" vs "write at a slower pace but needs less revision later"; if you're not sure, I recommend just opening a blank document, and reading aloud some text you've already written, and see how well the dictation works to capture it and if you're satisfried with the speed.

My current method of using it is having my bluetooth headphones paired with my desktop, and turning on voice to text using the windows+H key as needed for dictation.

[iraprince]

Heyo! Any advice on struggling to get your art seen in the world? I feel like no matter how much I post, or what I post, people never see it or seem to like it. I love art and am pursuing it as a career (hence why Im getting a degree in it currently lmao) but its kind of disheartening to work really hard on something, post it, and no one sees it.

oh, man. i'm afraid for this one i don't feel like i have a lot of solid advice. having a large-ish following online feels like something that kind of just, like, Happened to me, mostly on accident/in ways outside of my control, and even if i had some ideas on how to potentially replicate those gains i don't think they'd work consistently. (also, a lot of my large jumps in follower count came from mental health related work going viral bc it's #relatable; this is something i have complicated feelings about and it's absolutely not a viable, like, "strategy" or something that i would recommend, in the way that ppl can say like, "fanart gets attention!" or stuff like that.)

so, i don't have advice for how to actually GET those eyes on your art; i can maybe help with making ppl more likely to STAY once they do find you, and how to build a following that will actually help you maintain a living from your work -- bc i have TONS of peers w a following a fraction of the size of mine who get more jobs than me, are doing cooler/more "professional" stuff than me, etc! (heads up that most of my experience is on twitter; i know less than nothing about places like instagram + tiktok, and while tumblr functions very differently from twitter i feel like i handle things mostly the same here, aside from doing less personal posting/being less talkative and not 'networking' or following many people).

SCROLLING BACK UP TO ADD A SPOILER ALERT: AS ALWAYS I HAVE SAID "HAHA IDK I DON'T REALLY HAVE ANY ADVICE" AND THEN PROCEEDED TO TYPE A FULL ESSAY. IF YOU ARE ON DESKTOP YOU CAN HIT THE 'J' KEY TO SKIP THIS POST. IF YOU'RE ON MOBILE, I'M SORRY

a very important thing, especially professionally: it HAS to be easy to see what you do. (this is easier here on tumblr, where u can have a designated art tag etc, than on twitter, which is an awful website that sucks. <- guy who makes all his money on twitter) this means, like -- if i see something from you and get curious and click your profile, it should only take one more click to quickly see at least SOME of your art. on a professional account, it's probably best for your icon to be your own work, something snappy and memorable and eye-catching that reads well at a small size; people shouldn't have to dig for 20 minutes before they can start browsing your art. on twitter, this means TRY not to gunk up your media tab with a ton of reaction images/screencaps of your gacha pulls/etc; on here, it means make your art tag easy to find; on any website, a portfolio link, prominently displayed, is the best bet. (i am still working on that one myself lmao and i've been working professionally full time for a few years now so like, there are outliers and wiggle room on all of this).

next! it's great when your audience finds you, but you have to find them, too. find artists who do similar stuff to you and get into their stuff -- sincerely, not just as "networking." (like only do this with ppl whose stuff you actually think is cool, not just trying to get in mutuals with everyone you see in hopes of a bump, obviously.) get interested in other indie artists, find the people who are working/publishing in the spaces that are exciting and aspirational for you, and support them! i don't want it to sound cynical when i say there's a kind of give-and-take built into this; the point is not "well, if i reblog/retweet a bunch of YOUR stuff, maybe you'll feel obligated to boost mine in return," but that when you find other artists/creatives who are on the same wavelength as you, you will naturally stumble into pools of people who want to support art like yours, and you and your newfound peers will help each other when you hype each other's stuff up and direct followers to each other! (again re: things going differently on dif websites: this is twitter-specific for me, bc i use my tumblr as a gallery/portfolio. that doesn't mean it doesn't happen here tho! it can and does happen everywhere!)

it is really not a competition. i know that SOMETIMES it is in like, a really nitty-gritty numbers sense; people only have so much money to spare, they will make choices about whose patreon they can afford/what comic to buy/etc, that's true. but to me that's not competition. people who are sincerely into your stuff will hang on until they can afford it; maybe that means someone follows you for two whole years before the planets align and they have the budget/opportunity to commission you. by hanging out in similar circles you are not taking potential business or opportunities away from anyone else, nor are you risking leading your own audience to Someone They'll Like Better; you're just offering more options, and the internet is VAST and endless, and EVENTUALLY people will show up who are into YOUR STUFF, SPECIFICALLY. helping each other is never going to stifle or delay that!!

and my final chunk of advice is the one i give constantly that everyone is probably super sick of hearing but i just seriously seriously believe in it, even tho i know it's slow to pay off and hard to follow: keep doing exactly what you want to. keep doing it!!! you have to!!! yes, i mean the stuff that's getting like, 2 likes and 0 reblogs! the stuff that 'nobody likes!'

earlier i mentioned i have gotten big follower bumps from like adhd comics and stuff like that going viral. the thing is that, from a professional standpoint: my follower count has like, more than quintupled from where it was at a few years ago; my patreon income has absolutely NOT quintupled lmfao. it has less than doubled, over that same period of like... i wanna say over 4 years. that's still good, i'm grateful for it, and i owe a lot of it to the sheer numbers game (the more ppl see ur work, the more likely it is you'll reach someone who decides to support you), but there is absolutely not an actual direct correlation between numbers and career success/stability.

where there IS a direct correlation is between "people who give a shit about the art i really truly love making" and "people who like my art enough to support me professionally." HUGE chunks of the followers i get any time something goes viral slough off over time; there's nothing wrong with that, they just follow me bc something was funny/interesting and end up realizing my work's not actually their thing. but the ppl who follow me bc they're into all the stuff i post most consistently, the stuff i care about and am passionate about, stick around. and i would not have found them if i wasn't posting the shit i care about!

out there there are people who will be 100% crazy about the stuff that is 100% what you want to make. it's like actually statistically impossible for there not to be. the more niche your thing is, the longer it will take to find them, but they absolutely exist. but if you give up before you find them -- if you start saying, "well, i'll put in 50% of this idea that i love, but the other 50% is too weird and nobody's gonna like it and it'll flop" -- well, in that case, you can only ever find the ppl who are 50% into what you do. don't fuck yourself like that!! you cannot deny yourself the possibility (the INEVITABILITY!!! IMO!!!!!) of finding the people who will 100% get what you're doing.

so: on a pragmatic level, i'm sure there will be ppl who disagree with me on this, and who think it's absolutely mandatory to do fanart as a crowd draw or learn about algorithms and posting times and get on tiktok and do the visibility grind and everything and that it's stupid and irresponsible to tell people not to. i'm sure it's also easy to point out that i'm speaking from a place where i now have more eyes on my stuff than i know what to fucking do with so maybe i'm just totally out of touch and being naive or something. but for me the most important part of doing art now, ESPECIALLY as a career, is to keep loving it and to believe in what i'm doing and to build an audience that cares about the same things i do. and i think it is really really vital to make that your top priority. bc if you don't, then even if you DO crack the code to suddenly getting tons of notes on everything etc -- will you even keep wanting to do it?

this job is hard. it's lonely, in my experience; i spend so much time sitting in front of my computer alone. it's unstable, which is stressful and can be frightening. it's emotionally taxing, for me, because art is so important to me that it's hard to set boundaries and separate my identity from it and actually treat it like a job. it has taken me a long time to find success doing this; maybe i could have gotten there faster if i had tried to find ways to draw an audience specifically, but i think if i had somehow managed to get a big patreon following/tons of commissioners/etc by doing something formulaic or doing stuff that specifically gets tons of attention, but isn't what's natural for me -- i don't think i would have lasted very long that way. this is already hard and complicated enough; i don't think it's sustainable to give up any unnecessary ground on doing exactly what you're passionate about, bc at least in my case, that's mandatory for this even being a livable career for me. i would burn out and decide to do something else very quickly if the only way to succeed was to chase numbers/engagement.

doing it this way is very slow. if i hadn't been able to lean on family/my wife while starting up, i would have had to have a day job for much longer (like, years, probably) while saving up and preparing to go full time; for as long as you struggle to get traction, it may mean going full time has to be on the backburner. but the thing is that there's nothing wrong with that, it's the reality for the vast majority of us (from what i've seen) -- and you'll eventually build a career that can last way longer, i think.

okay oh my god i'm done. sorry about that. like i said this job is pretty lonely and i sit here all day and think about this stuff and then generally do not talk about it with anyone until somebody asks me about it and then i repeat myself at length again. like i did here. anyway have a good night sincerely and i hope some part of this was helpful!!!

[mla0]

hi, im a svtwt main whos looking at tumblr as maybe another place i can go to for the community bc its rly bad on x/twt. is it more chill here? anything i shuld know + is it better than twt

I'm going to be honest, in my experience just about any other site is better for virtually any community over Twitter... I've only very vaguely scrolled around on the slenderverse community on Twitter, and it feels like it's 70% infighting and the rest of it is confined to that 30% margin. There looks to be so much harassment and general toxicity, as though people on there have never learned how to be decent to their peers before, which I guess is expected of modern-day Twitter and its "culture."

I've never been a user of that site basically ever, but it seems rancid to me. So, I think Tumblr is a better choice (the community on Bluesky is new and small like the site itself, but it's also very chill over there so far, and unlike Twitter, the blocking and muting on that site is fantastic)

Now, sometimes shit happens, discourse spreads around, but I think it's a lot easier to ignore than it is on Twitter. First and foremost, since there's tagging on this site that drives almost all slenderverse content, it's very easy to filter out just about anything you don't like (I have dozens of ships, and even characters, filtered out on my dashboard, and I only click on them to view them if they're posts by someone/something I like). The main dashboard is also not an algorithmic one, and if you do have the "For You" as default, you can just change it, so random bullshit won't just get thrown at your face to drive more engagement and rage from the community.

If you're a desktop user, or you use mobile Tumblr on a web browser instead of the app, you can even use the extension called Xkit Rewritten, and under the tweaks extension you have the option to entirely hide filtered posts, so they just completely disappear instead of even warning you. There's another extension that allows you to hide an individual post, no matter where it pops up. XKit is AMAZING.

Ignore the discourse, curate your dash/filters, respect people's boundaries, be nice to fellow community members, be respectful to and about the creators of these series like Dylan, Evan, Valeria, Troy, etc., and I think you'll have a good time here. I've been in the community for almost a decade now, under various accounts and on different sites, and the moment I learned how the filtering worked, and I matured enough to realize 99% of infighting is a complete waste of time, I don't think anything bad has come my way. Tumblr gives you some tools to make it easier, and so does XKit- so learn how to use them!

And have fun ^_^

[une-femme-de-lettres]

Hey, love ur blog, I'm thinking of creating a blog for fics and was wondering if you had any advice for a new writer? xx

First, thank you so much! :)

And second, oh my Gosh, I’ve never been asked thatbefore and I’m kind of new on Tumblr too so I don’t really know what to say butI’m gonna do my best. All these tips and advice are the things I learned from mypersonal experience as a writer on Tumblr

(Future me: okay, it turned out that I actuallyhad a LOT of things to say so sorry in advance for the long-ass reply…)

So first there are two sides to running awriting blog on Tumblr: the writing and the blogging.

Number one and most important is of coursethe writing part and for this I have a few pieces of advice to give. I can’t guaranteeyou that ALL these tips will work for you because it depends on you and the wayyou work, you sometimes have to start from there and figure out what works foryou. But again, these is what I figured out from my personal experience:

First advice: read. Like, when I say ‘read’,I mean ‘read A LOT’. You might already be doing that and keep it up, becausereading is what got me into writing in the first place and what allowed me to builda rich vocabulary and overall develop my writing skills (my literature classhelped me a little with that too…) That may be obvious but reading in thelanguage you want to write in is especially important if it’s not your nativelanguage (for example my native language is French but fanfiction helped meimprove hugely my English and now Ionly write in English.)

Again something that might be obvious butthe key is writing about what you like/love. Whether it’s a show, a book or amovie, if you love its story, characters and universe, it’ll be easier to writeabout it. And it’s very common for people to like a show/book/movie for like ayear and then they’re not so much interested in it anymore. And that’s totallyfine, don’t force yourself, if you don’t like the show/book/movie you’rewriting your fic for anymore, move on and focus on what you like.

Also, if you like a show or a movie forexample, and you want to write about it: watch it and re-watch it. This is howyou’re gonna get to know the characters you’re working with and get the overallfeel and atmosphere of the show/movie. And if it’s a book, reading it severaltimes will help you, unconsciously, replicate the author’s style. My examplehere is Supernatural. I spent two and a half months binge-watching the show andit is so long that I don’t really need to re-watch it. At the end, when I wasready and eager to start writing fics for this show, I had spent so much timewatching its characters (mostly Sam and Dean) that I was able to predict howthey would react to certain events and how they would speak and move during a scene.

That brings me to the next advice, whichis, if you don’t really know how to start writing, start with the dialogs (ifthere are some in your work of course). I’m gonna take my previous examplehere. Now that I’m done with Supernatural, all this character/atmosphere thingis in my head and when I’m writing, I’m literally picturing the scene, thecharacters and the dialogs as if I’m watching an episode. But sometimes you canhave this in mind but still not know how to start. That’s when the dialogs comein handy. When I’m in this situation and I have the whole scene pictured in myhead, I first write the dialogs, with an indication of who is talking, like ascript. Then around that, I start writing literally every character’s actionsand movements, then their feelings and thoughts. You don’t have to break itdown like that because once you’ve started writing something, if you’re feelinggood, you’re not gonna want to stop.

Another advice is just to write your ideasas they come. And when you have an idea, don’t let it go and write in somewhereto remember it. Keep a note book close to you so you can write in it at everymoment, especially when you’re lying in bed at night, trying to sleep. That’swhen most of my ideas and inspiration come so keep something to write your ideaon ‘cause trust me, you won’t remember it the next morning…

Also, regarding this whole idea thing: don’tforce yourself to work on one single thing if it’s not the way you like to work.By doing that you’re keeping yourself from doing what you actually would liketo do. And in the end it will prevent you from actually working on that singlething, because you won’t stop thinking about something else. So don’t be afraidto work on a few projects at a time and when you don’t feel like working onone, work on another one.

BUT, sometimes following this advice andworking on too much things at a time can cause complete chaos with unfinishedseries and barely started one-shots, trust me I know what I’m talking about… Soto help with that, you can set priorities, whether they’re based on thepopularity of a work or the time you started writing it. Telling yourself ‘thisstory is important, I have to work on it’ will either help you getting to actuallywork on it or making you realize you don’t want to work on this one, thuspushing you to write the thing you actually want to write.

And finally, there’s the problem of notknowing what to write and just not ‘wanting’ to write. If really your brain issaying ‘nah, I don’t wanna write, I just wanna stare at the blank page and theblinking cursor for the rest of the day’ but your heart is actually saying ‘butI want to write, I have so many good ideas.’ In that case, you have to forceyourself a little, because the hardest part is getting started. To fight this,set yourself a writing goal, like writing at least 500 words a day (that’s whatI do), I don’t guarantee it’ll work but it’s worth the try.

Okay, that was the –long-ass- first andmost important part, now it’s time to tackle the number two: blogging part. Inthat part, I’ll give you some tips to get known on Tumblr and build an audience.Once again, I’m not guaranteeing you that you’ll become famous by following thesebecause the biggest part of building and keeping your audience is your work (ifpeople like it, they’ll keep coming back for more).

With that out of the way, my first adviceis having an accessible blog. What I mean by that is that if people can easilynavigate through your blog and find your work, they’ll be more likely to wantto say and read more. Hence the critical importance of having a functioning Masterlist,for both desktop AND mobile (a good part of people is using Tumblr mobile toread). On desktop, you can make your Masterlist by creating a page that willshow under your description text on your blog. But that doesn’t work on the mobileapp so what you will want to do is create a Masterpost, which is basically atext post with your Masterlist in it. With this though you’ll have to reblog itregularly so it shows up on your feed and is quickly findable and accessible.

Your Masterlist will have to feature everyone of your works and also make people that are new on your blog want to readthese works. To do that, you Masterlist must be clear and organized. You cancategorize your works, list them in different and well-defined categories tohelp the read spot what stories they’re interested in.

When you list a work, you must first writeits title and put a link to its corresponding post (you can use the title andmake it clickable so it will bring the reader to this specific work). You alsohave to make it easy for the reader to identify what the story will be about,so that they can decide whether or not they want to read it. To do that, youcan write a quick summary next to the title and even add a few tags that detailfor example the pairing featured in the work, the genre of the work (is itangsty, fluffy, smutty?) or the its length (is it part of a series, is it aone-shot?) you can also indicate the approximate word count. And of mostimportantly you can specify the warnings, if there are any (graphic violence,explicit sexual content?) so the reader knows what to expect and if it’ssomething they don’t want to read, they don’t have to click the link and waitfor the page to charge to find out.

Talking about tags, you can and have to usethe tagging system on your posts so that your works are easily sortable andaccessible through the search function. That way, the reader can pick and find exactlywhat they want to read. Keep in mind that the more accessible your work is, thequicker readers will be able to find what they want and the more they’ll wantto read.

So now, the main issue is getting people toactually come to your blog. You can always rely on the Tumblr recommendationsbut I don’t think many people actually see/take time to go through them. So myadvice for that is like reading to write: follow to be followed. The more blogsyou follow, the better (to a certain extant). Let’s take an example, if youwrite for the Supernatural fandom, you certainly already follow Supernaturalthemed blogs. Not everyone does that but I do: when someone follows me, and ifI see in their description that they write, I’m gonna want to go and see whatthey have and if I like their work, I’m gonna follow them and maybe reblog afew of their works and my audience will maybe want to read more and follow themas well, and so on.

There is also a few blogs on Tumblr thatsometimes ask for more blogs to follow. The more blog you follow yourself, themore you’re likely to encounter this type of posts. Then you have to seize theopportunity. Don’t be ashamed to self-promote if your blog corresponds to theirarea of interest (they asked for it after all LOL…). You won’t be botheringthem if you reblog the post and link them to your Masterlist, that’s actuallywhat they want, and again, if your work is easy to find and they like it, they’llfollow…

By now, you may have got it, the key togetting known on Tumblr is interaction with other people. And the last advice I’llgive you is related to challenges. Writing challenges are a big thing on Tumblrand it allows writers to share their work on a larger scale, as many biggerblogs do these kind of challenges. So it’s another great way to get people tonotice you and it’s also a really fun thing to do.

To conclude I’d say that you have to bepatient, don’t be too greedy and don’t expect too many people to express theirlove and enjoyment, at least at first. They don’t always let you know, but ifpeople like your work and if you put effort into it, your audience will grow byitself and you will eventually get the recognition you deserve.

And most importantly, enjoy yourself. Iknow it can be frustrating working for hours on something, posting it and notgetting any feedback. But don’t forget that, first and foremost, you write foryourself, because you enjoy it and because you love sharing your ideas withother people. And remember that, in the end, your most fervent supporter isyourself.