#my writing advice is what works for me

[hotcheetohatredwastaken]

Cheeto do you have any tips on writing I what to get some practice in before the next write a thon so I can write something ,but do not have good grammar skills is ok if I write it with some what bad grammar. And thanks for creating that I had so much fun.

My tip is to get into the practice of getting your ideas into words and onto the page, and that's it. Ignore grammar skills, ignore the mechanics of writing, ignore any thought of judgement from others or from yourself. Just write.

For the Write-a-thon, the goal is to write new words, and to write a lot of them. This means, basically, your first draft. And the purpose of a first draft is to exist. Not to have flawless grammar or mechanics or anything like that, but to exist as a base for further creation, and to capture the core idea of the story that you want to write so you can build upon it. So, if you want to practice for the write-a-thon, I suggest primarily to get comfortable with getting your ideas down on paper. You can do this in fragment sentences, in brackets, in bullet points, in floating pieces of dialogue and description, as unpolished or polished as works best for you---but get those ideas down.

If you are still worried about grammar, I would suggest continuing to read others' works, so that you can learn the rules of writing by observation. Further, an online spell checker would be able to proofread your work before your post. You could even get yourself a grammar book if you think it would help. But I just wanna emphasize that, grammar skills or not, your writing is still unique and captivating and worthy to be written and shared. So go write it, and worry about all of that later.

Thank you so much for joining us last month. I can't wait to see you next month, I'm sure you'll do amazing. Just keep writing---get those words on the page no matter how awkward or grammatically incorrect they may seem on the first pass---and the rest will follow. You've got this <3

[erinwantstowrite]

how do you find the motivation to write stuff, cus when my alarm to remind myself to write i just stand there like: 🧍‍♀️🫠

trust that i definitely struggle with this too. motivation comes in waves. sometimes i can't figure out if i want to write or not (or certain characters just don't want to be written).

a lot of the time, art block means that you're improving. you're noticing what you want to change about your art. and other times, you just aren't feeling good, or don't know where to start! whatever the reason is, it's not a bad thing, per say, that it's blocking you.

the best way to find motivation is to let your subconscious work on it for a little while and do something fun or creative in another way (like going to go get ice cream with friends, or drawing, or dancing, etc).

and always try to sit down to write. don't put any pressure on yourself. if you manage to get 500 words, that's awesome! if you manage to get 200, that's still awesome!! whether it's 0 or 2000, you're still technically working on your project.

putting yourself to a standard that you can't reach is gonna kill your motivation and your love for what you're doing. you gotta know what you can handle!! if you can write 500 words per day, or if you write 500 words per month, that's still you creating your art.

make sure you've got energy, that you're taking mental breaks, all that. write down what you've got even if you think it's so bad it should be thrown into the Mariana Trench and never see the sun again. you'll be able to come back to it with fresh eyes when you're feeling better!

overall: don't let yourself or anyone else take the fun out of your writing, and take care of yourself :)

[not-poignant]

Hi Pia

Feel free to ignore if this is unwelcome, but have you ever thought about publishing traditionally to sublimate your income and draw in new readers? I know you've self published two books already and that you didn't feel like they did very well, but maybe the experience would be different if someone else was in charge of marketing and all the other business stuff?

Obviously everyone's experience is different but as an author myself who's published both trad and self, traditional publishing has been a completely different experience and has allowed me to focus more on writing because I'm not the one responsible for advertising/marketing/financing anymore.

There are a ton of literary agents nowadays that want to represent diverse and lgbtqia+ fiction, some of them even in Australia.

Websites like Reedsy, AgentQuery and Jerichowriters have extensive directories to find literary agents.

(This is lengthy folks so I'm putting the other two parts (and my response) under a read more! Also putting it under a read more so the anon can skip my response since it's very 'here's all the reasons I can't do this' and they just might not want to read that, lmao)

(continued -> )

Trad publishing houses have better resources for marketing and helping authors get more attention than any self publishing website could.

Obviously most authors, unless they're really prolific, don't get a huge advance (the average is between $1000 - $5000) but getting your foot in the door or on the traditional publishing "ladder' so to speak can have a huge benefit for your serials. Because it gives you more exposure. Plus it's in the agent's best interest to find a publishing house that accepts stories that contain darker themes and negotiate the best deal for you.

For some reason places like Amazon and the like accept and keep up more "dark" books that are traditionally published than they do with self pub ones. Maybe because they have more respect or leniency for publishing houses? I have no idea. But you could use this to your advantage. I think I remember you mentioning that writing novels felt quite isolating to you? But you already have 2 completed novels (3 if you count the fae one) that you could potentially revisit or rewrite to your liking and get them represented by agents.

You already have a loyal readership and that's very attractive to trad pub houses and agents.

As well as trad publishing, you could also make s simple website that doesn't require much maintenance. It could be just a landing page that says something about you and then has links to your tumblr and patreon where you're more active. That way you increase the chances of getting your serials found by additional readers and also come across looking more "professional". Not that you're not professional now. You are and I admire you greatly, but the unfortunate reality is a lot of people still judge by appearances and some will be more drawn to an author's website than a tumblr page, at least at first. So I think having a simple landing page would open up another door for you to benefit from.

Trad publishing is work but definitely not as much as self publishing, and you can continue on with your serials. Getting an agent can be time consuming but I personally believe the pros outweigh the cons and I also believe that your stories would be a huge treasure to the growing lgbtqia+ market. Seriously there needs to be more!

These are just suggestions and thoughts and like I said before, feel free to ignore. But I know you've mentioned wanting to grow your career in the past and I genuinely believe you can do so with some of these pathways.

~

Okay, my response. Posting this because firstly I think the suggestions could work very well for other authors reading this! And I hope they take the advice to note, and secondly because I haven't talked about this for a hot minute so let's talk about it again.

So the TL;DR is yes I have considered traditional publishing. I have actually been traditionally published in short stories, poetry, and also had my art published on covers and re: interior illustrations. But my Fae Tales works got soundly rejected when I sent them to publishing houses that were doing open calls for that sort of material. I've never heard back from an agent and I never expect to, heh.

~

Now for a bit more detail

I have been traditionally published before (it's how I got my writing out there long before I ever wrote serials), and yes, I have approached publishers with my writing since then. In fact Tradewinds was written for the traditional publishing market, and it got soundly rejected, and then shelved. The reasons it was rejected ran the gamut from 'I don't like that these fae eat humans no one is going to relate to these people' (while the editor then went on to publish vampire books idk) to 'There's too much worldbuilding you can't expect readers to keep up with this' to 'Your stories are too long, no one wants to read characters talking all the time.'

Meanwhile in my online serials I was getting feedback like 'my favourite chapters are the ones where the characters just sit in a room and talk' lol.

The traditional publishing world is also not quite as utopian for most authors as you make it seem. I'm friends with a lot of authors who are traditionally published because that's the world I came from, and unless they're solely in KU and doing generic rapid release formula romances, none of them are making that much money. Certainly not enough to live off. It may have been that you were very fortunate, anon, but I know hundreds more traditionally published authors that left trad pub to make money, and I know about 5 in trad pub personally who are making enough to live off of.

Only one of those is really writing what she truly loves to write, and even then, publishing houses have refused to commit to her entire fantasy series (and she's regularly in 'Top 10/20 Women Fantasy Authors in the World' lists) and forced her to finish the series prematurely. Something I never ever have to worry about in self pub.

The reality is that in trad pub these days, you're still in charge of most of your marketing unless you're one of the big earners for the publishing house. In fact I'd be expected to keep even more of a social media and marketing presence than I do now. I don't do almost any of the things you're supposed to do as an author in marketing to be appealing. I don't have a Facebook author account. I don't have an Instagram author account. I don't maintain or regularly send out newsletters (which automatically puts me in the like 0.05% of authors who make money doing this lmao).

I don't know if you ever have looked that closely into what m/m publishing houses expect from most of their authors, but the newsletter swaps, cover releases, review circuits, interview circuits and more are fucking grueling. We're expected to be responsible for our advertising and our marketing to a fairly massive degree. Some traditionally published in m/m still have to pay for their release blitzes out of pocket. These publishing houses, by and large, do not offer advances. You say most authors don't get large advances. I don't think most authors in this arena get offered advances at all unless they're somehow miraculously acquired by a Big 4.

We're expected to have an already established social media presence because of that (that's why it's so appealing to publishers that we have social media presences already, anon, so we can market, they can save money, and we still see only a minimal cut from the royalties).

And you still have to focus on your finances, because publishing houses like Dreamspinner straight up didn't pay a whole bunch of authors for so long they destroyed careers. They still haven't paid some of their authors. And they're still running a business and people still buy their books.

Trad publishing houses have better resources for marketing and helping authors get more attention than any self publishing website could.

This is true if a) they're a big publishing house and not an indie publisher of which most LGBTQIA+ publishing houses are and b) they're willing to use them on you.

The authors that make the most money get the most resources. If they believe you're going to earn back your advance and move thousands or tens of thousands of units per book, then yes, you will get those resources.

I have been told so many times now - even from friends who run publishing houses, including one who works at HarperCollins - that my work will never be mainstream enough to have broad appeal. They literally told me not to keep trying re: trad pub, because that was my dream for a long time. These folks have given me rock solid advice in the past, it's one of the reasons I'm doing so well now via Patreon + Ream. But they were like (paraphrasing) 'you don't write 60-80k romances and you don't want to and that's not your strength anyway, you're multi-genre which makes you hard to market, you write psychological and literary trauma recovery which is hard to market, you write character studies which are hard to market, publishing houses often don't commit to series anymore if the first two don't move units and if they pulled the plug you'd be contractually obliged to never finish that series until your contract was up.' I could go on, but it was like yeah...actually. Fair.

For some reason places like Amazon and the like accept and keep up more "dark" books that are traditionally published than they do with self pub ones. Maybe because they have more respect or leniency for publishing houses?

They do, but most publishing houses want very formulaic dark romance which is not what I write.

I have a 300k omegaverse slowburn that still hasn't had any penetrative sex in it, anon. Publishing houses don't want that. They don't expect anyone will wait 4 full length novels to get to literally a single penetrative sex scene.

But you already have 2 completed novels (3 if you count the fae one) that you could potentially revisit or rewrite to your liking and get them represented by agents.

If I rewrote them to my liking, trad pub wouldn't want them. They'd be too long! I think agents etc. take one look at me and go 'oh god, no thank you!' I'm not an easy sell, by any means.

Plus I'm very e.e about all of that with the knowledge that they then give me only about 10-15% of the royalties on the sales, vs. self-pub where I get around 70%, or subscription where I around 80% of it. When someone subscribes to me, they don't have to worry about 85-90% of their subscription fee going to a publishing house. I don't have to think about how many thousands and thousands of books I'd have to sell to make the same amount that I do now via subscription.

As well as trad publishing, you could also make s simple website that doesn't require much maintenance.

If it was that simple, I'd be doing it. I don't mean this in a facetious way, I mean it in a: I've made a lot of websites, in fact I run one at the moment not connected to my writing (I've been running it for so long it's now in its 20s and can probably has a driver's license). I find it so tedious that I barely remember to check in on it. But forgetting about it means there's always maintenance to keep up with when I get back to it.

Running websites is simpler than it used to be, but it's still not simple. There's hosting and hosting costs, there's server changes, there's back-end maintenance etc. I'm considering it for down the track, but there's a reason I decided to go the route of Patreon over my own site. There are authors (like Christopher Hopper) who actually do subscription through their own domain, but it's a lot of work.

Even placeholder sites are still work. They need updating, details change, story titles changing etc. Maintaining my Patreon + Ream About pages is enough, they're always both a little out of date, lol.

Not that you're not professional now.

Oh no, I mean from a 'traditional publisher looking at me to see what kind of candidate I am' I'm really not though. Like I said, I don't have the newsletter (100 subscribers who get one newsletter a year is not really a newsletter), I don't have the Facebook/Tiktok/Insta/Twitter/Bluesky/Threads accounts, etc. I write multi-genre across multiple steam levels, and I'm allergic to writing serials shorter than 150k. One of my best performing original serials was an 800k contemporary story with no sex in it but a lot of BDSM. It can't be marketed as clean or sweet, it's not high steam, an entire chapter is 'boy saves snail from rain.' Also he was cruel to animals, so not exactly what I'd call a sympathetic main.

And yet that story did so well for me via Patreon + Ream, because people want the kinds of stories that publishing houses generally don't want and I happen to be writing them.

Trad publishing is work but definitely not as much as self publishing, and you can continue on with your serials. Getting an agent can be time consuming but I personally believe the pros outweigh the cons and I also believe that your stories would be a huge treasure to the growing lgbtqia+ market. Seriously there needs to be more!

Anon I just literally do not believe an agent would want to represent me. I have 0% belief in that. Not from a self-deprecating angle but from a 'I am not a good bet for the trad market' perspective. From a 'I have so many friends who are trad pubbed authors who stare at me like I'm insane for writing serials as long as I do' perspective. From a 'professionals in the industry have told me it's amazing I'm doing so well in serials because there's no way they'd take a risk on what I'm doing' perspective. From a 'just because it's queer and diverse doesn't mean it hits literally any other thing a trad pub is looking for' perspective. I've been doing this for 10 years. There are agents who represent work similar to mine who know what I'm doing and wouldn't touch me with a ten foot pole. They're not missing out on a trick, they know I'm not broad appeal, and they're right.

Also the only way I'd have the energy to manage trad pub is by quitting serials. And honestly, I never found trad pub all that much fun while I was doing it for non-novel stuff. It was fine, and it is nice to have my stuff out there, but it was a ton of admin and a lot of going back and forth between people who really only care about marketing a product, and that's great and what they excel at! But I'm too disabled to turn this job into something crushing just to potentially make more money, I'd rather just quit and go back onto a full Disability Pension. I can't see any way I still get to write the stories I want to write, in the way that I write them, and be remotely appealing to a single reputable trad pub or agent.

Also *gestures to everything in this article*

[4e7her]

yknow that thing about setting your font when writing to comic sans and it magically helps your brain work

i am not strong enough to comic sans-ify my works but i was using arial for a while. and now. i bring about a new contender

lucida console.

i feel like i'm in a game system and that is a vibe i appreciate. the characters are all easy to read and seem to have slightly more spacing between them. there's a theme in obsidian called wy console that makes me feel like a hacker and it just works.

this is my psa. game-ify your writing theme. it makes brain go.

i've started doing this for all my themes.

[platypusisnotonfire]

Something that you’re not prepared for when world building is that sometimes writing how a space station runs involves breaking down every single scientific, electrical, mechanical, and Human Resources parts of running a space station and logging these things over two dozen cross referenced spreadsheets and also gosh darn it you’re running on an alien time clock and calendar so you can’t use any premade employee schedulers you have to make your own which is another four spreadsheets

JUST to figure out where Corporal Cosmoulis is on Fifthday the 15th of Friass at 2830 hours.

[lemongogo]

need 2 find myself again in 2025 . tbhwu

[crossbackpoke-check]

it’s all the rest of what i want with you

connor dewar/brandon duhaime :: 8k

Summary:

“Brandon,” Connor says with a sigh. “There’s no baby in there.”

“Not yet,” Brandon says. Connor feels his stomach twist, almost like what he would imagine a baby kicking to feel like.

in these trying times of dewvorce, may i offer you 8k of pwp inspired by @stillfertile’s wonderful art which i had. several breakdowns about 🫶 anyway please enjoy!!!

[sabraeal]

Hey! I’m a reader who really loves one of your works! Man of Progress but that isn’t relevant, what is is I want to make you feel good with your readership and make you (and others) rare pair writing much more rewarding! Please advise on your favorite types of comments and other things we as nonreaders can do to make the writer/reader relationship more reciprocal!

Thank you for asking! Honestly, most comments are completely okay so long as they are not like a one line, "when is this going to update" or like "is this abandoned." I think the dream is people who really get into their comments and give you quotes and essays and all that, but most of us are just happy to know people are enjoying it.

Other things you can do is reblog (or retweet, share, etc)! Each social media platform has their own way of feeding their algorithm, so reblogging is a big deal on tumblr and likes & retweets are equally important on twitter, etc. It's helpful in getting our fics in front of more people who would be interested in them, and it's not something people do often anymore, since fics often don't fit the aesthetic of blogs, or people get very in their own head about showing what fics they like. I always like to scream in the tags of my reblogs because it's fun, but that's also entirely optional.

[rollercoasterwords]

just wondering how writing atwmd is going atm due to the slower updates? absolutely NO pressure whatsoever write at your own pace im just wondering since ive been hurt one too many times by abandoned fics and atwmd is honestly genuinely incredible i love it sm youre so talented, again 0 pressure literally just wondering

i updated a week ago lol what is ur frame of reference for “slower updates”…like i get that i’ve been updating more slowly than when i originally started posting the fic but ive still been posting consistently 1-2 times a month for like the past 6 months and i regularly answer questions abt the fic on this blog + talk abt my plans 4 it so i’m not really sure why you’d be worried abt it getting abandoned.

[dayurno]

hi dayurno, do u have any advice on how to keep writing a fic that youre stuck on ?

oh god............................ honestly i think the best and quickest way to go around it is to find out exactly What is keeping you stuck. for example, for me, when i've written myself into a hole it is mostly because 1) i don't like this scene but i think it's important, and when this is the case i rework the entire scene until i like it or 2) because what i'm writing feels purposeless and i can't justify spending time to write it if i know it won't serve to further advance anything, at which case i scrap the scene altogether :)

i would say though if you're stuck because of little things like specific character details or backstories or chemistry you can't quite put your finger on yet, my advice is to pause the writing altogether to rework it OR do the very opposite and push through and edit it after. personally though, i think if you don't have a sturdy foundation you'll just get stuck again, so it's good to pick at the basics of your story until you feel like you have a good grasp on them before going back to writing

[buildarocketboys]

Man nothing like talking to other writers to make you feel like you're not a proper writer

[catoswound]

in an idiot writers rut (haha) where i have no inspiration. but i can feel it in my belly. does anyone wanna give me ideas on what to write

[sunkissedliterarylightofchrist]

..... In writing my AU/self-insert character of Runner Five I have discovered that what I thought where 'her character flaws' are actually MY flaws as a person.

[its-all-papaya]

babe that's where you're wrong!!!! we would absolutely love and worship any kind of landoscar content you can feed us whether it's plot heavy or not, whether it's super polished or not etc etc bc the way you see your writing just will never be the way US readers see it and believe me we will love the shit out of it it's just factsss. i can speak on behal of all of us that we are so grateful for any and all content fic writers take time to write and publish. it's a blessing and we would be nothing without you 😭🙏

srry i really thought i answered this one.... my mind is a scary place to live this month istg.

so yeah, i know at least SOME people will like whatever i write, but to me... that is not enough, sadly. it must feel Good Enough for Me Personally or i will spiral. and thankfully since i posted the thing that prompted this ask from you, i do feel a bit better about my writing again, but is inevitably going to circle back.

i'm simply soooooooo temperamental about my own writing. and i think a lot of that stems from the real life stuff (i.e. my bosses telling me i consistently disappoint them), so i'm just in a period of my life rn where i'm EXTRA hypercritical of myself, even on top of my baseline perfectionism. and it sucks because i know y'all just want content. i know people like different things, and my fic doesn't have to be exactly like anybody else's. it's just, like. a lot of my day-to-day internal monologue right now is me reminding myself that i'm not good enough, and that i have to try infinitely harder to be as good as the people around me, or i'm going to fail and suffer materially because of it. and even though i've always been really confident in my writing skills, there's a lot of things about myself that i've always been confident about that have been debased in the last six months. so i'm really really scrambling to try to figure out what perceptions of myself are true, and what's me rating myself too high because i can't find distance from my own work. and it puts me in a weird spiral trying to decide what's real at all.

ANYWAY. i know readers just like fic that exists. and it's not that i actually think NOBODY will like the shit i produce. it's just that i want it to be good enough. and i don't feel like i know what good enough is anymore. i'm like... driving myself insane about it. it's not y'all's fault, though, you're all so nice to me all the time & i appreciate you and this ask. they really do help, even though i always end up insecure about everything again anyway ❤️

[the-brainrot-central]

Hot tip for teens: maybe don’t go to college straight out of high school, especially if you don’t know what you want to study, have zero work ethic, motivation, or desire to succeed, and no goals correlated to obtaining your degree to motivate you. Cus if you do, you’re gonna be pretty fucked.

[fraberry-stroobcake]

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays friends!! ❄️❄️

Hope you all have a lovely fun day :) And if there’s no snow around, maybe you should create it with your art in whatever media you use!