#petiolata writes

[petiolata]

My relationship with my writing is so bad right now. If we were a couple, we'd be teetering on the brink of divorce.

[petiolata]

It's all fun and games writing an awful first draft but eventually you hit the end of it and have to edit that bitch 😭

Through gritted teeth: my first draft is allowed to be awful. My first draft is allowed to be awful. My first draft is allowed to be awful.

[aphfanficwriters]

Every month we will pose a question and collate responses as a fun and informal little exercise in getting to know each other and spark discussion. This month's question is:

“Are there any recurring themes in your fics?”

Lacy: sadly no. I jump from genres and ideas too much to have a reoccurring theme in fics. Maybe if i really want to pinpoint one, i do realise my longer fics always made use of science experiments to push the events of the stories.

Tama / @delgumofics: 🤔 probably that evil goes unpunished. Bad people in my fics almost never see justice. Sometimes it's implied that they'll get their just desserts somewhere down the line but it's never anything I focus on while writing.

Wasps / @petiolata: Taboo relationships. Deception. Selfishness. Attachment issues, trauma, and mental illness. Family. Maybe these don't count as themes but are rather just subjects? For something more complex, I guess you could say there is no sense of right and wrong in my stories, or of justice or meaning. Sometimes characters' bad actions blow up in their face, other times they're deliciously rewarded. With most of my stories, the intention is more to voyeuristically view events and characters and take what you want from it. Sometimes I try to capture a feeling or experience but I'm not trying to make some grand point to anyone.

@chibidashie: As most of my writing is sugary sweet, it's that everyone deserves to be loved and that imagination can quite literally take you places you'd never expect to visit in your life! As the funny horse show says in the title, friendship really is magic!!

Emil / @connorsandroids: I don't have any simple 🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥

@billowingangel: So far no there isn't any recurring themes in my stories. Maybe eventually though it could end up being love knows no bounds or some other cheesy romantic shit ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

@proosh: I find myself trying to approach the question of "what is a nation, anyway?" and all of my conclusions are varying shades of -- most of the time fairly abstract -- horror and that's what I like to dig into from a conceptual and thematic standpoint. Besides that, the recurring motifs of blood being both life and death keep cropping up in my writing, commonly as an extension and extrapolation of the previous question. On a less esoteric level I frequently end up touching on the themes of freedom and duty, and the interplay of power and violence. All of these feed into one another and become inextricably linked on a narrative and thematic level. We have fun here at Prush Studios :)

ciel / @torontofetish: i tend to explore identity and specifically identity loss and transformation. agency and control are also big themes i play around with, and the intersection of agency and identity is my sweet spot. what i write often ends with heavy sacrifice and the complex emotions that sacrifice goes hand in hand with. i ask who this character is, what defines them, and then i strip it away brutally to see what they can become without that identity to hide behind. for obvious reasons, most of my work can be considered horror.

Eru / @eruverse: I wonder if i have any. Actually if i write original stories i DO have it, but prob not for hetalia

Didi / @teaedon: death (mortality), loneliness. sometimes the crossing of boundaries, other times the corruption of love (obsession). probably more, idk

Mossman: Sex

@netherzon: Love/Romance in my fanfics since they’re mostly ship focused, but I have branched out with some of my more recent fics exploring themes like family, good and evil and in between, and how grief affects people

Yukihitomi / @arthurhonda: Super late to this but often the themes in my writing are love and loss.

WhiteWings / @smuttyandabsurd: I want to say a recurring theme in mine is loneliness and the insatiable need for human connection, but the unadorned truth is it's blowjobs 🌚

[books]

[Taglist] Writing Workshop week 3: Stories of a Place

For those just joining us, @bettsfic is running a writing workshop on @books this month. This is the taglist for participants. You can join this list by messaging us here on @books. Want to know more? Start here.

@scamuel-likely

@cheerfulmelancholies

@subversivegrrl

@jamiesshelves

@wanderingbandurria

@nana-glass-chillhop-radio-hour

@dragonnan

@sirswooshnoodles

@strexrep

@preternaturalrose

@funkynoshes

@medieshanachie

@stayfrosty2sims

@ashmariesstuff

@thesoapgirl

@bibliomancerkay

@jeanie205

@paulineagain

@youreonyourownkid13

@mxxnlightwriting

@randomafterthought

@karacat

@lilliebellfanfics

@haillily

@djinnhatescold

@liv-is

@rhysofcourse

@nix-rose

@little-tea-kitten

@petiolata

@xoxo-gothic-girl

@omg-elledubs-things

@reblogwhoreowo

@mclurky

@deplorablethoughts

@richardmurrayhumblr

@gluepoo

@valkyrhys

@x-soapbox-x

@winterstar1412

@themandilorian

@dinovom

@allaboardthecolumboat

@scorpio-and-a-half

@musicismagic-writes

@mywhateversite

@mtk4fun

@kameonerd566

@cardcaptorsakura96

@loiladadiani

@zacharialend

@tanthamorelover

@inflappible

@emptymanuscript

@deadrabbitohno

@slicesofapple

@goldenwatcher

@porcelaintoybox23

[pinsplantsandpikes]

Poor Man’s Mustard, or, this forager’s first gold.

Today has been an interesting day. I have travelled two hours (one each way), worn uncomfortable shoes, and awkwardly stuffed myself into an overcrowded bus for a interview less than twenty minutes. Which started out with being told off for being “too early”. 

Isn’t the whole point to be early to show punctuality and reliability?

Anyway, on the way home I got a phone call about a potential job in PR, hence my sudden desire to start a new, professional and outside-world friendly blog. (My personal blog is most emphatically not suitable for non-Tumblr natives, it is a dark and strange fandom-filled place). I felt awkward telling them that despite my creative writing focused degree in English, my hobby of writing is not on display. So I resolve to do something about it.

When that phone call finished and I got off the bus, some leaves by the side of the road caught my eye. Rugged, rumbly shapes and soft edges, sort of waxy looking. I’d seen them before, in a cluster in the woods, by a flooded out bit of marshland. Yesterday, in fact. 

I’d deliberately set out yesterday (Monday 2nd March) to go plant identifying. I spent an hour freezing my butt off in the great outdoors, getting rained and hailed on despite the weather forecast saying it wouldn’t rain - because of course. On my jaunt I’d tested out my plant identifying app, with mixed results. Experimentally I pointed it at random things, and then at some I knew - obvious things like brambles, only to be told they were trees. Clearly, this needed to be taken with a pinch of salt, software can only get so far from a photo with no other sensual input.

So, the thing I found just as I turned back for home was shiny in the rain, a lovely glossy waxen-looking leaf, which the app confidently gave the first (and assumedly, therefore, most likely) diagnosis of being “Alliaria petiolata,” or, Poor Man’s Mustard. I smiled to myself, thought it was cool, then walked on, pleased to have found something vaguely edible or usable.

Only when I had gotten halfway home did I start to kick myself for not picking any to bring home, not even having a nibble or sniff to further confirm. But I did find a baby nettle to cheer myself up - didn’t pick that one up either, but y’know, stinging nettle.

But today, I found a large patch of darker, waxy leaves by the side of the road at the bus stop. Before now I would have thought nothing of them, maybe vaguely wondered what they were. But today, but today - I will stop using that expression soon, I promise - I looked down and thought, I know this one! Poor Man’s Mustard!

And I picked some, the single leave which a bit of stem in the first picture, plus breaking a half off another to sniff. And yes! I struck garlic! It smelled, though mildly, of the stinky onion family.

I trotted off the short distance home, clutching my find like it was gold from them thar hills. With a bit of help from Google and my dad’s girlfriend, (the books were useless, being as they didn’t even acknowledge the plant existed, only listed one of the potential lookalikes - which it most certainly did not look alike in the book) we determined the biennial nature of Poor Man’s Mustard and cleared up the confusion the differing gallery images on my identification app had caused. 

This is a young Poor Man’s Mustard, and when it grows up in the second year the leaves change, and it flowers.

I hope to grow like that too, for my soft edges to form strong shapes, and to bloom into who I may become.

Rather fanciful stuff for a leaf.

[supersoakerfullofblood]

What @petiolata said in the comments, very much that. You almost never want to start with a "theme-as-message" when writing. It may help to start with a "theme-as-content," if that's a better way of looking at it. I wrote a story about church camp, but I didn't go into it thinking "the theme for this story are going to be how religious and romantic trauma are bad." I went into it thinking "I'm going to write about church camp, romance, and maybe some weird people I knew at church camp." There's a difference: the former is a message, the latter is just content.

Stephen King talks about this in On Writing: "starting with the questions and thematic concerns is a recipe for bad fiction. Good story always begins with story and progresses to theme; it almost never begins with theme and progresses to story" (208). Start with the story, and the themes will fall into place naturally. Especially if you're writing queer fantasy. A lot of your personal experience will flow into the novel and create many of the themes of your own life without you noticing

Idk why but I'm feeling really stuck with my writing rn. I don't really have a *theme* for my story or a message I want to tell, and I keep seeing things that say you need that for a story.

I just want to write a fantasy with queer main characters. I don't even know what I'm doing.

[petiolata]

Going to try and edit what I wrote today. I know a lot of people say it's best to just write the complete first draft then worry about editing, but I did that with my last novel and that was a disaster.

It's still not edited, because it's such an overwhelmingly huge amount of work to do. And looking down at 60k words of crap is discouraging.

Better to have this novel in better shape by the time it's done. That should make the post-completion editing rounds less daunting. This first draft is around 20% completed so far.

[petiolata]

Why am I writing catboy Tim Drake when it's going to be the year of the snake and I could be writing naga Tim Drake...

I'm planning on doing my YOTP 2025 for Timber. Tim gets turned into a catboy hybrid against his will, and escapes only to be found and cared for by Bernard, who has no clue (at first) that it's Tim.

I suppose it doesn't officially change to 🐍 year til the end of January so I can be excused. Also I don't have any ideas for snakeboy!Tim. I just like to think of him and his cute shiny scales. He's too distracting to come up with ideas for.

[petiolata]

Weird maybe but I rly love when characters are in their own private hell? Like possessed, cursed, etc to where they can't tell anyone about their suffering state so they can't get help.

Idk if there's a name for that specific trope but I'd love more stories (either original or fanfic) to read with that. I should come up with a storyline for that for some of my characters too.

[petiolata]

Should I abandon my current novel WIP for another idea that's more shiny and appealing looking at the moment, or is that the devil speaking?🤔

this is my main problem with writing longer works (in addition to the organization issues). It's a struggle to remain interested in any one story idea long enough to see it through to its conclusion. Sometimes it's just a tonal preference shift...was writing a dark angsty story, now I feel like writing a fluffy uplifting story. Was writing a fluffy story, now I feel like writing a smutty story. And so on and so on...

[petiolata]

For someone who gets so stressed out and overwhelmed by story disorganization you'd think I would be more organized 😒

Other ppl who crave organization to write: simply organize things neatly and beautifully, so efficient!

me: AHHHHHHHH so many parts what do?!?!? 😫

I've cleaned up my outline and figured out how the next chapter will go, and now I feel MUCH better about my novel WIP. The rest of the outline beyond this next chapter is still patchy/uneven/full of gaps, but I'll flesh it out more when I get to closer to those parts.

In the future though, when I think I've made an outline, I need to make sure I've actually put down a solid consistent outline and not left large parts of the story as very vague and essentially: ????.

[petiolata]

Sometimes I talk about things I like in fiction. Just because it's interesting to me to figure out the narrative patterns and character dynamics and writing techniques that appeal to me (they're not always obvious).

Here's one I don't like. (Putting this under a cut because it's negative/critical and simply my personal preference, it's no judgement of quality/skill against writers or readers who like this.)

When stories skip back in time to explain some major plot event. I don't mean like a childhood memory or repressed event. But like, say Ash Ketchum's Pikachu gets stolen by Team Rocket in Celadon City and then Professor Oak appears and stops them using Muk.

And then the story flashes back an hour to show how Oak found out Ash needed help and made his way to Celadon City

Like...I'd rly just rather have Ash go "Professor, wtf are you doing here?!"

Oak: well Ash I was in the neighborhood doing my Christmas shopping.

Exposition-y but far preferable than hitting the brakes on the plot and going backwards.

[petiolata]

I hate writing sex scenes and I super hate dream scenes and yet somehow I put a 2.5k wet dream scene in this novel 🤦

[petiolata]

I feel like I'd write more nonfiction, like articles, essays, zine prose if I didn't feel like everything I had to say was very /r/im14andthisisdeep.

But then people will write on the same topic/idea/premise with a quarter of the details and exploration I would have put into it, and people will laud that as actually deep.

And then there are the people who will approach a topic I thought on, with 100x the creativity/ingenuity/depth that I would have given. Their thoughts really are deep.

I don't know what the point of sharing this musing is. I guess that I should get out of my head and just write things, even if they feel shallow. Tbh, it's hard to feel like there's any point in sharing a thought or experience or theory, in a formal structured and effortful way as opposed to just slopping some random thoughts down like I'm doing with this post.

[petiolata]

I got about half the editing done today that I wanted to. The fatigue's been killer the dash of nausea and every joint from the waist down aching didn't help either body wtf. I am glad I put in the effort and made some progress, even if it isn't as much as I'd hoped for.

I will slowly chip away at this story like...idk, a crazy guy with a chisel trying to take down the Rocky Mountains. If he lives long enough, he could do it.