moving to monstrouswrites

Maruyama Ōkyo | 1733 - 1795

your writing is a skill, not an inborn talent (unless, yeah, maybe it is). not everyone can do what you do and love

everyone says they want to write a book. everyone has what it takes to write a book. not everyone does it anyway. you be the small percentage of success you read about

your writing will always seem brickshit horrible because you wrote and read it a million times

you love this writing thingy. quitting it will be like cutting off your fingers one by one.

someone out there will want to read what you wrote.

someone out there wants to know what is on your mind. 

someone out there appreciates your art. they will share it with their friends. they will share it with their loved ones. they will share it with their future self because maybe what you wrote saved them.

Said Synonyms- Reporting

Added: to enhance an argument

Advised: to warn, to offer help

Announced: to declare formally and or publicly

Asserted: to state positively but having no proof

Called: to capture attention by increased volume

Commented: to explain, interpret, or criticize - to make a remark

Complained: to express dislike or disagreement

Congratulated: to give wishes; to acknowledge an action or deed

Continued: to further or add to an earlier point

Declared: to make known clearly and openly

Informed: to give information, to make known; declare

Lied: to not speak truthfully

Observed: to mention casually

Offered: to suggest; to state

Mentioned: to state briefly; to bring up in conversation

Protested: to formally or openly disagree

Quoted: to repeat words of others; to cite a source

Recalled: to remember or bring up

Related: to make connection; to say allegorically

Remarked: to make a brief, casual statement of an opinion

Remembered: to recall

Reminded: to remember; to mention so as not to forget

Repeated: to say again; to restate

Replied: to answer; to say in response

Reported: to give a formal statement; to give an account of

Reassured: to give additional comfort, support, or evidence

Revealed: to make known; to publish

Stated: to say or paraphrase from official documents

Taunted: to cruelly tease in a mocking or insulting manner

Teased: to annoy or pester; vex

Tempted:  to cause to consider (usually) something bad

Said Synonyms- Explaining

Addressed: to speak directly to sme, respond or answer

Answered: to respond to a question

Asserted: to add or offer additional information

Assured: to soothe, comfort, calm

Broke In: to interrupt, supplying additional information

Cautioned: to warn or advise; strongly suggest

Claimed: to assert or maintain; to state as fact

Concluded: to finish or draw to a close; to understand

Confided: to let in on a secret; to disclose

Described: to give additional information

Explained: to make or offer an explanation

Finished: to conclude or complete

Quipped: to say ironically or unemotionally

Implied: to suggest, hint, or say without saying

Noted: to make mention; to acknowledge

Promised: to give word or make a vow

Puzzled: to say with doubt or ambiguity

Reckoned: to add or submit; to figure or believe

Rejoined: to answer an objection

Replied: to answer a question or comment

Responded: to reply or answer a question or comment

Retorted: to reply to criticism in a sharp, witty way

Returned: to answer an objection; to reply to a criticism or charge

Speculated: to guess using information available

Surmised: to conclude or deduce

Said Synonyms- Arguing

Accused: to charge, slander

Agreed: to concur, to be in harmony

Argued: defend position, disagree or dispute

Chided: to scold mildly; to goad into action

Commanded: lead; overwhelm opposition

Contended: to argue, dispute, disagree

Countered: to dispute, question

Convinced: persuaded; remove all doubt, win over

Disagreed: to be at odds; to not agree

Emphasized: to stress

Exclaimed: to speak suddenly, loudly with surprise

Interjected: to add or assert; to interrupt

Interrupted: to cut off or disrupt; to interject out of turn

Maintained: to assert, to support by argument, to affirm

Objected: to disagree; be in oppostion to

Pleaded: to implore or beg; to speak desperately

Proclaimed: to announce officially; support publicly

Proposed: to set forth a design or plan

Reasoned: to state calmly and with logic

Sassed: to speak back to authority figure; rebel

Screamed: to use high pitch loud voice

Threatened: to say in menacing manner

Warned: to make aware in advance of harm, danger, or evil

Yelled: to shout or use loud voice; scream

Said Synonyms- Suggesting

Chimed In: to add (usually) unwanted advice

Coaxed: to convince against someone’s will; change mind

Dared: challenge, question

Hinted: implies suggestion

Implied: similar to suggest - indicates a definite idea

Insinuated: to convey sth unpleasant in a sly, sneaky way

Intimidated: to say without saying, stresses delicacy of situation

Pondered: to consider; to weigh all options

Suggested: to propose as a possibility, to imply

Urged: To entreat earnestly and often repeatedly; exhort

Said Synonyms- Questioning

Asked: to question or solicit

Begged: to ask in a humble manner earnestly

Blurted: to interrupt or interject, to ask all together

Bugged: to ask repetitively; difficult or unwanted questions

Demanded: to ask for urgently and boldly

Guessed: to infer; to ask without evidence

Hypothesized: to guess, infer

Implored: to ask with fervor, implying desperation or distress

Inquired: to ask, seek information

Insisted: to demand strongly, to declare firmly

Pleaded: to answer a legal charge, to lovingly implore

Questioned: to ask, doubt, or dispute

Requested: to ask (sometimes) formally

Wondered: to say with puzzlement or doubt

Worried: to cause to feel anxious, distressed, or troubled

Said Synonyms- Acknowledging

Acknowledge: reluctant disclosure of something perhaps a secret

Admitted: reluctance to disclose or concede facts

Affirmed: implies deep conviction, little chance of contradiction

Alleged: to assert or declare, especially without proof

Approved: to consent or agree

Avowed: boldly declaring, often in the face of opposition

Boasted: to take pride in, brag or overstate

Bragged: to boast or overstate; be prideful

Conceded: similar to acknowledge and admit  

Confessed: an admission of a weakness, failure, omission, or guilt

Corrected: to instruct more correctly; remove misconception

Denied: not accepted; unused, refused

Disclosed: to reveal something previously concealed

Divulged: to reveal sth that should have remained secret

Fretted: to needlessly worry about small details

Greeted: to acknowledge presence; salute, salutation

Imitated: to copy, mimic or simulate

Jested: to make fun of, tease

Marveled: to speak with wonderment or amazement

Nodded: to move head up and down in agreement

Praised: to speak of with honor; to speak highly of someone

Revealed: to make known that which had been secret or hidden

Uttered: to articulate; pronounce or speak

Volunteered: to give or offer to give voluntarily

Said Synonyms- Sounds & Misc

Babbled: to speak incoherently; gibberish, like baby talk

Bubbled: to speak lively and expressively; with joy

Chatted: to speak informally as to a friend

Chortled: to chuckle gleefully; short laugh of joy

Chorused: to speak simultaneously, together

Chuckled: short, soft laugh; usually to one’s self

Coughed: short, strong expulsion of air from lungs

Decided: finished, set

Echoed: repeated sound

Gasped: heavy breath after scare or physical exertion

Giggled: short, high-pitched laugh from fear or nervousness

Growled: rough, threatening manner

Gulped: to speak taking in large amounts of air as if drinking

Gurgled: to speak with fluid in the throat

Hissed: to speak in evil threatening manner

Hollered: to shout usually to someone at a distance

Lisped: to speak unclearly substituting sounds especially ‘th’

Panted: to speak as if out of breath

Piped:to speak suddenly and loudly

Quavered: to speak emotionally with faltering voice

Shrilled: high pitched shriek

Sighed: to speak with difficulty as if bored

Snickered: to say derisively with a laugh

Sniffed: to say as if about to cry

Snorted: to say with contempt and a short burst of breath

Sobbed: to cry uncontrollably

Sputtered: to speak with difficulty perhaps from impediment

Stammered: repeating words and sounds while missing others

Stuttered: to repeat certain sounds multiple times

Vowed: to promise solemnly; pledge

Wept: to cry softly, quietly

Whimpered: to cry or sob with soft intermittent sounds; whine

Whine: to complain or protest in a childish fashion

for the writer whose inspiration keeps running away.

Recognize that inspiration is, essentially, a faceless trickster deity and, to control it, you must be very, very clever.

Feed it carefully. If you want it to focus on your dark fantasy rather than your optimistic science fiction … feed it darkness, feed it magic, feed it the grimmest of aesthetics.

Remember that you only have so much creative energy. Use it wisely.

Set up a reward system. If you finish this draft, you can print it. It can be on your shelf. Your book. On your shelf. It exists!!

Remind yourself why you started it in the first place. Make a concise list of all the things you love about it (and conveniently forget those that you don’t) and pin up on your bathroom mirror. Add to this list.

Share it with a close friend. Make them love it. Make them want to read it to the end. Make them promise to swear at you if you don’t finish it.

Set reasonable goals and deadlines.

Let yourself take breaks. During your breaks, consider feeding your inspiration monster art and music and movies and peanut butter cookies.

Write down any and every idea. From the most bizarre to the most wonderful. Don’t discount anything.

Stay alive. You can’t keep inspiration if you don’t stay alive. Eat often (at least once a day), hydrate even oftener.

you just have to go through the tag you use for your edits. posts that were marked explicit will look like this:

and if you click on the post, you’ll see this:

but take a look at the address bar

this is the post number. if you copy it and go to tumblr dot com/post number, you’ll see the post and will be able to edit it.

From your local ex-hijabi and someone who lived in a country that enforced mandatory hijab.

1. Hijab is not just necessary for a woman. Hijab also includes men, who have to wear modest clothing, cover their arms, and grow a beard.

2. No one wears their hijab when they get inside the privacy of their home. Wearing hijab, especially if you wear it tight or its really hot out, can get uncomfortable so often times I would just whip it off.

3. We don’t wake up and put the hijab on, it’s only to be worn around men who are not close-relatives (husband and son) or children. Some people don’t follow this to a T and that’s ok.

5. Being a hijabi doesn’t mean you understand the dynamics and philosophy of islam. It just means you want to wear the hijab and took that step. Hijabs dont make you Holier Than Thou.

4. Hijab is not only a headscarf, but it’s literally a dresscode. You can’t wear a hijab with short shorts and your whole tit hanging out. You need to cover up to your wrists, ankles and neck area— clothes should be baggy and not tight. Once again, some people don’t follow this to a T, that’s fine.

4.5. Hijabs are suppose to cover the ears, hair, and neck.

6. “Can I draw this character without their hijab in the privacy of their own home?” Yeah it’s fine, no one wears hijab in their house unless they have guests.

7. Hijab means different things for different people. They can mean security, they can be a means of achieving confidence. They can also have absolutely No Reason for wearing the hijab besides that they want to.

8. At the end of the day Hijabis are still human beings, and often times they’re treated like aliens and it’s not okay. They’re a human who is wearing a headscarf for religious reasons. There’s nothing “exotic, ethnic” or “mysterious” about that. It’s like considering anyone who wears a hat to be some weird foreign creature.

reminder that it’s okay if your chapter is only one page long

reminder that it’s okay if your chapter is only one sentence long

as long as you can get across the point of your chapter, be it with ten thousand words, or just ten, then you do it. 

I wrote in bite sized chapters 800 words long in my first draft. Now I’m writing 1200 word long ones and it works better.

So I make costumes. Not your average fitted attire. I mean I do that too, but not just that. I make BIG costumes. Like with metal and shit. So about October-ish, I contacted a costume making studio that does work with a convention called “Dickens-fair”. Maybe You’ve heard of it. It is a Christmas fair that turns the whole center into a replica of Dickens’ London, complete with actors who represent his characters. I had always wanted to go and was just trying to think of ways to help out.

I contacted the head person for costumes for the actors and I told her I make period pieces and I specialize in weird stuff, but also in turning old thrift store items into period attire. She emailed me back and was like “Come meet me” and so I did. I came out to her studio and was sitting with her folks, showing her pictures of all the stuff I’d done I was proud of. Then she says…”Wait…I have an idea.”

She tells me that every year, Dickens-fair has this one performer who is a fiddling Christmas tree. Like What? yes. A tree…that fiddles. Apparently it’s like the fucking Mickey of Dickens-fair. Only, her outfit was made a few years back  from fabric, and kind of looked like a dunce cap with streamers. She told me that this year, the Fiddling Tree wanted a new costume. She says “Can you make a Christmas tree that can fiddle?”

I’m like…no. “If she can fiddle and wear a tree, then I can build a tree that can be worn by a fiddler. Hell yeah.”

And she’s like…”It can’t touch her shoulders, and it has to fit over her normal costume, and it has to be period accurate, so all period ornaments.” 

And I’m like…bitch, “I got this.” 

She says “Come back in a week and meet her and give us your idea.”

So I designed…because I make costumes and I have Christmas in my blood. My mom always tells this story about how when I was like 4, I was with her at the train station in LA and I saw this man sitting on a bench. Now this man wore blue denim overalls, with a long sleeved red shirt, had a white beard, and carried a wooden cane carved with Rudolph, who had a gemstone nose…He was fucking Santa. Admit it. And 4 year old me was like……SANTA? My mom always says I stared at him hard and then tried to climb in his lap, like for real Tim Allen from Santa Clause style, but he was cool, and pulled me into his lap and had a whole conversation with me about whether or not I was being good…in July. According to my mom, he told her he was a professional Santa and this was something he always got from kids, and that he loved it. He then got picked up by a woman in a convertible and drove away.

My mom has been telling me this story since I was five. 

So this year, about 3 years ago, I was like…A Christmas tree that fiddles…I got this.

I mean, I drew this shit. I went to hardware stores and craft shops and I priced out this shit. There were emails about what I could expect to be the substructure. I made a barbie doll scale model with pipe cleaners. I came in with a fucking Plan.

And they laughed and said… “We love the barbie…OK.”

So I had a budget. I had an idea. And I went with it. I made measurements and all sorts of stuff. Let me tell you about this costume…

This woman is 6′2″. She fiddles. She wears, beneath the tree, a full period costume. This means a bell hoop skirt and a corset. I made sure they had a hoop for her that was carved from fucking PVC pipe and a steel boned corset, and I went to work. I had frames…on fucking chains…from MY CEILING. I had the whole thing mapped out.

A lightweight metal skirt in a grid pattern made from chain, linked together in a mesh. gathered at the waist and clipped like a belt. Over the head, a cone-like structure carved out of mesh, mounted on braces that were lashed to the torso with straps bolted into the metal cross-braces. A light aluminum frame. And over this…a cape, made from long dangling chains. Every inch of chain was coated in weatherproofing green paint. Every few links…a limb hacked off a fake plastic Christmas tree. Woven amidst these? A series of handmade and donated ornaments, including fake cookies made from clay, fake candles with a remote control that controlled the flicker. I had paper ornaments, streamers, instruments made of brass, birds, candies made from plastic…I mean I had everything, and all to period. I worked and worked on this for months and had numerous fittings.

The aluminum headpiece came along. I was stressed. I didn’t know exactly how I was going to make this fucking cone mount on her chest so her shoulders would be free. I mean I had ideas - like a cone, but with a back and front piece that came down her torso and to which, straps were fixed that clipped at the sides. This would distribute weight evenly through the corset and allow for freedom of the shoulders. But! I didn’t have a firm plan. I went to the hardware store.

Me. Three months pregnant. All cute and glowy and shit.

And I walked into the section where all the plumbing and flashing is. Now I know my way around. I hate going here because I’m usually hassled by a dude who thinks girls can’t know shit about hardware. But this time…this time it was a nice old man with a snowy white beard, wearing a red shirt and a green apron. I’m like…he’s a Santa…this is fate.

He comes over and says “What can I help you with today?”

And so I tell him the whole story. About the tree, and the odd parameters, the physics, the complexities. I tell him what I’m trying to create, this cone of metal lashed to the chest, and he…

Smiles. 

He tells me, “I’m a Santa. I do it every year. I love this project! I want to help!”

As we are brain storming, and he’s showing me all the products that might work, he mentions to me that he isn’t the first Santa in his family.

“My dad did it for most of his life.”

“Man, I have such respect for Santas. My mom always tells this story about me meeting this man who looked like a Santa at a train station and trying to sit on his knee.”

The man got very quiet. “At a train station?”

“Yeah, like he was wearing overalls and a red shirt and had this carved cane…”

“I remember that cane,” he says.

I turn to him… “The one with Rudolph?”

“With a ruby nose. Yeah. After he died I looked everywhere for it, but I couldn’t find it.”

I stopped. Like straight up stopped moving, with like my limbs all cold as snow. “Wait a minute? What? Are you telling me you know that Santa?”

“I think that was my dad. He is exactly as you say. He worked on the railroad as a conductor for most of his life, and when he retired they gave him free travel. He was always taking trips, and he always went as Santa, because after he retired, he did that full time.”

“Did your mom own a convertible? Like a sleek one?”

“Yup.”

I lost it. I’m in the middle of fucking Ace Hardware, talking to Santa, about my Santa, the one I can’t remember, but always knew existed, and that man is this Santa’s daddy. And here I am…shopping for parts to a fiddling Christmas tree. I cried like a little kid. He hugged me. I apologized and told him I was in my first trimester. He said it was fine. He gave me his card. Told me he was glad to hear his father had had such an impact on kids. He helped me pick out my tree pieces and then checked me out.

I built the best fucking tree you ever saw. I wove metal. I bent aluminum. I used riveters. I worked with saws, and vices, and paint, and glue, and fucking plastic clay. I did everything wearing gloves and a mask because of baby. I did it all like I had a fire under me, because fuck that…I’m not letting Santas down.

And this is what I made.

This was the dry fitting, the trial run. We fluffed it out with more limbs, added bits here and there, or planned for more. I strung this fucking thing from my rafters on a mannequin and we had a tree decorating party, putting ornaments on it like it was a real tree. Then we had her put on the whole thing, and we watched her play “O Tannenbaum”

And it was the best Christmas moment ever, for me. 

That year, I had free tickets to Dickens-fair. I went and caught sight of my Christmas tree fiddling around, playing songs for kids and spreading the spirit. Then later I saw the fiddler dancing in Fezziwig’s ball, with her tree skirt still on over her dress. It was awesome, seeing this 7.5′ tall tree gliding around, this thing I made, with help from My Santa’s Son.

I was Santa that year. It made my holiday.

So the next time you meet a Santa… it might not be the real guy… but you needed to meet him. And if you are a Santa… this is what you do. This is your legacy.

Unfortunately, I’m not going to be there this year as I’m traveling literally the entire time the fair is on, but I might just take you up on this in future years if you’re game! I love going to this fair and wearing my period costume I made. Really a fun fair. Thank you so much for the offer.

Are you wearing bloomers also?