Calm & Chaos

i saw somebody say “what if you’re gone and i haven’t become anything yet” and basically that broke me on a random thursday evening

Tagged by my wonderful friends @thegreatobsesso and @winterandwords for a WIP Wednesday, and following the emerging trend I am not posting this on a Wednesday. :D

I'm gonna tag them both back, and also add @inkovert, @dyrewrites, @space-writes, @isherwoodj, and @oh-no-another-idea to share some recent lines from your WIPs!

This comes from the Definitely Not a Fanfiction current WIP I'm working on, which is both unbelievable fun and also spiralling madly out of control:

I have a friend who works in education and he told me about how he was working with a small group of HS students to develop a new school sports chant. This was a very daunting task for the group, in large part because many had learning disabilities related to reading and writing, so coming up with a catchy, hard-hitting, probably rhyming, poetry-esque piece of collaborative writing felt like something outside of their skill range. But it wasn't! I knew that, he knew that, and he worked damn hard to convince the kids of that too. Even if the end result was terrible (by someone else's standards), we knew they had it in them to complete the piece and feel super proud of their creation.

Fast-forward a few days and he reports back that yes they have a chant now... but it's 99% AI. It was made by Chat-GPT. Once the kids realized they could just ask the bot to do the hard thing for them - and do it "better" than they (supposedly) ever could - that's the only route they were willing to take. It was either use Chat-GPT or don't do it at all. And I was just so devastated to hear this because Jesus Christ, struggling is important. Of course most 14-18 year olds aren't going to see the merit of that, let alone understand why that process (attempting something new and challenging) is more valuable than the end result (a "good" chant), but as adults we all have a responsibility to coach them through that messy process. Except that's become damn near impossible with an Instantly Do The Thing app in everyone's pocket. Yes, AI is fucking awful because of plagiarism and misinformation and the environmental impact, but it's also keeping people - particularly young people - from developing perseverance. It's not just important that you learn to write your own stuff because of intellectual agency, but because writing is hard and it's crucial that you learn how to persevere through doing hard things.

Write a shitty poem. Write an essay where half the textual 'evidence' doesn't track. Write an awkward as fuck email with an equally embarrassing typo. Every time you do you're not just developing that particular skill, you're also learning that you did something badly and the world didn't end. You can get through things! You can get through challenging things! Not everything in life has to be perfect but you know what? You'll only improve at the challenging stuff if you do a whole lot of it badly first. The ability to say, "I didn't think I could do that but I did it anyway. It's not great, but I did it," is SO IMPORTANT for developing confidence across the board, not just in these specific tasks.

Struggling is part of the process, and I've had a lot of people argue with me that it shouldn't be who fail to see the point. When you replace an composer with an AI music generator, an artist with an AI-generated image, or an author with an AI-generated fanfic, you are missing out on the critical, fundamental experiences humans need to learn and grow. You are robbing yourself of essential skills you need as a person.

If you're having a hard time doing it, I say do it at least for a minute every day. Even if small, that daily progress will mount to the finish. Like the hare & the turtle.

Time will pass anyway. Trust me, you will be super grateful that there is at least some progress! I wish I had been editing a sentence or a paragraph last year every day because I would have finished my book by now!

Go, I believe in you! Never overlook that small progress! That underdog! It is a champion!!

Scroll [-3hp]

This is the difference between approaching an experience outside of your own in good faith and not. Do your best. Write the best character and plot you can. But KNOW that you're gonna get some stuff wrong. And know that it's okay.

Because sensitivity readers aren't out to get you, they're here to help you. No one scientist builds the whole rocket by themselves, so why would one novelist?

Sensitivity reading is just another kind of editor. Polished writing comes from revision. Period. Good writing can happen under any circumstances, but you can't have a polished piece without running it through the tumbler of a few revisions. The more eyes on something, the larger the pool of knowledge.

There is no shame in admitting you don't know something. In fact, I think it takes great strength. Being willing and open to learn new things takes strength. Write your best, be open, and take what you've learned into the next piece.

—

when people ask where my url is from

I've been so hesitant/scared to share this opinion because I felt that it would be misconstrued or received the wrong way, or that fantasy writers (which make up what feels like 90%+ of writing communities) would feel attacked/demonized by it. I felt like pointing out the elephant in the room was a sure way to ostracize myself from the very community that I wanted to be a part of.

I understand that writeblr and other writing communities grew out of online fandoms/fanfic, many of which included fantasy-focused stories/media, so it's not surprising that these communities are largely made up of fantasy writers themselves. But as someone who's a minority in these spaces (in more ways than one), it's difficult to feel included or even seen when every post you see circulate about wanting to follow or build a community with other writeblrs specifically says "reblog if you write fantasy so I can follow you!" as the first bullet point in the description. As if you couldn't throw a stone in any direction and be guaranteed to hit a fantasy writer.

I am not by any means saying that fantasy writers or any writers have it easy when it comes to getting others to read their work. Of course that is a glaring problem that writers in general struggle with in online spaces, and with a lot more frequency these days. But you can't ignore the fact that if you do write fantasy you already have more of a leg up in getting someone's attention than if you don't, given that the majority of people in these communities write fantasy and therefore are interested in reading other fantasy writers' work. Does that seem like a stretch to you? Okay fine. Forget even getting someone to read your work. Let's focus solely on finding and connecting with other writers like you with whom you can talk about your shared interest in the specific genre you write. Fantasy writers are far more likely to be successful at this than writers of lesser represented genres, like thriller or literary fiction. Simply because these communities are saturated with fantasy.

This is by no means a callout post, nor am I even sure I'm looking for — or can even think of — a solution to this problem. But I just wish at the very least there was more of an acknowledgement that it is a problem people in this community face? Yes, everyone has preferences. People are entitled to like what they like, and avoid what they don't. But when fantasy writers/readers choose not to engage with works that are not explicitly fantasy, you have a wealth of content/writers to connect with and turn to. When non-fantasy writers do the same with fantasy? We have very little else to turn to. It doesn't feel like we have a choice. It's so hard to find other people who are like us. Which leads to feelings of being excluded and like you don't belong (sound familiar?).

I remember making a post searching for other litfic writers on writeblr and, despite a few boosts from followers and friends, hardly anyone responded. It was discouraging, seeing how hard it was to simply find other writers in my genre when it seemed to come so easy for those who wrote fantasy. I truly started to believe that I was the only litfic writer on here even though I knew rationally that couldn't be true. People have stopped posting their writing on writeblr for a multitude of reasons, but a lot of the reason I stopped posting was because —despite having complete confidence in my ability as a writer and a deep devotion to the story I was telling — I felt my work was inferior simply because I didn't write fantasy and thus was thoroughly convinced that no one in this community could possibly be interested in it.

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