LavenderJam

I saw your note on ao3 that you would not be writing for HDM anymore. Does this mean you will not be writing any more fics at all? Honestly, I would read whatever you wrote, even if I was not part of the fandom.

What I really want to say is thank you for all the talent you've shared with us over the years. You've given me so much masriel content to enjoy and inspired me to write fanfiction as well. I wish you absolute success with your personal projects; I am always rooting for you!!

“We should have died,” she cried. “We should have fallen into the abyss and been obliterated.”

The golden monkey stroked her tangled, coarse hair with his little black hand. “It’s not much further now. And then we can sleep, and then – ”

“And then?” she said. “And then we shall wake in this strange new world, our only company a dying, drooling, useless man, who may never be well again – ” She gasped and pressed her hand over her mouth, the tears on her face glinting in the moonlight, as if her cheeks were decorated with silver charms.

“Hush now, Marisa,” the monkey said, curling into her and placing his hand over her heart. “If he does not recover, we can always cross back without him.”

That thought placated her somewhat, and she bent her head so that her dæmon could wipe her tears.

By the time they reached the clearing again, the sky was alive with stars. Marisa dropped the bags with a thud and stood there, aching and weeping and drained, and tilted her head back with a wince. She took deep, gasping breaths and tried to surrender to the expanse above her. She let her eyes flit from star to star, her tears blurring the scene into a sparkling sea, and thought of the other worlds layered upon this one, in which other people were looking up at other stars and other moons, and begging for conviction, just as she was. She sunk to her knees, the cool night air ruffling her hair.

She knew that she should dress Asriel’s head and clean her own wounds before succumbing to sleep, but within seconds the sky has begun to ripple and pulse as if it were a dissipating hallucination, and Marisa knew that she could do no more for either of them before the dawn broke. With her last conscious thoughts, Marisa crawled across the ground, pulled a blanket from the trunk and laid her head down beneath the stars, drifting off into a fitful sleep beside her wounded lover, her dæmon curled into her breast, the pair of them breathing as one.

Then came the washing of the hair, the neck, the face, all manner of lotions and potions swept across Lyra’s skin until she was squeaky clean and beaming. The detangling spray smelled like pear drops; the conditioner like vanilla and hibiscus. The moisturiser was thick as clotted cream. By the time Lyra was snuggled into Mother’s bed, hair combed, book in hand, nightdress on, she felt like an iced cake or sweet biscuit, or perhaps a flower in a garden, ready to be picked.

“Have you chosen a story, darling?” Mother said, as she removed her own diamonds, watch, hair grips; as she wiped away her mascara, lipstick, powder, eye-dust; as she applied her own cleanser, toner, moisturiser and night cream.

“Uh-huh,” Lyra said, holding up the book. “I mean: yes, Mama, I have.”

“Wonderful,” Mother said, in the soft and special night-time voice that let Lyra know she meant it.

Lyra had chosen the book quickly, not because she didn’t care about that evening’s story, but because she loved to lie in Mother’s blankets and watch as Mother rubbed away her layers of paint and metal; as she revealed the woman who was only Lyra’s mother beneath. Then came the silk pajamas, the lavender pillow mist, the twin mugs of hot chocolatl. The story, read aloud in French, their secret language in the heart of London. The forgotten prayer, even though both Lyra’s schoolteachers and their priest said that praying before rest was a necessity. The lights turned out, Mother’s arms opened, Pantalaimon and Mother’s dæmon sitting sentinel at their feet. Mother’s arms were Lyra’s favourite place to sleep in all the world; as a young girl, she’d hoped that she’d always be allowed to snooze in that warm, safe embrace, the smell of Mother’s potions and perfumes perfusing her dreams forever.

Such was the way of Lyra Coulter’s little life.

Thank you for the tag @torrefaction-of-silver!

Favourite time of the year: Summer, absolutely. I’m never happier than when I’m sprawled out in the sun half-naked with an ice cream, like a lizard basking on a rock. 

Comfort foods: I have a huge sweet tooth, and the British do cake and puddings really well. If I’m feeling down, then a bowl of sticky toffee pudding or something gooey and chocolate drowned in double cream will always perk me up. 

Do you collect anything: It’s not a deliberate collecting effort, but I do seem to accrue books at an impressive rate. Given that I currently move every two years or so, that’s usually to my detriment. 

Favourite drinks: The sweet tooth strikes again. I love a sweet, creamy cocktail, or any drink that tastes like perfume: lychee, rose, violet, etc. I once split a bottle of Amaretto with a friend and it was gone in two hours. My partner also likes to pick sloes in the autumn and make sloe gin for us to drink over Christmas, which is always delicious. 

I drink obscene amounts of water too, because I am very prone to UTIs but refuse to fuck any less than I want to. One thing that confuses many people is that I don’t drink tea or coffee - in fact, I have never had a cup of coffee. Maybe 2023 will be the year that I take the plunge. 

Favorite music artists: I very rarely get attached to specific singers and musicians; I’m much more likely to become obsessed with a song or two!

Current favourite songs: Sapokanikan and Divers by Joanna Newsom, The Whole of the Moon by the Waterboys, Evergreen by Yebba (maybe my favourite song ever), Barbra Streisand singing My Man, Dancing Queen by ABBA, and Clair de Lune, an incredibly basic forever favourite. 

Favourite fics: @torrefaction-of-silver’s Fortunate the Man with None. It changed me. Of my own? Raising Hell and Devil May Care are the obvious answers, but I love Good Grief. I think it’s very sad and horny and lush. 

Favourite video games: Not a gamer, I’m afraid!

“So, what was it about tonight than made chancing detention seem sensible?” Marisa asks him, settling back against the windowsill and folding her arms.

“It will not have escaped your notice that there are plenty of deep pockets out there. Thanks to you, these are the sorts of petty indignities with which I must now concern myself.”

Oh, it’s delicious. Delicious! “Ah,” she says, smiling, “so tonight we’re both whores.”

“I’m not even going to dignify that with a response,” he says, followed immediately by, “Though if I am a whore tonight, it’s only because you made me so.”

“Of course, it’s always my fault, isn’t it? So who can I blame? Who made me a whore?”

“Not me,” he says. She wonders if he’ll leave then, or at least threaten to. But instead he walks purposefully towards one of the room’s two settees, red leather, facing each other, and sits down without breaking eye contact. He looks up at her. She doesn’t like it; as if she’s a girl in a pleasure house and he expects her to take off her clothes for him and dance. So she walks over and sits opposite him, on the other settee, and he smiles a little as he leans back into the leather, rests one ankle on the opposite knee, and has another mouthful of his drink. Stelmaria comes to stand at one end of the sofas, and then the golden monkey leaps up deftly, to perch on the arm at the other end of the two. For a moment, the four of them hang there, watching, sipping, breathing, like the four points of a compass or pieces laid on a chessboard.

Hello! What a lovely message to receive today, thank you! I’d love to hear your thoughts on my fics, so please feel free to leave comments whenever! Even on old fics (especially then, tbh; it’s so nice to know that people are still reading older stuff!). It really makes the difference when I’m writing :)

Firstly, sorry it took me such a long time to answer this ask. Secondly, I’m so flattered that you’d like my advice on this topic - though, to be clear, I am very much an amateur writer and am no authority on the craft! But I do think a lot about the rhythm of my stories and I can happily share my own thought process here, in the hope that it might be useful to you too. And for what it’s worth, writing so much fiction and trying to improve as a creative writer is the best thing I’ve ever done to improve my academic writing as well. So the ideas are absolutely transferable!

For me, the most important thing is to read everything aloud. It gives you a different perspective on the sound of the sentences and I can always tell when there’s a clause that needs to be cut or when a word is missing. Pay attention to when your mouth wants to end the sentence (and when it’s hanging there, because it needs more). I’d also recommend reading your work aloud several times: if you keep tripping over the same phrase or section, then that’s a good sign that the flow’s not right. 

Following that, read other work aloud! Great books and poetry almost always have perfect rhythm (that’s why they’re so pleasing to read and listen to!). Often reading your own work aloud only alerts you that something’s wrong; it doesn’t tell you what to do about it. That comes from reading work with excellent rhythm and slowly learning what that sounds like to the ear. Overall, I do think reading aloud is the most important thing: in John Gardner’s book The Art of Fiction, he writes at length about the specific details and techniques of writing with various metres, but then says that a good writer will do this all by ear. Only in dire circumstances do you need to mark the stresses on a sentence!

Vary your sentence structure. Gary Provost said this better than I ever could: 

“This sentence has five words. Here are five more words. Five-word sentences are fine. But several together become monotonous. Listen to what is happening. The writing is getting boring. The sound of it drones. It’s like a stuck record. The ear demands some variety. 

Now listen. I vary the sentence length, and I create music. Music. The writing sings. It has a pleasant rhythm, a lilt, a harmony. I use short sentences. And I use sentences of medium length. And sometimes, when I am certain the reader is rested, I will engage him with a sentence of considerable length, a sentence that burns with energy and builds with all the impetus of a crescendo, the roll of the drums, the crash of the cymbals–sounds that say listen to this, it is important. 

So write with a combination of short, medium, and long sentences. Create a sound that pleases the reader’s ear. Don’t just write words. Write music.” 

This is an important thing for me to keep in mind, because I love a long sentence!

Sometimes you need an extra word or clause just to make the rhythm work. Mostly, I try to cut out the ‘just’s and the ‘now’s, because they’re filler words and are lazy on my part. But sometimes you need that extra beat or two to make the rest of the sentence sound right.

Match the rhythm with the mood and character. This might be less relevant for academic writing, but in fiction, the rhythm you choose for a scene (or paragraph) is an integral part of the overall mood. If a character’s feeling relaxed, lazy; daydreaming by a river in summer, you might use long, drowsy sentences to capture the atmosphere. If a character’s struggling to think straight or is under immense stress, you might use sentence fragments. Short, regular sentences might work well for a character who is very logical and orderly, while longer, meandering prose might make sense for someone dreamier whose mind is often floating off on tangents. You get the idea. 

And lastly: get the rhythm of the final sentence right. That last sentence is the part of your work that readers are left with, and it’s so important that it leaves them feeling like the story is finished. If you get the rhythm wrong, you’ll leave your reader with a sense that there’s more to say but they’re not privy to it. Don’t do it! Make that last part perfect. 

Then Stelmaria gives a little growl, tiring of the game, and the golden monkey whines, reaching down towards her. Asriel frowns. “Let him go to her.”

Marisa shakes her head. Tears have sprung to her eyes. “No.”

“Why not?”

“I mustn’t,” she whispers.

“It’s what he wants.”

“I wish that it wasn’t. You simply can’t imagine how much.” That doesn’t seem to upset him in the slightest, because she hasn’t denied it. She’s staring at Asriel through tear-blurred eyes. He licks his lips. Then Stelmaria leaps up, claws pressing gently into the crest of Marisa’s rear, which spooks her badly enough that she drops her dæmon out of fright. He flings himself at the snow leopard, who receives him gratefully, and the pair begin to bite and lick and rut on the chalky stone of the palace path. Marisa’s eyes close, and a tear slips down her cheek. She feels looser already, and it disgusts her.