fairies are better than mermaids

"Kill your darlings" means "if something is holding you back, get rid of it, even if it sounds pretty."

That's it! That's all it means! It means if you're stuck and stalled out on your story and you could fix the whole block by removing something but you're avoiding removing that thing because it's good, you remove that thing. That's the darling.

It does NOT mean

That you have to get rid of your self-indulgent writing

That you should delete something just because you like it (?wtf?)

That you need to kill off characters (??? what)

That you have to pare your story down to the absolute bare bones

That you have to delete anything whatsoever if you don't want to

The POINT is that you STOP FEELING GUILTY for throwing out good writing that isn't SERVING THE STORY.

The POINT is that you don't get so HUNG UP on the details that you lose sight of the BIG PICTURE.

Anyway I was bitching about how hard it is to come up with feasible planets in Star Wars because sometimes you need a new planet from scratch and sometimes you need to know more about a planet than the 'has jungles, is probably a moon technically' than Wookieepedia will give you, and they're like 'oh yeah I can do something about that'.

So they've written (in Matlab but they swear it will run as a .exe as well and I may be conscripted to embed it as a web tool at some point) a star system generator.

You input what you know about the planet (ecosystem, population, sun colour, does it have liquid water, does it have a moon or moons, is it a moon or moons, temperature averages, atmosphere, you get me) and it will give you the... everything else about the star system, in obedience to real-universe physics. And if you input nothing you get a randomly generated star system.

And I’m like oh I know people who will be into this with a vengeance, and they're not on Tumblr, so this is me seeing who exactly would be keen on, and I cannot stress this enough, a real-physics comprehensive star system generator.

I've encountered several portrayals of characters in recovery from addiction, both in fanfiction and published writing, that are clearly somewhat under-researched or leaning into stereotypes. Additionally, writing advice posts on the subject often feel detached and cite statistics rather than express humanity.

As a result, I decided to put together what I believe to be some characteristics and shared experiences of people in recovery that aren't just about withdrawal and might be less familiar to the general public. Perhaps they can be useful to writers aiming to write thoughtful and accurate portrayals of characters in similar situations.

Please note, of course, that both addiction and recovery are very unique, personalized experiences, so no one list will ever apply 100% to a single person—fictional or real.

In reality, many physical and mental symptoms are present for a lot of people for YEARS, potentially forever! I can't even list everything wrong with my own body without sounding like an exaggeration. I have to be honest and admit I most likely shortened my own lifespan.

1. Most people that submit to literary journals are cis white men. We know this because our journal has an anonymous survey about demographics for people that submit.

2. Most things that get submitted to the creative non fiction section are on the level of middle school "What I did over the summer" essays.

There is so much work from marginalized narratives in litmags these days — people lament there is no representation in media, but that disregards the progress and diversity of the works of editors and writers who help make these litmags possible. 

There is representation, and it is flourishing. They are waiting to be read. 

The Lumiere Review compiles a list of submission opportunities every month, and it are always very useful: 

https://lumierereview.com/sub-sep-oct-2021

List of Litmags that Specifically Look for Work from Marginalized Creators or is Run by Marginalized Creators:

Warning Lines: https://warninglines.com/

With Confetti: https://with-confetti.com/

Giving Room Magazine: http://www.givingroommag.com/

The Bitchin’ Kitsch: https://www.talbot-heindl.com/

Tealight Press: https://www.tealightpress.com/

Tipping the Scales: https://www.tippingthescalesjournal.co.uk/

The Winnow Magazine: https://www.thewinnowmagazine.com/

perhappened: https://www.perhappened.com/

AZE Journal: https://azejournal.com/

Honeyfire Lit: https://honeyfirelit.com/

and so much more!!

(And even if some litmags’ mission statement isn’t specifically for marginalized creators, they will always welcome these narratives.)

How many chapters do you prewrite before posting?

I decided to try to sort my ideas and whats canon regarding my ocs with this and ITS PERFECT. IT ALL FEELS SO CONRETE. and i sure as hell AM Going to continue to use this with every single OC I have until google drives is set ablaze- Just!!!!!!!!

From what I can tell, there are only three universally applicable pieces of writing advice:

Read a lot (mandatory)

Show your writing to people (mandatory)

 Let’s say you’ve got a city where there’s tame white doves everywhere. They’re not pests, they’re regarded as sacred, holy protectors of the city, and the whole city cares for them and feeds them like they’re pets. They’re so tame because it’s a social taboo to hurt or scare one. Nice pretty doves :)

 Then someone points out that even if they’re not seen as pests, doesn’t having a completely unchecked feral pigeon population - that not only isn’t being culled, but actively fed and cared for - mean that there would be bird shit absolutely all over the place?

 A part of you wants to say no, because these are your nice, pretty doves. To explain that there’s a reason why they’re not shitting all over the place, maybe they’re super-intelligent and specifically bred and trained to not shit all over the place. The logistics of how, exactly, could anyone breed and train a flock of feral birds go unaddressed.

 An even worse solution would be to not have those birds, editing them out of the world. No, they spark joy, you can’t just toss them out!

 Now, consider: Yes, yes they would, but the city also has an extensive public sanitation service that’s occupied 90% of the time by cleaning bird shit off of everything. One of the most common last names in the area actually translates to “one who scrapes off dove shit”, and it’s a highly respected occupation. And thanks to the sheer necessity of constantly regularly cleaning everything, the city enjoys a much higher standard of cleanliness, and less public health issues caused by poor public sanitation.

The Augsburg concept has one big pigeon house every 500m in which wild pigeons are fed, protected from weather and have nesting opportunities. Cities doing that have WAY less uncontrolled populations (since they can take out eggs if they feel they need reduce the population), way less shit AND a healthy population since it’s easier for veterinarians to notice and get to sick animals.

So I’d say one can of course still keep your general idea……but there’s also those MASSIVE palace-like pidgeon houses and only the most worthy are allowed to enter and directly interact with the pigeons (feed them, heal them, clean their lodgings). One big entrance for the human servants (priests??) and millions of small holes for the pigeons.

Because it was trained on pirated work—including freely accessible online writing (like fanfic, academic texts)—ChatGPT picked up patterns and quirks native to human writing.

Including (sigh) the em dash.

There are other victims here (RIP tapestry and delve 🫠), but the appropriation of the em dash—a punctuation mark beloved by writers everywhere—feels especially personal.

A kind of low-grade panic is ensuing. Writers who once memed their own em dash overuse—the greatest punctuation mark ever to grace the control-freak’s lexicon, frankly—are suddenly backing away to avoid accusations.

No. More. We have centuries of dash-abusing writers behind us. We will not sit quietly while AI repurposes our beloved stilted aside—or the just-one-more clarification the sentence demands—or the dramatic pause your comma could never—etc.

You don’t write like AI—AI writes like you.

Defend the em dash.

(Feel free to download/share/stick it where it matters!)