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Taye Be Gladiating

@artsychica2012 / artsychica2012.tumblr.com

Gladiator with a Laptop.
Loves Scandal, Tony Goldwyn and Kerry Washington and the Scandal crew.
I'm a child of God, a daughter, a mother, a sister, a digital griot, a visual | digital artist, a writer-in-training of original soul and sorcery fantasy fiction and the occasional fanfic.
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artsychica2012 mvid my scandal mvids
artsychica2012 art all my other artistic endeavors
other tags: amWriting writing tips
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charliejaneanders

Random writing thought: the best stories are often the ones that only you could have written — but also the ones that you could only write at this one moment.

I couldn't write All the Birds in the Sky from scratch now if I tried. But the me of 2013 couldn't have written The Prodigal Mother either.

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neil-gaiman

When people ask if I'd change anything about a book I've already written, I want to explain to them that I'm not the person who wrote that book any longer, and even if I tried right now I'd write a different one. Everything you make as a writer* is a combination of what you want to say and who you are at the time you are telling that story.

*possibly also as an artist or as a human being

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fixyourwritinghabits
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byjoveimbeinghumble

A research tip from a friendly neighborhood librarian! 

I want to introduce you to the wonderful world of subject librarians and Libguides. 

I’m sure it’s common knowledge that scholars and writers have academic specialties. The same is true for subject librarians! Most libraries use a tool called Libguides to amass and describe resources on a given topic, course, work, person, etc. (I use them for everything. All hail Libguides.) These resources can include: print and ebooks, databases, journals, full-text collections, films/video, leading scholars, data visualizations, recommended search terms, archival collections, digital collections, reliable web resources, oral histories, and professional organizations. 

So, consider that somewhere out there in the world, there may be a librarian with a subject specialty on the topic you’re writing on, and this librarian may have made a libguide for it. 

Are you writing about vampires? 

How about poverty? 

  • Michigan State: Poverty and Inequality with great recommended terms and links to datasets 
  • Notre Dame: a multimedia guide on Poverty Studies.

Do you need particular details about how medicine or hygiene was practiced in early 20th century America?

  • UNC Chapel Hill: Food and Nutrition through the 20th Century (with a whole section on race, gender, and class)
  • Brown University: Primary Sources for History of Health in the Americas
  • Duke University: Ad*Access, a digital collection of advertisements from the early 20th century, with a section on beauty and hygiene  

You can learn about Japanese Imperial maps, the American West, controlled vocabularies, Crimes against art and art forgeries, anti-Catholicism, East European and Eurasian vernacular languages, geology, vaudeville, home improvement and repairs, big data, death and dying, and conspiracy theories.

Because you’re searching library collections, you won’t have access to all the content in the guides, and there will probably be some link rot (dead links), but you can still request resources through your own library with interlibrary loan, or even request that your library purchase the resources! Even without the possibility of full-text access, libguides can give you the words, works, people, sites, and collections to improve your research.

Search [your topic] + libguide and see what you get!

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thoughshebebutlittle1

This is…amazing. I am angry that I didn’t know about this until now. Now I can ~academically~ indulge my fascination with the 1918 flu pandemic? When I have organic chem homework and a lab report due tomorrow? I both love this and hate this.

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byjoveimbeinghumble

I have terrible news. 

At a quick glance, Christopher Newport University, Goodwin College, and Harford Community College all have libguides on the 1918 flu pandemic. 

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diebrarian

LibGuides are magic.

(also let us know if you find dead links, we can fix them!)

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librariandragon

An even better way to search for libguides?

https://community.libguides.com

Use the libguide community site and search by topic, institution, or even your friendly neighborhood librarian! (If you have a librarian or two who you trust to put you on the right path, you might be able to get that guidance even if you don’t have time to reach out directly!) If their site says “LibGuide” it’ll show up in THAT community somewhere!

Looking to see what books are being used in a particular class in a particular university? Course specific libguides usually have those!

Interested in browsing until you find something that catches your attention? Springshare (the vendor that manages LibGuides) curates lists of interesting, amusing, and innovative libguides! (Okay some of these are boring because they’re geared towards UX and data visualization for librarians, but still…)

Interested in seeing the stuff that YOUR local or institutional librarians are trying to promote? Looking for ways to make the most of the resources that are freely available to you just down the road? Libraries from Atlantic City to Saratoga Springs to South Australia are making guides for their various resources, which describe everything from how to search databases to how to read call numbers to how to access online resources like e-books and video subscriptions!

Even major institutions like the New York Public Library have guides, on everything from genealogy to the history of New York neighborhoods!

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heywriters
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vixivulpixel

Doing away with the lame "character gets fat to indicate that they've become a huge loser" trope and replacing it with a new, cooler "character gets fat to indicate they finally feel fulfilled with life" trope

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pocket-deer-boy

Doing away with the lame “character loses weight to indicate that they’ve regained control over their life” trope and replacing it with a new, cooler “character gets fat to indicate they’ve found the comfort and stability to look after themselves and are recovering from hardships”

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fandomshatefatpeople
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ao3commentoftheday
Anonymous asked:

my biggest obstacle as a writer is that i desperately want to be a popular and well-known fic author, but my main fic inspiration comes from characters most fans don’t want to read fic for, or ideas that go against popular fanon/characterization and so are doomed from the start. i end up feeling paralyzed and like i can’t write the unpopular ideas I want to write, because i hate knowing i could have done better by writing something with broader appeal. but whenever i try to write solely for numbers i lose motivation while the halfway through the fic. so i end up unable to write anything and feeling miserable because of it.

i want to see my unpopular ideas come to life, but i don’t want to see my fics crash and burn and keep missing the chance to create fic that people really love. so most times, i don’t write anything, but i hate that i’m so hamstrung by my own anxieties. i so desperately wish i could create one of those extremely well-known long fics that most people love and always rec everywhere, but i feel like i’m completely incapable of that. i know i should be writing for myself, but i’m greedy and want results and for people to like my fic, however unlikely that is. wanting to write my ideas but knowing i’ll limit my audience if i do is something that’s constantly on my mind. do you have any advice for me?

ao3commentoftheday answered:

My biggest question after reading your ask is simply: why?

You're very clear about wanting to be a popular writer. You want to write a fic that lots of people talk about, and you want people to know who you are. Have you examined that desire at all?

You say that the things you actually want to write are not the things that will make you a popular author. That means you have a choice:

  • write things you don't care about with no guarantee of becoming that Big Name Fan or
  • write things you love and enjoy spending time writing and know that BNF status will probably never happen.

Writing fanfic is really not a great way to try to become popular. It's an even worse way to try to become "famous" in any kind of way. So dig into what it is that you hope to get from the "broader audience" that you could appeal to by writing something you don't really like.

Are you trying to get a feeling of being liked? Respected? Looked up to? Do you want to be someone other fans look to for advice or for setting the tone of the fandom? Do you want love? Power? Some kind of community connection? Recognition of the effort you put into your works?

Some of those things likely will require you to pretend to be someone you're not. You might even manage to write that one big fic that gets thousands of comments and tons of people talking about it on tumblr (or wherever else you care about, social media-wise).

Others you can probably still get by writing your "unpopular" ideas but seeking out your fellow fans. It will take more legwork to find them and you'll need to be willing to be the first one to reach out for a conversation, but it can definitely be done.

I'll leave it up to you to decide what you actually want, anon. But take your time and scrape off the top layer of shiny thoughts about popularity first. Then you'll be able to see what's underneath.

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neil-gaiman
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dduane
“I think fanfiction is literature and literature, for the most part, is fanfiction, and that anyone that dismisses it simply on the grounds that it’s derivative knows fuck-all about literature and needs to get the hell off my lawn. Most of the history of Western literature (and probably much of non-Western literature, but I can’t speak to that) is adapted or appropriated from something else. Homer wrote historyfic and Virgil wrote Homerfic and Dante wrote Virgilfic (where he makes himself a character and writes himself hanging out with Homer and Virgil and they’re like “OMG Dante you’re so cool.” He was the original Gary Stu). Milton wrote Bible fanfic, and everyone and their mom spent the Middle Ages writing King Arthur fanfic. In the sixteenth century you and another dude could translate the same Petrarchan sonnet and somehow have it count as two separate poems, and no one gave a fuck. Shakespeare doesn’t have a single original plot—although much of it would be more rightly termed RPF—and then John Fletcher and Mary Cowden Clarke and Gloria Naylor and Jane Smiley and Stephen Sondheim wrote Shakespeare fanfic. Guys like Pope and Dryden took old narratives and rewrote them to make fun of people they didn’t like, because the eighteenth century was basically high school. And Spenser! Don’t even get me started on Spenser. Here’s what fanfic authors/fans need to remember when anyone gives them shit: the idea that originality is somehow a good thing, an innately preferable thing, is a completely modern notion. Until about three hundred years ago, a good writer, by and large, was someone who could take a tried-and-true story and make it even more awesome. (If you want to sound fancy, the technical term is imitatio.) People were like, why would I wanna read something about some dude I’ve never heard of? There’s a new Sir Gawain story out, man! (As to when and how that changed, I tend to blame Daniel Defoe, or the Modernists, or reality television, depending on my mood.) I also find fanfic fascinating because it takes all the barriers that keep people from professional authorship—barriers that have weakened over the centuries but are nevertheless still very real—and blows right past them. Producing literature, much less circulating it, was something that was well nigh impossible for the vast majority of people for most of human history. First you had to live in a culture where people thought it was acceptable for you to even want to be literate in the first place. And then you had to find someone who could teach you how to read and write (the two didn’t necessarily go together). And you needed sufficient leisure time to learn. And be able to afford books, or at least be friends with someone rich enough to own books who would lend them to you. Good writers are usually well-read and professional writing is a full-time job, so you needed a lot of books, and a lot of leisure time both for reading and writing. And then you had to be in a high enough social position that someone would take you seriously and want to read your work—to have access to circulation/publication in addition to education and leisure time. A very tiny percentage of the population fit those parameters (in England, which is the only place I can speak of with some authority, that meant from 500-1000 A.D.: monks; 1000-1500: aristocratic men and the very occasional aristocratic woman; 1500-1800: aristocratic men, some middle-class men, a few aristocratic women; 1800-on, some middle-class women as well). What’s amazing is how many people who didn’t fit those parameters kept writing in spite of the constant message they got from society that no one cared about what they had to say, writing letters and diaries and stories and poems that often weren’t discovered until hundreds of years later. Humans have an urge to express themselves, to tell stories, and fanfic lets them. If you’ve got access to a computer and an hour or two to while away of an evening, you can create something that people will see and respond to instantly, with a built-in community of people who care about what you have to say. I do write the occasional fic; I wish I had the time and mental energy to write more. I’ll admit I don’t read a lot of fic these days because most of it is not—and I know how snobbish this sounds—particularly well-written. That doesn’t mean it’s “not good”—there are a lot of reasons people read fic and not all of them have to do with wanting to read finely crafted prose. That’s why fic is awesome—it creates a place for all kinds of storytelling. But for me personally, now that my job entails reading about 1500 pages of undergraduate writing per year, when I have time to read for enjoyment I want it to be by someone who really knows what they’re doing. There’s tons of high-quality fic, of course, but I no longer have the time and patience to go searching for it that I had ten years ago. But whether I’m reading it or not, I love that fanfiction exists. Because without people doing what fanfiction writers do, literature wouldn’t exist. (And then I’d be out of a job and, frankly, I don’t know how to do anything else.)”

— “As a professor, may I ask you what you think about fanfiction?” (via meiringens)

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sentate

SENTATE - The Spite Collection

If there's one thing I love in this world it's a wicked, wretched SPITE filled villainess... with a killer wardrobe to match! For this years October set I let the inspiration flow with some of my favourite horror tropes. Perhaps your sim is a sorrowful Onryō in her burial robes seeking her retribution. A cunning Witch wearing a dress made from the patched together clothing of her victims. A Black Widow who's already looking for her next husband. Or maybe a powerful Sorceress seeking to destroy... something.... for some reason... You get the Idea!

The collection features 9 items that come in my 30 swatch pallette plus loads of fun prints and colour combinations, (all grungy horror swatches have a clean version too). So whether your sims are burying their next victim or rising from the grave themselves; they will always be ready to slay with the The SPITE collection!

The full collection will be publicly available on the 27th of October.

DOWNLOAD - Patreon (Early Access)

MORE DOWNLOADS  |  TERMS OF USE  |  LINK TREE

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neil-gaiman
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iamstartraveller776
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roane72

Best trick I ever picked up. Seriously.

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catastrophe-jones

I have also learned this is great for [PICK A COOL NAME FOR A SHIP] and [LOOK UP THE FACTS ABOUT OXYGEN LEVELS] and [WHAT’S THE WORD] and [DOUBLECHECK CHARACTER’S EYE COLOR] and ALL KINDS OF THINGS.

Anything that isn’t critical in the moment, and could be filled in later while I’m currently trying to burn through writing pages that will be lost if I don’t get them out right now? Brackets.

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betweentimeand42

This is seriously the best advice, and it really helps put it into perspective that the first draft is just that- a draft. There’s no reason to agonize over a particularly tricky bit of writing when you could just leave it in brackets and skip to the good parts, the parts you’ve visualized. I also use brackets for [fact-check this], [use a stronger verb], [is this in character?] and other notes as I write, just so I don’t forget what I want to work on when I go back and edit. 

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petermorwood

Note the good sense of [brackets] not (parentheses).

Parentheses AKA round brackets can appear in fiction, usually as an afterthought in a character's thoughts or narration (as I saw them used just recently), but square brackets hardly ever do.

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artsychica2012

I also put TK [to know] in front of stuff like this, so I can run a search to make sure I haven't missed anything

#amWriting
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loish

Thinking about what it would be like to see color for the first time. I always love stories with those kind of themes, ever since I read The Giver as a kid. The idea of growing up without color but suddenly seeing it for the first time always stuck with me.

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neil-gaiman
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lizardsfromspace

In the early 70s Sesame Street was created with an eye towards educating poor, inner-city children for free, and became a massive hit with all children. In 2016, faced with going off the air forever after facing conservative efforts to destroy public broadcasting since basically its beginning, new episodes became a timed exclusive for premium cable network HBO. In 2022 HBO Max, newly merged with and taken over by reality TV channel Discovery, removed Sesame Street episodes and spin-offs from streaming as a tax write-off and scheme to avoid paying residuals.

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saintofpride201

Sesame Street's official YouTube channel is uploading the episodes for free, btw. A lot of creators are rebelling against this bullshit.

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amy-vic
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scifigrl47

I also want to put in a plug for the American Archive of Public Broadcasting, spearheaded by GBH in Boston to preserve and make available public funded programming from around the country.  More than 7000 public television and radio programs are available to stream through the website, with more than 40000 hours of programming archived and available to researchers and educators through the Library of Congress and GBH itself.

https://americanarchive.org/

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yeahwrite
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gardenvarietyhuman

💥🙌👏

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ineffablebookgirl

Well shit, Henry Jenkins, out here in 1997 dropping truth bombs

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staygoldsunshine

Oh hey I need this for a research paper I'm writing, thank you!

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angstbotfic

i mean he had been out here since 1988 dropping such bombs:

"'fandom' is a vehicle of marginalized subcultural groups (women, the young, gays, etc.) to pry open space for their cultural concerns within dominant representations; it is a way of appropriating media texts and rereading them in a way that serves different interests, a way of transforming mass culture into a popular culture"

Jenkins, Henry. “Star Trek Rerun, Reread, Rewritten: Fan Writing as Textual Poaching.” Critical Studies in Mass Communication 5, no. 2 (1988): 85–107. https://doi.org/10.1080/15295038809366691.  

there are even some earlier works in fan studies but that’s what i have ready to hand. 

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neil-gaiman

Henry's been amazing for a long time.

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