violas-notebook:

nosebleedclub:

Discussion 4/8/22

1. Dream of you

2. Spring playlist

3. Another universe

4. Fluffy

5. In secret

1. 

eyes wide open you

pierce my feeble chest through mist 

cruel dichotomy 

2.

i’ve been listening

to a lot of silences 

in between doorways 

3.

vines and leaves and teeth

circle this dreamspace like the

serpent embraced eve 

4. 

sugar on my tongue

stings gritty like sand - i can’t

taste this memory

5.

and the old moon waxed

gently over the rocking 

chair and its stories

nosebleedclub:

Did the pain

soften my edges?

or was it simply the anvil

on which i molded my being

into shape?

nosebleedclub:

I haven’t seen god

since I was 7, kneeling palms-together before the shrine, repeating words in a language I spoke but didn’t know

under my mother’s watchful gaze I pressed first sindoor then haldi then a single grain of uncooked rice to a golden forehead hardly bigger than my fingertip, and when my mother closed her eyes I

kept mine open and searched minuscule bronze pupils for some hint of otherworldly presence, transcendent benediction

asked: are you there; are you watching; can you tell me if I’m good enough; can you tell me how to atone;

and god said: why should I distill my essence into 100 grams of silver rather than the gradual carving of aquifers into bedrock or the ebullience of frolicking through air currents with the eagles; why should I have eyes only when you provide them; why should your sins weigh heavier upon me than those of the raging ocean or the mountains that will not bow their heads

and god said: you will not find me by making me in your image

and god promised: seek the slivers of me dispersed among the infinite entities under my care and lay them one atop the other and in the amalgam you will discover the shape of me

two decades later my search has barely started and I will still be looking when I’m on my deathbed and if I am granted another life to continue paying penance my search will go with me

some days I think that must be the point

starving4satisfaction:

HOW WAS YOUR SUMMER?

My summer was:

[she who double-knots her shoe laces like it matters and breaks hearts like it doesn’t]

[when the new wears off and the new sets in/my brows are heavy holding up my tear-filled eyes/the skies weep for you]

[freckles I’ve never met before litter my skin and the bright July sun exposes pieces of myself I forgot existed]

[I want to be buried in the color green. I want to soak into the earth like water poured over a flower]

[Tell me why I can’t come home and I will tell you why I left]

[I can no longer tell if I am falling apart or coming together these days]

[Every time I go into town I hope I’ll see you. We could live 1000 miles apart, and every time I went into town I would still hope I saw you]

[I know that you shouldn’t be in my life but that doesn’t mean I know how to live without you in it]

[I can’t remember which wrist I used to wear my bracelets on. And I don’t know my child hood friends voice/But I know the curve of your calf by heart and every time your favorite song comes on, I remember every word/And I still see your eyes when I close mine]

[If I could…if I could do anything, I would crack open my ribs and show you every thought that’s ever lined the walls of this body of mine and hope you understood why I did what I did. Why I did everything I ever did. I hope you would know how sorry I am. I hope you would know how much I loved you. How much I love you. How much I’ll always love you. How much a piece of me will always crave you, will always want to drop everything and run to you at the sound of your voice]

[She, who is willing to sell her life story to anyone at the cost of companionship]

[I just need to know that it mattered to you as much as it did to me]

[I don’t know how to live a life that’s not built around loving you]

[I paint the kitchen in my underwear; the cabinets need touching up, you see. And the trim could use a nice wash. My stomach flat against the floor, the arm stretched to the wall, the brush covering the scuff marks, my mouth exhaling songs established upon your name.]

[I just want to call you and say I still love you, I’m still here/Where are you?]

[I want to crack my head open and pour it out onto a plate for you/I want to spoon-feed you my brain/You say it is a galaxy, here, eat my stardust]

[I need to gently weep/I need to viciously weep]

[The window open. The air flowing in as freely as the tears streaming down my cold-pink cheeks]

linkinmoon:

Anne Sexton, A Self- Portrait in Letters

minutia-r:

anghraine:

so I’m looking at short story publishers (fantasy)

1. Tor, cream of the crop. 25 cents a word. Stories can be read for free (YES). Slowish response time at ~3 months. Prefer under 12k, absolute maximum is 17.5k. Don’t bother if it’s not highly professional quality. SFWA qualifying.
2. Crossed Genres. 6 cents a word. Different theme each month (this month’s is “failure”). Submissions must combine either sci-fi or fantasy with the theme. Response time 1 month. 1k-6k, no exceptions. SFWA qualifying.
3. Long Hidden, anthology from CG. 6 cents a word. 2k-8k, no exceptions. Must take place before 1935. Protagonist(s) must be under 18 and marginalized in their time and place. Must be sci-fi/fantasy/horror. Deadline 30 April. Response by 1 October.
4. Queers Destroy Science Fiction. Sci-fi only right now, author must identify as queer (gay, lesbian, bi, ace, pan, trans, genderfluid, etc, just not cishet). 7.5k max. Deadline 15 February. Responses by 1 March. You can submit one flash fiction and one short story at the same time. (My network blocks the Lightspeed site for some reason, so I can’t get all the submission details. >_>) Probably SFWA qualifying?
5. Women in Practical Armor. 6 cents a word. 2k-5k. Must be about 1) a female warrior who 2) is already empowered and 3) wears sensible armour. Deadline 1 April. Response within three months.
6. Fiction Vortex. $10 per story, with $20 and $30 for editor’s and readers’ choice stories (hoping to improve). Speculative fiction only. Imaginative but non-florid stories. 7.5k maximum, preference for 5k and under. (I kind of want to support them on general principle.)
7. Urban Fantasy Magazine. 6 cents a word. 8k max, under 4k preferred. Must be urban fantasy (aka, the modern world, doesn’t need to be a literal city). 
8. Nightmare. 6 cents a word. 1.5-7.5k, preference for under 5k. Horror and dark fantasy. Response time up to two weeks. SFWA and HWA qualifying.
9. Apex Magazine. 6 cents a word. 7.5k max, no exceptions. Dark sci-fi/fantasy/horror. SFWA qualifying.
10. Asimov’s Science Fiction. 8-10 cents a word. 20k max, 1k minimum. Sci-fi; borderline fantasy is ok, but not S&S. Prefer character focused. Response time 5 weeks; query at 3 months. SFWA qualifying, ofc.
11. Buzzy Mag. 10 cents a word. 10k max. Should be acceptable for anyone 15+. Response time 6-8 weeks. SFWA qualifying.
12. Strange Horizons. 8 cents a word. Speculative fiction. 10k max, prefers under 5k. Response time 40 days. Particularly interested in diverse perspectives, nuanced approahces to political issues, and hypertexts. SFWA qualifying. 
13. Fantasy and Science Fiction. 7-12 cents a word. Speculative fiction, preference for character focus, would like more science-fiction or humour. 25k maximum. Prefers Courier. Response time 15 days.
14. Scigentasy. 3 cents a word. .5-5k. Science-fiction and fantasy, progressive/feminist emphasis. Fantastic Stories of the Imagination. 15 cents a word. 3k maximum. Any sci-fi/fantasy, they like a literary bent. (psst, steinbecks!) They also like to see both traditional and experimental approaches. Response time two weeks. 
15. Beneath Ceaseless Skies. 6 cents a word. 10k maximum. Fantasy in secondary worlds only (it can be Earth, but drastically different—alternate history or whatever). Character focus, prefer styles that are lush yet clear, limited first or third person narration. Response time usually 2-4 weeks, can be 5-7 weeks. SFWA qualifying.
    
16. Clarkesworld. 10 cents a word up to 4000, 7 afterwards. 1-8k, preferred is 4k. Science-fiction and fantasy. Needs to be well-written and convenient to read on-screen. Appreciates rigour. No talking cats. Response time 2 days. SFWA qualifying.
17. Orson Scott Card’s Intergalactic Medicine Show. 6 cents a word. Any length. Science-fiction and fantasy (along with fantastic horror). Good world-building and characterization. Clear straightforward prose. Response time three months. Yes, OSC is editor-in-chief. SFWA qualifying.
18. Interzone. Sub-pro rates if anything (but highly respected). 10k max. Short cover letter. Science-fiction and fantasy.

Whenever I see a post like this, I feel like I have to tell people about the Submission Grinder.  I just did a search on it and it came up with 135 markets that pay for fantasy short stories. You can search by genre, pay rate, length of story they accept, etc, and it’s constantly being updated, which a post like this can’t be, and you can also use it to keep track of what you’ve sent where and when, and since a lot of people use it for this purpose it’s got a lot of good data about response times and so on. If you are trying to sell fiction or poetry on the regular, it is such a useful tool and I encourage everyone to use it.

salty-inc:

salty-inc:

There should be more “coming of age” movies set not in teenage years

coming of age stories that feature characters who are primarily 15-19 really fucked with my perception of adulthood and growing up. Yea there’s a lot of stuff that happens in that phase of your life that shape you as a person but rarely does an event change you to the point where you come out of it all Mature and Grown Up. Feeling like I need to be ready to face the world by the time I’m 20 has given me too much anxiety than it’s worth.

When I ask older people when they finally felt like a “real adult” the answer has constantly been when they were 26-30. Their personal “coming of age” story happens about a decade after they do on the movies.

You don’t need feel Grown Up right away. Enjoy the bubbling uncertainty of your 20s

heck-in-a-handbasket:

missroserose:

wafflewrites-blog:

So… I found this and now it keeps coming to mind. You hear about “life-changing writing advice” all the time and usually its really not—but honestly this is it man.

I’m going to try it.

I love the lawyer metaphor, because whenever I see “John knew that…” in prose writing I immediately think “how?  How does he know it?”  Interrogate your witnesses.  Cross-examine them.  Make them explain their reasoning.  It pays dividends.

All of this, but also feels/felt. My editor has forbidden me from using those and it’s forced me to stretch my skills.

nosebleedclub:

1. Experimentation
2. Neighbor
3. How long does it last
4. Cottage
5. Old growth

i. experimentation

take a scalpel to my veins / with clinical precision / clinical fascination / how deep must i sink to dig it all out / how deep does it rest / lurking / writhing / roots sunk into my heart / lungs / how deep are the gouges left by its claws / step by step hollow the channels / pause and assess / if the vein is gone then will it leave too / if the core is hollow will it wither too

ii. neighbor

The thing that used to live in my veins lives in my home now. It goes to bed beside me, pours itself coffee as I settle at the counter, reads a book while I finish my work. The relief I once harbored, having expelled the writhing mass from my veins, dissipated long ago. Though I expelled the mass it still writhes. It resents me for taking from it its home to build one of my own. So it writhes, and it eats my cereal, and it reminds me again and again and again and again and again that I will never be rid of it. 

iii. how long does it last

too long / i’ve already forgotten it / forgiven it / forever / a moment, a moment, a moment 

iv. cottage

There are nights where the only way I can sleep is cradled in its limbs, its heaviness draped over me with all the surety of a weighted blanket. These are the nights where the inhabitants of my being give up on tending to me: let the fire burn itself to ash; let cobwebs hang in curtains from the rafters; let fragment after derelict fragment crumble as the rot eats its way out. Let this faltering edifice collapse under its own weight, offering its decaying bones as the last vestiges of safe harbor to an ecosystem that turned its back. To surrender is a familiar comfort, though a small one. To surrender is all I’ve ever known. 

v. old growth

tell me a story / there are none to tell / tell me a memory / you know them all / tell me the truth / i don’t make a habit of telling truths / tell me the truth / you would fare better commanding the sky to kneel at your feet / tell me the truth / there was never another outcome there was never a reality prepared for you alone there was only you daring to spread your wings and me clipping the feathers because flight isn’t for people as broken as you whose bones are too brittle to hollow out whose vertigo would knock you out of the sky whose feeble cries would garner you pity in place of the respect you seek you who is too naive to know your own limitations and me who wants only to keep you safe / tell me the truth / there’s no such thing as a happy ending / then tell me a lie / there’s no such thing as a happy ending

nosebleedclub:

1. Number one
2. Mirror
3. Strawberry
4. Paralysis
5. Understudy

when i wake up there is sunlight dripping
across my face down my hands
like maple syrup
with its sticky golden rivulets
dripping
pooling
soaking into the hollows of my bones until i am so filled
to the brim with golden honeyed sunlight
that i cannot move

when i wake up there are dreams bridging the beams of my brain
my own personal cobwebs
hazy milky white in need of a proper dusting
looking so much like spider silk but stronger
somehow
waiting for sticky sunlight to trace its way along the grain and
eat through the glue
that keeps me from moving

typingoverworld:

word-nerds-united:

headspace-hotel:

Literally none of my story ideas come with a plot, ever. WITHOUT FAIL, it’s always just an Aesthetic, like two and a half characters, some very, very vivid settings, and a weird concept. Never plot. Not even an inkling of a plot. My brain tosses me this cool stuff and is like welp i’ll be back in 4-5 business months 

Don’t look for plots, look for problems. 

Examples: 

• crippling debt 
• lonliness 
• a building is on fire 
• the world is going to end 
• failure 
• a broken heart
• guilt 
• noises they can only hear 
• seperation 
• lack of strength 
• lack of wit 
• someone has too much pride 
• forbidden love 
• encouraged love? 

Pick a problem, give it to a character, and let them try and solve it. 

Bam: plot. 

This is exactly Stephen King’s approach, outlined in “On Writing”. He prefers to start with a “What if?” situation, introduce characters, and then see what they do.

prokopetz:

The problem with writing every character as though they’re the hero of their own story is that sometimes you realise the third extra from the left has a more interesting story than your nominal protagonist.

ignitevale:

i’ve always wanted to be one of those oversized sweater-wearing wavy haired bookish girls who drinks pumpkin lattes and takes walks through the leaves in their boots but in reality i’m a 18 ft five-headed firebreathing dragon and we don’t wear boots

eudaimonia-111:

2.7.19// 5:42 pm. such a busy busy semester, when do I even have time to study?

piscestudying:

12519

Finalsss week went by pretty fast,,thaNK GOD. Cheers to the second semester!