WHY YOU SHOULD WRITE HORRIBLY:

LUSH Series - Gouache by Madeleine Bellwoar

Frankly some of you should be hornier over weirder shit. The fear of being too genuine is the enemy of art. Be a bit of a pervert. It's good for the health. Doesn't have to be a sexual thing just own up to being a bit obsessed in some cringe shit it's fine.

FREE Fantasy Creative Writing Planning Guide

Do you want to write a fantasy story but don't know how to start? Have you already started a fantasy story but hit a snag in the plot?

Well, have I got a PDF for you! Take a look--it's free! ✨WOW✨

(Opens to Kofi--resource is pay what you want).

Okay, marketing aside, I've been sitting on this for a while now. I used to teach a high school class on fantasy literature, and I miss creating stuff for it. I have all these resources and knowledge, and I'm not doing ANYTHING with it. So, I figured I'd put some resources together and make them available to the vast audience of the Internet.

This is the first of the resources I'll be making. It's a 39 page PDF with fillable worksheets and examples, and I threw in a separate black-and-white document for easy printing. It guides users through some basic planning principles that can help any writer, from beginner to expert, get their plot together.

I hope to make more in the future covering character, plot, the Hero's Journey, rhetoric, and maybe even editing and feedback. It takes a while to make these, and some of the future documents may cost money because I'm ✨lacking funds✨ but I do hope to continue with them. I'll also make some resources for constructed languages eventually if that's anyone's cup of tea.

So far, feedback for this resource has been good! Share widely with anyone you know who may be sitting on a fantasy story that needs to see the light of day. Please comment with feedback (I'd love to hear about what you'd like to see in the future or how I can improve documents like these), and leave a tip if you'd like!

writer bitches be scrolling on tumblr knowing damn well they need to finish those drafts.

Friendly reminder to artists, writers, and anyone else working at a desk:

Stand up, uncrunch your back from whatever pretzel cosplay you were doing, and take a quick walk to get water, eat a snack, or use the bathroom.

I just found the funniest font ever

Like. What is this. Why is this. Who is the target audience of this?

heyy can we do a sexy roleplay where im a prince from a fallen kingdom and youre the powerful warrior who has taken me for their own pleasure. yes? yipeeee ok so before we start first here's a google doc with the whole history of the fictional land we're both from and the intricate geopolitical workings of the- oh yeah and here's a supplementary doc on the agriculture and trade routes of said fictional land and stuff and yes this is important. the dirty talk has to be lore accurate

The Sissy Strikes Back

I’ve lost faith in the saying “You’re only as old as you think you are” ever since I got old. It is a saying with a fine heritage. It goes right back to the idea of the Power of Positive Thinking, which is so strong in America because it fits in so well with the Power of Commercial Advertising and with the Power of Wishful Thinking aka the American Dream. It is the bright side of Puritanism: What you deserve is what you get. (Never mind just now about the dark side.) Good things come to good people and youth will last forever for the young in heart. Yup. There is a whole lot of power in positive thinking. It is the great placebo effect. In many cases, even dire cases, it works. I think most old people know that, and many of us try to keep our thinking on the positive side as a matter of self-preservation, as well as dignity, the wish not to end with a prolonged whimper. It can be very hard to believe that one is actually 80 years old, but as they say, you’d better believe it. I’ve known clear-headed, clear-hearted people in their nineties. They didn’t think they were young. They knew, with a patient, canny clarity, how old they were. If I’m 90 and believe I’m 45, I’m headed for a very bad time trying to get out of the bathtub. Even if I’m 70 and think I’m 40, I’m fooling myself to the extent of almost certainly acting like an awful fool. Actually, I’ve never heard anybody over 70 say that you’re only as old as you think you are. Younger people say it to themselves or each other as an encouragement. When they say it to somebody who actually is old, they don’t realize how stupid it is, and how cruel it may be. At least there isn’t a poster of it.

But there is a poster of “Old age is not for sissies”—maybe it’s where the saying came from. A man and a woman in their seventies. As I remember it, they both have what the air force used to call the Look of Eagles, and are wearing very tight-fitting minimal clothing, and are altogether very fit. Their pose suggests that they’ve just run a marathon and aren’t breathing hard while they relax by lifting 16-pound barbells. Look at us, they say. Old age is not for sissies. Look at me, I snarl at them. I can’t run, I can’t lift barbells, and the thought of me in tight-fitting minimal clothing is appalling in all ways. I am a sissy. I always was. Who are you jocks to say old age isn’t for me? Old age is for anybody who gets there. Warriors get old; sissies get old. In fact it’s likely that more sissies than warriors get old. Old age is for the healthy, the strong, the tough, the intrepid, the sick, the weak, the cowardly, the incompetent. People who run 10 miles every morning before breakfast and people who live in a wheelchair. People who work the London Times crossword in ink in 10 minutes and people who can’t quite remember who the president is just now. Old age is less a matter of fitness or courage than of luck equals longevity. The leafy greens and the workouts may well help that old age to be healthy, but unfair as it may be, nothing guarantees health to the old. Bodies wear out after a certain amount of mileage despite the most careful maintenance. No matter what you eat and how grand your abs and blabs are, still your bones can let you down, your heart can get tired of its incredible nonstop lifelong athletic performance, and there’s all that wiring and stuff inside that can begin to short-circuit. If you did hard physical labor all your life and didn’t really have the chance to spend a lot of time in gyms, if you ate mostly junk food because it’s all you knew about and all you could afford in time and money, if you haven’t got a doctor because you can’t buy the insurance that stands between you and the doctors and the medicines you need, you may arrive at old age in rather bad shape. Or if you just run into some bad luck along the way, accidents, illnesses, it’s the same. You won’t be running marathons and lifting weights. You may have trouble getting up the stairs. You may have trouble just getting out of bed. You may have trouble getting used to hurting all the time. And it isn’t likely to get better as the years go on. The compensations of getting old, such as they are, aren’t in the field of athletic prowess. I think that’s why the saying and the poster annoy me so much. They’re not only insulting to sissies, they’re beside the point. I’d like a poster showing two old people with stooped backs and arthritic hands and time-worn faces sitting talking, deep, deep in conversation. And the slogan would be: Old Age Is Not for the Young.

No Time to Spare: Thinking About What Matters - Ursula K. Le Guin

Linocut print by Pamela Leavey