Cause Of Death: Trying To Write A Fight Scene.

if ever you find symbolism in my writing please tell me i’d like to know about it too

fuck off it's not a collar it's to hide my decapitation scar. my head will literally fall off if you take it off it's not a sex thing. the decapitation was a sex thing though yeah.

"absence makes the heart grow fonder" well actually it was already as fond as can be it's just also Sad now. come back here

like honestly just give your non binary characters traditionally "gendered" features. just do it. it's not like being androgynous ever stopped non binary characters from being misgendered.

frisk undertale and kris deltarune were androgynous and are only ever referred to by "they/them" and ppl are still arguing over how the "main character is not the player but their own person" message didn't apply to their genders bc they refuse to wrap their head around different pronouns. raine owlhouse was paraded around as "disney's first ever nb representation" by everyone and their mother but bc they have short hair other countries dub them as male. this also happens to most anime nb characters bc of how japanese pronouns work. halara raincode literally has the color scheme of the non binary flag AND their in-game profile says that they, and i quote "have no specified gender" AND several characters remark on it in the actual game but bc theyre voiced by a female voice actor ppl still call them a woman.

like literally at this point just give your nb characters huge tits and a massive beard. if ppl refuse to accept the existence of non binary characters in media, then there is no way to make a character non binary "enough" to convince them otherwise. no matter how much you hammer in their androgyny in an attempt to detach them from "male" and "female," there will be people determined to assign gender roles to any trait you give your character.

creators being hesitant to give their non binary characters traits that could be associated with a binary gender is why every goddamn genderqueer character that the creator wants you to take seriously in popular media has shoulder length hair and a board-flat figure and a perfectly neutrally pitched voice. like. just do what you want at this point. the character is non binary because your story said so and people who misgender them would have done that no matter how androgynous they look.

You Don't Need an Agent! Publishers That Accept Unsolicited Submissions

I see a few people sayin that you definitely need an agent to get published traditionally. Guess what? That's not remotely true. While an agent can be a very useful tool in finding and negotiating with publishers, going without is not as large of a hurdle as people might make it out to be!

Below is a list of some of the traditional publishers that offer reading periods for agent-less manuscripts. There might be more! Try looking for yourself - I promise it's not that scary!

Albert Whitman & Company: for picture books, middle-grade, and young adult fiction

Hydra (Part of Random House): for mainly LitRPG

Kensington Publishing: for a range of fiction and nonfiction

NCM Publishing: for all genres of fiction (YA included) and nonfiction

Pants of Fire Press: for middle-grade, YA, and adult fiction

Tin House Books: very limited submission period, but a good avenue for fiction, literary fiction, and poetry written by underrepresented communities

Quirk Fiction: offers odd-genre rep for represented and unagented authors. Unsolicited submissions inbox is closed at the moment but this is the page that'll update when it's open, and they produced some pretty big books so I'd keep an eye on this

Persea Books: for lit fiction, creative nonfiction, YA novels, and books focusing on contemporary issues

Baen: considered one of the best known publishers of sci-fi and fantasy. They don't need a history of publication.

Chicago Review Press: only accepting nonfiction at the moment, but maybe someone here writes nonfiction

Acre: for poetry, fiction and nonfiction. Special interest in underrepresented authors. Submission period just passed but for next year!

Coffeehouse Press: for lit fiction, nonfiction, poetry and translation. Reading period closed at time of posting, but keep an eye out

Ig: for queries on literary fiction and political/cultural nonfiction

Schaffner Press: for lit fiction, historical/crime fiction, or short fiction collections (cool)

Feminist Press: for international lit, hybrid memoirs, sci-fi and fantasy fiction especially from BIPOC, queer and trans voices

Evernight Publishing: for erotica. Royalties seem good and their response time is solid

Felony & Mayhem: for literary mystery fiction. Not currently looking for new work, but check back later

This is all what I could find in an hour. And it's not even everything, because I sifted out the expired links, the repeat genres (there are a lot of options for YA and children's authors), and I didn't even include a majority of smaller indie pubs where you can really do that weird shit.

A lot of them want you to query, but that's easy stuff once you figure it out. Lots of guides, and some even say how they want you to do it for them.

Not submitting to a Big 5 Trad Pub House does not make you any less of a writer. If you choose to work with any publishing house it can take a fair bit of weight off your shoulders in terms of design and distribution. You don't have to do it - I'm not - but if that's the way you want to go it's very, very, very possible.

Have a weirder manuscript that you don't think fits? Here's a list of 50 Indie Publishers looking for more experimental works to showcase and sell!

If Random House won't take your work - guess what? Maybe you're too cool for Random House.

so are you trying to kill me (derogatory) or are you trying to kill me (romantic)

writing tip #3474:

writing is about "what ifs". for example, what if i closed the word document and played sims 4 for five hours instead

from the studio that brought you “i swear i already revised this chapter”, may i present: “is this scene actually dull or have i read it eleven billion times”