Two Roads Diverged In A Wood, And I— I Took The One That Added 35k Extra Words To The Projected Length

Ever since I learned that the people at Bunnings recognise my name due to my frequent delivery orders I've wondered what they think of said orders. Do they have theories on what I've used the well over a hundred 0.9m run of the mill pine shorts that I regularly buy in batches of 20-30 for. Do they wonder why I need quite so many metal brackets. When I stopped buying tiles and grout in small batches at random intervals, did they have feelings on the fact that I'd obviously finished my tiling project.

the "canon isn't real we make our own rules" to "i am begging you people to revisit the source material" pipeline

Putting books on hold at the library has the same thrill of ordering books online, but with the added benefit of not losing any money over titles I might not enjoy.

10/10 would recommend.

I'm begging all of you to read the Jeeves books

here are some interesting surnames I have seen on old graves:

*they’re not inherently “weird” or “rare”, they’re just names I noted for possible future use in my writing

Since you guys like my male name list, here are some vintage girl’s names from old historic documents, recently updated:

(Sorry I listed the name origin/individual’s place of birth on some and not others.)

screaming, crying, throwing up, as I force myself to write a story i'm very passionate about and love writing and have no obligation to write except that i want to

i love characters who are always like fear not, i shall take care of this problem for you….. by sacrificing myself!! and everyone else is like i swear to god if you pull this shit again i’ll kill you

alright, I’m annoyed with the class that I’m taking. it’s about writing novels, and I thought it would have cool stuff about balancing your narrative and developing themes etc, but instead she spent the first class talking about how every book fits into the Hero’s Journey (the monomyth template). and I was somewhat of a contrarian, and said “can you give us examples of books that don’t fit into this template?” and she said “no. because all books fit.”

but I dunno man, I just finished reading this Korean book where the plot is just the character having a string of hookups and reflecting on them without changing in any way. I don’t know if it’s possible to contort that into the Hero’s Journey.

something I’ve learned from querying: everything has a million subcategories, and it is crucial to actually learn then.

like when I first started, I thought an agent listing ‘speculative fiction’ in their interests was enough to give me a shot! but now it’s like ok. but does that actually mean fantasy (as opposed to science fiction or surrealism)? and if it does, is it constrained to one of the following:

high fantasy

low fantasy

grounded fantasy 

magical realism

etc.

and if fate is smiling on me and it is high fantasy, what sort do they like? because mine starts as a medieval George R R Martin clone before morphing into a post-apocalyptic sci fi, so they have to simultaneously be alright with a) cliched shit and b) experimental weird shit.

and say everything aligns, and that genre works for them - even then, they often accept it only in one or two age categories. there’s mg, ya, na (middle grade, young adult, new adult) and adult. mine is adult, which is a huge strike against it given the genre. 

AND THEN! AND THEN! say everything else is perfect. they love high fantasy with elves and unicorns, they want it for adults, they’re cool with genre bending, but in their profile is a phrase I’ve learned to dread: “HEA (which stands for happily every after) required”. I love my little book, but it is dark and full of terrible people.

and then I also have to hope that they’re into queer romance, on top of everything else! it’s a hard process.

currently I have 45 queries sent, 15 rejections, and 30 unknowns, and I think a good portion of those rejections are because I didn’t initially understand that ‘accepts speculative fiction’ shouldn’t be taken literally.