First I Started With Sweeping. The Broom Wasnt In The Laundry Room Or On The Portico. I Paced, Butting

First I started with sweeping. The broom wasn’t in the laundry room or on the portico. I paced, butting my heels against the floor with each step, until I saw the bristles sticking out from under the couch. I laughed out loud. There was just something so pathetic about hiding a broom under a couch—I could imagine her planning to sweep, laying the broom upright against the couch, then laying on the couch herself. The broom would fall and she’d back-kick it under the couch, lying to herself about how she’d get it up soon and get right to work when really she knew she’d make herself forget about it at the soonest possible moment. That was my mother: hiding away any chance of achieving her own goals. Waiting for a savior. 

 With only the loosest possible attempt at sweeping, I managed dust piles that towered like ant hills. Wrinkled roaches, candy wrappers, loose hair, toenail clippings. Celeste’s accumulated detritus. Penny used to be the one to do this, to clean up Celeste’s playpen, to manage her home nursery, and before that it was me. And now, as if to shirk the responsibility, Penny traded Celeste’s bed for a casket, traded life for freedom. The one that got away.

Is anyone writing a novel / short story?  Please share an excerpt from your WIP

How do ya'll get WIP ideas? I'm curious

Bathtub Gods - a WIP by j.d.

Viv Abernathy arrives in a town swathed in secrets with far too many of her own. 

Ellie Knight can no longer be the one who got out, and so down the drain she goes.

Delilah Holloway dreams of dead girls.

Vivian ‘Viv’ Abernathy: A history teacher who arrived in the small town of Ieyren with a suitcase three weeks ago. Who knows who might have followed. Or what might have followed.

Eleanor ‘Ellie’ Knight: A third year psychology student, who came home because she definitely did not have a mental breakdown. Keep away her ghosts, and she’ll survive.

Delilah Holloway: Former high school mean girl, currently worth only as much as her boyfriend is. Once, she had something to live for. Someone. And they’re back with a vengeance.

why all my wips hate me | Writing Update

(hey so note from the future I started writing this post so long ago - when I first decided to revamp my writing life. It’s been like six months since then. So like, that’s why I start using my shift key halfway thru)

the problems

remember when i did that whole wip intro for that one camp nano novella and then never talked about it again? well, it’s because i had to kill it before it killed me. from the start of this blog, pretty much all i’ve ever talked about was all the wips that i never fucking finish. i’ve only ever had two wip intros that were about finished projects. and those projects all had something in common: they were songs. they were poems. they weren’t fiction.

i’ve always wanted to write fiction because i’m a writer and that’s what writers do. i wrote poetry and songs a lot - wrote collections of poems and albums of songs - but that didn’t matter. it was about the fiction. the fiction that i never finished. every novel: abandoned, picked up again, revamped, abandoned. every short story: first draft half finished, never edited, hidden away in shame. 

with fiction, i was always wondering “am i reading enough? am i writing enough?” meanwhile, i was writing “sublime,” “frolic,” “Too young.” “Loveless,” “even if you’re not,” and “i hope you’re haunted”. then there was the poetry collections “Godworship,” “The Science of Lust,” “Anhedonia,” and “humans have the wrong anatomy”. all finished. how could i fall on my face with fiction so often, but not with anything else?

i realized it was because i treated fiction like it was sacred. “real writers write fiction.” “the only work i do that matters is fiction.” “i’ll only be accomplished once i write a novel.” i also treated reading novels like it was sacred. i kicked myself every time i had to return a book to the library without finishing it. so what the fuck is wrong with me? GAD is my guess, but the jury’s still out on that one i guess. 

so what do?

my first step was dropping all those fiction projects that drained me so damn much. i’m freeing myself to put all of my focus into my new project: doing whatever the hell i want! i had to watch a lot of @coffeeandcalligraphy videos to reach that conclusion. 

and then i had to ask, “wait, do i even like fiction?” there are a few books i do like, yes. i really like “On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous,” “The Bell Jar,” and “My Year of Rest and Relaxation”. but, with everything else, there are times were i’m completely obsessed with how the best songs/poems/tv shows work, but does that happen with fiction? or am i only obsessed with the idea of being able to make a fiction piece that works? writing fiction feels more like a duty than a hobby and, honestly, that fucking sucks. 

i also realized that i treated fiction like prose instead of like a story. and don’t get me wrong, prose gets me out of bed in the morning, but novels are supposed to tell stories. but when i try to read a book, i’m doing it because it’s what i’m supposed to do, and when i try to write a book, i’m doing it because that’s what i’m supposed to do. so what do? don’t write fiction if i don’t actually want to. don’t write it if i don’t get a thrill from doing it. 

in a certain tumblr post i’m sure you’ve all read, someone said that if you don’t like what you’re writing, something’s wrong. i realized what was wrong was not some gap in my knowledge of craft or some ill-conceived plot - it was the fact that i wasn’t writing because i loved it. i was writing just to prove it to myself that i could. and that’s some deadly pride. so now, the rule is, i’m not allowed to write a fiction unless i actually want to, unless i have a story to tell. and i’m not allowed to read unless i want to read, unless i’m not even thinking about that stupid fucking goodreads reading challenge. 

but without fiction, who am i? 

someone with a whole lot of wips to talk about 🤠

fuck yes finally

SONGS + ALBUMS:

So, along the lines of only doing what I want cause I’m the writer and I make the rules, I’ve decided to only write songs the way I want to write them. According to everyone online ever, you write the lyrics and the melody of a song at the same time. Problem is, I get most of my song ideas on the bus or in the middle of the night—i.e. not the best time to be singing into your phone. So I’ve just been writing the lyrics and decided I’ll only add a melody when I feel like it. Revelatory, I know.

With this ingenious process, I’ve started writing another ep, this one called “Baby blue”. It’s an indie folk, Daughter/Lana Del Rey/Hayley Williams’ Flowers For Vases-inspired litany of self-loathing and codependency. Yes very on brand, I know.

POETRY:

So, “humans have the wrong anatomy” has grown in the middle of the night. It’s shaping up to be the size of an actual chapbook at this rate. Also, the title is actually in title case now.

SCRIPTS:

I am addicted to teen drama. There’s two I’m sitting on right now - CRICKETS, SICKLY GREEN and MANNEQUIN CHILDREN. And! There’s also? An animated film? Which is a reimagining of “Tangled”??? Yes you read that right, it’s not a reimagining of Rapunzel, its a reimagining of Tangled, the Disney movie.

GAMES????:

So. You see how fast my brain comes up with shit when I stop writing fiction? There’s a? Social simulation art game? That I’m making a pitch for? Its called “dawn breaks like a fever”. Well actually, that’s the short version of the title, the full one is “dawn breaks like a fever & you are no better for it”.

~~also I might start planning a dating sim soon too~~

FICTION:

When you take so long writing a single Tumblr post that you outgrow the very premise of it. Anyway! I write fiction again! 2 books and a short story collection that’s too much of a mess to ever be called a book. The novels are “Carrion Crow” (which is actually a novella) and “Terrestrials”. These are books I cannot shake for the life of me, at this point they’re extensions of my person. And short stories! I’ve been writing one or two of those. My main problem is that, sometimes, in an attempt to achieve the Short I end up forgetting to include the Story, so… (No but fr my short stories at some point just sound like personal essays where I’m just straight up lying)

The end!

Writers!! Describe your current WIP(s) in the most boring way possible. I want to see this skdjfkdfhk

[image description: illustrated book cover featuring two girls holding hands (my ocs lilith, who is shorter with a bob cut and juniper, who is taller with dark curly hair). “house plants” is written over this in handwritten font. the drawing has maroon lineart and the colouring is minimal and in shades of red / end id]

a few months ago i kinda impulse adapted house plants into a webcomic and now i’m suffering from my actions because i have a responsibility to finish the opening scene at least 🎺 it’s on webtoon and tapas under ‘house plants’ !

webtoon: https://www.webtoons.com/en/challenge/house-plants/list?title_no=708282&page=1

tapas: https://tapas.io/series/houseplants/

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