#writing for a living

[writersramble37]

I want to escape real life responsibilities with every fiber of my being

So I’ve been gone for a while. I had too much on my plate at the time to even think of doing anything writing related, let alone podcasting - as much as I wanted to do those things. I was working full time, going to school, planning a wedding, graduating with a BA in psych, planning an unexpected trip to New York, planning our honeymoon, relocating to the city and trying to find a better paying job there. . .Half of these things happened within the span of 3 months alone. It’s been the wildest time of my life to say at the least.

Now the honeymoon is over, and my husband and I are officially settled in our new lives as a married couple. We’re thrilled to be married, and we love the time we spend together when we’re off work. But we’ve both discovered, as writers that are not in writing related fields, our new jobs are leaving us feeling. . .Unsatisfied. 

Neither jobs are what we expected them to be, and after working only a couple of months, I’m already looking for work elsewhere to focus on a slightly different avenue. I’m tired of waking up feeling a loss of appetite because this is the job I have to wake up to every day. I’m terrified of the idea of having to do something like this for the rest of my life.

The fact of the matter is, I want nothing more than to become a successful author. Successful enough to be able to make a living off of it, that is. My husband feels the same way as well. I’ve never before in my life wanted anything more than to just leave everything else behind, and pour all my time, attention, and resources into this dream of ours. Let me be clear about something: I am not spontaneous. At all. I carefully plan everything I do before I take action. I would never leave my job unexpectedly, especially for something so impractical. But I’ve never felt more tempted to take action on this dream before in my life. 

“Why can’t I pursue this dream?” I’ve been asking myself. “All I have to do is just make it happen.” It sounds so simple, but I know it’s not realistic. 

Though it pains me because writing is what I feel I do best. My husband has expressed feeling similarly about himself. I feel crippling imposter syndrome every day at my current job, when I’ve never felt that as a writer. All the more reason why I feel I’m meant to write.

Although I’m aiming to try traditional publishing first, I feel I would have the perseverance needed in order to tackle self publishing as well. The idea of writing every day and making a living off of that sounds heavenly to me. The idea of doing that and podcasting at the same time also sounds heavenly. I can’t help but wonder if I simply gave it my all, maybe I could eventually support myself as a writer. Perhaps we could support ourselves as writers. Or at the very least, I hope and pray for that.

One day, that is.

In the meanwhile I keep working my regular 40 hours at my current job, thinking of my dream job. I feel as if I’m wasting my time doing the wrong thing. Never have I felt it so strongly before. I feel as though I’m living the wrong life. I’m sure this is a universal feeling for all writers. But man. Doesn’t it suck?

#writing life #wanting to be an author #wanting to escape reality #imposter syndrome #dream job #writing for a living

[butchfalin]

the funniest meltdown ive ever had was in college when i got so overstimulated that i could Not speak, including over text. one of my friends was trying to talk me through it but i was solely using emojis because they were easier than trying to come up with words so he started using primarily emojis as well just to make things feel balanced. this was not the Most effective strategy... until. he tried to ask me "you okay?" but the way he chose to do that was by sending "👉🏼👌🏼❓" and i was so shocked by suddenly being asked if i was dtf that i was like WHAT???? WHAT DID YOU JUST SAY TO ME?????????? and thus was verbal again

#yeehaw #1k #5k #10k #posts that got cursed. blasted. im making these tag updates after... 19 hours? #also i have been told it should say speech loss bc nonverbal specifically refers to the permanent state. did not know that! #unfortunately i fear it is so far past containment that even if i edited it now it would do very little. but noted for future reference #edit 2: nvm enough ppl have come to rb it from me directly that i changed the wording a bit. hopefully this makes sense #also. in case anyone is curious. though i doubt anyone who is commenting these things will check the original tags #1) my friend did not do this on purpose in any way. it was not intended to distract me or to hit on me. im a lesbian hes a gay man. cmon now #he felt very bad about it afterwards. i thought it was hilarious but it was very embarrassed and apologetic #2) “why didn't he use 🫵🏼?” didn't exist yet. “why didn't he use 🆗?” dunno! we'd been using a lot of hand emojis. 👌🏼 is an ok sign #like it makes sense. it was just a silly mixup. also No i did not invent 👉🏼👌🏼 as a gesture meaning sex. do you live under a rock #3) nonspeaking episodes are a recurring thing in my life and have been since i was born. this is not a quirky one-time thing #it is a pervasive issue that is very frustrating to both myself and the people i am trying to communicate with. in which trying to speak is #extremely distressing and causes very genuine anguish. this post is not me making light of it it's just a funny thing that happened once #it's no different than if i post about a funny thing that happened in conjunction w a physical disability. it's just me talking abt my life #i don't mind character tags tho. those can be entertaining. i don't know what any of you are talking about #Except the ppl who have said this is pego/ryu or wang/xian. those people i understand and respect #if you use it as a writing prompt that's fine but send it to me. i want to see it #aaaand i think that's it. everyday im tempted to turn off rbs on it. it hasn't even been a week

[mamaangiwine]

I don't think many people realize how much they've been turned into a bunch of casually cynical jerks.

Someone may come to their parents and say "I want to write a book" and their parents will say "it's really hard to get published".

Someone might confide in their sibling and say "I want to sell my art on "x" platform" and that sibling will say "do you know how many people you'd be competing with? Do you know how many shops are even on that platform?"

I know a kid who once told his best friend "I think I wanna start a dnd podcast" and the friend was like "do you know what the word "oversaturation" means?"

Personally, I don't know why any of that matters? And even if it did, perhaps your response should be "Do it! Do it and see where it goes!"

#i am literallly lamenting the world we live in #not magic #creativity #art #writing #creative work

[whatkindofnameisella]

can you believe that we have fanfiction. that we have websites dedicated to fanfiction. that there is a place that you can go and read tens, hundreds, thousands and thousands of pieces of writing that strangers have made. people who are not "writers". people who come home at the end of the day and have feelings and say, i am going to put that into words. i am going to share those words. short, long, sweet, sad, horny, funny, wonderful words. we are all just human and we all love to make and remake and share that with others. can you believe that.

#ao3 #archive of our own #fanfiction #sometimes i can't even believe how much i myself have written. like i think i am not a writer. i am not doing enough. i do not write enough #and i look back and i have 34 (34!!) works on ao3 and reams of unpublished work on my computer and so long left to live. so i think #we will be okay. #writing

[k9effect]

Reblog for a larger sample size!

No "show results", if you're not a fanfic writer just be patient.

I saw a post about an anon saying it was embarrasing to have an ao3 account in your 30s (it's absolutely not), so I want to do a poll and see what the age range actually is.

#sam polls #fanfic #ao3 #fanfiction #fan fic #fan fiction #writing #authors #writblr #fanficblr #wattpad #quotev #live journal #fanfic.net

[braxiatel]

I honestly and truly believe all good AUs should be a little “”””ooc”””” in the sense that good characterisation involves understanding that changes a characters backstory and circumstances will have an effect on how they respond to the world around them

Good characterisation isn’t about creating a perfect 1:1 canon replica it’s about understanding why a character is different in your work and about grounding the changes you do deliberately choose to make in canon character traits

#also you know art is subjective doesn’t just mean quality wise #we all view fiction through the lense of our own lives and thus we all interpret it in our own unique way #writing #the void collection

[officialspec]

modern au but set in brisbane. is this anything

#TRICK QUESTION its everything. to me #dungeon meshi #delicious in dungeon #marcille donato #senshi of izganda #laios touden #kabru #falin touden #izutsumi #farcille #chilchuck tims #namari #my art #dunmesh #brisbane meshi #americans have all the fun putting their modern aus wherever they live. well its my turn. namari is a caboolture bogan i know this #ive thought about this So much i need to write down all my notes somewhere

[biggest-gaudiest-patronuses]

the fact that shakespeare was a playwright is sometimes so funny to me. just the concept of the "greatest writer of the English language" being a random 450-year-old entertainer, a 16th cent pop cultural sensation (thanks in large part to puns & dirty jokes & verbiage & a long-running appeal to commoners). and his work was made to be watched not read, but in the classroom teachers just hand us his scripts and say "that's literature"

just...imagine it's 2450 A.D. and English Lit students are regularly going into 100k debt writing postdoc theses on The Simpsons screenplays. the original animation hasn't even been preserved, it's literally just scripts and the occasional SDH subtitles.txt. they've been republished more times than the Bible

#due to the Great Data Decay academics write viciously argumentative articles on which episodes aired in what order #at conferences professors have known to engage in physically violent altercations whilst debating the air date number of household viewers #90% of the couch gags have been lost and there is a billion dollar trade in counterfeit “lost copies” #serious note: i'll be honest i always assumed it was english imperialism that made shakespeare so inescapable in the 19th/20th cent #like his writing should have become obscure at the same level of his contemporaries #but british imperialists needed an ENGLISH LANGUAGE (and BRITISH) writer to venerate #and shakespeare wrote so many damn things that there was a humongous body of work just sitting there waiting to be culturally exploited... #i know it didn't happen like this but i imagine a English Parliament House Committee Member For The Education Of The Masses or something #cartoonishly stumbling over a dusty cobwebbed crate labelled the Complete Works of Shakespeare #and going 'Eureka! this shall make excellent propoganda for fabricating a national identity in a time of great social unrest. #it will be a cornerstone of our elitist educational institutions for centuries to come! long live our decaying empire!' #'what good fortune that this used to be accessible and entertaining to mainstream illiterate audience members... #..but now we can strip that away and make it a difficult & alienating foundation of a Classical Education! just like the latin language :)' #anyway maybe there's no such thing as the 'greatest writer of x language' in ANY language? #maybe there are just different styles and yes levels of expertise and skill but also a high degree of subjectivity #and variance in the way that we as individuals and members of different cultures/time periods experience any work of media #and that's okay! and should be acknowledged!!! and allow us to give ourselves permission to broaden our horizons #and explore the stories of marginalized/underappreciated creators #instead of worshiping the List of Top 10 Best (aka Most Famous) Whatevers Of All Time/A Certain Time Period #anyways things are famous for a reason and that reason has little to do with innate “value” #and much more to do with how it plays into the interests of powerful institutions motivated to influence our shared cultural narratives #so i'm not saying 'stop teaching shakespeare'. but like...maybe classrooms should stop using it as busy work that (by accident or designs) #happens to alienate a large number of students who could otherwise be engaging critically with works that feel more relevant to their world #(by merit of not being 4 centuries old or lacking necessary historical context or requiring untaught translation skills) #and yeah...MAYBE our educational institutions could spend less time/money on shakespeare critical analysis and more on... #...any of thousands of underfunded areas of literary research i literally (pun!) don't know where to begin #oh and p.s. the modern publishing world is in shambles and it would be neat if schoolwork could include modern works? #beautiful complicated socially relevant works of literature are published every year. it's not just the 'classics' that have value #and actually modern publications are probably an easier way for students to learn the basics. since lesson plans don't have to include the #important historical/cultural context many teens need for 20+ year old media (which is older than their entire lived experience fyi)

[mariamlovesyou]

bisan's live video on her 2nd acc is piercing my heart

she started off expressing (in arabic) how sick she is of the constant sharing, photographing, capturing, having to speak english and how she wants to speak in her native tongue instead.

she explained that the leaflets that were dropped again are ordering evacuation to rafah so they are forced into the sinai, and how impossible it is for over 2 million people to go to an area that's only 151 square km, so many have no choice but to stay in khan younis. they are trapped and have no international passports. rafah is the southernmost point of palestine after khan younis and she said - this part in english - "after rafah there is no more palestine. if we are forced into rafah there is no more palestine."

someone asked her if she has eaten and whether they have any food, her response was no, not at all; one loaf of bread has to be divided between everyone in her tent.

the video kept freezing because of how bad the internet service is in gaza right now so i lost bits and pieces, but at some point an older woman joined the live, a journalist outside of the country. it's unclear whether they knew each other previously, but a lot of warmth was exchanged. the woman got tears out of bisan when she told her "dont listen to people who tell you to be strong, i don't want you to be strong, i want you to be you. if you are sad i want to know, if you are happy i want to know." she explained that she tried entering rafah but the occupation refuses to let any foreign journalists in anymore.

after the woman left, bisan talked about her life before october. she said her life was beautiful and fruitful and any source of strife was solely on israeli hands; namely her inability to travel or pursue placements for her education outside of palestine. other than that she had nothing to complain about. if im able to watch the video after it ends, i will add any pieces i missed

#the live paused for me so i went to go write this down

[lgbtlunaverse]

Nothing will dispell the "the curtains were just blue" myth faster than writing something yourself, because the amount of pretentious symbolism i am putting in my silly little fanfics is ridiculous. I mean SO much with these words, literally every single one of them. This fic has twenty five typos and zero correct uses of punctuation but if there's curtains you bet your ass I put thought into what colour they were.

#writing #fic writing #like this is stuff i'm doing for fun with my perfectionism meter turned down as far as i can get it #and i am still thinking about it A LOT #talk to me about how in red string fic jgy perceives the memory block both as syrup and as mud but nmj thinks it feels like blood #it's just a thing in their heads that mentally feels kind of thick and sticky but they both made something different of it #it's about issues with cleanliness / lies as a way to craft an illusion of a better lopking world vs the constant violence nmj lives in

[implodingvolcanoes]

Nothing destroyed my confidence as a writer like becoming a professional writer

#writing #writing for a living #confidence #jobs #help me

[cryptixotic]

Be real with me. You're sitting in a bar and a 𝔴𝔞𝔯𝔩𝔬𝔯𝔡 𝔬𝔣 𝔱𝔥𝔢 𝔰𝔢𝔞 with a massive sword rams into the door. Do you or do you not laugh

#one piece #dracule mihawk #one piece live action #i wasn't planning on posting this but a good old shitpost is always enjoyable in a while #can you believe i've been writing with a fountain pen my whole life yet i am the most mediocre calligrapher to bless this earth ?

[ayatou]

the strawhats & their dreams

#one piece #one piece live action #opla #opla spoilers #luffy #zoro #nami #ussop #sanji #one piece netflix #netflixedit #daily netflix #mycreations #whoever in the writing team decided to feature the kid characters #may both sides of your pillow be cool tonight #they make me feel Insane

[khajiithaswitchywares]

Go hiking. Fake your death. Become one with the forest. Elevate to forest god. The simple things.

#witchblr #witchcraft #witch #nature #forest #hiking #witch tips #suggestion #life worth living #life goals #current mood #satire #forest god #level up #local cryptid #cryptid #feral #forsake society #writing #my writing #down with capitalism #cottagecore #flowers #random #just witchy things

[bishy437]

he won

bonus:

#oi oi don’t steal my tags i see u 🫵 #svsss #mdzs #moshang #hualian #bingqiu #sqq u spoilt brat #binghe is def the best cook out of the three gongs i’m not saying this lightly #we know lwj can cook from the extras and i can only assume hc can cook bc the only thing he CANT do is write BUT: #xl enjoys cooking so ofc hc is gonna let him express himself culinarily #and wwx is a spice fanatic weirdo who wants to go live his m!lf dreams into the sunset #lwj will not get in the way of that #sqq however is perfectly content having bingmei cook his meals forever and never stepping into a kitchen #scum villian self saving system #scum villain #mo dao zu shi #tgcf #heaven official's blessing #wangxian #mine #luo binghe #shen qingqiu #wei wuxian #lan wangji #xie lian #hua cheng #shang qinghua #mobei jun

[rustchild]

desperately craving weird surrealist arthurania. Knights with no faces wandering through the mists. Seams between Christian and pre-Christian Britain gaping like open wounds. Beafts and visions. Maybe a monk. Maybe the monk is gay

#This post brought to you by remembering that The Green Knight exists #and longing to live in the alternate universe where it launched a whole genre of high quality queer indie arthurania retellings #craving themes of guilt honor repression wildness etc etc #bonus points if it includes critique of the whole divine right of kings English empire imaginary that can accompany Arthur retellings #I would write it myself but alas! I have no brain #Mine