Gay people are so crazy… what do you mean you married her dad but you’re thinking it could maybe still work out🧐🤨
i’m losing my mind right now bc i really really want to write but for some reason i can’t think of anything. sitting here staring at like 3 open wips without a Single working brain cell. god has abandoned me.
Sylvia Plath: There certainly isn’t enough genuine talent for us to take notice.
Rudyard Kipling: I’m sorry Mr. Kipling, but you just don’t know how to use the English language.
Emily Dickinson: [Your poems] are quite as remarkable for defects as for beauties and are generally devoid of true poetical qualities.
Ernest Hemingway (on The Torrents of Spring): It would be extremely rotten taste, to say nothing of being horribly cruel, should we want to publish it.
Dr. Seuss: Too different from other juveniles on the market to warrant its selling.
The Diary of Anne Frank: The girl doesn’t, it seems to me, have a special perception or feeling which would lift that book above the ‘curiosity’ level.
Richard Bach (on Jonathan Livingston Seagull): will never make it as a paperback. (Over 7.25 million copies sold)
H.G. Wells (on The War of the Worlds): An endless nightmare. I do not believe it would “take”…I think the verdict would be ‘Oh don’t read that horrid book’. And (on The Time Machine): It is not interesting enough for the general reader and not thorough enough for the scientific reader.
Edgar Allan Poe: Readers in this country have a decided and strong preference for works in which a single and connected story occupies the entire volume.
Herman Melville (on Moby Dick): We regret to say that our united opinion is entirely against the book as we do not think it would be at all suitable for the Juvenile Market in [England]. It is very long, rather old-fashioned…
Jack London: [Your book is] forbidding and depressing.
William Faulkner: If the book had a plot and structure, we might suggest shortening and revisions, but it is so diffuse that I don’t think this would be of any use. My chief objection is that you don’t have any story to tell. And two years later: Good God, I can’t publish this!
Stephen King (on Carrie): We are not interested in science fiction which deals with negative utopias. They do not sell.
Joseph Heller (on Catch–22): I haven’t really the foggiest idea about what the man is trying to say… Apparently the author intends it to be funny – possibly even satire – but it is really not funny on any intellectual level … From your long publishing experience you will know that it is less disastrous to turn down a work of genius than to turn down talented mediocrities.
George Orwell (on Animal Farm): It is impossible to sell animal stories in the USA.
Oscar Wilde (on Lady Windermere’s Fan): My dear sir, I have read your manuscript. Oh, my dear sir.
Vladimir Nabokov (on Lolita): … overwhelmingly nauseating, even to an enlightened Freudian … the whole thing is an unsure cross between hideous reality and improbable fantasy. It often becomes a wild neurotic daydream … I recommend that it be buried under a stone for a thousand years.
The Tale of Peter Rabbit was turned down so many times, Beatrix Potter initially self-published it.
Lust for Life by Irving Stone was rejected 16 times, but found a publisher and went on to sell about 25 million copies.
John Grisham’s first novel was rejected 25 times.
Jack Canfield and Mark Victor Hansen (Chicken Soup for the Soul) received 134 rejections.
Robert Pirsig (Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance) received 121 rejections.
Gertrude Stein spent 22 years submitting before getting a single poem accepted.
Judy Blume, beloved by children everywhere, received rejections for two straight years.
A Wrinkle in Time by Madeline L’Engle received 26 rejections.
Frank Herbert’s Dune was rejected 20 times.
Carrie by Stephen King received 30 rejections.
The Diary of Anne Frank received 16 rejections.
Harry Potter and The Philosopher’s Stone by J.K. Rolling was rejected 12 times.
Dr. Seuss received 27 rejection letters
#basically every time catra says hey adora
rjgames asked:
Hello, I see you already have a post on writing accents, my question though: Is there any other way to write accents without saying from where it comes from (i.e. french)? My story takes place in a fictional setting where Earth does not exist and I’m having a difficult time with this. Also, I would not like to rely on misspelling a lot, or is that the only way? Thank you!
When you can’t say where an accent comes from, your best bet is to give the reader a basic idea of how it sounds. Obviously, there is no way to write a description that everyone will interpret the same way, and that’s true even if you’re describing the sound of a real world accent. A really great formula for describing fictional accents is this: sound or flow descriptor + dialect descriptor + origin location + regional reference + pronunciation description Example: He spoke with the lyrical brogue of the Tonterosi highlands–trilled Rs, clipped consonants, and a lilt at the end of every sentence. - He spoke with the lyrical (sound or flow descriptor) brogue (dialect descriptor) of the Tonerosi (origin location) highlands (regional reference)–trilled Rs, clipped consonants, and a lilt at the end of every sentence (pronunciation description.) You don’t have to do it in that order, and you can do a little mixing and matching. Whatever sounds best. And, even though no two readers will interpret that the same way, you’re still giving them something to imagine when they imagine this character’s accent. At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter if they imagine your character with an accent that sounds English, or French, or Spanish, or none of the above. What matters is that they imagine an accent. Here are some words you can use in your descriptions: Sound Descriptors
Soulful Dulcet Golden Sweet Honeyed Flowery Silvery Syrupy Mellow Broad Flat Deep Sharp Thick Heavy Crisp Round Hard Jagged Throaty Nasal Guttural Husky Breathy Smoky Raspy Chirpy Rich Discordant Sonorous Flow Descriptors
Lyrical Melodic Songlike Musical Mellifluous Rhythmic Staccato Rolling Flowing Rhythmic Dialect Descriptors Burr Lilt Drawl Brogue Slur Twang Lisp Regional References Highlands Midlands Lowlands Country High Country Low Country Back Country North Country South Country East Country West Country Backwoods Coastal Northern Southern Eastern Western Midwestern Badlands Riverlands Grasslands Hinterlands Marshlands Wetlands Boglands Woodlands Moorlands Bushlands Shrublands Mountains Jungle Desert Plains Valley Basin Swamp Prairie Foothills Forest Savanna Tundra Plateau Steppe Inland Pronunciation Description
Clipped Stilted Cut Hissed Trilled Tapped Shortened Drawn out Drawled Elongated Dropped Tense Lax Rounded Raised Shifted Glottal stop Loose Tight
Other Sound Words
Cadence Rhythm Tempo Lilt Timbre Harmony Meter Beat Intonation Inflection ——————————————————————— Have a writing question? I’d love to hear from you! Please be sure to read my ask rules and master list first or your question may go unanswered. :)
I’m so damn grateful to my younger self for looking at all the work it takes to be a writer and saying, “fuck it, I’m doing this anyway!”
You go, past me. Smash those tiny fists on the keyboard and figure out what the fuck a semicolon does, you ambitious little bastard.
getting over the fear of being bad is so fucking hard… like, it’s literally a super power if you can start something and say ‘it doesn’t matter if it’s bad, it just matters that it exists’
‘bad’ is so terrifying, ‘bad’ is wrecking, and the ability to apply self-compassion to things deemed ‘bad’ is beyond amazing, to understand not everything in life will be ‘good’ and that’s okay
essays, art, novels, school, relationships, anyone out there starting things when they are terrified of the arbitrary metric of the result… I am so fucking proud of you, you are so brave and strong
keep starting new things, even if ‘bad’ is a possibility