sirkir
23 / Finnish / Queer / Fantasy writer
162 posts
Latest Posts by sirkir
Current book: 50% done, struggling.
New book idea: shiny, exciting, begging to be written.
Result: 27 unfinished drafts and a deep, personal crisis.
Soooo ✨
3 months ago, I finished the first draft of my first book (yay!!). I wanted to share some of my experience, knowing there are a lot of writers here. Maybe it could help some of you. I hope it will 🫶
It took me 3 years and 2 months to reach this point. From the world building and research to the writing part, it has been painful, frustrating, exhilarating, humbling, enriching and another tone of adjectives that i cannot list here (even if we love them, as writers)
I have some pieces of advice that stick to me after this agonizing experience. They are completely personal but if they resonate with someone here, I'm happy to share them :
Write : I know how it sounds. But there is no best advice for me. "You want to write a book ? Write it" yeah, absolutely. Write the 3 sentences that come to your mind in the middle of the day. Write the silly ideas that "nobody is going to like". Write 10 words a day. Write even if it doesn't make sense. One day, it will. So write. Sometimes it can be painful and I think it's okay. Most of the time, it's wonderful and liberating.
Your writing doesn't define your value : If you think it's not the best time to write then don't. I know, I said to write RIGHT ABOVE. But : listen to yourself, your feelings are valid and you're not defined by the number of words you wrote everyday. Sometimes, it's not the best time in life to write a book. A book is a massive project that requires time, investment, energy. You can always come back to your project when you have the right mindset
Listen to your heart : write and write what you like. Never forget that you write for yourself. Even if you want to publish. Write what is dear to your heart, be authentic. I'm convinced you'll find your audience
The first draft is bad : and it's FUCKING OKAY. The first draft is just here to exist. This is its ONLY job. If it's already good, great. If it's bad, that's normal. You're still learning about everything in your story. Especially in the case of a first novel !!!!
Talk about your story : I know how it can be difficult because it makes you vulnerable. I don't say to share every part of your story. Sometimes, talking about critical points offers you POV that you didn't have yourself. If you don't have anybody in your entourage, I think you can ask here
Take a step back : go outside (alone or with friends), play video games, read a book, take a nap, learn new skills. Leave your writing in peace. It needs to rest. And so do you
Stop following every advice: if you need advice, read them, then make them yours, but don't turn them into a holy rule. Your writing is yours. Writing is a creative hobby. It's too sad to kill this creativity with too many rules
Keep writing and take care 🩷
a constant problem
Just opened my fic document and found this
Thanks, past me. Incredibly helpful.
i love how everyone on this website is kind of pathetic it brings such a sense of understanding and community
Writers are scary because we’ll take personal trauma and think, "Hmm… what if this happened to my fictional characters but worse?"
I realised that plot holes are only holes because you keep forgetting to repair them. If you actually sew them up with a bunch of made up shit occasionally, then they won't get so big. I somehow made my world building make sense by just adding reasons why its like that.
Why doesn't anyone know about the other plains of the dodecahedron? well obviously it's because everyone thinks you just fall off the edge and whatever you see after that is The After Life. You know, folklore and totally not a complete plot hole with an half arsed explanation slapped on top.
Your best writing happens when you stop worrying about what’s “good” and just write. Messy, chaotic, too-long sentences. Weird, overdramatic dialogue. Scenes that make you feel something. You can always clean it up later, but the rawest, realest writing comes from writing like no one will ever read it.
The finnish array of folklore creatures mainly exists outside of any human understanding of good, evil, right, or wrong. Or to be more specific, their personal moral codes - if they have any - have no regard for human wellbeing. This includes household spirits. A house elf is attached to the house, not the people, and it does not give a shit about individual human beings, but grudgingly aknowledges that whatever's good for the household is usually good for the house. But it will not tolerate residents who don't maintain it.
The sauna in essentially a sacred place. Not in connection to any particular divinity, but sanctified for washing and cleansing. People gave birth and were born in the sauna, because it was the cleanest place to do so. The sauna was were the dead were given their final wash before burial. You strip naked and rinse yourseld before going in because your skin and your clothes are dirty, and in the sauna you sweat out the dirt still in your pores. Every surface of the sauna is scrubbed clean at least twice per year, for christmas and summer solstice.
The sauna, too, has a guardian spirit. And just like the house elf, the sauna elf does not give a shit about you. Their duty is to guard the sauna. See that it's heated appropriately, washed properly, treated with reverence and used with respect. If you fuck around with the sauna, the spirit can and will kill you. You jack off in there too many times and the elf will straight-up skin you alive, eyelids and all.
There's been joking discussion about whether all saunas have an elf or not - some say that all saunas do, some say that only wood stove saunas do and electric saunas don't, the jury is out there. I for one have observed that my facial piercings start burning in an electric sauna, but not in a wood one, though I don't know why a sauna elf would particularly approve of them.
That being said, the saunas that I am certain do absolutely not have a guardian spirit in them are the ones at the american gyms y'all are talking about. Because if you can walk in there without showering, in your sweaty gym clothes, with your shoes on, and watch tiktoks on your loud-ass phone with no headphones on, that is either not a true sanctified bathing sauna, or nobody is going to leave that building alive today.
Hey you ever think about The Characters so much to the point where
Täytyy kirjottaa täytyy kirjottaa täytyy kirjottaa täytyy kirjottaa täytyy k
the most humbling experience of being a writer is when you spend hours writing and think you wrote 10k words but it was actually more like 400. and then you do it again
people need to stop treating fictional characters like they're real people
it's so annoying
"simping over this character is objectifying them!!!" THEYRE LITERALLY OBJECTS. THEY DONT EXSIT. THEY CANT BE OFFENDED, MADE UNCOMFORTABLE, ETC, BECAUSE THEY DONT EXIST.
ah yes i worked for 2.5 seconds i think a break is in order
>take break from wip
>reread wip
>this is awful
> :(
“can i read your draft?” can you survive secondhand embarrassment?
real picture of me trying to figure out the plot of my novel so it makes sense
I assume it’s important…
the cool thing about writing is that if you finish the book you get a free book at the end
trope i really like is self-loathing characters desperate for the catharsis of punishment for frankly rather selfish reasons who r also obsessed with repeatedly pressing others into hating them and hurting them as essentially a method of self harm. yes baby continue making it worse for urself and everybody around u instead of doing an actually productive and effective journey of improvement and redemption
Ihmiseks joka rakastaa kirjottaa mä vihaan kirjottamista aika paljon
writing is so fun
"Oh my God why would they do that????" I say as I write someone doing something bad with my own ten fingers
I just wiped a character completely out of existence because I’m a cruel god
