SpanishRed

Rage, Rage Until the Dying of the Light

  There are three types of people on my block list:

* Those who hate feminists.

* Those who hate men.

* Those who hate everyone.

Scratch that. There is one type of person on my block list: Fundamentalists.

When my block list was young, I thought hate groups were the problem. Then my block list grew up, and I thought men’s rights activists were the problem. Then, I thought a particular kind of internet feminism wa...

Finding Your Voice Week Day Two: Developing the Capacity for Original Thought

If you want to develop an original voice, you must develop the capacity for original thought. The latter might seem well-nigh impossible, but it’s not something one conjures out of nothingness. You must develop it like a muscle. That requires a lot of exercise before you grow strong, and cliches are the wheelchair you use to get places because you’re too comfortable to walk.

You don’t develop muscles in a wheelchair. You don’t develop the capacity for original thought by regurgi...

We Are the Product

During my first year at Fetlife, an internet stranger told me he wanted to cut my throat, hang me upside down over a bath, and watch me bleed out. In the years since, I’ve lost count of the men who’ve asked me if I fuck my dog. Rape and murder messages are so frequent they’ve turned my inbox into a horror movie. I can’t tell you which is preferable: to find those messages unusual enough to shock you, or to find them so common that you no longer have an emotional response. When rape an...

This Week We're Working on Finding Your Voice

Zen Buddhists say the primary goal of meditation is to find enlightenment, but if you have a goal to find enlightenment, it will never happen. If you achieve enlightenment, merely thinking you have pushes you out of enlightenment. That’s Zen in three lines. It’s a pleasure.

Finding your writing voice is a lot like achieving enlightenment. You must chase an ephemeral thing without chasing it. When you achieve it, thinking you have is enough to eliminate it,...

Writing Community Week Day Four: In Which I Nag a Whole Lot

This week we spoke about the writing community, and this is what we learned:

• You want to work on your writing.

• You want to learn the basics, even style guides.

• You’re willing to read, write, and thrive.

• You’re up for prompts.

• You’re totally up for NaNoWriMo

• Hell, you’re willing to sell a kidney for more writing skills.

• You’re willing to meet writers in person.

I th...

I Fell into the 4B Movement By Accident While I Was Shopping for Groceries

The Korean 4B movement has been swearing off heterosexual marriage, dating, and children since 2010. If society won’t promise them safety or reproductive rights, the 4Bs will simply remove themselves from the equation.

So society wants them to have sex but not abortions?
4B says that’s not good enough.
So the patriarchy wants to assault and abuse them?
4B isn’t willing to accept those conditions, and since they won’t get rid of the patriarchy in their lifetimes, the onl...

Writing Community Week Day Three: Spoken Word Events

Spoken word poetry is one of the most hated and beloved forms of poetry today. It’s written to please an audience in a live performance, so its writers tend to be lazy about structure. These poems must keep an audience of casual readers entertained, so they don’t try to challenge anyone. They’re more interested in how a poem is received in the moment, so spoken word poems are often referred to as McPoems: Fast products that are low on nutrients and high on cheap, easy sustenance.

...

BlackHippyChick Day: Apostrophes

How do you comfort the grammar police?
They’re, their, there.

I didn’t write that joke, but I wish I had, and that’s enough. Today we’re doing apostrophes. (Yay)

Apostrophes have a few different roles:

• They denote ownership (as in “SpanishRed’s apostrophe lesson”)

• They show that numbers are missing (as in “The cupcake cult of ’23 was the best cult that ever existed.”)

• They denote ownership of plurals (as in “The ...

  2024-11-20 08:59:08 +0000 UTC View Post

Sometimes Hurt People Hurt People

As a shelter volunteer, I’m on The Cuddle Crew. As the name suggests, our job is to cuddle. We earn the trust of traumatised dogs so they can find their forever homes. It’s our job to teach them that humans can be good.

I soon learned why the cuddlers wore protective gear. You get bitten. You leave the shelter covered in bruises.

Cuddling is a lot more dangerous than walking. Dogs with PTSD do weird things. The closer you get, the more teeth you’re ...

Cheat Code Week Day Five: Thesauruses

South Africa has several official languages, so we have higher expectations of our vocabularies than most. We know there's no way to replicate the musicality of Xhosa in Zulu and no worthy English words to replicate the harshness of Afrikaans. When we translate South African books, we learn how woefully inefficient the English language is. Some words just do the job better, and not all of them are English.

If you're a writer, you must find all the right words. Those words must be viscer...

Cheat Code Week: Mythology and Religion

Not too long ago we spoke about the symbolic value of colour. We said red could symbolise love and green, nature. But colour’s symbolism is relatively limited when you compare it to the symbolic potential of an entire story. T.S. Eliot packed meaning into his work by writing allusions to legends and Bible stories. Ash Wednesday is, perhaps, the most famous of these. He references Lazarus here:

And God said
Shall these bones live? shall these
Bones live? And that which had been c...

Writing Cheat Codes Week: Homages

I’ve been writing the same book since <checks files> 2011. I’ve been trying to achieve the impossible feat of writing the last two poems in my collection before I delete another two. A writer friend gave me a neat trick for overcoming this problem. It goes like this:

Take one of your rejected poems.
Delete every second line.
Rewrite those lines to make something entirely new.
Delete the lines from your previous poem.
Fill in the gaps with new content until the new ...

Why My Limits are an Autocracy

“You should never have to make a case for your limits and submit them to another party for approval.” @AncillaL

“Why?” was S’ favourite word. When we were negotiating the terms of our relationship, “Why?” When I was setting new limits, “Why?” When I safe worded, “Why?”

I made one mistake during those conversations, and only one: I beli...

2024-11-14 04:42:14 +0000 UTC View Post

Black Hippy Chick Day: Choosing Your Words Carefully

Abstractions are one of the most common criticisms you’ll see in this workshop. Abstract language deals in ideas rather than objects, and generalisations rather than details. Which of the following two sentences is better?

As he talked, Mr Ben-Gurion transformed.
As he talked, Mr Ben-Gurion transformed from a rather tired man suffering from influenza, sitting in a blue bathrobe in a hotel room, to one of his nation’s greatest visionaries. (Harry Gilroy)

What about:
Senor...

Cheat Code Week: Grammar-Checking Apps

In days of yore, the only way to check your writing syntax and style was through editors. Yay, progress! There are now free tools to do all that work on your behalf. I use two: Grammarly and the Hemingway App. Technology isn’t always right, though, so neither tool can act as an autocracy. You must question it at every turn.

Let’s take a look at Hemingway. The software highlights overcomplicated language, words that di...

It's Cheat Code Week. Today We're Speaking About Research

I have a cognitive disability. My short and long-term memory has been crushed beneath the wreckage of decades of seizures. I don’t process ideas well. I’ve forgotten most of the knowledge I’ve gained. I’ve lost some of my most important writing tools, and knowledge is not the least of them. I still produce writing to the same level I might if I had a healthy brain because I have tools.

I have dictionaries of phrase and fable for times when I can’t come up with extended metapho...

The Kink Scene is Like Cops and Robbers

When I was in nursery school my best friend, Nicola, and I used to play cops and robbers. We'd stand on opposite sides of the field, run towards each other, then scream bloody murder. Then we’d run some more. Did I say it was good game? Nope, but to Nicola and I, it was the best thing since the jelly-filled orange peels we sometimes got for tea. I have no clue what cops and robbers had to do with our game, but I'm sure we both had a common understanding of when screaming was appropriat...

Writing Psychology Week Day Five: Discipline

Today is Red the Asshole Day, because today we’re going to talk about discipline. I’m sure this will be super fun. </sarcasm>

I spend a great deal of time telling you to create the space for inspiration to come to you rather than forcing the words out. Even so, there’s something to be said for daily writing. If you’re committed to your craft, daily practice will speed up your progress exponentially. Want to see how? Go to the beginning of my journal. Compare the writing to...

Writing Psychology Day Four: Feel the Fear and Do it Anyway

Writers are usually introverts. We don’t take well to thoughts of grandeur, but our vocation requires us to believe, even just a little bit, that we are worthy of being read. We must find self-confidence and self-belief in our poor, introvert hearts, so you’ll find entire gigabytes of writing in our files, but when a local writing event is looking for people to do readings, they’ll have one person on the list who’s been doing this all year and is really quite tired now.

Writing ...

Request for feedback

Morning! I have a couple of users who are requesting that I add ALL my daily Fet posts to Patreon so that they can access them away from Fetlife. Based on engagement, I've been picking up that when I do post all Fet posts here on Patreon, the exclusive content is difficult to identify for those of you who follow me on Fetlife. I last did a stint of adding all Fetlife content here about two weeks ago. I posted that content to the $1 tier in the hope that it would be less confusing for everyone...

How to Avoid Writing Burnout and Writer's Block

Creativity isn’t an infinite resource. You only get so much of it on any given day. f you push yourself too hard, you will run out of creative energy. You will burn out, and then you’ll lose the ability to produce good work. The dominoes will fall and fall as you gradually lose every iota of your confidence.

Congratulations! You’ve just picked up a nasty case of writer’s block, all because you spent a month pushing yourself too hard. This isn’t the last domino. Nope. Failure b...

BlackHippyChick Day: Tenses

Since a few of you are struggling with your tenses, I thought it’d be a good idea to cover them for BlackHippyChick Day. Let’s start with the most basic of basics: There are 12 tenses. Yes, 12. Don’t worry. If you speak English, you will probably know how to use them, even if you can’t list them. The most important thing you need to keep in mind for your writing is you have to pick a tense and stick to it as much as possible. See? Not so complicated.

I am currently writing in th...

If We Spoke About Real Life the Way We Speak About Kink

I heard that you cooked a crap pasta for your boyfriend the other night. If you don’t start preparing better food, the entire restaurant industry will collapse under the weight of canned tuna and savoury jelly moulds. Not a single Michelin star will remain, and it will all be your fault.

You’re buying a Mini? You can’t do that. That’s not what the Ancient Romans drove.

I’m sorry you’re not interested in Spiderman movies, but I kno...