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Terror Week Day Four: Locking Up Your Inner Karen

Earlier in the week I asked you what you feared as writers. You told me you were scared of judgement, of not succeeding, and of taking “too long” to pick up the tools. These are the terrors that cause writer’s block. We’re so frightened about what might happen after we’ve written something that we can’t manage to actually write. Our inner Karens are shouting so loudly we can barely manage to put down a word.

The first commandment of writing is “Thou shalt not...

Some Things Aren't Too Good to be True.

I once had a relationship that was like a nuclear fallout. There was absurdly delicious sex around every corner so the paintings were skew. The furniture was out of place. There were clothes on the floor and enough breakage to complete with the inside of the Titanic. I stopped bothering with underwear and started bothering with transparent negligees.

Submission felt like flying, and I often saw tears in his eyes. He was profoundly moved—by us, by me, by the world that ros...

BlackHippyChick Day: Run-On Sentences

You’ve seen it before, probably in my writing — The writer has forgotten that readers need to take a breath while reading, so they have written a sentence that takes up an entire paragraph, and as the reader, you’re starting to feel a little confused as though your head might explode if you see another “but”, but you’re in it for the long-haul, so you keep reading until your lungs have shrivelled like balloons, and if you don’t see a period soon, you’re probably going to suffo...

Terror Week Day Three: Writing is the Best Cure for Writer's Block

My mentor believed that poetry and verse were entirely different things. He saw poetry as inspiration set down on paper from the highest point of your creative instinct. Verse was the technical, soulless version you created with your rational mind.

This distinction matters because it insists you can write no matter how uninspired you feel. You can produce the mechanics of the work without feeling them in your soul.

I write every day. If I can’t produce ...

When all the toys are put away, sadists must face themselves in the mirror.

“I know who I was when I got up this morning, but I think I must have changed several times since then.”” –Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.

E’s first sub didn’t want floggers, but fists. She didn’t want pretty rope. She wanted to be bruised and slobbering in a pool of her own vomit. He had to get past his feminism well enough to go there, but the aftermath hurt him most. He was shocked at his own behaviour and even more stunned th...

Terror Week Day Two: Separating David from Goliath

Life is simple when David and Goliath are two separate people. David can simply pick up a pebble and unleash a pointed assault. Easy.

More often, though, David and Goliath are the oppressors and heroes in our own brains. Oppressor and protector are the same person. One half of us is a giant called “Fear”. The other half is David, the tiny human trying to survive it.

Fear is perhaps the greatest threat to exceptional writing. The creative spirit is delicate, so fear only needs ...

This is Terror Week! Day One: Overcoming Fear

Most industries require workers to learn facts and formulate strategies based on those facts. Writing is an entirely different matter. It certainly puts you in touch with facts and strategies, but it also requires you to reveal your most intimate secrets. It requires courage and integrity. You must grow as a person while simultaneously finding your creative spirit. Undeveloped personalities produce undeveloped writing. Even if you can capture something as illusive as inspiration, it will neve...

Literary Device Week Day Five: Anaphora

Dicken’s A Tale of Two Cities may well have the most beautiful first paragraph ever written:

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we wer...

2024-08-31 08:53:26 +0000 UTC View Post

Questions to Ask in Pre-Scene Negotiation

This is not intended to be an exhaustive list, but rather a list of questions you might not have thought to ask.

How much nudity are you comfortable with? Which items of clothing must stay on?

Are you comfortable with rope marks? Impact marks? If so, where?

Do you have a medical condition that could affect your safety during the scene?

Are you looking for a platonic, playful, or sexy scene?

How much experience do you have?

Are you comfortable with t...

Literary Device Week Day Four: Assonance and Dissonance

If you’ve watched Romeo and Juliet, one passage probably plays out loudly in your head:

O Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo?
Deny thy father and refuse thy name.
Or if thou wilt not, be but sworn my love
And I’ll no longer be a Capulet.
‘Tis but thy name that is my enemy

It’s a melodic passage with an easy rhythm, but how does it create the tune?

Shakespeare wrote the melody with assonance. He presented words with similar sou...

We're the Hidden People

My kink is a secret. I spend a great deal of my life hiding. I keep my toys in unidentifiable boxes and don’t open my Fetlife window in polite company. I dodge references to one of the most important facets of my life with much hand waving and many generalisations.

“I can’t come over because I’m going to a party. No, you can’t come because… because... you won’t like the people. No, it’s nobody you know. There’s nothing untoward happening here. Where did I ...

Literary Device Week Day Three: Symbolism

In Lord of the Flies, a group of stranded boys use a conch shell like a talking stick. The boy with the conch is allowed to speak, and everyone else is required to listen. Once he’s finished, he passes the shell to another boy. In early meetings, life is orderly and everyone has a voice. We see references to this shell throughout the book, but by the end, Jack insists, “We don’t need the conch anymore. We know who ought to say things. What good did Simon do speaking, or Bill, or Walter?...

It's BlackHippyChick Day! Today we're doing active and passive sentences.

Writing is like watercolours. The more you dilute your sentences with extraneous words, the weaker their impact. We spend a great deal of time trying to remove words that contribute nothing to our work as a whole. One of the ways we achieve this is with our sentence structure.

There are two kinds of sentence:

Passive: (The pale of water was fetched by Jack and Jill)
Active: (Jack and Jill fetched a pale of water.)

Passive sentences are almost always an inferior choice bec...

Literary Devices Week Day Two: Devices for Dialogue

Are you with ABC? Because I think they’re a fake news network, a terrible network, and I think it’s disgraceful that I came here in good spirit. I love the Black population of this country. I’ve done so much for the Black population of this country, including employment, including opportunity zones with Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina, which is one of the greatest programs ever for Black workers and Black entrepreneurs.

Can you tell me who said that? 2024-08-27 08:13:09 +0000 UTC View Post

It’s Literary Device Week!

I know it sounds boring, but I’m terrifically excited about this one. A literary device is the accelerator pedal of your car. Without it, you won’t get very far, but if you put foot, you can race all the way to Nando’s before you die of hunger. Literary devices give your work power. They add nuance and depth to any writing genre. You’ll recognise a few of them because we’ve covered them before: Rhyme, metre, metaphors, assonance… The more devices you know, the more layers you’ll...

Reading Week Day Six McSweeney's Internet Tendency

McSweeney's Internet Tendency is the Paris Review of comedy and satire writing. They basically reject every submission they receive. I have three rejections to my name thus far, but I intend to earn at least 20 more.

Humour writing is a lot like poetry. It requires you to control every word and beat. It demands exceptional economy. It looks easy, but it's one of the toughest genres to master. That's why I read a thick pile of satire from The New Yorker and McSweeneys. They're the best.<...

I Will Never Give a Good Handjob

I trust my math abilities more than my handjob talents, and I can barely do long division. My first boyfriend gave me a little technical knowledge, but I’m still terrible at them.

Will I edge you through a 40-minute blowjob? Hells yes. Blowjobs are hot. I love them and that's why I can pull them off. With your cock in my mouth, I'm right there with you. Nothing exists to except those hot noises you keep making.

Handjobs ju...

Felony cyberstalking

Felony cyberstalking can include up to five years in prison. Under federal law, cyberstalking is punishable by up to five years in prison and a fine of $250,000. A defendant convicted of felony harassment could face up to 5 or even 10 years of prison time. The victim may sue the defendant in civil court for damages or other relief.

I Hereby Declare Wednesdays "Black Hippy Chick Day

@BlackHippyChick is working on basic grammar or style, and since everyone needs to do the same thing, we'll be covering one Writing 1.01 topic every Wednesday.

Every literary snob who ever lived extolls the virtue of the Oxford comma (also known as the serial comma.) If you’re not familiar, this is the comma you would use in a list or before an “and” or “but.”

People who have strong feelings...

Reading Week Day Four: Salman Rushdie and Marquez

Midnight's Children is one of the most awarded novels in history. Salman Rushdie writes magical realism, but this particular book is far more accessible than most in the genre. People often recommend it to magical realism "beginners." Here's an excerpt from the first chapter:

The Perforated Sheet

I WAS BORN in the city of Bombay … once upon a time. No, that won’t do, there’s no getting away from the date: I was born in Doctor Narlikar’s...

2024-08-24 04:42:14 +0000 UTC View Post

Reading Week Day Five: Crow

In the past we’ve spoken about universality in literature: the themes and emotions that all humans have experienced, and how we, as writers, must turn them into something new. Everyone has loved, so love poems and songs resonate with all of us. Most of us have hated, so those poems resonate as well. When we write about experiences that are unique to us (parenthood, rejection, loneliness, illness) we find universal ways to help our readers understand them. Imagery, symbolism, and other liter...

Domineering Doms Lack One Magical Ingredient: Dominance

A dom once hurt me so badly it felt as though my organs were being flayed. My legs crumpled and, for a while, I couldn’t breathe. His response? “That’s one way to kill the mood.”

The harm was my fault. The limit I put up as a result was inconvenient, and so he manipulated it away. He nagged it away. He ordered it away.

He pushed.

And pushed.

He wouldn’t stop pushing until I gave in. He...

Week Six Day Three: Sipho Sepamla

During the apartheid era, Black writers were gagged from publishing prose. To get around the gag, those writers began covering political themes through poetry. This didn't make it effective poetry, though. Their cause was true, but was the writing sufficient to create real change? This is how a group of Black and Brown writers launched a little writing workshop in Alexandra township where they learned to write poetry well.

These writers came to be known as the Dru...

I Don’t Need a Reason to Cut People Off. My Discomfort is Enough

Over the last few months, a particular user (we’ll call him Bill) has been throwing red flags all over my nice green lawn. He’s perfectly nice, so I’ve quietly tolerated his presence. You know the rules: Someone must do something terrible before you cut them off, so I’ve sent him the occasional one-sentence response and tried to give him the politest version of indifference I could stomach.

As a young girl, I was taught tolerance was more important than autonomy. Ot...

Writing 1.01 Wednesdays

Every literary snob who ever lived extolls the virtue of the Oxford comma (also known as the serial comma.) If you’re not familiar, this is the comma you would use in a list or before an “and” or “but.”

People who have strong feelings about serial commas will often cite the sentence, “Eats shoots and leaves,” which means a very different thing than “eats, shoots, and leaves." One is eating bamboo for some reason, and the other is shooting up pubs and running away. The Ox...

Reading Week Day Two for Poets: Wallace Stevens

Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird

By Wallace Stevens

I
Among twenty snowy mountains,
The only moving thing
Was the eye of the blackbird.

II
I was of three minds,
Like a tree
In which there are three blackbirds.

III
The blackbird whirled in the autumn winds.
It was a small part of the pantomime.

IV
A man and a woman
Are one.
A man and a woman and a blackbird
Are one.

V
I do not know whic...

Reading Week Day Two for Prose Writers: Arundhati Roy

The God of Small Things Chapter 1
PARADISE PICKLES & PRESERVES

May in Ayemenem is a hot, brooding month. The days are long and humid. The river shrinks and black crows gorge on bright mangoes in still, dustgreen trees. Red bananas ripen. Jackfruits burst. Dissolute bluebottles hum vacuously in the fruity air. Then they stun themselves against clear windowpanes and die, fatly baffled in the sun.

The nights are clear, but suffused with sloth and sullen expectation.

But ...

The Stars that Disappear

Everything must die—even the earth. Even the sun, which will fuse hydrogen for 10 billion years, and grow into a red giant so massive it will consume Mercury and Venus. Before it gives up the last ember of its light, though, its radiation will shine brighter than its own galaxy.

This morning I turned on a phone I’ve been too scared to look at for over two years. It’s the last remnant of an old life I’ve not wanted to confront until today. It tells the story of ...

Reading Week Day One: Margaret Atwood

You can't learn to write unless you read, so this week we're going to read fiction excerpts and poems. Today we're doing two pieces of writing by Margaret Atwood. Choose one or both. It's up to you.

Reading for Poets

Siren Song

This is the one song everyone
would like to learn: the song
that is irresistible:

the song that forces men
to leap overboard in squadrons
even though they see the beached skulls

the song nobody knows
becau...

Why I'm Rarely a Feminist Offline

This week, a man told me to move manspreaders out of my space through sheer force. He didn’t know that women had done experiment after experiment on exactly that. He didn’t know many of them obtained several minor injuries as a result. Still, that’s not why I refuse to fight every random manspreader and street harasser I encounter.

I love serenity, so ...