Latest Posts by catalystcorvid - Page 3

ive been calling these asterisms this whole time regardless what they looked like i had no idea that theyre actually called dinkuses. dinkuses. that doesnt sound real

I've been writing more at work in-between customer interactions. Upside is that I can hit my daily goal before I'm even off for the day (and I technically get paid to do it!). All I gotta do is transcribe it into Obsidian when I get home. The downside is I get interrupted often and keep losing really good lines x_x Poor one out for all those bursts of inspiration that get squashed before they make it onto the page

Feeding the Worms

Ever since I found out that earth worms have taste buds all over the delicate pink string of their bodies, I pause dropping apple peels into the compost bin, imagine the dark, writhing ecstasy, the sweetness of apples permeating their pores. I offer beets and parsley, avocado, and melon, the feathery tops of carrots. I’d always thought theirs a menial life, eyeless and hidden, almost vulgar–though now, it seems, they bear a pleasure so sublime, so decadent, I want to contribute however I can, forgetting, a moment, my place on the menu.

Bonfire Opera - Danusha Laméris

Sunset!

from Deep and Dark, Beautiful and Bright:

When the train screeched its way into the city, it was nearing dusk, and Trip pressed his nose to the window, drinking in the glowing orange concoction of sunset and streetlamps. It almost gave the impression of journeying through a beehive—bustling, honey colored, geometric. And here they were to meet the queen.

Where to Find Free, Legal Books

If you have access to a public library and/or have college credentials;

Libby - Ebooks, digital audiobooks, and magazines from your public library. Free, but requires a library card. Materials aren't infinite, so popular titles will often have a several week long waitlist. If you're in the US (or sufficiently crafty) you can sign up for a free card from the Queer Liberation Library.

Hoopla - Another service often bundled with a library card. The selection is smaller than Libby, but you have a limited number of instant borrows per month to cash in.

EBSCOhost Research - Ebooks and research materials, usually offered through a college. Where I do most of my reading lately, TBH.

Worldcat - Browse the world’s libraries from one search box. Easiest way to find out where to go to check out a book if you can't find it at your usual spot.

US residents will likely have a public library near them, but if you cannot go in person and sign up, there are a number of public libraries that don't require anything but a local address to get an Ecard. The libraries that offer this change frequently, so ask around.

Also keep in mind that US public libraries don't typically purchase self published material. If you're looking for your favorite tumblr author's book, you might want to try the links below instead.

If you can't get a library card (or couldn't find what you're looking for)

Open Library - Large collection of ebooks. Some materials may not be available currently due to ongoing legal issues.

Project Gutenburg - Another huge collection of ebooks, probably the most well-known option on this list.

Standard Ebooks - Professionally formatted public domain ebooks (sourced from places like Project Gutenburg but then turned into dynamic epubs)

LibriVox - Public Domain Audiobooks. Extremely limited library, but provides a rare service.

Audible Free Trial - Amazon offers a free trial of their service, with one free title on signup. You need a viable payment method to get access, but you keep the book even after you cancel. Don't give Amazon your money, folks.

I'd also recommend trawling youtube and soundcloud for user-made audiobooks. The quality varies, but I've been surprised at the results.

Other cool resources

StoryGraph - A non-Amazon GoodReads alternative, for those who like to challenge themselves to read more or enjoy writing book reviews.

Banned books list - Around since 1994 and currently still updated weekly, this site showcases books that are either banned or have been attempted to have been banned somewhere in the US. Some are available to read for free on site.

Scrub Jays

All morning they’ve been screeching back and forth between the oak tree and the roof, bickering over bits of cat food pinched from the metal bowl by the door. When song was handed out, the lark and nightingale got there first. Who can blame the jays for raiding the robin’s nest—its pale and delicate eggs— for tearing the dark red plums straight from each other’s beaks. Who can blame the ear in its ignorance, for wanting music and failing to hear it?

Bonfire Opera : Poems. -- Danusha Laméris.

Today I read Bonfire Opera by Danusha Laméris, available for free as an ebook through my college's library (if you haven't checked out yours' digital collection, do so now). I had previously seen her work online, and even posted the popular Feeding the Worms, but most of her collection remains firmly bound to print and had thus far evaded my discovery. Boy am I glad to have checked her out. Her descriptions of food, grief, and desire are all mingled into each other in an evocative way that makes me want to cook, cry, and kiss beautiful feminine men.

I've transcribed a handful of my favorites to post here, so keep an eye out. There's plenty of lovely entries I'm not including, so if they catch your eye give it a read.

For all my chronically ill writers out there, dress warmly when you write. Stretch to whatever degree you're able. Even in a heated apartment my poor circulation has got me shivering an hour and half into sitting and writing 🥶

Two rules for creating anything.

1) Make it weird.

2) Make it with love.

Some of you might find this controversial, but I recently decided to change the love interest of my story to a woman in the name of yuri.

fascinating that when you tell people "you have to learn the rules to break them" when talking about drawing/painting etc everyone nods and agrees but the second you say "you have to read books if you want to write better" there's a horde of contrarians begging to be the wrongest people ever all of a sudden

How to improve your writing

(Exerpts from Chuck Palahniuk's article Nuts and Bolts, edited lightly for my own self reference)

From this point forward you may not use “thought” verbs.  These include: 

Thinks

Knows

Understands

Realizes

Believes

Wants

Forgets

Remembers

Imagines

Desires

Loves

Hates

As well as limiting the use of the following;

Is

Had/Have

Are

And many more.

Thinking is abstract.  Knowing and believing are intangible. 

Your story will always be stronger if you just show the physical actions and details of your characters and allow your reader to do the thinking and knowing.  And loving and hating.

Instead of characters knowing anything, you must now present the details that allow the reader to know them.  Instead of a character wanting something, you must now describe the thing so that the reader wants it.

Your story will always be stronger if you just show the physical actions and details of your characters and allow your reader to do the thinking and knowing.  And loving and hating.

Don’t tell your reader: 

Adam knew Gwen liked him.

Instead, you’ll have to say: 

Between classes, Gwen was always leaned on his locker when he’d go to open it.  She’d roll her eyes and shove off with one foot, leaving a black-heel mark on the painted metal, but she also left the smell of her perfume.  The combination lock would still be warm from her ass.  And the next break, Gwen would be leaned there, again.

No more shortcuts.

Only specific sensory detail: action, smell, taste, sound, and feeling.

Typically, writers use these “thought” verbs at the beginning of a paragraph  (In this form, you can call them “Thesis Statements” and I’ll rail against those, later)  In a way, they state the intention of the paragraph.  And what follows, illustrates them.

Brenda knew she’d never make the deadline.  Traffic was backed up from the bridge, past the first eight or nine exits.  Her cell phone battery was dead.  At home, the dogs would need to go out, or there would be a mess to clean up.  Plus, she’d promised to water the plants for her neighbor…

Do you see how the opening “thesis statement” steals the thunder of what follows?  Don’t do it.

If nothing else, cut the opening sentence and place it after all the others.  Better yet, transplant it and change it to: 

Brenda would never make the deadline.

Don't leave your characters alone.

One of the most-common mistakes that beginning writers make is leaving their characters alone.  Writing, you may be alone.  Reading, your audience may be alone.  But your character should spend very, very little time alone.  Because a solitary character starts thinking or worrying or wondering.  

A character alone must lapse into fantasy or memory, but even then you can’t use “thought” verbs or any of their abstract relatives. 

Oh, and you can just forget about using the verbs forget and remember. No more transitions such as: 

Wanda remembered how Nelson used to brush her hair.

Instead: 

Back in their sophomore year, Nelson used to brush her hair with smooth, long strokes of his hand.

Better yet, get your character with another character, fast.  Get them together and get the action started.  Let their actions and words show their thoughts.  You -- stay out of  their heads.

And while you’re avoiding “thought” verbs, be very wary about using the bland verbs “is” and “have.” Instead, try burying your details of what a character has or is, in actions or gestures. At its most basic, this is showing your story instead of telling it.

The challenge.

In short, no more short-cuts.  Only specific sensory detail: action, smell, taste, sound, and feeling.

Pick through your writing and circle every “thought” verb.  Then, find some way to eliminate it.  Kill it by Un-packing it.

Then, pick through some published fiction and do the same thing.  Be ruthless. Find them.  After that, find a way to re-write them.  Make them stronger.

The Orange

At lunchtime I bought a huge orange— The size of it made us all laugh. I peeled it and shared it with Robert and Dave— They got quarters and I had a half. And that orange, it made me so happy, As ordinary things often do Just lately. The shopping. A walk in the park. This is peace and contentment. It’s new. The rest of the day was quite easy. I did all the jobs on my list And enjoyed them and had some time over. I love you. I’m glad I exist.

The Orange and other poems - Wendy Cope

Geocentric

Indecent, self-soiled, bilious reek of turnip and toadstool decay, dribbling the black oil of wilted succulents, the brown fester of rotting orchids, in plain view, that stain of stinkhorn down your front, that leaking roil of bracket fungi down your back, you purple-haired, grainy-fuzzed smolder of refuse, fathering fumes and boils and powdery mildews, enduring the constant interruption of sink-mire flatulence, contagious with ear wax, corn smut, blister rust, backwash and graveyard debris, rich with manure bog and dry-rot harboring not only egg-addled garbage and wrinkled lip of orange-peel mold but also the clotted breath of overripe radish and burnt leek, bearing every dank, malodorous rut and scarp, all sulphur fissures and fetid hillside seepages, old, old dependable, engendering forever the stench and stretch and warm seethe of inevitable putrefaction, nobody loves you as I do.

Geocentric: Poems - Pattiann Rogers

Thinking

Don't you wish they would stop, all the thoughts swirling around in your head, bees in a hive, dancers tapping their way across the stage? I should rake the leaves in the carport, buy Christmas lights. Was there really life on Mars? What will I cook for dinner? I walk up the driveway, put out the garbage bins. I should stop using plastic bags, visit my friend whose husband just left her for the Swedish nanny. I wish I hadn't said Patrick's painting looked "ominous." Maybe that's why he hasn't called. Does the car need oil again? There's a hole in the ozone the size of Texas and everything seems to be speeding up. Come, let's stand by the window and look out at the light on the field. Let's watch how the clouds cover the sun and almost nothing stirs in the grass.

The Moons of August, Danusha Laméris

The Sissy Strikes Back

I’ve lost faith in the saying “You’re only as old as you think you are” ever since I got old. It is a saying with a fine heritage. It goes right back to the idea of the Power of Positive Thinking, which is so strong in America because it fits in so well with the Power of Commercial Advertising and with the Power of Wishful Thinking aka the American Dream. It is the bright side of Puritanism: What you deserve is what you get. (Never mind just now about the dark side.) Good things come to good people and youth will last forever for the young in heart. Yup. There is a whole lot of power in positive thinking. It is the great placebo effect. In many cases, even dire cases, it works. I think most old people know that, and many of us try to keep our thinking on the positive side as a matter of self-preservation, as well as dignity, the wish not to end with a prolonged whimper. It can be very hard to believe that one is actually 80 years old, but as they say, you’d better believe it. I’ve known clear-headed, clear-hearted people in their nineties. They didn’t think they were young. They knew, with a patient, canny clarity, how old they were. If I’m 90 and believe I’m 45, I’m headed for a very bad time trying to get out of the bathtub. Even if I’m 70 and think I’m 40, I’m fooling myself to the extent of almost certainly acting like an awful fool. Actually, I’ve never heard anybody over 70 say that you’re only as old as you think you are. Younger people say it to themselves or each other as an encouragement. When they say it to somebody who actually is old, they don’t realize how stupid it is, and how cruel it may be. At least there isn’t a poster of it.

But there is a poster of “Old age is not for sissies”—maybe it’s where the saying came from. A man and a woman in their seventies. As I remember it, they both have what the air force used to call the Look of Eagles, and are wearing very tight-fitting minimal clothing, and are altogether very fit. Their pose suggests that they’ve just run a marathon and aren’t breathing hard while they relax by lifting 16-pound barbells. Look at us, they say. Old age is not for sissies. Look at me, I snarl at them. I can’t run, I can’t lift barbells, and the thought of me in tight-fitting minimal clothing is appalling in all ways. I am a sissy. I always was. Who are you jocks to say old age isn’t for me? Old age is for anybody who gets there. Warriors get old; sissies get old. In fact it’s likely that more sissies than warriors get old. Old age is for the healthy, the strong, the tough, the intrepid, the sick, the weak, the cowardly, the incompetent. People who run 10 miles every morning before breakfast and people who live in a wheelchair. People who work the London Times crossword in ink in 10 minutes and people who can’t quite remember who the president is just now. Old age is less a matter of fitness or courage than of luck equals longevity. The leafy greens and the workouts may well help that old age to be healthy, but unfair as it may be, nothing guarantees health to the old. Bodies wear out after a certain amount of mileage despite the most careful maintenance. No matter what you eat and how grand your abs and blabs are, still your bones can let you down, your heart can get tired of its incredible nonstop lifelong athletic performance, and there’s all that wiring and stuff inside that can begin to short-circuit. If you did hard physical labor all your life and didn’t really have the chance to spend a lot of time in gyms, if you ate mostly junk food because it’s all you knew about and all you could afford in time and money, if you haven’t got a doctor because you can’t buy the insurance that stands between you and the doctors and the medicines you need, you may arrive at old age in rather bad shape. Or if you just run into some bad luck along the way, accidents, illnesses, it’s the same. You won’t be running marathons and lifting weights. You may have trouble getting up the stairs. You may have trouble just getting out of bed. You may have trouble getting used to hurting all the time. And it isn’t likely to get better as the years go on. The compensations of getting old, such as they are, aren’t in the field of athletic prowess. I think that’s why the saying and the poster annoy me so much. They’re not only insulting to sissies, they’re beside the point. I’d like a poster showing two old people with stooped backs and arthritic hands and time-worn faces sitting talking, deep, deep in conversation. And the slogan would be: Old Age Is Not for the Young.

No Time to Spare: Thinking About What Matters - Ursula K. Le Guin

Going into Space

SO I GUESS THEY ARE GOING INTO DAMN SPACE AGAIN SOON. A TWO AND A HALF BILLION DOLLAR CAMPING TRIP. OH SURE THESE THREE HAVE ACCOMPLISHED MUCH IN THEIR LIVES. THEY BOY SCOUTING WILL FINALLY COME INTO A REAL TEST. WHY DON'T THEY HOVER THEIR SPACECRAFT OVER THE RESERVATIONS OR HOVER THEIR SCREAMING STEEL OVER THE GHETTOS AND SEE BUT I GUESS YOU CANNOT SEE THE POVERTY FROM 28 MILES ABOVE THE EARTH.

Rising Voices: Writings of Young Native Americans, Francis Becenti, edited by Arlene Hirschfelder and Beverly R. Singer.

slow down for your disabled friends. thats like a bare minimum kindness that we shouldnt have to ask for. i love that youre so quirky and walking fast is a cool personality trait to you and all that but i bet you can count your physically disabled friends on less than one hand

This morning I was walking through Manhattan, head down, checking directions, when I looked up to see a fruit truck selling lychee, two pounds for five bucks, and I had ten bucks in my pocket! Then while buying my bus ticket for later that evening I witnessed the Transbridge teller’s face soften after she had endured a couple unusually rude interactions in front of me as I kept eye contact and thanked her. She called me honey first (delight), baby second (delight), and almost smiled before I turned away. On my way to the Flatiron building there was an aisle of kousa dogwood—looking parched, but still, the prickly knobs of fruit nestled beneath the leaves. A cup of coffee from a well-shaped cup. A fly, its wings hauling all the light in the room, landing on the porcelain handle as if to say, “Notice the precise flare of this handle, as though designed for the romance between the thumb and index finger that holding a cup can be.” Or the peanut butter salty enough. Or the light blue bike the man pushed through the lobby. Or the topknot of the barista. Or the sweet glance of the man in his stylish short pants (well-lotioned ankles gleaming beneath) walking two little dogs. Or the woman stepping in and out of her shoe, her foot curling up and stretching out and curling up.

The Book of Delights - Ross Gay

She's got him shackled to her ankle. He's on her invisible leash; he's wearing her invisible choke collar. He can't shake free. Deep breath, Stan, he tells himself. At least you're still fucking alive. Or alive and fucking. He laughs inwardly. Good one, Stan.

The Heart Goes Last - Margaret Atwood

Has your name every appeared in the credits of a book, or is it likely to in the near future? Then you should join AUTHORS AGAINST BOOK BANS! Transcript below the cut. A version of this zine formatted for print is available to download on my patreon.

Do you make books? Yes? I want YOU to join Authors Against Book Bans! By Maia Kobabe

WHAT IS AABB? 

A coalition of writers, illustrators, editors & other book creators, standing united against the unconstitutional movement to limit the freedom to read. We support the availability of diverse voices in our libraries, in our schools, & in our culture. We pledge to band together against the oppression of literature, to speak when our voices are silenced, to go where our bodies are needed, & to fight to ensure this freedom.

Our concern is not only for the books, but for the children, families, educators, librarians, & communities who suffer when the freedom to read is challenged and taken away.

WHAT CAN AABB OFFER YOU? 

- Regional groups working on legislation to protect authors & the freedom to read state-by-state

- Online trainings on digital security, public speaking, & how to counter book challenges in your community

-Affinity groups for BIPOC authors, queer authors, authors with disabilities, indie, nonfiction, romance writers & more

-Support if your book is challenged!

-A very active discord community

Author: What if my book hasn’t been challenged? 

Maia: JOIN!

Author: Ok, but what if I’m really busy and can’t do much organizing right now? 

Maia: JOIN ANYWAY! 

Even if all you do is sign up, your membership will help lend weight to the letters AABB sends to publishers & legislators. As of January 2025, AABB has 3500+ members. Check out the recent open letter to publishers on AABB’s socials & feel free to share it with your contacts. 

An Open Letter to Our Publishers- instagram.com/p/DCzYmKcR8uq

Maia: I’ve been facing intense challenges to my book since 2021. Knowing that I am not alone in the fight against censorship is what keeps my spirits up! 

Watching the folks in AABB share information, co-write legislation, show up to library & school board meetings, & speak up to publishers about the need to protect diverse books & minority authors has been amazing! 

This is a weird & scary time to be an author, but you are not alone! Join thousands of us fighting for the freedom to read, the freedom to write, the freedom to teach, the freedom to learn, & the freedom to share our stories!

Authors Against Book Bans -

Authors Against Book Bans

Our Mission Statement We are Authors Against Book Bans. We, a coalition of writers, illustrators, anthology editors and contributors, and ot

AABB on instagram / AABB on bluesky

Illustrations commissioned by @leapness for @jerichos_kitchen

I wrote 2k yesterday O_O I didn't even realize

www.shinozukatomoko.com

heyy can we do a sexy roleplay where im a prince from a fallen kingdom and youre the powerful warrior who has taken me for their own pleasure. yes? yipeeee ok so before we start first here's a google doc with the whole history of the fictional land we're both from and the intricate geopolitical workings of the- oh yeah and here's a supplementary doc on the agriculture and trade routes of said fictional land and stuff and yes this is important. the dirty talk has to be lore accurate

every writer knows the pain of having an idea that’s “too good” to write because you know you can’t do it justice

LUSH Series - Gouache by Madeleine Bellwoar