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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 afterwe’ve written something ...
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 underwe...
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 se...
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 ...
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 ...
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 ...
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 ...
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 ...
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 a...
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 loveAnd I’ll no longer be a Capulet.‘Tis but thy name that is my enemyIt’s a melodic passag...
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...
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 re...
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 ...
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 ...
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 n...
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 b...
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...
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 c...
I Hereby Declare Wednesdays "Black Hippy Chick Day
@BlackHippyChickis 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...
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 Perf...
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 wel...
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 myfault. The limit I put up as a result was inconvenient, and so he manipulated it away. He nagged it...
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 effectivepoetry, though. Their cause was true, but was the writing sufficient to create real change? This is how a g...
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 occasio...
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, “Eat...
Reading Week Day Two for Poets: Wallace Stevens
Thirteen Ways of Looking at a BlackbirdBy Wallace StevensIAmong twenty snowy mountains,The only moving thingWas the eye of the blackbird.III was of three minds,Like a treeIn which there are three blackbirds.IIIThe blackbird whirled in the autumn winds.It was a small part of the pantomime.IVA man and...
Reading Week Day Two for Prose Writers: Arundhati Roy
The God of Small Things Chapter 1PARADISE PICKLES & PRESERVESMay 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 fru...
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 turne...
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 PoetsSiren SongThis is the one song everyonewould like to learn: the songt...
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 injuriesas a result. Still, that’s not why I refuse to fight every random manspr...
