I've already said that my number one piece of writing advice is to read.

But my number two piece of advice is this: be deliberate.

Honestly this would fix so many pieces of bad writing advice. Don't forbid people from doing something, tell them to be conscious and deliberate about it. This could help stop people from falling into common mistakes without limiting their creativity. Black and white imperatives may stop a few annoying beginner habits, but ultimately they will restrict artistic expression.

Instead of "don't use epithets": "Know the effect epithets have and be deliberate about using them." Because yes, beginners often misuse them, but they can be useful when a character's name isn't known or when you want to reduce them to a particular trait they have.

Instead of "don't use 'said'" or "just use 'said'": "Be deliberate about your use of dialogue tags." Because sometimes you'll want "said" which fades into the background nicely, but sometimes you will need a more descriptive alternative to convey what a character is doing.

Instead of "don't use passive voice": "Be deliberate about when you use passive voice." Because using it when it's not needed can detract from your writing, but sometimes it can be useful to change the emphasis of a sentence or to portray a particular state of mind.

Instead of blindly following or ignorantly neglecting the rules of writing, familiarize yourself with them and their consequences so you can choose when and if breaking them would serve what you're trying to get across.

Your writing is yours. Take control of it.

It probably sounds like I'm preaching to the choir here because most of my mutuals are already great writers. But I'm hoping this will make it to the right people.

Not everyone knows this so im gonna tell you. Countries that speak the same spoken language will not necessarily use the same sign language.

For example, American Sign Language and French Sign Language are related and I’ve known ASL users who have said they could stumble through communication with people who use LSF.

British sign language is completely unrelated to ASL however. The two languages have almost nothing in common. BSL is related to Australian sign language but Auslan and BSL still aren’t the same language.

Mexico from what I gather has at least three completely unrelated sign languages, though LSM is the most widely used. Mainland China and Taiwan use completely different unrelated sign languages despite both countries using Mandarin. Portuguese sign language is influenced by Swedish sign language while Brazilian sign language is influenced by LSF. In most of Canada they use ASL but in Quebec they have their own unique sign language that’s still related to ASL and LSF. Nicaraguan sign language is a unique language naturally developed by children in a school for the deaf and is completely unrelated to the sign languages around it in other Spanish speaking countries.

I could go on and on and on. There’s hundreds of sign languages out there and they don’t follow the same geographic lines that spoken ones do. Keep that in mind.

2025 Progress Pride Reading Challenge

The Goal: Populate every spot on this progress pride flag with a queer book with the corresponding cover color.

The Rules:

Hard mode (optional):

Participants: Anyone who wants to join and also can read.

The End Date: Whenever you want! I will be aiming to finish by June 30, 2025 aka the last day of Pride.

The Prize: Honor, glory, and having read some more queer books.

You can follow along with me at my Instagram, and if you want some suggestions, you can check out the pride-flag-in-book-covers post that insipired this.

If you have any suggestions, stick them in the replies (and if you're an author, feel free to suggest your own books)!

My first update is here! I've put in the books that I can from this year, so I know what I need to do to get from here to (hopefully) filling in the whole flag by the end of June. All future updates will probably live just on Instagram, but I wanted to give the first one here.

White: 0/2

Pink: 0/4

Light Blue: 1/6 - The Kings Weaver by Novae Caelum

Brown: 1/6 - Impulsive Connections by Marie Reynard

Black: 0/6

Red: 2/8 - Boyfriend Material by Alexis Hall - A Strange and Stubborn Endurance by Foz Meadows

Orange: 4/7 - The Last Sun by K. D. Edwards - Secondhand Skin by Hailey Turner - A Gilded Iron Blade by Kai Butler - Woven by Gold by Elizabeth Helen

Yellow: 2/6 - A Taste of Gold and Iron by Alexandra Rowland - Betrothed to the Emperor by Kai Butler

Green: 2/6 - Finding Lord Landry by Lucy Lennox - The Necromancer's Dance by S. J. Himes (aka Sheena Jolie)

Blue: 4/7 - This Gilded Abyss by Rebecca Thorne - Alexander by Karla Nikole - Time to Shine by Rachel Reid - Perfectly Imperfect Pixie by MJ May

Purple: 5/8 - The Stolen Court by Megan Derr - Cover Story by Rachel Lacey - The Scars that Bind Us by Michele Notaro - The Sword-Witch's Heart by Tavia Lark - Theirs for the Night by Katee Robert

Total books remaining: 45

I'm doing Hard Mode, so I still need a book with a lesbian MC for orange, an intersex MC for yellow, and an aro MC for green.

I also still need books with female MCs for white, pink, brown, black, red, yellow, and green.

2025 Progress Pride Reading Challenge

The Goal: Populate every spot on this progress pride flag with a queer book with the corresponding cover color.

The Rules:

Hard mode (optional):

Participants: Anyone who wants to join and also can read.

The End Date: Whenever you want! I will be aiming to finish by June 30, 2025 aka the last day of Pride.

The Prize: Honor, glory, and having read some more queer books.

You can follow along with me at my Instagram, and if you want some suggestions, you can check out the pride-flag-in-book-covers post that insipired this.

If you have any suggestions, stick them in the replies (and if you're an author, feel free to suggest your own books)!

If anyone needs the count for each color:

Total: 66

Anyone have any suggestions for adult books with asexual and/or aromantic main characters (ideally romance, fantasy, or sci fi)?

A few recommendations from my end:

The Painted Crown and The Stolen Court by Megan Derr (books 2/3 in The Unbreakable Soldiers series) both have main characters on the asexual spectrum.

The main character in Time to Shine by Rachel Reid reads as being on the asexual spectrum, though I don't think it was ever stated explicitly.

This is not a criticism of anyone who uses this phrasing but if I could watch people on Instagram talk about books without having to ever hear the words "shadow daddy" again it would solve a good 18% of my issues with bookstagram.

For those who are curious, it's (from what I have been able to suss out) a term for a male love interest with shadow powers in a romantasy book/series, who is probably dark and broody, maybe immortal, scarred, maybe tattooed, etc.

I think people started using the term when they talked about the Darkling from the Grishaverse, and then it spread to the love interests in books like Fourth Wing by Rebecca Yarros, Quicksilver by Callie Hart, and ACOTAR by Sarah J. Maas.

To be clear, my issue is not with characters like this but with the literal words "shadow daddy."

This is not a criticism of anyone who uses this phrasing but if I could watch people on Instagram talk about books without having to ever hear the words "shadow daddy" again it would solve a good 18% of my issues with bookstagram.

For those who are curious, it's (from what I have been able to suss out) a term for a male love interest with shadow powers in a romantasy book/series, who is probably dark and broody, maybe immortal, scarred, maybe tattooed, etc.

I think people started using the term when they talked about the Darkling from the Grishaverse, and then it spread to the love interests in books like Fourth Wing by Rebecca Yarros, Quicksilver by Callie Hart, and ACOTAR by Sarah J. Maas.

hey you're doing a great job, just remember: a semicolon can be used to combine two sentences where you might otherwise use a period; this allows you to create longer and longer run-on sentences

Quick update, babes: semicolons are also for if you want to make a list of things but items in the list contain commas. You can divide your list items with semicolons.

As proof of gratitude please send a lawn-white shirt; a braided, beaded, bronze and leather belt; a pair of boots that strides the sea; and a new iphone.

I need this for when I’m tutoring kids…so many college students have no idea how to use semicolons

The one bizarre thing to me about textiles is that warp-weighted weaving is at least 6500 years old, but our oldest knitted artifacts are only ~1000 years old, and crochet 200 years old. Even though you need less equipment to knit (two sticks) or crochet (one hook) compared to warp-weighted weaving (frame, loom weights, batting, heddles). Why the big gaps between these inventions? And why did each one appear and spread when it did?

Oooh, I know this one! Well, the knitting one. The commonly given reasons, at least.

Firstly, you don't just need two sticks. You need at least two (fairly) identically sized, (fairly) identically weighted, straight, smooth sticks that are strong enough to carry the weight of what you're making. Which isn't impossible to do with bronze age technology, but it's gonna take time or money. And every time you change gauge of thread, or want a different tightness of fabric from the same artisan, you need a new size of needles. A loom is more flexible about these things. Nalbinding, which looks very similar and fills a similar niche, is more flexible about these things and uses way less resources.

Secondly, it's probably older than the 12th century sock find. That thing has colorwork and a shortrow heel. Not something you do instinctually, not something you figure out on your first or second or fourth attempt if you've never seen it done. So we know it's older. We also know from contextual evidence that it doesn't show up in texts or art or myths before the Middle Ages, so... Not hugely older. It's hard to find archaeological evidence because almost every part of knitting, until fairly recently, was made of material that loves to decay. And if you were to find a knitting needle... It's a pointy stick. Made of wood, maybe bone. Even in the context of lying in a dwelling, that could be many, many things. Loom weights are slightly easier to categorize.

Then there's the fact that most knitted garments, while wonderfully stretchy and drapey, have a tendency to wear out fast. (It's why most commercial sock yarns these days tend to be reinforced with nylon.) Since the panels are made of one continuous thread without knotting off, you get a hole bigger than what can be easily mended much more quickly. So you need incentive to choose it over other, older, proven methods.

Good points, and when you mentioned "thread" something clicked for me - it's really hard to knit thread, i.e. laceweight yarn or thinner, into solid fabric. You need needles no bigger than toothpicks, which break easily even if they're solid steel, and if the size is even just 1mm off it'll make the fabric too stiff or too loose. And every knitter will need a different size of needles to produce a particular gauge of fabric, and you can't have more than one knitter work on the same fabric at once. It may also be slower and harder on your hands than weaving, since there's no way to form "sheds" and knit multiple stitches at once with only Neolithic tools.

So: Harder, and probably slower to work. Fragile tools, which are probably difficult to make in standardized sizes. Hard to get a consistent gauge you can price for the market. Like you said, these issues aren't impossible, but they might make it less economical, and less likely to become popular.

It's probably not a coincidence that our earliest knitted artifacts are socks, which are A) more durable than most knitted clothes, B) normally knit with heavier yarn than thread, and C) an item much more suited to knitting than weaving, so there's a stronger incentive.

I don't know much about how durable knitting is compared to weaving, but I'm not sure if that'd be a big factor in limiting its spread. Either kind of fabric can be felted for strength, and you can reinforce knitting with heel stitch or duplicate stitch, even years after you made the object. (My socks start wearing thin after about 6-8 years, and reinforcing an old sock takes about an hour.) But if this is easier to do on woven fabric, I'd be delighted to learn about that, too!

Weaving is also faster and takes up less yarn, since the threads are all running parallel to each other and not making loops. Plain weave is fast compared to knitting or crochet.

When you have to produce all textile goods for your family, of course you’re going to go for economy. I saw somewhere that it would generally take two or three hand-spinners to produce enough yarn for one weaver, so I can’t imagine how that would translate to knitting or crochet which use a lot more yarn.

Also, worn out woven fabric can be cut down and repurposed into other useful items, while knitting and crochet would come apart if you tried to cut it.

So it makes sense that knitting and crochet would take longer to gain popularity, since they take up more resources.

These are also great points, thank you! (Also, the work on your blog is beautiful!)

As a multicrafter I'm going to point out another thing here, too! We've talked a bit about how woven items are efficient, but naalbinding, more than knitting, is truly an efficient use of your resources in conjunction with weaving.

Naalbinding, as mentioned above, is much older than knitting! It uses what is essentially a single large-eyed needle similar to a tapestry needle. A type of needle that you could also use while making your weavings. But additionally, while knitting and crochet are ideal for using a long, single length of yarn, Naalbinding excels at using shorter lengths of yarn - If I use anything longer than 3 ft (about 1m) I run into problems very quickly.

Now when you're weaving? Any loom is going to have waste yarn in the warp - this is how it holds the tension needed to weave. Even on the small table looms I've worked with these scraps can be about 1-2 ft of yarn - a great size for Naalbinding, but extremely difficult to use for knitting or crochet. It's very efficient to take these weaving ends - yarn and thread that's already been worked heavily to simply get into yarn for the weaving! - and use them for naalbinding.

We don't really weave socks because, well. They're a tube. And not just a tube, but to be comfortable, it's a closed tube! With a curvy end! and decreases! This would be really hard to make via weaving, which excels in Flat Rectangles (see: why a lot of Ancient clothing was Flat Rectangles with Fancy Pinning) and simpler shapes.

Even knitting has some issues with socks - though I'm fairly sure knitted socks are going to be more comfortable than naalbound ones, as the fabric has a more even drape. It's not just two even sticks of the same size that you need for knitting a tube - it's a minimum of four. Usually five!

It's also easier to make increases and decreases in naalbinding than knitting, IMO. A closed tube is honestly ideal for the craft, especially if you are fitting it to yourself or a close relative as a mitten or a sock. Like, say, when you're both crafting next to the campfire and every row or two you can hold up the item against their body, and be sure you're on the right track for the fit.

Naalbinding is slower than knitting, overall, but in a more resource poor society it makes a lot more use of those scraps of yarn that you've already put hours and hours of work into making. And they won't go to waste.

I always forget that one of the more annoying things about doing data collection on AO3 is that if I'm too fast at it the website locks me out for doing too many server requests in too short a time.

If anyone is curious, I'm trying to figure out what fandoms are most popular based on daily updates (rather than based on total number of fics).

Some of these numbers are actually wild.

I'm nowhere near done collecting my data, but from what I can tell, in the last 10 years (and particularly in the last 5 years), Harry Potter has actually become more popular on AO3, relative to the total number of fics updated in a day (i.e., in that time, the number of HP fics updated in a day has grown faster than the total number of fics updated in a day).

I'll see if this holds as I keep collecting data on this.

I always forget that one of the more annoying things about doing data collection on AO3 is that if I'm too fast at it the website locks me out for doing too many server requests in too short a time.

If anyone is curious, I'm trying to figure out what fandoms are most popular based on daily updates (rather than based on total number of fics).

Some of these numbers are actually wild.

I always forget that one of the more annoying things about doing data collection on AO3 is that if I'm too fast at it the website locks me out for doing too many server requests in too short a time.

If anyone is curious, I'm trying to figure out what fandoms are most popular based on daily updates (rather than based on total number of fics).