I enjoy writing letters, but my hands have progressively hurt more and more from handwriting. For a time, I tried typing letters on my computer, the personal feeling of my letters diminished. Having printed it out, looking clean and mechanically perfect made my letters feel less valuable, they didn't feel like I spent time on them.

So, for the last few years, I've typed letters on two older typewriters and that has felt like a happy medium. I make mistakes and have to fix them, sometimes the text looks odd or the paper moves, I love it.

I have two questions I need help with:

1. Does anyone know of a mechanical typewriter that doesn't utilize the rolling pin to secure the paper? When I write on cards, they have to be bent and sometimes they never retain their former shape. I'd also like to get into journaling this way, but can't feed a whole journal through the rolling pin.

2. Can anyone think of other ways I could write letters, other than the methods I've listed already, that may bring a personal nature to my letters?

Thanks!

Apple recently released a journal app in their latest iOS update. I used to journal when I was younger and thought it would be a good opportunity to get back into it. I usually use it as a reflection of my day, but some days nothing happens and I feel like there's probably a plethora of things I could be writing about.

So for those of you who journal what do you like to write in it?

I have tried and tried to write a daily journal/diary and always gave up after a while. My longest stretch was over the course of five years. It always devolves into a litany of banality, though, and when I look back at it, invariably appears a bit cringy.

So I have decided to start keeping a commonplace book- a place to write down interesting thoughts, quotes, ideas I come across and so forth. Without the chronological format of a journal I feel less compelled to list down stuff for the sake of it and am actually listing down ideas I'd like to remember.

Do any of you do something similar?

For anyone who is writing fiction, it can be difficult to find suitable readers who are willing to provide extensive notes on their work, especially when writing anything over 300 words. Generally speaking, the longer the story, the harder it is to get notes on it.

One of the most successful subreddits for fiction criticism is /r/DestructiveReaders/. That sub has a series of rules and recommendations for its functioning, but, to summarize, you are only allowed to request feedback on a story if you have previously provided quality feedback to a story of equal or larger length than yours.

Each critique you make gives one "credit" that you use to receive a critique on something of your own.

It's a great idea and, by and large, it works.

The issues of /r/DestructiveReaders/ are, essentially, the issues of Reddit as a whole, as a consequence of the existence of downvotes. Members can take the notion of "quality critique" to an extreme, going way above what the rules actually require. They may require something overly lengthy, or something that appeases a subjective criteria. Some may even downvote the "competition" so their own posts stand out.

That can lead to some unfair, frustrating experiences the mods can do little to prevent.

In this post, I am proposing that we create a series of recurring posts that function in many ways similarly to /r/DestructiveReaders/, but in a way that is more flexible and adapted to the needs and peculiarities of the Tildes community.

The posts could be either monthly or created when the previous got too long.

I would maintain the "credit" system, but I would use a notion of "effort" which takes everything into account, including the length of the review, but other criteria we can come up with as a group. We could possibly have a scheme in which the authors themselves would say how useful that review was. Sometimes, three paragraphs can be useful, and I would like us to have a way to ascertain this.

I wouldn't have any powers to remove anything, so the whole thing would be in the honor system. Essentially, I would be merely suggesting behavior, and, if someone decides to simply not follow the rules, I won't even try to admonish or shame anyone.

I would track credits and submissions on the body of the post itself. At least in the beginning, I could serve as the sole organizer, but anyone else who wishes to contribute will be welcome.

And, oh: we could be open for non-fiction as well. That could mean biography, history, or even technical writing. But I'm not sure how to incorporate everything into that idea.

What does everyone think?

I wrote this story yesterday. I translated to English with the help of Google Translate and added my own revisions and fixes.

Inspired by this comment and a need to burn off some steam during dead time in my day, I figured i'd spin off and ask what everyone else likes writing with.

I have atrocious handwriting, but have found i'm more likely to take notes if I actually enjoy what i'm writing with, and then by extension I started looking at smaller pens so I wouldn't mind carrying them on me at all times. After diving down the rabbit hole a bit over the years I've got-

Fountain Pens:

Lamy Vista-
The first one I dived into. Everyone recommended the safari, and the vista looked cooler, so I went with that. It eventually got broken, but I thought it was a great starting point. I haven't gotten any more though simply because I don't love that they use a different cartridge than the vast majority of pens, and didn't want to bother with converters.

TWSBI Eco-
My first piston fountain pen and still one of the best. I love the look, I love how it writes, I love that it's cheap so if I do screwup (like say put it through the wash 4 times over the years.....) it's not a bank breaking expense.

Kaweco liliput in fireblue -
This was my treat for not losing/breaking the Eco for a few years, and because i've got a sling I carry with me and wanted something nice to write with that fit with a notebook (there's a wallet I use for that). Much more expensive than a normal liliput but it's gorgeous and I love it.
NOTE: I linked to the nibsmith because I do think it's the only spot you should buy this pen from. They let you choose some extra options for the nib at the bottom, and for no extra charge, they'll do a "tune & smooth" pass which I've noticed helps with this pens one flaw of sometimes struggling to get it started. Not the end of the world if you're buying it for the normal $55 price and need something small, but extra unacceptable at the price point of the fancier versions.

Other Pens:

Bullet Space Pen -
I've got one in black and one in brass. They fit in the same compartment as the liliput for when I don't want to be using a fancier pen, and of course write very well, in basically any condition, and are extremely cheap for the hobby at $36.

Contrail pocket pen-
Silly expensive, but this one clips onto my wallet, which also has a notebook in it, and thus has become the pen I use the most. Writes well (and since it's a ball point you can easily change the cartridge to whatever you want), looks nice, and is quick to get open so I can take spur of the moment notes. I can use the Liliput/Bullet as well with my setup, but the liliput's screw cap is a little slow/unwieldy for those scenarios, and the bullet clip kept falling off in my pocket.

Stuff I've had my eye on:

Honestly i've found a lot of fountain/fancy pens are quite over the top/large, when I really prefer a more sleek/small look. Still one of these days i'll probably get a Vanishing point fountain pen, because I do think that's really cool, but I haven't seen too much else that's really caught my eye.

That's it for my modest collection. I'm curious to see what others have.

As an author who normally writes a lot of thrillers with dark subjects, I found at the outset of last year that I just couldn't add any more darkness to the world. Lisica is a story I've been incubating for over 20 years, about a fictional island 1600 km off the coast of Oregon in the middle of the Pacific. I've just finished the series and it needs a new set of eyes to take it to the next level.

It is pure escapism, a love story about eleven researchers who are sent to Lisica for eight weeks to categorize the island's life before a new global satellite agreement comes into force and the USAF has to reveal the island to the wider world. The novels are equal parts scientific discovery, (with special emphases on data science, field biology, geology, meteorology, marine science, archaeology, and linguistics) and equal parts torrid romance between all these beautiful people. In many ways it is a utopian story, about people in paradise doing valuable work who can also love without hurting others. There is no toxic masculinity or bullying on this island, no sophomoric communication problems, no jealousy nor regret. It is my belief that natural challenges such as storms and cliffs and the mystery of the unknown is enough. This isn't Lost. There is magical realism here but it is more realism than magic.

I'm hoping to find a few qualified beta readers who have a background in these sciences, to help me make sure I present them correctly. But it's a lot to ask, for sure. Each of the four volumes is 15 chapters of exactly 26 pages each. 1560 pages in all. 425,000 words. If anyone knows a retired biology teacher with plenty of time on their hands, that's basically who I need at this stage.

My next step is to turn each chapter into audio episodes. As well as an author, I'm an Audible narrator and professional character actor. It is why each chapter is exactly 26 pages long. They make for sixty 42 minute audio episodes. I will eventually release the series week by week for free on my literary podcast over the next year.

Hopefully, this scratches someone's itch. Thanks for reading!

Not too long ago, I came across a book that changed my life, or at the very least, my writing. While I have some trouble remembering specifics, I do remember it going deep into the world of philosophy and psychology, exploring the intricacies of what makes a book, and what our writing really means. The book analyzed the craft of writing, discussing how humans perceive the differences between good and bad writing, the difference between a good speech and a dull monologue, and how good writing becomes great. This, as well as the nuances of human perception on language in general. Alas, I have since lost the book's title and author, but the captivating writing style and genre remains with me, and I’d really enjoy some recommendations of similar works. I don’t expect to ever find it, as my search has led me to other good books about this sort of writing.

*Please forgive me if this is not the method I should be following when I post, this is my first post here. *

Recently I've been rewatching GIRLS for the umpteenth time. When the series finale originally aired, it was a mini “Game of Thrones finale” situation. Fans were largely disappointed by the final episode, many disliking season 6 in general. It's one of my favorite shows, but usually when I rewatch it I either skip the very last episode, or I skip the entire final season, instead pretending that the season 5 finale was the ending of the show.

The finale of GIRLS hit a lot of marks for controversial finales. A few beloved characters were largely missing from the final episode/season or didn't get closure that people expected. The ending for the main character seemed to come out of nowhere (magically landing a dream job after struggling with employment the whole show,) and her overall arch didn't seem to align with her personality or anything that had happened up to that point. No one really got a happy ending, and the overall message or theme of the show seemed unclear, since many of the characters experienced very little growth over the course of the show, or they did actually experience some growth that was ignored when their conclusions were written.

I thought it might be fun to see if any of you have similar thoughts about any TV shows that didn't end the way you expected, or what you imagine would happen in fantastic shows that never even got an ending due to being canceled early. A few examples that come to mind:

• The obvious - How would you salvage the disaster conclusion of GoT? (I've seen so many takes online that manage to make it more satisfying.)
• I haven't seen Dexter, but I've heard that the ending was unsatisfying and clashed with what people expected from the main character.
• How could HIMYM have ended if the whole show wasn't instantly tranformed into a bait and switch with the finale?
• What would've happened with the characters on Freaks and Geeks, had that amazing show been allowed to continue for another season or two?

I intended to write about how I would want my example show to have ended, but honestly I'm stumped. Writing is hard! Especially if you don't have the luxury of planning the ending ahead of time, which I imagine was the issue for the writers of many of the classic "controversial finales." I'll probably add a comment about it after I come up with something.

I'm looking at making a major career change and I'm considering trying out one of our local newspapers to see if I can get into a semi regular gig with them. Is there anything in particular I should know or be looking for?

I'm very interested in the inner-workings of a writer's room. I have seen glimpses in "making of" documentaries, but I don't feel that they show much of the actual process.

I'd love to see more about how the sausage is made. Bonus points if it's a beloved, popular tv show or movie. I feel like I would be most interested in seeing the best of the best at work.

This is quite possibly one of the greatest struggles to writers: choosing a title. You'd think that writing a chapter or story would be the hard part, and to an extent it is, but somehow I almost always draw a blank at the title. Sometimes, I get lucky and a title just comes to me instantly. Usually though, I'm left staring at the top of the page after finishing trying to figure out what to call it. This doesn't just include the overall story, but even the title of individual chapters. Last year when submitting a short story for a contest, I had no clue what the heck to title it and ended up going with something like "Hawksbills and Ospreys" because the deadline was right there.

I know this is a common problem for writers. As someone who's active in the fan fiction sphere, the most common trick I see (and that I've used myself) is to pull a title from song lyrics or poems.

What about you? What are your tricks for trying to get inspiration for titles, and what sorts of "guidelines" do you follow to try to make them stand out?

I have two goals this year. The second is to submit at least one short story to a literary magazine. The first is to write one good short story (just kidding, the first is to write one story a week in the hope that one will be good enough to submit).

Of course the goal in my secret heart is to have my submission accepted but let’s not get ahead of ourselves here. Walk before you can run, and so on.

So, writers (particularly of fiction), have you ever submitted a short story to a literary magazine? How did it go? Did you learn anything in the process that you wish you’d known before? Any tips for a rookie?

I've been struggling with finding a good workflow for taking notes on the journal articles which I read. I collate articles using Zotero, yet its in-built notetaking features (and comment scraping from PDFs) is quite poor. So, my alternative so far has been to write up notes by hand, but this is pretty cumbersome and makes it take some time to refer to my notes. My approach is clearly not effective!

How do you take notes on the papers which you read? Do you prefer to use written notes, or do you type your notes? In any case, what is your preferred means of storing and categorising your notes? And are there particular software which you use, if you opt for typed notes? (At present, I use an A5 notebook. Yet, this is not alphabetised or organised by topic, which compounds my struggles.)

Hi there,

I enjoy writing! I find all formats fun to play with from short stories to screenplays. One thing I've never really written for is video games. I love the idea though. All the world building, lore notes, dialogue, weapon descriptions, codecs, bestiaries and on and on. There's all sorts of ways to tell a story through a video game and I want to try my hand at it!

Problem being though, I'm not particularly interested in game design. I'm not NOT interested, but it's not where my passion is. I am willing to learn what I need to, so don't shy away from suggestions that would require me to learn some on the design side.

Really the only ideas I've come up with are using the mod creator in Neverwinter Nights 1/2 or something like RPG Maker? Are these overwhelmingly difficult to get started in? Could I write in all the things I mentioned from dialogue to weapon descriptions?

Or perhaps trying to find someone NOT interested in the storytelling side? Someone who wants to focus on design but would love some storytelling in their project and would welcome the addition?

Or even starting with TTRPG modules maybe. Video Games and TTRPG modules seem to have some similar storytelling elements.

Does anyone in the profession have thoughts? Does anyone not in the profession have thoughts?

anyways, bye love you

:wave: everyone, I've been thinking about where to put non-technical blog posts and what to call them since, so far, I have bookmark/, cheatsheet/, howto/, note/, snippet/ and tutorial/ folders already[1].

I think those cover most of the things I like writing about and I intend to share, but I also enjoy poetry, analyzing movies, political commentary and writing an essay here and there.

Following from that, I kept essay/, poem/ and commentary/ around for whenever I felt like sharing some of my non-technical writings, but I don't like those folders :smile:. They seem way too granular, more akin to tags than categories, both of which are contained in each file's metadata.

Tags, however, don't feel like a "pillar"/category of a Zettelkasten/ramblings/thoughts crate. They're empty at the moment and in draft/, so it's the perfect chance to do some re-structuring and avoid the issues I faced when I ditched blog/category and chose the current structure.

In case you're asking yourself why I didn't put everything in the same folder, as they reflect categories and each .md file has category metadata already, it's because the drafts in draft/ became unmanageable (+120). So, in an effort to give myself an easier way to navigate and edit, I decided /folders were going to reflect the categories that existed. I'm aware it can be that after note #50 or something I have the same problem, and thus it wouldn't have made a difference whether notes were together with tutorials or not. I've decided to deal with that problem when it arises :)

I'd be very interested in hearing your thoughts! Would you keep essay/, poem/ and commentary/ or merge them into something else? note/ are short and wouldn't feel right for longer ramblings. I am not a big fan of writings/ as everything is a "writing", prose/ also doesn't quite fit and so far the only one I've sort of liked is reflection/ since essays, poems, and comments on happenings are the result of reflecting.

/rant over, I know, I'm overthinking it. Let those not guilty throw the first stone :)

[1] I've removed quite a bit of the irrelevant stuff but kept what I believe is relevant, but feel free to ask away in case something necessary is missing.

.
├── bookmark/
│   └── sample.md
├── cheatsheet/
│   ├── sample.md
│   └── sample.md-data
├── commentary/
├── draft/
│   ├── bookmark/
│   │   └── sample.md
│   ├── cheatsheet/
│   │   └── sample.md
│   └── ...
├── essay/
├── extra/
│   ├── archive/
│   ├── blob/
│   └── robots.txt
├── howto/
│   └── sample.md
├── note/
│   └── sample.md
├── poem
├── private/
│   └── sample.md
├── snippet/
│   └── sample.md
└── tutorial/
    ├── sample.md
    └── sample.md-data/
        ├── sample.png
        └── ...

I'm big into self-hosting and recently getting back into writing as an additional hobby, cuz one can never have too many, right? Anyway, I am looking for a writing organization tool like Manuskript, Dabble, or Scrivener that is both open source and self-hosted.

Essentially, I would just like something that I can organize my thoughts and occasionally write in, but be able to access it from all my devices - desktops, laptops, phones, tablets, etc. It seems like most of the solutions I've looked at are limited to a single device or cloud functionality is locked behind a paywall. Of course, I could just use a self-hosted wiki site for cloud editing/organization, but I'd like something more oriented toward writing if anybody has any ideas. Thanks!

Uneasy. The invite received days ago ye respond today.
Betraying your identity, self…
Click here, add this, add that, oh my, what have ye become?
Continue lurking.
Continue being who you are!
I miss my NSFW days. Never mind!
Hours turn to days, and days to weeks, what have ye become?
From the shadows thy step, and ye become, A POSTER!
Do not judge me.
Do not look upon me.
Do not think of me.
Do not. Do not!
And to the rest of you, a great day.

Hello, long-time lurker here who only recently obtained an account!

I personally like Uniball pens (although annoyingly they do tend to smudge more than I'd like). I'm trying to find a less wasteful option (i.e. a refillable pen) but not really sure which models are good.

I'm looking to obtain a nice notebook, but I do feel that a lot of the popular models (e.g. Moleskine, Leuchturm) are a bit overpriced!

What kind of stationary do you use?

The recent PKM thread had me thinking about what folks are using as journaling app/portal. I do use Obsidian for my second brain right now and genuinely love it. But I find the mobile app on Android to be a bit clunky, if I'm honest. Seems slow to open even with very few plugins. For jounaling I've used DayOne for years. I started back when it was iOS/MacOS only, but then switched phone to Android and haven't been back. But now they have an app and web app for that. What I don't like is the somewhat goofy format it saves in and it's on their servers. They used to allow you to at least leverage your own Dropbox, but no longer.

For the past several months I've tried several FOSS options. Main criteria is that I could host it myself, supports offline entries stored in an open file format (preferably MarkDown), and had either multi platform app or a decent web app. That lead me to try these:

Memos
Pros:

• Great persistent web app
• Slick UI that is light and snappy
• markdown support
  Cons:
• Stuffs the .md inside a database file so can be a bit cumbersome to export data
• No offline support. There is a 3rd party app that hopes to implement it

Flatnotes
Pros:

• Incredibly simple
• Another easily deployed app
• Flat Markdown files
  Cons:
• Web app on mobile is almost unusable as in it doesn't scale well to smaller screens
• Very early development, but very likely to stay as minimalistic as it is now.
• No offline and very unlikely to ever have it

Joplin
Pros:

• Multi platform apps that perform well
• End-to-end encryption supported
• Could replace both DayOne and my To-do solution (Google Keep)
• Offline support
  Cons:
• More database stuff instead of flat markdown files

One solution I've been testing lately is using IAWriter to write to a 'Journal' folder within my Obsidian vault on Google drive Obsidian Vault > Journal > 2023.... for example. This works surprisingly well. Of course IAWriter is a bit spendy at $29 for Android and then more $ for other platforms as they're sold separately.

So I'm curious what other people are using for just simple daily journaling, random thoughts, etc. If there's an approach I've missed I'd love to hear it. Joplin is so dang close but not having the structure of plaintext files is a no go for me as I don't want to be trapped by any one product should something happen to the development down the road. Doesn't have to be free, but I want control of the entries either on my own server or cloud storage.

When talking with my therapist, the subject of writing is a constant. My obsessive approach to writing is a source of frustration.

I write well in my first language, and aspire to create short fiction . But I'm an over planner and way too critical of my own writing.

Anything longer than a single page is impossible for me because I'll obsess with editing and some misguided sense of "perfection", cutting paragraph after paragraph until I'm left with a decent micro story that you can read in two and a half minutes. Most of the time I don't even get this far.

So my question is, how can I force myself to be less self critical and obsessive, let things flow, and write longer stories? Are there any advices, books, courses, practices and exercises I can use?

I rarely get ideas for fun writing prompts, but I love reading them and the stories they spark. Since Tildes doesn't have a community for just prompts, I'd like to see if a thread would be a replacement!

Rules:

Every new prompt is to be a top level comment and replies are to be child comments underneath the correct prompt. Mistakes happen, but my little heart can only stand so much messiness!