WayWords (5)

Hello there, all you lovely deviants! Welcome to the fifth edition of WayWords, where we introduce you to an amazing writer on this site and interview them on subjects of writing and whatnot Before we introduce our revolutionist, I am your host, Eevee1999, and I'm glad you all could make it here free of harm! Here at LiteratureRoadtrip, we like to keep things fresh and give you knock-your-brain-out deviants who have struck that Wall and can't write with a prompt given to us by the one and only...

_{wait for it...}

SilverInkblot! Lauren here is an admin for DailyLitDeviations, where they pass out Daily Deviations (just, you know, Daily Lit Deviations) to the amazing writers on this site and what they have written. Seriously, her and all the other admins work excruciatingly hard to go through all of their suggestions to select a few for the day, so props to them for doing such an amazing job for the community! Along with several other of the DLD admins, she also contributes (and founded!) the group :thetitlepage:, which focuses solely on poems created using the titles of other deviations on the site (and by Jove, do they get some fantastic pieces thrown out there), so once again, props to them! Lauren has been a deviant for almost six years, and it is wonderful to have such an icon of the community sharing her thoughts with us today

Before we "officially" start the interview, would you like to share anything with the readers? Any hobbies, things people might not know about you, etc?

The only thing pertinent to my writing is that I'm a mail whore. Seriously. I joined Postcrossing.com on a whim a year ago and have been amassing quite a collection of postcards from around the world. I send them to friends around dA too I'll send something to anyone who notes me an address, even international. Regular watchers know I'll mail them handmade bookmarks. I can't seem to keep penpals, but Lord knows I've tried

I think letters are my favorite way to communicate; I've always been a quiet soul, so being able to sit down and get everything I want to say out was perfect for me. Everyone important to me (that isn't related) gets a letter from me at some point.

First off, what is writing to you?

I suppose it's putting words on a page, isn't it? I really don't have anything profound - it's a thing I do. I honestly don't have any deeper meaning behind why I write beyond the fact that I enjoy it. I guess that's a boring answer, but life can't always be exciting

Do you have a writing process, and if so, what is it?

It's funny; much of the time, I don't remember a lot of my process. I tend to do a lot of work in my head - my first draft is also my fourth draft. I like to get as much of it right as I can on the first try. I made a C in one of my creative writing classes a few semesters ago because the professor was insistent on seeing every step of the process on paper, and I just don't write that way. (After, I was sure to throw in some mistakes ahead of time for this professor.)

On my more technical pieces, I like to research. Wikipedia may get a bad rap in classrooms, but I say work smarter, not harder If I can build a metaphor through lots of technical or scientific terms (say, using Chemistry words to describe the "chemistry" between two people), I'll do it. I don't write those pieces as often because they take a lot out of me, but I love them in the end. They're some of my most popular pieces too, so that's validating!

How did you come across the name "SilverInkblot?" I must say, t is very unique, and rolls off the tongue like a beauty. Seriously, try saying it out loud; it's gorgeous.

I got my start in writing over on Fanfiction.net when I was 16 or 17 - I chose the name then. I kept the same name when I joined dA, and continued to use it for every other social media site I joined (except Tumblr - that's not me).

I don't quite recall how I chose it. The "inkblot" was for writing obviously, but I don't know why I chose silver as my adjective. I like the "s" and "l" and "v" sounds though, and even if I wanted to change my username, I've become very attached to this one. And I believe the people who know me have as well

How did you come to be a writer, and is there anyone, or you know, anyones, you'd like to thank for their aid on you coming to being a writer?

Again, I started on FFN. I was writing Kingdom Hearts fanfic back then, because no one was writing the kind of stuff I wanted to read I can't bring myself to thank all the bad fanfic writers of the world though.

I started doing more original stuff when I joined the Admin team at SixWordStories. I later joined the team over at theWrittenRevolution. Somewhere in there, I nabbed a DLD and got some recognition and it snowballed from there.

Who would you list as your biggest inspirations and/or supporters on dA? In real life?

Oh boy.

Around dA, for either writing or community spirit: betwixtthepages, LionesseRampant, SurrealCachinnation, aprilwednesday, BeyondJen, SocraticSynapses, brassteeth, doughboycafe, SCFrankles, psithurisms, dietcocaine, Concora, Nichrysalis, Shoeborn, doodlerTM, your-methamphetamine...

Oh, just go through my faves. I have seven folder dedicated exclusively to literature in there

Off dA - my regular watchers know what I'm about to say You guys can just skip this part. The only person that's ever supported my writing out there in the real world is a professor I met two years ago that I've come to call Doc. He's the only person that ever asked to see more of my writing - not as part of a class or a writing group or for a grade - just because he liked it. He himself has made a wonderful writing subject, and I've learned a lot about writing nonfiction thanks to that. Not to mention, he's a pretty awesome writer himself. I edited his book over the summer and if he ever gets it published, it's going on my favorites shelf. He's an amazing teacher and a wonderful friend

Do you happen to have a favorite type of literature (prose, poetry, nonfiction, fiction, etc)? A preferred format or style? What about some of your favorite deviations of others?

I like everything I have a particular fondness for slice-of-life though, since it's so difficult to be interesting with that. I also enjoy magical realism. As for some favorite deviations...

Prose:

distinctionThis is what I cannot understand.
There is an understanding that nothing is ever black and white. Good can be achieved through bad means, what's wrong can sometimes be right, and if you turn right for long enough, you eventually go left. Boys can be girls who fall in love with girls who sometimes think they are boys and the lines between everything end up irreversibly blurred.
Or so I've always thought.
But this is a line that cannot be blurred. This is the only remaining clear-cut line that separates black from white as perfectly as a color wheel. And that is the fact that everything is until it isn't. We are until we aren't. We breathe until we don't. We live until we die. There is no gray area, no matter what the talk of doctors and comas and life support and brain death might say. Your heart beats until it doesn't.
This goes beyond just life and death. Emotions are until they aren't. As are moments, definitions, seasons. Two people falling in love, well, some of them inevitably cra CharlieI had a stalker.
I didn't know his name but I'm sure he knew mine.
I called him Charlie.
He always had a camera hanging from his twig thick neck and he cradled it in his hands; a wispy finger stroking the shutter release. His dark brown hair was a curly mess and his shirts wrinkly and thin. He had the most perfect eyebrows, sweeping and gentle. He must have the most captivating eyes, I thought every time he'd glance my way. We'd never made eye contact. Charlie preferred it that way.
He came into the bookstore once a week, not to watch me leaf through the used books or reach high to shelve the approved ones, but to actually browse them. He read the unknowns; the virgins with their unbroken spines. I imagine he liked the smell of them – aromas preserved for him alone. Charlie appreciated the books wearing dusty coats and factory perfume a decade old.
The rest of the time he spent on the outside looking in. My co-workers were tickled pink. "What a geek." "Poor guy doesn't realize you Maurice Eugene DobsonMaurice Eugene Dobson, aged forty-three years and two months, is standing in the middle of a car of the A train, on his way home. He is not holding onto the pole: he stands off to its side, swaying slightly with the movements of the train, but balanced perfectly and seemingly without effort. He never holds onto the poles. He takes pride in being able to maintain his balance like this, although he knows it’s not the sort of quality anyone else will appreciate, and it’s not really something you can put on your résumé. Too bad.
He is a small man, though he prefers the word diminutive. He is five feet, four and a half inches tall in his stocking feet, and slightly built: his clothes hang on him as though bewildered to have such an insufficient resident. He wears pressed khaki pants, their sharp creases billowing several inches forward of his knees; he wears a stiff checkered shirt and a navy blue suit jacket with a single gold button that is somehow incongruous. Chemical Attractions, Part IWe can learn a lot from salt.
The chlorine atom is fundamentally lacking, longing to fill that gaping hole in its valence shell, and those bright bits of energy dancing in amorphous clouds around a sodium atom are just too tempting for the poor chlorine to resist. Chlorine probably knows that it has no claim to those electrons. It might lie awake at night for days or weeks in a fit of conscience, seeking alternatives before sending out tentative feelers and inviting Sodium to join it for coffee... It's a romantic comedy in minature, and I think that we can skip over the montage of dates and dinners and late nights on the couch in front of a forgotten movie, set to some perky but meaningless tune of the early Nineties.
It's only much later, once caught in the throes and tedium of a borderline-abusive relationship, that Sodium begins to understand the true nature of an ionic bond, begins to search and grope in vain for those lost luminous stars that Chlorine stole back in the early days, love is coming home--i don't write about God.
i don't write about God because it's writing about love, it's writing about faith, it's writing about trust and hope and belief and pain, the kind of gut-wrenching betrayal you feel when you've given up and you're waiting for someone to save you, only nobody ever does.
and who else are you going to blame?
it's easy to write about a God you don't believe in. it's easy to pour out all your hate and anger and hurt and deepest, darkest broken fears and fling them from your fingertips and scream, this is not God! it's easy to believe in nothing.
it's not easy to believe.
believing is opening yourself to the pain. it's letting go and falling back with your eyes closed, your heart in your throat because you can't see whether there's anyone waiting to catch you. and what if you hit the ground? what if there are no hands waiting to embrace you? what if there's nobody waiting at the beginning, when you finally turn around ready to try again; what if there's Why Peter is not a poet.Cole is eleven.  Age matters in October, when twelve is the only difference between the haunted hayride and the shelled corn sandbox.  Age matters when a boy says the word "shit" in school (and Cole does).  But age doesn't matter when the same boy has both sneakers dangling over the edge of a 250-foot grain silo, his hands sweaty on the rungs, the state of Nebraska breathing vacant and honeyed and infinite below him.  For the first time in his life, Cole can't be quantified by the candles on his last birthday cake.  Cole is young, but today, he is worth saving.  Three facts about Cole:
1. His eyebrows are the most expressive arches his body has to offer.
2. He's so terrified that his very expressive eyebrows are threatening to take up permanent residence in his hairline.
3. He does not have suicidal tendencies, and later understands--for the sake of his mother's heart and Officer Roy's bladder control--that his strategies for :thumb417756168: Things ChangeHe rode their tandem bike, alone. Stationery Pt IStanley loved stationery.
He loved the way it smelled when you stripped away the crinkly cellophane wrapper. He loved the Spartan beauty of an unspoiled pad of paper (A4, plain, 80gsm). He loved the sound of a cap crisply clicking onto the top of a Biro. He loved the texture of a freshly-sharpened pencil and the flake of the finely-honed graphite point. He loved gazing over stacks and stacks of untouched Post-Its, each a perfect square of yellow, an army of ideas awaiting orders.
He loved everything about it. Stationery was neat. It was orderly. It was always needed, easily replaceable, and something that everyone can appreciate.
Stanley reckoned he had the best job in the world. Working in the post room of a three-storey insurance company, Greenlight Insurance, he was at the very nexus of stationery for the whole building. Letters would come in crumpled, dusty and worn from their journeys; and go out crisp, freshly franked and printed, ready for the adventure ahead. Deliveries of new

Poetry:

wrists that roarmama says
pull down your sleeves
they'll see, they'll see
but no-one's even looking
i say mama
tigers are proud and strong
and tigers show their stripes
so today i'm a tiger
and who says
i can't be a tiger
when razors made me fierce
and secrets kept me lonely
who says
i can't tiger-roar
when everything unsaid
ripped my throat raw
i made my stripes
with tiger-claws and tiger-teeth
so damned if i'm not a tiger
and damned if i won't roar
mama, i'm a tiger
mama, hear me roar SpringtimeIt is winter on my breastbone,
Across my nose,
Down my arms,
Snowbanks of pale skin
At my shoulders, elbows, knees.
But a sudden spring emerges on my hipbone,
A rioting vibrant mass
Of blue-black-purple-green.
Brought on not by the warming of the weather,
Or a gentle rain,
But by a forceful collision with a table.
This bloom will wither soon,
Just like the real daffodils and irises.
The colors will fade,
And my skin will return to the tundra. Night"Night"
The sun is tired
It lends beauty to the moon
"Keep my light safe, please." BeliefBelief
She tells him the child is not his.
The old women mutter and cluck
as they slap wet cloth against river stones.
He wraps his arms around his chest as though he fears
he will also sprout with child. "A dove,"
he quietly asks? She points to a blood spot
on her cheek. "He pecked me here." It still hurts
when she touches it. It always hurts.
He loves the child, the cuckold's hatchling. He loves his lying wife.
But he knows she lies. When the old men stumble
into the stable, beards matted, coarse as grain,
he simply mutters, "Drunks," bad wine, betrayal.
One afternoon as he saws cedar planks, sawdust thick as pollen,
an angel catches his hatchling as he falls from a branch.
"I shaped the angel out of air," he thinks, so desperate
to believe that a dove pecked his wife, and she swelled with child. CathieSalt-and-pepper hair contrasts sharply with the crisp, starched pillow;
bone-thin arms resemble bed rails--
tears in my eyes, the morphine drip in your vein.
My inner rage refutes your calm acceptance.
You ask if we are waiting for you to die:  no.
We are waiting for a miracle,
we are waiting for you to heal--
We are waiting for something that will not happen.
We are stretching for something that is out of reach.
We are holding onto our obsolete hopes, the small fragments of our lives
so closely, we cannot see the bigger picture
of eternity.
In a paradox, God is calling you clearly,
but we can't seem to hear His voice--
only the silence ringing in our ears
as the monitor stops
your breathing ceases
your face un-creases--
and, for the first time in years,
you run Home. k.n., ii7 9 13                       he took a bow overlooking interstate 680:
                                           car-comets in full spin,
                                                          orbital lights
                                                  his dreams planetary, saturnian -
                                          he almost sprouted wings that night and
                                   i cannot say it would not be beautiful;
                             the palpations of downtown pumping
                             luminous cells, coursing
                                       through highway veins
                       
                    and he, standing in the heart of his world
             visions galactic
                             mind ecstatic -
                                                                his feet began
                                                                to lift just a little.
9 20 13
a few phone calls
and a pair of Caramel cloudsBrittle caramel clouds lit their way
With shards of broken sugar
Melted by the sun and spread thick
Like honey syrup seas
I used to talk like that. The Song of the CrowPrelude - The Forgetting
Out here, far away from our origins, where the stars beat their drums of light across the clear blackness, here in the outer regions of things, where the world pushes into new found spaces, leaving behind unexplained traces of wonder, out here matter vibrates and thickens. Here, the taught web of magic stretches and the miracle of Being becomes thin, so thin it’s almost invisible to us. Almost.
Out here, we forget ourselves.
Inside the noise of the world, we forget that we stood together in different forms at the endless beginning. We lose track of the tiny changes that eons and ages have brought, the minute alterations that infinite orbits have sought. All the endless atoms we are, the molecules that build us and then quickly fall apart, written and posted letters of change. All of this weight, this carbon slated universe, it fogs out our history, mists the memories of our minds.
We have dropped veils across our eyes like confused sai PlowIt's finally snowing again,
blankets of peace falling
with a freshness that lacks innocence.
Nearly forgotten, they're here as expected,
clearing the streets,
trying to push aside all the worry
that makes things unsafe, but
the steel mouth askew grates against my heart;
its thick bass scrape pushing more than piles of white aside,
it pushes my blood aside too,
piling it up in the corner of this pumping vessel that falters,
ice-caked and bitten, stiffened,
and keeps faltering,
again,
and again,
and again,
until the air is silent
and the street no longer shivers in torture.
The only evidence is the blanket of white
that keeps falling,
like fluffy stuffing that's been yanked out.
All is silent,
except the fond memories that peel away
from my heart in little shreds,
and the plows, scraping fresh wounds again.
--
1/20/2012, 1/22/2012
Copyright © 2012 Jen Fowler
All Rights Reserved 7.34mmA simple measurement
can make a man
lose himself; a blurring, no more
than a grainy smudge
a scant 7.34mm long
this rice-grain, seven weeks old
with one hundred and twenty nine
heartbeats per minute
—all this, from a mere sesame-seed of a heart a poem about driving in pennsylvaniaI'm driving west and at the state line all I can see
are canvases of steaming light waiting to be painted
in the brushstroke forest that lies like a crescendo
across the reservoir where the grass washes over our ankles
and my eyes will never open so wide again.
June 12th had all the markings of a fine poem:
thick music scattering lights to the night city
reflecting in the same warm cadence of breezes
and your head resting on my bony shoulder.
You asked me with such sweetness if you could read my poems,
but please don't leave me with my love, with the cats
spilling out of your arms into the contaminated water
of taking in the divine ecstasy of just existing.
I want you to be so happy that when I swear to protect
your solitude, you will promise to escape for me,
to tear off the anxious rivulets that keep us netted
in the seasons as they appear in the Hudson Valley:
three sadistic ellipses promising comfort with the turn
of the next gentle equinox and rattled atmosphere
and my eyes are di


Do you have any favorite deviations of yours?

SuperimposeHe doesn't look like a gymnast. He's all button down shirts and frazzled grey hair framing wire spectacles, a picture perfect professorial archetype down to the very tips of his frayed shoelaces. But he was a gymnast once, or so he tells us, and I believe him because he smiles like he knows something while he's chatting before class.
It's strange to see that image superimposed over the current one – the distinguished professor in pressed khaki slacks and a jacket, worn brown loafers exuding a faintly courteous manner (you can always tell them by their shoes), and a ring on the fourth finger of his left hand – versus the athletic kid who went to college for a semester and grew nine inches too tall to keep doing what he loved so he took up a tennis racquet instead. Gymnasts don't wear suit jackets; no steel mill worker has such manicured nails. But the images are all there, flickering just under the surface and bubbling up again when he's recounting stories about his days in Pi

This is my hands-down favorite thing I've ever written. It's about the professor I mentioned earlier, and it's one of the things I put the most of myself into. It's about 600 words and I spent an entire week just polishing it, over and over. I love how it's about one person, but tells the reader a lot about the narrator at the same time.

SurrogateI stopped using his full title
because it started sounding too formal,
and it’s hard to be standoffish with someone
who swaps albums and memories so generously,
who loves German chocolate but hates the smell of oranges,
who knows me by my boneless,
drowsy form on the couch and by my words.
And maybe one day he’ll ask
me to drop the title altogether and call him Brad,
but I won’t.
Because it sounds too much like dad,
and I’m afraid of slipping up. He doesn't write poetry anymore.He doesn’t write poetry anymore,
even if he still collects it, reads it, saves it, treasures
faded verses from his wife the way connoisseurs
savor vinyl over metallic rainbows on disc.
I don’t mind not knowing, but I can’t stand not asking.
The record needle hits the groove wrong;
he stumbles over words that aren’t there,
rummaging for an answer he doesn’t really have.
He doesn’t write poetry anymore
and his confusion is strangely endearing.
But there’s a lyricism to his words that I love,
poetic lines inserted between the daily grind
of character names and who said what;
voiceless boys in white and draymen carting the dead to saltwater lakes,
elegiac undertones that haunt historians and forlorn painters.
He doesn’t write poetry anymore –
except when he does.

These two are also about that same professor. Consequently, they mean a lot to me as well It's like I'm willing to be more personal and open as long as I'm technically talking about someone else.

Stories of feelings with no names - Revision   i.
   The feeling you get the day after sending a letter, and you know there is no possible way that the recipient has received your message, let alone formulated time to write a reply. You still get just a little hopeful when you hear the mailman drive by. You rush out to the postbox a little too quickly and are disappointed by the pile of free coupons, bills, charity flyers, and a late Christmas card from your late Grandma Moses.
    ii.
    You lost your voice one day. You woke up to a hollow echo in the base your throat and knew you’d lost something special before you’d ever had a chance to say anything worthwhile. You checked under the bed and tried the lost and found, but couldn’t even ask if anyone had heard it lately.
   iii.
   A sudden awareness that occurs during funerals that you are going to die. You are dying right now – your cells are shedding like snakeskin and your hair is turning silver and every moment is one less than

This piece shut me down for seven or eight months after I finished it. I just couldn't write anything else after working on this for half a semester, on top of finals, final essays, radio scripts, and the graduation process. I like working in second person for some reason, even if I don't do it often, and after this one I may never again I crammed so much imagery into this that I'm afraid it may be overwhelming. One day, I'd like to publish this piece with each section on a card - the reader can shuffle them up and try to put the narrative together, like a puzzle. I think that would be a lot of fun

Now, you have received many DLDs and four Daily Deviations on You can't have it all, Escape Velocity, Superimpose, and Recycled Dreams. What was it like to be given these amazing feats as a writer?

You can't have it allbut you can have the glazed heat bursting from the blacktop like a broken
fire hydrant. You can have the jangle of keys
swinging from your hip with each stride.
You can have the tactility of leather and the graze of
bathroom mosaic tiles under a cold shower pelting
bullets and when the water cuts off
you can have dry book pages. You can have happiness,
though it will often be bitter, like finding a stranger’s
wallet full of pictures of smiling children until you
return it to find that the couple is barren.
You can have the scratches on the back of his knuckles,
faded, yet raw. You can have the translucency of sheets
in the sun, silhouettes but no details,
never revealing anything more than a fringe of hair
and frayed laces tripping over themselves.
You can drop obscenities like bombs until
they don’t mean anything anymore. You can pull out the Monopoly board
that broke your family. You can’t put it back together,
but you can pretend the thimble is your mother and the Escape VelocityF = G(m1m2)/r2
Black – true black – is the absence of light. Darkness is defined by what it is not, by the lack of something else. When we say a black hole, we truly mean that; black. Blacker than black. An absence of not only light, but of time, distance, anything.
The night was scary when I was little. I hated the dark, but couldn’t bear to sleep so long as the light was on, any light, burning on the other side of my eyelids. I used to have nightmares about dark things in dark corners, shadowy figures with shadowy fingers trailing along my spine. I always woke up cold and fumbling frantically for the lamp, but the aura of light just made the shadows deeper and I turned it off quickly.
F=force
Black holes are dead stars. Graves. Tombs that bury light, bury it so deep, swallow entire suns, planets, galaxies. Dead stars take all the light with them like rich men spending fortunes on alabaster monuments and marble headstones.
There are four unmarked graves SuperimposeHe doesn't look like a gymnast. He's all button down shirts and frazzled grey hair framing wire spectacles, a picture perfect professorial archetype down to the very tips of his frayed shoelaces. But he was a gymnast once, or so he tells us, and I believe him because he smiles like he knows something while he's chatting before class.
It's strange to see that image superimposed over the current one – the distinguished professor in pressed khaki slacks and a jacket, worn brown loafers exuding a faintly courteous manner (you can always tell them by their shoes), and a ring on the fourth finger of his left hand – versus the athletic kid who went to college for a semester and grew nine inches too tall to keep doing what he loved so he took up a tennis racquet instead. Gymnasts don't wear suit jackets; no steel mill worker has such manicured nails. But the images are all there, flickering just under the surface and bubbling up again when he's recounting stories about his days in Pi Recycled DreamsI was halfway down the second floor apartment stairs when I realized I'd left my left arm on the table.
It's no surprise of course, for I've always had a habit of misplacing important things like keys, documents, and identification cards, but to leave one’s  arm on the table is truly embarrassing. I would have run back to get it, but the bus driver is always a bit early on Tuesdays and I could already hear the distant hum of the engine making its way to me. And it's not like I really need it for work anyway. So I left it behind.
It's penguins and oranges today; my latest client is a fairly normal one. The last dreamer wanted marsupial martial arts masters in Atlantis. In space. You would think putting dreams to canvas is an easy job, and you'd be right - but truly I wonder about humanity at times. Subconscious wanderings are laid bare to my paintbrush - they get their dreams, and I don't fall apart entirely.
Morpheus is upstairs. I know because I can see the color runn

Recycled Dreams was my first DD, and that was a surprise. It's actually one of the first stories I ever worked on. I began it as one of two stories in my senior year of high school for a creative writing project. I ended up doing the other one, but kept that one and finally finished it two or three years later. I was proud of it at the time, and the DD was so exciting - I'd never had so much attention before. Now though, I can't say I care for it as much

I've already talked about Superimpose but getting a DD on it was the icing. I'm just so proud of that piece and having it recognized like that was everything to me.

Escape Velocity was another surprise since I was still in the middle of working on it I like it a lot, but the idea still hasn't been executed to my satisfaction. I think it's still a bit too choppy.  One day, I'd like to go back and revise it again.

You can't have it all was another one that shocked me. I literally wrote it in like 15 minutes. It was the first assignment of Poetry II, to imitate the poem I linked in the artist comments. I treated it more or less like a Mad Lib. TheGlassIris also did an imitation of the piece you should check out - the great thing about trying the poem on is that there's enough structure to keep you focused, but you can roam pretty much anywhere.

You have been a deviant for more than five years (soon to be six) You have done nothing but good for the literature community, not just by being an admin for DailyLitDeviations/Daily-Lit-Deviations, but by also being there to support any and all deviants aspiring to become better in their writings. You actually care for all the writers on this site, something very few do. Is there anything throughout your years here that you would change, for better or worse?

Firstly, thank you

Maybe getting involved sooner I had an account on dA for two years before actually submitting stuff here. Back then, I was just a collector. I'm still a collector, but I'm a lot more than that now.

While we're on the subject of deviants, are there any deviants on your watchlist that you feel do not get the attention or feedback they deserve? Could you name some of their deviations for us?

I keep my watchlist very tight to avoid being overwhelmed by messages. That said, I think I can point you to some under-appreciated writers

younghabitat, introverted-ghost, half-pixieman, dearspineless, saltwaterlungs, TheAdequateGatsby, littlemoonboots, anobrain, BlakeCurran, jswebb, camelopardalisinblue, i-am-a-bridgewalker

And finally, are there any last words you'd like to say to our readers? Not really last words, but... oh, you know what I mean. Shoutouts, even tips on writing are welcome, especially the latter.

The best tip I've got is to ask for help. There are lots of tutorials around if that's your thing, but those rely on your ability to see your own work critically. Not many people can do that. There are lots of groups and deviants out there willing to lend a hand if you ask.

My second tip is not to treat your work like it's too precious. You can't improve that way. Sometimes a piece has to be cut down; sometimes it needs to be burned down and the foundation reset.

Thirdly; it's better to put too much in than too little. Even if you take it out later, you can still feel  the imprint of detail or research or characterization in there. It's harder to add than it is to take away.

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Of course, quid pro quo, Lauren has left with us a prompt for all you sufferers of Writer's Block (seriously; that should be listed as some sort of disease. I'm thinking a branch off of insomnia, or something like that)

Write a fragmented narrative using some sort of motif - days, planets, months, class subjects, etc

A doozy, yet thought provoking I hope you guys enjoyed this segment of WayWords, and I cannot wait to see you next time! And until then, this is Chris, signing off