[x]

Want to Become an Alpha Tester? Now's Your Chance!Update: A massive thank you to everyone who sent in a application to be an alpha tester! Applications are now closed. Due to the volume of applications it will take a few more days to finish going through them. Users will be contacted if they are successful in getting a place, so keep an eye out! - $DEVlANT
Calling all beta testers, bug lovers and feature loving deviants.

I have exciting news! #devBUG is looking for some new deviants to be Alpha Tester!

But what is an alpha tester?
An Alpha tester is a bit like a Beta tester only they get to test out new features before Beta testers do.

So, what do alpha testers get to do?
As an alpha tester you'll have the chance to talk to staff and developers about new and upcoming features, and help find and report any bugs that there may be, before it goes to beta testers or th

Let's Talk Writing: Issue 14Let's Talk Writing: Issue 14
Let's Talk Writing is my news article featuring five different writers that I've discovered here on deviantArt. It will be published every Friday. If you have any suggestions, please feel free to note me. I will take them into consideration. Now, Let's Talk Writing!
Sorry this issue is a day late, but I was having major internet problems. They're fixed now, obviously XD
Writer #1: :iconwinterkate: ~winterkate

What inspired you to start writing?
I was actually a teen angst poet. I wrote about the tiny little horrid things that happened to me when I was fourteen and just kept going from there.
How much do you feel you've improved in the last few years?
Past few years…well, I am sixteen to the thirteen or fourteen I was when I started. But I think that in the past few years I

Community Project: One-Sentence-At-A-Time [CLOSED]

Well, that's a wrap! *SCFrankles got in the last word this time. Expect the deviation to be posted sometime tomorrow. Thanks for a smashing success!
You've all seen these, I am sure. The idea is one person starts a story with a single sentence. Each participant writes a comment that adds another sentence to continue the story. You can leave as many comments as you'd like, but no two can be back to back. Please make sure you read previous comments so you know what general direction the story is headed.

Some ground rules:

The story will be written in third person omniscient which allows us to be in any character's head at any time. But try not to do too much jumping as that gets confusing.

Absolutely stick to the ONE sentence per comment rule. They can be compound sentences.

Let's aim to have this story done by January 5th at 11:59pm Pacific Time. I'll compile all the comments into one

An Interview with CrumpetsHarvey

Let's start simple. Tell us a little bit about yourself and your Lit life.
Dog at the End of the World is a collection of 52 poems for young adults, featuring sea monsters, emails, paradise birds, over-achievers, Anglo-Saxons, leaving home and socks. It has been described as "funny, inventive, alive, very alive, surprising, unexpected, funny" by poet James Crowden, and it includes House on my head, The lovesong of Flird and Memoon, and Urgent please reply. It's out September 10th in hardback and you can get it from Amazon or any UK bookseller. It will also be released as an ebook if a hardback plus i

Project Educate: Haiku, Senryu, Tanka, and RengaAs part of Poetry Forms week at #projecteducate, we wanted to go into a bit of detail regarding some of the more well-known Eastern forms of writing. The same way there are many forms of Western poetry, there are many forms of Eastern poetry, and ultimately this article will barely begin to scrape the surface of even the forms that it actually touches on, but within this article, there are links to resources that delve further into the subject matter, and all are worth reading if the subject interests you.
Haiku & Senryu

Haiku, in the classical Japanese sense, is a small poem comprised of 17 characters known as on (sometimes onji). These characters each represent one unit of sound, and each unit of sound has its own meaning which then contributes to the overall haiku. The 17 on are split into phrases of 5, 7, and 5, which is where the most commonly know

CLOSED!Spring is almost here, for those of us in the northern hemisphere! The cycle of life is turning again, and that means baby animals, fresh shoots, and budding trees. The world up here seems to be awakening!

Of course, those of you in the southern hemisphere have beauty and a part of the life cycle, too! Leaves are falling from trees, and animals are prepping for their winter hibernation. Unless of course you live in a subtropical or tropical region, like ~Vocable. Lucky so and so!

I'd like to present a contest. Write 1500 to 3000 words for me, using the themes AWAKENING or ASLEEPENING however you'd like!

THIS CONTEST IS NOW CLOSED.
THE RULES:
The theme is either Awakening or Asleepening. Use one however you like, but don't try to use both!Minimum word count is 1500. Maximum is 3000. Put word count

A Smattering of Lit NewsFeatured Thingies (everything in this section is new, yes)
May CLiterature Update
Be A Critic vol. 14 - deadline May 28
CAKE VS PIE (you know which side you're on

) - deadline June 21
Dialogue Workshop - deadline June 20
LTdAB Poetry Slam submission folder now open - deadline May 31
Flash Fic Month!
Live-Love-Write's Synergy
FOTOFriday - Maastunnel Syndrome
Mea Culpa Contest Results

Tips from Talented RhymersRhyming shouldn't be stigmatized over poor examples or be embraced as the only poetic form available to the writer due to the many classical examples from centuries before. It should be used if the writer is comfortable with it, or it is a part of how they write, or what they are writing calls for rhyming. The writers below are all talented at their craft and have generously accepted to contribute to the article.
~HoldTheNoise

What is your opinion on rhyming literature on deviantART?
Traditionally fixed literature in any place (not strictly deviantArt), can seem either very natural and effortless, or very forced. Although free verse tends to be significantly more popular here, there's something in a rhythmic poem that free verse does not always capture. Just like word choice or metaphors, the melody of a poem also helps in the telling of the story.
Do you have an

Intrigue Behind the English DictionariesColor vs. Colour
On an international site such as dA, you often run across cute debates about whether to use an extra "u" or whether it is apologize or apologise. Few people know that this debate was once an international hot button issue between the US and Britain. Noah Webster started compiling An American Dictionary of the English Language in 1807. Eighteen years later he published the most comprehensive overhaul of the American English language. To research the etymology of words, Webster learned over twenty foreign languages, including Arabic and Sanskrit.
Webster chose to revise many of the traditional British English spellings, thinking them too complicated. He dropped the 'u' from words like colour and revised centre and theatre to end in -er. Webster felt that these changes were necessary to help further establish the United States as a

SonnetsSonnets
This article aims to give you an outline of sonnets, including what they are, their history and some examples of the different kinds of sonnet. Hopefully along the way you'll pick up some tips to help you write sonnets (or write better sonnets!).
What is a sonnet?
Sonnets feature:
Fourteen linesFixed metreFixed rhyme schemeA shift in mood or perspective during the poem
Sonnets are short poems which traditionally have 14 lines, a fixed metre and a fixed rhyme scheme. Despite, or perhaps because of, the formal constraints of sonnets, they often deal with themes of emotions, love, and freedom. The name ‘sonnet’ comes from the Italian meaning ‘little sound’ or ‘little song’

Sonnets usually have two sections; a proposition or argument followed by an answer, solution, or a different way of looking at the original issue. In this, sonnets a

A Romantic TakeoverRomance is no longer limited to lengthy novels that only women read. It's infiltrated every genre and can be found in nearly all literary works. Whether it's the focus of the novel or just a side story, romance adds to character depth and helps the reader grow an attachment to the characters and their stories.
While romance novels are defined by two characters meeting and growing an attachment to each other, romance as a sub genre doesn't have to follow these same rules. The story isn't going to revolve around the emotions brewing between the characters; the invading aliens, storming goblins, or murder mystery is the focus.
Let's take a deeper look into romance novel's roots and how it launched itself into other genres and took over literature as a whole.
The Romance Novel
by: `GrimFace242
We can hardly discuss romance without bringing up Jane Austen. She's often considered the epitome of romance. Her novels are romance by

Found Poetry and Black Out PoetryFound Poetry and Black Out Poetry: Tips, Tricks, and How To's
Misconceptions
The most common misconception is that found poetry and black out poetry are the same thing. In actuality, they are very different methods to achieve the same effect. Found poetry consists of rearranging words, phrases, and possibly even whole passages taken from different sources and reframing them as a poem. There are two different types of found poetry: treated and untreated. Treated poems are when the words you take create poetry that is dramatically different from the sources you gathered your words from. Untreated poems are when the words you take create poetry that preserves the original meaning of the source(s). Many who study found poetry attribute the origin of the form to the French Uruguayan poet Isidore Lucien Ducasse (1846-1870) in his work Poesies. After his death, the technique of found poetry

An Interview With Not-Free WillLearn all about community rockstar `IrrevocableFate!

Tell us a little bit about yourself to get started.
I am heavily involved in the Literature Community and I try to support
any lit projects I can and encourage people to participate in the
community. Sometimes I even write, usually it's prose, but occasionally I
write poetry. I am also fond of hugs.
Why did you start writing?
I'm not exactly sure why I began writing, but I know why I continue writing. Words have always come easier to me and writing is something I could mull over and really explore. However, it could be because even when I was very young I absolutely loved reading and wanted to be able to create my own stories and characters and drawing seemed so much harder to me.
How do you think you've progressed over time in your writing?
I believe that I've grown the most over the last few years and I have definitely improved technically and learned to step out of my comfo

Writing Without Publishing: Exillior speaksThe second interview in a new series focusing on writers who—le gasp! —aren't writing to get published. If you have any ideas on discussion topics or people I should interview, please drop me a note.

Writing Without Publishing: raspil speaks

Boring question first! How long have you been writing?
I wrote a lot as a teen, but then I had this writing block when I was in school in my late teens and couldn't write a single sentence, whether for essays or for my personal writing. I only started writing again once I mingled in with the Lit people here. (So now you know who's to blame.)
Slightly less boring follow-up! I know you're a doctor, so was there some point where you chose that over writing, or was it the plan from the beginning?
No, they're all part of the same person. I'm me, I write,

An Interview With A BirdAn interview with `SparrowSong, ex-lit GM extraordinaire! (Posted thumbnails are from her favorites.)

Why did you start writing?
At eight or nine, I started receiving ‘constructive criticism’ on my drawings. I didn’t want constructive criticism on my drawings; I wanted blind adoration, effusive praise, and a place of honor and glory on the fridge.
Come to think of it, I still want all of those. Perhaps replace ‘on the fridge’ with ‘in the canon’ and add in ‘critical respect.’ We could also replace 'on the fridge' or ‘in the canon’ with ‘on a throne and in the hearts of millions.’
How do you think you've progressed over time in your writing?
I used to write doggerel, almost exclusively in rhyming quartets, and usually about love. I usually come down with horrible stomach pains when I read it now.
Now, I’ve used a wider variety of styles

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Is Your Skin Too Thin?

Wed Feb 20, 2013, 12:56 AM

A lot of writers on this site fantasize about having a book published someday. But even if you don't, pretty much everyone still posts for an audience, even going so far as to hope for honest feedback.

Hell, who doesn't like improving?

If you are honestly truly really, after much introspection, writing only for yourself and not particularly interested in critical feedback, I would skip this. There's no point.

Here's the thing: improving depends on having some thick skin. How do you know if you're there? Read on below.

Self-Assessment

Please imagine these comments directed at you, most likely in an email (though hopefully not the same email), about your favorite and most polished work ever, the one that you'd like to see on the front page of the New Yorker or with a prologue by Neil Gaiman or something. IDK man. Poets, fill in whatever you need here.

Your work is too long and boring.
This is absurd and uninteresting.
This is not funny.
Not for us, thanks.
This won't sell.
The language is too difficult.
I really wish this had a different ending.
This would be better without the title character.
The concept sounded interesting, but this failed to hook me.

IF even a single one of these would make you feel bad for longer than five minutes, or if you'd honestly stop writing or dump the whole story and never come back to it because of a comment like this, your skin is too thin.

Many things were rephrased to make them more universally applicable, but the point is that even though you're likely to just get a polite and 100% generic response (thanks, it's not for us at this time, please keep submitting), this totally happens in the real world and either you deal with it or GTFO because you're not ready for the deep end of the pool.

(I should mention that 'dealing with it' doesn't just mean moving on, it might also mean being like 'oh shit they're right' and editing or even rewriting the damn thing.)

Sources:

HOW DO I GROW A THICKER SKIN????

Dude, I got no fuckin' idea. The process probably differs from person to person. For myself…baby, I was born this way.

Since I can't keep my trap shut, though, here are some ideas, many of which just boil down to 'real world is real.' Also, I probably didn't phrase these very nicely, which is fine 'cause I'm not a very nice person. Feel free to suggest things that've worked for you and I'll swap this section out.

Get some perspective and don't let all your hopes or whatever ride on one goddamn work. For instance, 543 out of 2200 manuscripts submitted to Harper Voyager during the open submissions call are even meriting further consideration, which I'm interpreting as 'these are the ones we're actually going to read past the query letter.'
MORE HOBBIES. Also, a job that's actually going to put some (vegan) bacon in the fridge because even full-time writers smirk at the notion of getting made on your very first novel. Can you imagine not just your hopes but your next meal riding on an agent and then a publisher falling in love with your work? Yeesh.
Perspective, have it: see things from the publisher's side; no two people look for the same thing in a work; IT'S NOT THE END OF THE WORLD.
Feedback is subjective, even when it's right. Don't lose sight of all the good bits: someone cared enough to tear it a new one, which generally means it's salvageable at the very least.
There is such a thing as an excessively thick skin.
Encompassing the three bullet points above, try giving feedback to better understand the process!
Also, a survival guide for thin-skinned writers.

Anyway, the thing about any art form is that it doesn't have to be held to any standards but those of your audience.

So, please answer this: Whom are you writing for?

490 Comments

Is Your Skin Too Thin?by ^neurotype

Journals / Art News / Literature

Some thoughts on writing, taking criticism, and that thing we like to call "the real world." These probably apply outside of writing, too, but I don't do much there so I'm not going to pretend I know what I'm talking about. Also, the publishing industry is a lot more consolidated: there's no single place artists turn when they want to be in print.

Most rejections are really just polite form responses (which of course people get depressed about too), here is a place you can see what they look like: [link] and for historical interest [link]

^Beccalicious suggested the discussion question. Thank you Becca.
Original journal skin: [link]
GIFs pulled from ^pica-ae's Tumblr.

Honestly though I didn't like Thor's redesigned costume at all.

`raspil linked this blog on resilience, criticism & rejection to me a while ago. Forgot about it until just now, but here you go.

love 2 2

joy 5 5

~~wow 0 0~~

~~mad 0 0~~

~~sad 0 0~~

~~fear 0 0~~

~~neutral 0 0~~

=Loona-Cry Feb 23, 2013 Hobbyist General Artist

Excellent article and definitely something everyone should keep in mind, including professionals.

^neurotype Feb 23, 2013 Hobbyist General Artist

Thanks

*ChristalKitto Feb 22, 2013 Hobbyist Writer

I think my first piece of constructive criticism came from you. I let the piece set for awhile and then when I came back to it I could see what you were talking about. Its gone through to rewrites or further expansion. Since yours I have found in a sadistic way to enjoy seeing others tear a story a new one. The end result is normally 10x better than the original.

^neurotype Feb 22, 2013 Hobbyist General Artist

Awesome

Hahahahaha, it is fun.

*KaizokuShojo Feb 21, 2013 Traditional Artist

I like the bit about possibly even needing to rewrite. Some people get so hung up on "oh I like it how it is" when it actually DOES need a rewrite that works don't improve and trash ends up circulating. XD
I remember in about 2002/2003 or so, I put a work up and someone said, "This character is a mary-sue" and explained it a little bit--they didn't even have to go into detail. I was annoyed for about one minute before I was like, "Snap, they're honestly right," and I took that idiotic sucker right off the internet. And I was all the better for it, learning from my mistake.

^neurotype Feb 22, 2013 Hobbyist General Artist

Seriously, there are times when you have to just suck it up and say 'I love this and it's not gonna work.'

Ooooh, nice!

*TortillaDelPeligro Feb 21, 2013 Hobbyist Writer

"Let me never fall into the vulgar mistake of dreaming that I am persecuted whenever I am contradicted." ~Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Seek not the favor of the multitude; it is seldom got by honest and lawful means. But seek the testimony of few; and number not voices, but weigh them." ~Immanuel Kant

"The price of success is hard work, dedication to the job at hand, and the determination that whether we win or lose, we have applied the best of ourselves to the task at hand." ~Vince Lombardi

"No one can make you feel inferior without your consent." ~Eleanor Roosevelt

^neurotype Feb 22, 2013 Hobbyist General Artist

Nice quotes! I think the last one is my favorite.

~Hurricaneclaw Feb 21, 2013 Hobbyist Digital Artist

Nice, love it~ Why am I writing? For fun.

And it's not fun if I don't improve, ya know.

I'm weird and kinda pathetic with that now that I think about it. I love giving and getting critiques, but I'm horrible at applying them to my work in the long-term. Plus, on some rare days I can't handle criticism at all, especially if it's said right to my face, which is more annoying than anything. I gotta work on my poker face

^neurotype Feb 22, 2013 Hobbyist General Artist

seriously, stagnating is lame.

P-p-p-poker faaace! Also it could just be a matter of being like 'okay this is not a good day for criticism' and then saving it for later. Which granted you can't do so much with face to face.

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