Productivity Tag Game

beforehand I'll do like a brainstorm/word vomit in my notebook to get ideas flowing. when actually writing I'll light essential oil candles, open pinterest, wordbook and google, and drink like a gallon?? of ginger tea and disapear for like 3 hrs.

do any of you have writing rituals? tell me about them!

Novel Moodboard: Neon Chatroom.

A little preview of a moodboard for my shelved novel, Yellow Houses. Although this project is now shelved I'll be making an intro for it soon so stay tuned!

I love this pov!! :oo Please add me to your taglist???

I N T R O D U C I N G: 996 CATHERINE CLOSE. this is a story about a house, which is to say my story, which is to say a story with walls, and doors, and people passing through them. they go and they do not stay. this seems unfair, at least to me. does it seem unfair to you?

GENRE: a ghost story minus ghosts. POV: mostly first person and some third person sections. THEMES: homes as monsters, memory, preservation and loss, good and bad families, letting go, holding on, abandonment, every house is haunted. CONTENT WARNING: abuse, mental illness, some horror elements.

All I could do was watch. 

My voice was too low. I could barely even sing to myself, the walls creaking and shuddering the tiniest bit when I tried to create voice. Jonathan had built me too well. I fit together like one of those puzzle sets, all the edges aligned perfectly, no room for air to whistle through holes and for me to rattle the walls like percussion. I could whisper. I would soften the sounds of my floorboards when Marie was bedridden with one of her headaches, her body turned away from the light streaming through the windows. I couldn’t dim that light. But I could make everything around a little quieter and a little less. She was always dearer to me than Jonathan, so I did more for her.

There were many things I couldn’t do. I couldn’t scrub my floors for her. I couldn’t remove the tiny shards of glass stuck in lines of grout that she painstakingly scoured the kitchen floor for, on her hands and knees, wincing when her palm dragged across one that she hadn’t seen. I couldn’t stitch my walls back together where Jonathan’s fist had opened holes. I couldn’t save Marie.

I’m sorry. This isn’t a tragedy like that.

I have a flair for the dramatic now, from the stories that I’ve heard throughout the years. I have always been an eavesdropper, ever since I was born. But I used to tell things better. So allow me my confusion, and I will correct it. They didn’t die here. They simply left. Only one person has died here, and if they remained as a ghost, then it is not as one that I have ever personally known. When I say that I am haunted, I mean that I am haunting myself. I asked for them to stay, and they did not, but the images do. 

I can hold onto those forever.

find out more.

TAG LIST: @phloxxiing / @nouveauweird / @pilipalea / @starrywritingg /  @carnalbanshee/ @flynnswritings / @ohsugarfoot / @reya-writes / @onfablesandfiction / @reeseweston / @cohldhands / @klaythestoryteller / dm or reply to be added!

"Hold Me Under Till I See the Light" by Shaelin Bishop - The New Quarterly Digital Edition

On the first day of summer, my sister asked me if I believed in god. “I’m leaving, Rainey,” she said, while we scrubbed the bay windows—dim on our side, bright on the other, where blonde tendrils of grass rustled against the glass. Vinegar stung my eyes and the raw hangnails on my pinkies. The other […]

What’s this?! “Hold Me Under Till I See the Light,” my most recently published short story, is available to read online in TNQ for free! I had no idea the story would be made available to everyone, but I was so excited to see it there today. If you want to give it a read, I don’t know how long the story will be available for non-subscribers (might only be around a week), but it is probably my favourite story I’ve ever written so if you want to read it, now is your chance! 

–Shaelin

Word Find Tag

Thank you @orphanheirs for tagging me!

My words: desire, cook, under, and heat!

p.s. just realized my 95K manuscript doesn't include the word 'cook' anywhere. Probably because my characters are too lazy to cook ahahah

Zero pressure tagging: @tinywater @icarianauthor @noirwordsmith @literaryvein @macabremoons, and anyone else who wants to join! Your words: thought, walk, sky, and laugh!

Stuck in an unanticipated editing spiral at the beginning of Draft 2 of Project Istanbul, oh and mourning the plot lines that got chucked for the Greater Good. Goodbye side character whose only purpose was to be aesthetically pleasing, I never knew you.

Yess! Been looking forward to your nano vloggg!

A writing major attempts NaNoWriMo and fails duh | Writing Vlog #25

watch me fail nanowrimo because why not

June 3, 1938 Virginia Woolf, “A Writer’s Diary” (1918 - 1941) originally published: 1953

Ok, but who else is drooling over this prose???

HOUSE PLANTS, CHAPTER 20: GLASS, DIVERTED

DISCLAIMER: this is my original writing, do not use / repurpose / plagiarise the excerpt in any form or way.

hello i was feeling very proud of this chapter— wrote this at one am, too! what a vibe!! who needs a stable sleep schedule anyway!!!— and wanted to share it + also you guys have never actually gotten a full chapter excerpt before so enjoy!! also this is one of the vignette chapters™ so that’s why it’s so short + is told in present tense and in the fictive present. i hope you like it as much as i do! [transcript + taglists under the cut]

Keep reading

the painter’s mistress

The oak cottage has grown mushy in the rain, susceptible to mold.

The boggy air - a warm, wet rag, plugs my mouth 

as I sit and snap split peas into a Blue Black bowl, nostrils blaring 

at the stink of rotting leaves.

My hunched figure is molded from swirls of oil, greasy smears 

of Yellow Ocher, Permanent Mauve;

colors you’d so thoughtfully selected, seen in me.

Now, under coats of glaze, spotty like a bride’s moth-eaten veil,

I’m just a mute, colorless oval to you.

It’s needless to hide my bloated, decaying face;

you turned away before I could.