the shipfitter's wife

boxofoctaves:

hurryuppleaseitstime:

Ways to get featured on the tumblr prose tag:

- Write a thing about one of the editor’s birthdays

- Be friends with one of the editors

- Literally beg; point out that you’ve recently been dumped, say it’s your birthday.

- Already have been featured many, many times before

I know that complaining about this comes off as pretty bitter, but boo you know, this system is so flawed. A lot of the writer’s who get  featured constantly are very talented, but they are featured constantly, they already have a huge following, they are known to the tumblr writing community - original content from unknown blogs is ignored in favour of telling us over and over about the same people.

I’m with lettersforburning on this one, I miss nominating a blog every week, I miss being involved in choosing the work that rises to the top.

I’m with the both of you. There are so many great writers out there that never get featured and you have the same group of people who always do. Taste varies, but I mean please. You shouldn’t have to kiss ass to get featured, nor should you have to write tripe that kisses ass to get featured. Tumblr’s Prose editors are fine people, but I wish there was more variety into what gets featured. Any person who is going to be in a position of power needs to stray away from favoritism and try to be as objective as possible, and it isn’t any one person’s fault the tag is the way it is but perhaps there should be different taste in the editor’s pool.

I don’t even want to begin to discuss the poetry tag, it seems like a lost cause at this point.

Because I’m feeling this discussion right now:

Honestly, the whole Featured Tags system on Tumblr is flawed. For most of the literary tags (long reads, prose, poetry, lit) especially it’s all the same handful of editors, and they need to be coddled in order to feature one’s work or quote. Do not even get me started on the lit tag. Speaking as someone who’s been featured a handful of times on that tag in particular, I actually found myself posting quotes/poetry and then asking myself what chances it had of getting chosen by one of the editors. I wasn’t getting so bad that I actually posted things in the hopes that they would all get featured, but the fact that I even had to ask that question to myself makes me slightly queasy. And talk about lack of variance on the lit/poetry tags as well. I feel like prose is a little different with subject matter, even if it’s all the same people getting featured time and time again, but I swear to God that if I see one more verse from Sylvia Plath’s “Mad Girl’s Love Song” (or any Sylvia Plath in general, tbh) or Pablo Neruda’s “Sonnet XVII” I might just throw my laptop out of the window.

But going back to the prose tag issues, no one should have to suck up in order to get their work featured—though it actually makes me kind of sick that people even have to go there in the first place because they want to get their stuff featured. I mean, I totally understand continuously posting your writing and tagging it with ‘prose’ for six months and not getting on the prose tag throughout that entire time. I totally get how frustrating it can be to be below the radar (literally) when you’re doing everything that you can to get your things featured without crossing any boundaries yourself and being patient and quiet.

And then I came to a slightly horrifying realization: that it’s not just the Editors who are fucking up the system, it’s everyone else, too: whether it be the people who are constantly getting featured or the people who are actively whining and complaining to the Editors and throwing shade about not getting featured. It’s at a point now where people are EXPECTING favoritism. I mean, honestly, I’m still not very clear about how Editors even GET selected in the first place (I’ve reread that FAQ about ten times and still, nada) but I DO know that Tumblr might want to check themselves on that system because it honestly just seems like the same damn people on the Editor’s list, save for maybe two or three bloggers.

I realize that not everyone is on Tumblr to write for themselves. A lot of us need/want an audience, if only for the critique (though let’s be honest for a moment and say reblogs.) Since this is the case, some other kind of system really needs to be put into place.

Because, yeah, okay, at the end of the day, it’s just the internet. We’re all strangers in this magical multi-dimensional universe called Tumblr. But I’m a little disappointed with how things are currently being run and that huge flaws are continuing to be overlooked with the featured (and okay, radar needs to be revisited too) tags and the Editors that “cultivate” them.

July 17th ∙ 52

fired up today long hair lit poetry long reads prose featured

Date a girl who reads. Date a girl who spends her money on books instead of clothes. She has problems with closet space because she has too many books. Date a girl who has a list of books she wants to read, who has had a library card since she was twelve.

Find a girl who reads. You’ll know that she does because she will always have an unread book in her bag. She’s the one lovingly looking over the shelves in the bookstore, the one who quietly cries out when she finds the book she wants. You see the weird chick sniffing the pages of an old book in a second hand book shop? That’s the reader. They can never resist smelling the pages, especially when they are yellow.

She’s the girl reading while waiting in that coffee shop down the street. If you take a peek at her mug, the non-dairy creamer is floating on top because she’s kind of engrossed already. Lost in a world of the author’s making. Sit down. She might give you a glare, as most girls who read do not like to be interrupted. Ask her if she likes the book.

Buy her another cup of coffee.

Let her know what you really think of Murakami. See if she got through the first chapter of Fellowship. Understand that if she says she understood James Joyce’s Ulysses she’s just saying that to sound intelligent. Ask her if she loves Alice or if she would like to be Alice.

It’s easy to date a girl who reads. Give her books for her birthday, for Christmas and for anniversaries. Give her the gift of words, in poetry, in song. Give her Neruda, Pound, Sexton, Cummings. Let her know that you understand that words are love. Understand that she knows the difference between books and reality but by god, she’s going to try to make her life a little like her favorite book. It will never be your fault if she does.

She has to give it a shot somehow.

Lie to her. If she understands syntax, she will understand your need to lie. Behind words are other things: motivation, value, nuance, dialogue. It will not be the end of the world.

Fail her. Because a girl who reads knows that failure always leads up to the climax. Because girls who understand that all things will come to end. That you can always write a sequel. That you can begin again and again and still be the hero. That life is meant to have a villain or two.

Why be frightened of everything that you are not? Girls who read understand that people, like characters, develop. Except in the Twilight series.

If you find a girl who reads, keep her close. When you find her up at 2 AM clutching a book to her chest and weeping, make her a cup of tea and hold her. You may lose her for a couple of hours but she will always come back to you. She’ll talk as if the characters in the book are real, because for a while, they always are.

You will propose on a hot air balloon. Or during a rock concert. Or very casually next time she’s sick. Over Skype.

You will smile so hard you will wonder why your heart hasn’t burst and bled out all over your chest yet. You will write the story of your lives, have kids with strange names and even stranger tastes. She will introduce your children to the Cat in the Hat and Aslan, maybe in the same day. You will walk the winters of your old age together and she will recite Keats under her breath while you shake the snow off your boots.

Date a girl who reads because you deserve it. You deserve a girl who can give you the most colorful life imaginable. If you can only give her monotony, and stale hours and half-baked proposals, then you’re better off alone. If you want the world and the worlds beyond it, date a girl who reads.

Or better yet, date a girl who writes.

— Rosemarie Urquico (in response to Charles Warnke’s You Should Date An Illiterate Girl)

January 3rd ∙ 797

lit quote rosemarie urquico date a girl who reads date a girl who writes this will always be relevant charles warnke long reads perfection favorite