One of the best things about being a writer on deviantART is the opportunity to be featured in a Daily Deviation (DD). While most literature communities can only offer you an audience of other writers, deviantART can expose your work to an incredible range of artists - and even non-artists (and other assorted muggles). A DD is a golden ticket to the kind of exposure which is so hard for a struggling wordsmith to find.
And yet, the systems behind DDs seem to be a mystery to a large part of the deviantART community. Our
recent poll suggests that almost half of our voters don't understand what DDs are or how they work.
WritersInk is stepping in to help. Over the next few weeks, we'll be talking in more detail about some of the different aspects of DDs. We'll explain how suggestions are processed, how to suggest a piece, and what to look for when making a suggestion. We'll also pay a visit to Daily Literature Deviations (DLDs) - a smaller, but no less important, cornerstone of the literature community.
The Waste WorldShe said create the world, so I did. I made it dark and dusty, coughed up from my own black lungs. I gave the trees an ashen hue and the ground a color to match the starless sky. The creatures were murmuring oozes, globs of drying acrylic that inked across the orb of my bubbling imagination.
Repulsing, it was in fact the product of an industrial mind. I was born from man's smog goddess and, if memory serves me, her breath was laced in exhaust which I inhaled nightly with her songs. She was soothing and complacent, her voice smokey like a hazy bar. No one could deny her features were hideous beyond belief. Her skin dripped pollution like morphine into veins, into deep red rivers to turn them ebony and clogged. Her eyes glistened obsidian, sharp and cold if you didn't know her at all. I knew she was lost and ashamed, as her mother, my grandmother, would often remind her of the destruction her presence caused. I loved her like grandmother nature never could.
Grandmother was ,indeed, a gra
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DDs are works of art, hand-picked each day from across the whole range of artistic mediums - from visual art to literature to Journal CSS. You'll have seen them: they appear in the footer of most of deviantART's pages (including the home page). For the day of a deviation's feature, it can expect to get
thousands of page views. It's difficult to buy that kind of publicity; and a thrill to receive it.
A small group of Community Volunteers (CVs) run and choose the Daily Deviations. They rely on suggestions from the community to help them find the best artwork out there. Literature has to stand up against visual art - so the bar for quality is pretty high. It needs to be impacting, original and instantly engaging. There are four CVs dedicated to looking after literature DDs (they're all writers, too).
It's important to remember (and we think a lot of people don't realise this): DDs aren't supposed to be
perfect. As CV
neurotype-on-discord said:
They're not an award, they're just a feature. Opinions will vary on what's worthy of the feature and what isn't, and anything is open to respectful criticism. We encourage everyone to read the literature DDs every now and again - but also to remember that DD-featured artists are desperate for feedback too. Constructive criticism is incredibly valuable, even to pieces which receive a lot of attention.
Fire and WaterIt was raining in Lancaster on September 3rd 1555, and Jane Ask loved the earthy smell that it coaxed out of the soil.
She wiped away the sheen of rainwater from her forehead with the back of her hand and set her small basket of nettles down by the front door. Later she would dry out the leaves and reduce them to a powder; the substance worked wonders on small wounds which refused to stop bleeding.
Jane had always been something of an herbalist. Growing up with only a father, and two older brothers from his first marriage, she had spent the majority of her childhood outdoors. Now practically a spinster at the age of twenty-two, she knew the Lancashire countryside as though it were the dearest friend, and for years now its other residents had come to her for aid. She knew which plants could heal or, if nothing were to be done, could simply ward off the pain.
She sniffed, wiping a drop of cold rainwater off the end of her nose, and looked across her herb garden at Sally. Sally was her co
The Origin of the InternetThis is the story of Compudites and Internedes – great gods of knowledge and communication. It is a story of their love for each other. It is a story of their betrayal at the hands of Hermes the messenger. It is a story of Internedes' destruction at the hands of Zeus. And it is a story of how, with the help of Athena, Compudites was able to be together with Internedes once more. It is the story of how and why humanity got one of the greatest resources ever known – the internet.
Compudites was a kind and gentle god, frail and limited in power, but boundless in intellect – a patron of sciences, mathematics, and technology. He was the guiding hand behind many of humanity's technological breakthroughs throughout the millennia. But just as technology and discoveries in the maths and sciences depend on others to spread them, Compudites was forever dependent on others to spread his knowledge. Hermes the messenger was one, swift like the wind, he helped carry messages between th
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Writers here on deviantART are united by a common cause. Yes, we want people to read the words we've spent hours arranging on a page. But we're also desperate for
feedback: to know what works, what doesn't, and why. We want to know what kind of people our writing speaks to, and whether we're hitting the right notes. We're all dependent on the wisdom of our fellow writers to help out, and that means we all need to put in a little bit of effort, too. Daily Deviations make a huge difference in attracting that sort of feedback.
By the end of these articles, we're confident that you'll be comfortable in seeking out and suggesting work to be featured - and by doing so, you'll be making an important contribution to the community.
Next weekend, we'll introduce you to the people who run literature deviations (and tell you a little more about what they do!)
More ReadingIf you're impatient to know more about DDs - here are a few links to help you get started.
FAQ #18: Who selects Daily Deviations and how are they chosen?
Project Educate on Daily Deviations fav.me/d5bt1h6
The original "DD's are an award, not a feature" discussion fav.me/d5bf6vl
How to suggest a DLD fav.me/d3uvun1
