#WordWeavers 2406.04 — Antagonist POV: Is it easy for you to apologize? Can you apologize to someone right now?
If I made a mistake or bumped into somebody? Of course. Many people recognize me, or take a look at me, and something between awe and stupidity sets in. I account for that. I've survived the fall of civilizations; I can be charming. What I won't apologize is for doing things I must do, whether it simply upsets you or ends up killing people you knew, and all the permutations in between. My role in this miserable life that never ends is ensuring humanity survives. Nobody apologizes to me for saddling me with that responsibility. You know what really ticks me off? Questions like this one. Sorry!
@golgaloth yes, tech changes very quickly but so do social attitudes. My books from 2012 seem dated now. And then there are international changes and Covid and natural disasters, impossible to keep up.
"Over the years, her friends wondered what ever happened to Antonietta. Was she safe? Was she being well-cared for? Was she even still alive?" —Maria Iqbal for Toronto Star
The added functionality didn't even have to actively do anything, better if it didn't. it just had to be. available. ready. waiting. able. the long game. Stephanie gasped from the pillion seat when her elbow strummed the passion fruit draped corrugated asbestos of the laneway fence during figure eight practice. a slow speed maneuver. like planting landmines. when I told Stephanie a dumb printer couldn't spy on me if it wasn't on the network she said it doesn't have to spy on you if it can betray you. I snorted incredulously and never connected the dots. the near invisible dots in their unique imperceptible configurations. the Judas constellation. that was the code name. on the blueprint it was marked as dynamic alignment recalibration. this stuff will do your head in. I snorted. I'm mixing things up. things are dissolving. exact phrasing escapes recollections. Stephanie's last words to me that wet Wednesday morning by a red door. you should go you should leave you should go get some more you should leave some you should leave you should get out leave run leave me leave it to me leave them to me leave me for them leave run go get. like I'm a rescue hanging round. rescuing me. saving me from what I couldn't see coming. sending me out into the cold to not be there. be there for them for me. funny OD with bruised neck. no autopsy. big shrug. those bruises left for me see, have to have been left by me. maybe the same hands as now on my neck as I'm losing at Twister on the bedsit carpet.
I'm thrilled that 'The Auroras & Blossoms PoArtMo Anthology: Volume 5' with poetry, haiku and a short story by me is out. You can purchase a copy of this e-book, with beautiful work by Cendrine Marrouat, Elena Anufriyeva, David Ellis, Azelle Elric, Deni Weeks and James Penha a.o. at bol.com and many other webshops where e-books are sold.
Yep. I love to use metaphors. Curiously, I use them more in the narration than in the actual dialogue. But some characters, like Laura, use them frequently. She likes to compare Our Hero to ridiculous things things, as in "This idiot's louder than an exploding orchestra", or "that dumbass eats more than a vegan castaway" =)
"Artists are people who are not at all interested in the facts—only in the truth. You get the facts from outside. The truth you get from inside." –Ursula K. Le Guin
Meet the #Streusandbüchse (pounce pot), a plain artifact found on #earlymodern writing desks in Europe, next to the more famous ink pots and quills and papers. Filled with sand or pounce, it was mainly used to dry the ink after writing. The print featuring the item is from the 1680s.
Apparently one of the most common uses of LLMs in #academia is copy editing: cleaning up your #writing on points of spelling, grammar and style. This is wildly unattractive to me. I love writing. My personal style, my personal voice, are extremely high priorities to me. It annoys me no end when a journal editor replaces one of my unconventional style choices with something bland. If an editor ran a paper of mine through an #LLM I would scream bloody murder.
@mrundkvist I agree, but every spell-scheck, every grammar-check etc in Microsoft Word is a result of AI. I would like to find a word-processor that does NOT use AI at all.
#WordWeavers 2406.03 — Who is your most creative character?
In the sense of one of my creations being uniquely different? I have one who character who interacts with the spirits of a few people and aliens who have died over the course of the two SF novels, but in the end it's difficult to decide whether the spirits were "real" or if the shaman is simply insane. In another set of novels, the main POV is able to rewrite reality (but not history) by application of will, but doesn't really understand the process or the implications. It takes a couple of books for her to fully understand she's being used, then she has to fix what she's been tricked into doing.
In the sense of the character being a creative? Being creative isn't often important in my stories, but my characters have things they do beyond what is necessary for the stories. Almost all my characters cook, and at least one of them cooks for a party that proves pivotal to the story (the shaman above). Caramelo in Inklings is a "spirit" photographer. It's important for the story as the MC wants to get him a job because she finds his work amazing. His artistry allows me to add a visual component to how the magic flows in the story.