sfwrtr

sfwrtr, 1 hour ago (edited 53 minutes ago) to escribiendo

#WordWeavers 2405.28 — Did your MCs have comfort objects they carried as a child? Now?

I guess if you could run away from home and fear being dragged back again, you must be a child? Right? The day she ran away, she took only one thing that wasn't essential. It wasn't a doll. She was tutored on how to govern and had people (not dolls) to practice with everyday. It wasn't a remembrance of her parents. Their celebrity had made them shy away from photography, and then they died. Taking a vinyl record was a nonstarter; listening to it, if she could, would have made her cry. Not comforting. No, what she took was a very obscure book! I'll let her talk about it for you:

#Excerpt: (revised)

My books lay thrown on the counter, on top of the messenger bag, on top of my clothes. I felt a spike of anger. I looked from them to him.

He said, "Stop with the playacting. This—" He tapped a hand on my Marlin's Tertiary Primer for the New Age Thaumaturge."—is a month's basic for most!"

I shook my head. Over the last nine months, I'd learned the first edition was worth magnitudes more.

He pushed aside the book revealing the stained blue paper-backed journal. "And this: Thaumaturgical Review Letters. That's nobody's idea of light reading."

I snorted at how wrong he was. "I dumpster-dived that one. I hiked up to the university a few weeks ago. You'd be surprised what moneyed folk throw away!"

"I was saying—"

"My Marlin's is kind of like a plush bear for silly girls. And yes, I do sleep with it. Give it a sniff. It smells like silly me—"

[Author retains copyright (c)2024 R..S.]

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sfwrtr, 1 hour ago to escribiendo

#PennedPossibilities 328 — If you could meet your characters, what would you say to them?

I'm way too #shy to meet them, even the kind and beautiful one... a white wolf with a gold collar that reads HUMAN follows her around. These people live a life on a different level from someone like me. I'd need someone to introduce me, and then I'd probably lock up.

[Author retains copyright (c)2024 R.S.]

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sfwrtr, 14 hours ago to random

Re: Ideas

#writingcommunity #writersofmastodon

https://www.tumblr.com/incidentalcomics/95099934378

sfwrtr, 22 hours ago to apple

WWWOOOOWWW! Wohoo! Just discovered that control+Option right or left arrow will scroll my Mastodon advanced UI right or left on the iPad I am airplaying to a monitor and keyboard. Game changer!

#apple #ipad #keyboard #keyboardshortcut #writersOfMastodon #writing #writingCommunity

sfwrtr, 22 hours ago (edited 22 hours ago) to 13thFloor

#PennedPossibilities 327 — How much does your MC value other people? Do they wish to have many friends, lovers, and / or associates? Are they an easy person to love?

Both my MC's have difficulties with how they value people.

Wintereyes views people and beasts through the same nonjudgemental prism. She understands beasts' natures' intuitively. Where her gift allows her to live amongst the beasts she's befriended, she is prohibited from using her gift on humans. A decade of living with wolves, thriving, has rewired her social understanding of her species with no magical map to ease her way. It's unfortunate how people are attracted to her—and that she doesn't understand them or her body's reactions to them. She has met a boyfriend who she thinks will make her experiences in the human world better.

The devil-girl is autistic, but was raised with this being one of her best features. She isn't wired for dealing with people; it's a learned skill that her tutors drilled into her until using it became natural. Well, natural with a few glitches, if you were looking from the outside. She can be stiff. She can be undiplomatic. She really will only give you one chance. She finds too much glee in fighting (though her target needs to give permission to fight them, but implicit is good enough). The reader knows her struggle. Dealing with people is exhausting but a challenge; it's often a self-dare. Were she given her druthers, she'd say she'd rather be reading a book. Deep in a university library stacks. Alone. Helping people is a culmination of her skill, and part of her very much adores seeing people safe and happy. In part, this may be an achieved reduction of drama, but it may be her human heart. Now that she's discovered the concept of lovers—and that her brain is delightfully wired for it—and is learning the give and take that requires to make that work fabulously, her world is shifting toward really understanding those around her on their terms.

[Author retains copyright (c)2024 R.S.]

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RubyJones, 22 hours ago to random

#WordWeavers 27 May: What would your ideal writing group be like?

I'll be honest, because my subject matter is steamy, I wouldn't be comfortable sharing it with a writing group.

I've been in a lot of writing groups over the years and they all worked differently. To be honest, as I and my friends have got older, we rarely have the time to do each other's work justice and enjoy the experience.

The ME/CFS unsurprisingly, also interferes. I can't go out and Zoom calls are overstimulating>

kagan, 1 day ago to random

There are rivers of rain pouring down the (nearly floor-to-ceiling, panoramic) windows of my apartment. It's like being in the reverse of a fishbowl: a little bubble of air surrounded by water. 🌧

sfwrtr, 1 day ago (edited 1 day ago) to 13thFloor

#WordWeavers 2405.23 — Are your MCs picky about where they sleep?

Yes. Wintereyes always sleeps with someone. She doesn't do "alone."

[Author retains copyright (c)2024 R..S.]

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sfwrtr, 1 day ago to Prompt

Algorithmic not artificially intelligent, but even the automation might make you feel inadequate. In any case, take a moment to ponder a future with this idea is applied to any labor you might do...

#Writer? #Author? #Storyteller? #Write something about the #prompt or the #cominglaborapocalypse now. #WritersOfMastodon #WritingCommunity

https://newatlas.com/robotics/mitsubishi-electric-robot-rubiks-cube/

sfwrtr, 1 day ago (edited 1 day ago) to Artist

This is a very good comic, and it describes every author (or #artist) who is unsure of themself. Don't let this be you!

• Complete stories (your vision) regardless of the merit you see in them.
• Start a next one. Full stop. Then another.
• Complete and send out more stories even if some editor (or commenter) doesn't buy or like them.
• It's all practice, every single failure or not-good-enough. Practice makes you better, whatever they think, or you think. Keep practicing.
• Take from criticism only whatever helps you identify or fix problems; reject being put in your place or ridiculed. It's practice. Your art is unique to you. Be truthful with yourself, though.
• Keep starting and completing stories. Statistically, some will be good—and you will start to recognize the wheat in the chaff.
• Their first stories weren't fabulous. Neither may be yours. The difference? They kept on starting, completing, sending (or posting), until they found success. Let that be you.

Please remember: #boostingIsSharing and boost to give others a moral boost.

#Writer #Author #Writers #Writing #WritersOfMastodon #WritingCommunity #Fiction #Nonfiction #peptalk #art #fineart #photography #painting #watercolor #watercolour #sketch #comics #photographer #painter

https://www.gocomics.com/speedbump/2008/07/31

kdnyhan, 2 days ago to random

Wow. A microbiology lab at Texas A&M accepted purchased raw milk samples from NPR for H5N1 testing, then contacted the milk producers to seek permission. When the producers said, "don't test our milk," the lab not only declined to carry out the tests but also refused to send the samples on to another lab.

sfwrtr, 2 days ago to 13thFloor

#PennedPossibilities 326 — Do any of your characters have a favorite place that they've ever visited?

I'm sure they all have somewhere, but I've never asked.

For the devil-girl, it's doubtlessly any library she's visited. She'd sleep in the stacks were she allowed. It could also be Silver's Gym where she trained for and became a champion mixed magical martial arts prizefighter—and achieved her first K.O. Brings back fond memories. Despite the athletic funk and the muscle nerds overflowing with testosterone and attitude.

Wintereyes loves her Fell Woods and running with the wolves, However, this happened in the last chapter and it feels like her recalling a favorite place?

Recessed radiance light lit [a ceiling with] a painted dusk sky full of fluffy clouds lit by a recently set sun. The cloud shadows and the orange, pink, and purples felt as if the painter had somehow captured an instant of time and transported it above me.

I'd stopped so abruptly, Caramello had to dodge, nudging my left shoulder. I caught him reflexively, grabbing his shirt to keep my balance, saying, "I've lain in the meadows at Streams End, staring up at skies like this. I like."

"This is my bedroom."

"Sorry!" His shirt slipped past my thumb...

[Author retains copyright (c)2024 R.S.]

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sfwrtr, 2 days ago to science

A flu vaccine has a side effect... no, not what antivaxxers think... a reduced chance of Alzheimer's? Interesting. Studies, only, but still...

#science not fiction

https://www.thebrighterside.news/post/scientists-found-a-significant-link-between-vaccinations-and-alzheimer-s-disease

sfwrtr, 2 days ago to 13thFloor

#WordWeavers 2405.25 — How often do your characters think of death?

The reader and author are privy only to the MC's thoughts. "Often" is a vague word. Generally the MC doesn't think of death as you and I would experience time. However, in story time, she thinks of it rather often. She experiences PTSD episodes from when she saw someone die horrifically during a gang war, then realized her actions (or rather her inactions) resulted in dozens of others dying. Being responsible but powerless to stop it rattles her to the core. Her death? Not so much. Having been a bodyguard for a mob boss, and to an extent being a prizefighter where an errant strike could be lethal before that, she's never expected herself to live to old age. Twice someone has tried to murder her; only quick thinking and skill saved her. Twice she actually died, only extraordinary attempts at resuscitation bringing her back from the brink. She's not yet 20 years old. Each time she learned something or achieved something, the very last time saving not only the life of her lover but the life of his assassin because actually murdering the assassin was worse to her than dying herself. Not becoming a murderer is a possible tipping point in her life story because she is was conceived as a evil character, and if something doesn't get in the way she will be responsible for the destroying the world...

[Author retains copyright (c)2024 R..S.]

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sfwrtr, 3 days ago to 13thFloor

#WritersCoffeeClub Ch 9 Nbr 25 — Do you use a cover artist or design your own covers? Share your cover art.

I design my own covers, but I often pay a cover artist to draw them. I provide detailed stage directions (text) and supply excerpts, approve thumbnails then sketches, then negotiate color corrections to get them on one pass. I've also created abstract covers myself, or bought stock art. I've never used my photography in a cover. Yet. Once I colorized a sketch (digital watercolors) when a sketch was all the artist could provide when a family issue caused the artist to bow out.

I do the titles myself (and plan with the artist in the composition phase where I plan to put my titles). I've offered to do titles for others, but no takers, yet.

Um. Not sharing artwork. It's all for my other alias, which I feel uncomfortable revealing.

[Author retains copyright (c)2024 R.S.]

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SmudgeTheInsultCat, 3 days ago to random

sfwrtr, 3 days ago to 13thFloor

#PennedPossibilities 325 — SC POV: If you could relive one day of your life and change its course of events, which day would you choose?

[Adds to my response for the SC in 324. —R.S.]

Let's see. Relive a day and change it? Hmmm.

The day I told my parents that I wanted to haul furniture and machinery as a living? Basically, become a mover? The day they reacted badly, grounded me, starting nagging me about school, wouldn't let me fly anything for my friends that weighed more than a few books—or airtaxi anyone—started telling me I was weak in the head? The day I ruined my childhood?

Yeah, I'd keep my enthusiasms and dreams to myself, could I rewrite history.

Or maybe it would be that day that I threw a brick through the Moving Guild's window. Wouldn't let any company hire a woman. Okay, I turned over all the parked moving vans. For the record, only one rolled down a hill. Hmmm...

On second thought, not that one.

[Author retains copyright (c)2024 R.S.]

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sfwrtr, 3 days ago (edited 3 days ago) to 13thFloor

#WritersCoffeeClub Ch 9 Nbr 24 — Is there any work of fiction you could have written better? Don't be shy.

There are plenty of TV or episodic dramas I could have written better. Doing so would have been procrastinating for me, though I have written my share of fan fiction and retconned really egregious plot advancement by stupidity...

Almost anything I've written, even a few years ago, could qualify as fiction I could have written better. I recently "rewrote" an earlier novella, changing and fixing a few details to retcon a prequel (including typos and grammar faults), then used that as an excuse to tack on the rest of a novel by changing the last couple of paragraphs.

[Author retains copyright (c)2024 R.S.]

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sfwrtr, 3 days ago (edited 17 hours ago) to random

While and whilst. Not looking the usage up and I know the latter is archaic, but...

I use while to state something happened within the same time span. I use whilst to introduce a time span or something asserted (usually as true) followed by another clause that what happened in the time span or something important about what happened because of the assert.

Boost for a larger sample size, please.

An #excerpt using the word because I'm an #author as well as a #writer.

Whilst Feliz would easily pass as a Kenyan woman cosplaying an elf with cyan-dyed skin—she bled copper—her flying saucer pilot was a whole different can of worms. The dragon-humanoid groused, arms crossed. "I hate wearing clothes."

I appreciated he did anyway. A lot. At the West Hollywood Halloween Carnaval we were going to, they'd likely appreciate if he didn't. A lot.

#writingCommunity #writersOfMastodon #poll

flux, 3 days ago to random

moth in the kitchen

sfwrtr, 3 days ago to 13thFloor

#WordWeavers 2405.24 — While drafting, do you avoid or binge watch similar material?

I binge watch all the time. K-dramas and anime. I avoid watching or reading similar material to what I'm writing while I'm composing, so I'm not influenced. I want it to be me writing; I want the voice to be mine.

I avoid reading Dickens. I think his is my default writing style and I need to avoid it at all costs.

[Author retains copyright (c)2024 R.S.]

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sfwrtr, 3 days ago to random

Rather happy with the new sticker on my Composition Book (Kindle cover).

amberage, 4 days ago to random

Another problem with writing is that I would love to write stuff set in a modern world, but I don't want to write about Germany (boring, shitty country, too close to home, German names are ugly) but don't have enough knowledge to write about America or the UK.

Writing anything set there would put off my readers within ten pages by being grossly inaccurate.

Writing anything set here would put off my readers within ten pages by being grossly German.

Damned if I do, damned if I don't...

#AmWriting #AmNotWriting

orionkidder, 25 days ago to writing

#PennedPossibilities 301: What are some of your MC's other (lesser) fears?

Getting lost in the bus system. Her brother getting mad at her. Her dad making a kind of chilli she doesn't like.

Am I doing this right?

#Writing #Writers #WritingCommunity #WritersOfMastodon #AmWriting #AmWritingSF #AmWritingFantasy #AmWritingSFF #Scriberspace