It was miraculous. It was almost no trick at all, he saw, to turn vice into virtue and slander into truth, impotence into abstinence, arrogance into humility, plunder into philanthropy, thievery into honor, blasphemy into wisdom, brutality into patriotism, and sadism into justice. Anybody could do it; it required no brains at all. It merely required no character.” Joseph Heller, Catch-22 #Trump#Writing#josephheller#uspolitics#Politics
I deceided to join Medium and start sharing stories. I am starting with some short stories that I have started to write. The Fifth Wheel is my frist. Thank you for reading my post.
I get my ideas early in the morning. I'll sort of wake up and be dozing away, then these people come into my head. Often they are doing something and I don' know why.
The main character in my upcoming book woke up next to a dead body and said, "Oh, no. Not again." It took me MONTHS to work out why the fuck she said that.
@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.
Have you ever had to change anything because you felt it was no longer relevant?
Yeah. I wrote one short story years ago, then realized that the main character who spoke about people landing on the moon hadn't been born yet so couldn't remember that. Made me feel no longer relevant.
More than one, and in many of my stories. Loren is non-binary and genderfluid teen, with variable preferences depending on the hour of the day and how their brain wired (literally) at the moment. Maistro is everything-sexual (as long as there's consent and of legal age). The Still Unnamed Daughter might have done some non-het experimentation. And Our Hero learned to like women's clothing and shoes…>=)
Recently found out that my great grandmother's dining room set is available for me to have...
Which means the dining room set I currently have needs to be sold.
It is a very good dining room set that was acquired when the original owner wanted to spite his ex-wife and sold it to us for cheap so she couldn't have it.
Also, Reagan and posse could have possibly eaten at this table because it came from a swanky hotel in SF.
#WritersCoffeeClub
How do you select ideas from all the ones floating around?
My stories usually come when some person, or an image of them, an action they're doing, a location they're in, etc, gets stuck in my head. Usually there's a strong emotional feel attached. My new book, for instance, started when I was dozing away one morning and in my head a woman woke up next to a dead body and said, "Oh, no. Not again." That made me sit up.
#TechnicalWriting#SoftwareDocumentation#SoftwareDevelpopment: "With few books on technical writing, and even fewer trying to push tech writing into the minds of other professionals, TWfSD is an excellent, necessary book that capably bridges the gap between engineering and tech comms by directly addressing our partners in crime, software developers. I think both Chris and I would agree on making technical documentation a mandatory subject for Computer Science degrees, alongside modern DevOps and PMO techniques. This book could be the basis of a “Documentation 101” course in the syllabus of any modern CS degree (and I’d certainly pay to see Chris as the instructor)."
“First forget inspiration. Habit is more dependable. Habit will sustain you whether you're inspired or not. Habit will help you finish and polish your stories. Inspiration won't. Habit is persistence in practice.”
Octavia Butler #writing#writingcommunity
#TechnicalWriting#SoftwareDocumentation#Markdown#XML#DITA: "Think about how in Markdown you would ensure that “all our how-to guides must have an h1 title, followed by one or more paragraphs, followed by one or more steps to achieve the guide’s goal”, and then consider how easy it is in DITA.
This is just not really possible today, at least in any popular Markdown-based framework.
There is a path
Bridging the gap between Markdown and structured authoring will require building new tooling and standards. It’s unlikely that CommonMark or any other popular Markdown flavor would consider going in this direction, so we’ll have to create tools around Markdown.
We at Doctave have some ideas about how to achieve this, and have a roadmap on how to get there. At a high level there are a few things we would need:
✅ A parser and template system that is Markdown-aware
❌ A language for describing constraints and rules for your Markdown content
❌ An engine that enforces those rules on your content
We’re already part of the way there!"
Just getting the day going here on the East Coast of the USA. I’m tired, have a headache, and have to teach #writing in about 3 hours. But I’m also awake, have something to type on, and have this guy to keep me company. So, it’s all good. #catsofmastodon#cats
Snippets of memory
Green grass
Laden picnic table
Sunny day
The brook
The chickens
Rides on the tractor
Jaundiced view
Standing in the midst
Of such perfection
We just kept trying to shape it
Change it, manipulate it
When it was already perfect
Nope, my agent didn't deal with indie comics and so I queried small publishers and was published by them. For a time, I had an agent I got through networking (never querying), but once I was hired as an in-house writer, we parted ways. :)
—I was at a bar last night. One of the patrons, a girl half my age thought I was a girl and tried to seduce me. Her face when she heard my laughter made me laugh even more. Then she tried again. Had to sent her home in a cab. She was drunkest than a sailor on extended leave. I envy her because of such ability…
