I've been thinking about how speculative elements are sometimes clearly real in a story, sometimes clearly metaphor, sometimes clearly both, and sometimes--this is the one I'm most thinking--in a space between metaphorical and actual. That in-between space used to annoy the piss out of me (always a matter of taste, of course!), but now maybe I'm starting to appreciate it. There's maybe a different sort of magic in the in-between.
Hello #Mastodon, I am seeking comments from the community to include in my next newsletter about #Google's change in their privacy policy. (They now say that anything you post online will be used to train their AI models.)
I am especially interested of thoughts from #writers and #artists.
How do you feel about this move? What do you think about placing your content behind a wall to protect it? And will this change how you post online in the future?
Hello #WritingCommunity
Apparently #Google has changed their privacy policy and now says that they'll scrape everything you post online to train their AI tools.
I even post my #Fiction online on #Substack & my #Wordpress blog and now wonder if this is a bad idea.
They say paywalls could deter the scraping.
What do you think writers can do to protect their content? Or should we just roll over and accept that this is the way things will be from now on?
I do reading groups with my 2nd grader's class & they talk about sensory images that come to them. (The ones they name are amazing!)
What about that as a way to give feedback in a workshop? To just name the sensory images that pop into your head as you read a story? So useful know how my words mingle with a reader's experiences to evoke something else!
What other useful forms of non-prescriptive, non-judgmental feedback have you discovered?
Oh my God! Oh fck! I wake up to this big news and all I can say is fck! I went to bed having read something about Philip K Dick Awards (I can't even remember what I read about it!) and I wake up to learn that my book, Where Rivers Go To Die, has been nominated for this and its a big deal to me and all I can day is f*ck! What a way to start the year!
I drummed my fingers on the table beside her open grimoires. Not facing the bully, I turned my eyes toward the blonde, taking in her arrogant smile. She'd gotten me to do what she wanted. She held her wand steady, and the tip glowed like hot iron. "And that's all I need to do? I can't believe you're helping me like this after all we've been through..."
The bucket-full of water and me being hit by said bucket falling off the shelf above the door. The vanishing ink pen I used on a test. The worms in my box lunch. Other things. But I was also a T.A. Some responsibilities where inescapable.
I did volunteer to help Jill.
I wanted to laugh at the "we" in that last sentence, but sighed instead. She was predictable. Very predictable. "The mnemonic, the equations, the visualization. Spot on. It balances and your wand indicates that."
"So all I have to do is say what I want to conjure?"
Predictable. I didn't grin. Instead I switched to French, hopeful. "/Tu m'emmerdes avec tes questions!/"†
She blinked. "Merde? Isn't that French for—"
With magic you really need to be specific about where to target a spell affect and what you're asking for. She'd been specific about neither.
Where your wand is pointing is the default. Her's pointed above her head.
The spell understood what she wanted enough that the closest source proved to be the horse stables. I could see it out the dorm room window. The spell mucked every stall.
A load of small round spheres crashed down around her, bouncing off her head and bounding around the room. I squealed reflexively and jumped away.
I doubled over leaning against the door, laughing despite the smell. For her part, the bully sat stunned. Her expression wanted to be a smile. She had succeeded, after all. She also knew she'd been made the fool.
Exiting out the door was the better part of valor. I grabbed the nob.
"/Amélie/," came a growl.
=-=-=-=-=
† "You're so annoying with your questions!" Literally: "You're shitting on me with your questions."
I wrote about a really incredible use of a child's perspective (in Verushka, by Jan Stinchcomb).
Some writers--& some readers--prefer to mimic a child's language when they write from their perspective, but I don't want to be limited by that & now I'm thinking of other perspectives that jump words to make something stranger.
How do you approach perspectives when you can't--for any reason--use the character's words?
I need help, dear #writingcommunity, fellow followers of #writerscoffeeclub, #wordweavers, #TimeTravelAuthors, #pennedpossibilities.
It's been some time since I was a teenager. Things have changed. I need a place for my kids in #JulesNVera to hang out in a small town. I chose this place to be a mall. I haven't specified the country in which my story takes place for numerous reasons, but is this still something kids do these days? Or is it completely out of date?
A question I ask all the time in my classes--and it's not rhetorical--also I don't think there is one answer--is: What makes a story?
I love to think about what it is that gives me (or anyone--and it definitely varies) the sense of narrative, the sense of having read a thing that has... what... something like a point? I can't even define what the feeling is--but the sense that it's a story.
What does that for you? What makes a thing a story?
#WritersCoffeeClub Jan 1: What are your writing related New Year Resolutions?
I don't really do resolutions, but let's try this: I'll actually send my work out more this year. Get serious and make a list of agents, and just go through the list.
I find it ironic that I need to work in a coworking space/cafe a few times a week to keep sane. My home office has been designed to 100% suit me & I focus the best there, but as an extrovert, working at a place with people has been necessary for my #MentalHealth. (I live alone.)
Anyway, am looking for tips to keep away the #RemoteWork blues. Still love it & I think the hybrid system suits me the best :)
Writing routine, not really, but I have a drawing one : after breakfast, I start my day with about one hour of drawing as warmup before starting my daily job.
Got down to #author stuff, now that I'm retired and can devote time to the #business of #writing#fiction. First order of business: catalog the unsold novels from after the burn out that need revision and rewrites.
Turns out that disconnecting my Mac from my work VPN messed up my folders. I had somehow mapped (don't know the Mac term) my work Windows computer folders to the Mac, and when I look in documents it tries to find it on the network and fails. If I reboot, so long as I go directly from my user's directory to documents directory, I'm good. If I click on Documents in Finder, it redirects and I'm screwed.
First thing I did was copy all my writing folders to the desktop. At least I've lost none of my old novels and short work.
I thought there were 7 completed books, and I said so online. There are actually 9, three that form a trilogy and one novel with a sequel in the mix. There are two incomplete novels.
Some works are older than others. Pages refuses to open one novel from 1996, a fun space opera that possibly has the highest chance of early sales. I haven't tried the others. Now I gotta install Word, of which I am not a fan, and investigate programs that'll open the really old files. If anyone wants to chime in with suggestions, please do! (I can always find someone with a Windows machine if need be.) Putting Google on TODO. I actually have original copies of chapters from my Apple ] days, but thankfully I updated those to the Mac and to a new millennium version of Word in what were my PowerPC days.
Incidentally, there really are three novellas in good shape.What surprises me though? There looks like about 15 short stories, many complete because I see multiple submissions in the various folders. I completely forgot about these, and was sure I never wrote short-form.
Jokes aside, it was bad before but now I have completely given up on buying ebooks or go through Kindle Unlimited as a result. Instead, I do it the slow way, via Goodreads or social media recommendations. That's the only way I know to cut through the noise, and I feel bad for the #WritingCommunity because they have to battle through this trash to be found 😔
I wonder what tense you've all chosen to write in and why.
I know past tense is likely the most common, but I have experimented with both and decided that present tense offers more direct immersion for my purposes.
This also ties into who the narrator is. In my WIP, it is a person in the room invisibly tagging along with the MC.
How did you decide, and is it reflected in the identity of the narrator?
I would love to get your thoughts and feedback on my #BookCover from my latest book, The Challenges of Being Me. Do you like it? Does it capture your attention? Without knowing anything about the book, what genre would you say this cover best fits? #writingcommunity#bookstodon#authors@bookstodon
#WordWeavers Sep 2: What could you change about your world to make it better for most people?
Racism and sexism. The world has advanced a lot in terms of declawing capitalism, which creates a huge updraft for women, poc, indigenous people, queer/trans people, etc. Economics are the tool of oppression, after all, but white supremacy and patriarchy are still implicit in all kinds of systems of power, not to mention individual prejudice.