@sfwrtr@eldritch.cafe
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sfwrtr

@sfwrtr@eldritch.cafe

RS, pronounced /är' əs/. Professional #SF #fiction writer coming back from burn-out. Writes character-driven #SFF (science fiction #fantasy) and some #fanfiction (#MLP). #ClarionWest 98 graduate. #SFWA life member. Studied non-western culture, #folklore, and #mythology. #Feminist #Writer and #Author in the #WritingCommunity amongst the #WritersOfMastodon.

Goals: Return to paid publication. Provide interesting content for followers. Make friends; attract colleagues. See intro post for more...

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sfwrtr, to writing
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I've just realized being an author is bad for your health. Second night in a row, I've awoken thinking about the story I fell asleep musing about just a couple hours before... then couldn't sleep for three hours. Arrgghhh!

sfwrtr, to 13thFloor
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Ch 2 Nbr 7 — Have you ever seen a TV show or movie so close to one of your ideas you wished you'd written it?

No. But many are the TV episodes or movies I could have written better, or have fit well on the writing staff.

Sorry, no modesty here. I'm a sucker for a good story, but a potentially good story fumbled, or made "Hollywood" because of stupid concessions to stupid ideas of what sells tickets, infuriates me.



sfwrtr, to 13thFloor
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Ch 2 Nbr 10 — Did you learn cursive/joined-up writing in elementary/primary school?

Yes, and that would have been in the 60s. OMG, am I really that old?

Thank you, I'm now feeling kind of depressed. Mostly because my writing is really bad, and I'm not even a doctor.



sfwrtr, to 13thFloor
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10.14 — What's your characters' relationship to spooky things?

You don't want to enter the forests claimed by the Wild, especially now that the Golden Stag are itching for a war. The things that people can do with their bodies after they die (or die a second death) is miraculous, scary, and dangerous for outsiders to witness. Arguably spooky, because you might not know when you trespass, or if some wonder that is again alive is "active."

You don't want to be surprised. Trust me on this.

What these things /aren't/ is supernatural.

[Author retains copyright.]



sfwrtr, to 13thFloor
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Ch 2 Nbr 20 — If you read over a quarter of a book and decide you don't like it, do you bail or complete it?

I have never finished a book I grew to dislike while reading it. Except in an English lit class. There are perks to having graduated.



sfwrtr, to 13thFloor
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121 — Who is your favorite character to write, and why is that person your favorite?

I have two versions of the same character for different genres, and both are my current favorite to write. She's deeply flawed and knows it, but deeply principled, too. She thinks she's evil, and has history she trots out to prove her point. Her internal dialog is snide, self-deprecating, amusingly cynical, and filled with wild opinions about people she never states aloud. Okay, that's not entirely true: She's often noticing guy's sir-parts, and will state her opinion to a guy's face if it serves her purposes. She's a master of euphemism (e.g., sir-parts), innuendo, and double-entendre, but what makes it fun is sometimes she's the dog who catches the car. Though she has a matter-of-fact attitude toward sex that shocks others ("You have to pee and eat, too, right?"), she can blush until she heats the room if she lets her feelings get in the way or she's taken the the mask she's wearing too seriously. She often makes me feel proud, when she does the right thing, and worried when she get's hurt (often) and nearly killed (rarely). Her words come easily; I channel her well, because she's like the me I'd like to become in so many ways.



sfwrtr, to photography
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A Sunday tradition: a cup of real caffeinated coffee in a 1984 Olympic glass mug.

1984 Olympics commemorative glass mug with symbols of athletes doing weight lifting, wrestling, running, and archery.

sfwrtr, to apple
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It is a sad commentary for and and its when I store a couple images in iCloud files on my , then go to my to use them and discover they aren't there. The Mac has no way of telling , "Hey, stupid. Refresh. Look for my new files that I need NOW!"

No button. No clickable icon. No menu item.

So what did I do?

On the iPhone, I moved (copied) the image files to . The files instantly up/downloaded to my Mac. Literally, less than 5 seconds.

How much am I paying Apple for 2 TB of storage? Well, too embarrassing; look it up. What I am paying for Dropbox is zilch, nothing, nada, bupkis.

Stupid, stupid, stupid!

Epic .

PS: 10 minutes later, the iCloud version is still not showing up on my Mac.

sfwrtr, (edited ) to Writers
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Ugh! I found someone had scanned and uploaded a copy of my book to the Internet Archive, without my permission. When wanting to find a review to recommend a book to someone, I found that copyrighted book there, so looked for mine. I still own my copyright. This interferes with me creating an author-preferred edition (instead of the publisher's vision) as planned.

In their terms of service, you will find:

While we collect publicly available Internet documents, sometimes authors and publishers express a desire for their documents not to be included in the Collections (by tagging a file for robot exclusion or by contacting us or the original crawler group). If the author or publisher of some part of the Archive does not want his or her work in our Collections, then we may remove that portion of the Collections without notice.

You can only contact the Internet Archive through email as their telephone number is voicemail. AFAIK their website doesn't list take down procedures.

I have emailed them a takedown demand, with their identifier for my novel, and left the same message on their voicemail.

You may wish to go to https://archive.org/ and find your books, right now.

Please boost so your circle of followers will see this, especially if they are authors.

PS: Yes, they consider themselves a library. I don't mind if they loan an original paperback from Del Rey in paper form. I don't give them permission to scan and then display, or display someone else's scan of my book.




sfwrtr, (edited ) to 13thFloor
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#PennedPossibilities 323 — What's a piece of advice for writers that you listened to and are glad for?

An Australian author, Lucy Sussex, told us at Clarion West 1998 to be shameless in promoting ourselves. Being a shy person, networking and promotion has been a heavy lift, but I'm working on it and I know it's going to help. Mastodon: ☑️

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

#BoostingIsSharing and #CommentingIsCool

#fiction #fantasy #sf #sff #sciencefiction #writing #writer #writers #author #writingcommunity #writersOfMastodon
#RSdiscussion

sfwrtr, to 13thFloor
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#PennedPossibilities 305 — Are there any characters of yours that you wound up HATING once you were finished with a story or WIP?

Taking a cue from @floofpaldi on how to answer this one, I have characters that are HATEFUL but none that I hate. I'm not to a Conan Doyle level that I can hate a character so much that I want to kill off my Sherlock Holmes.

Occasional hateful characters are great fun to write and pit against my MC. She ticks off one misogynist prizefighter during a press interview where her trainer presents her as a contender. An off-handed remark. He becomes her boogeyman, but he's stupidly angry, obviously uses steroids, blurts racist epithets, and gets used by others as muscle. The time he attacks her on a crowded public street, she manages to get him to trip into traffic where he breaks his legs. She walks off with her "Starbucks" she'd put down on a newspaper rack to deal with him.

Another time he ambushes her in a quiet neighborhood midday when nobody is around. His first punch to the head renders her unable to use magic part of her martial art and leaves her stumbling. He fights only with brawn. He wants to kill her. How could you hate a character on character setup like that?

She defeats him with a child's wooden pull toy. Anymore would be spoilers.

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

#BoostingIsSharing and #CommentingIsCool

#fiction #fantasy #sf #sff #sciencefiction #writing #writer #writers #author #writingcommunity #writersOfMastodon
#RSdiscussion
#RSstory #RSReluctanceStory

sfwrtr, to Writers
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This comic should amuse #writers. I did some research on the #etymology of the cited #homonyms and wrote this to my lit friend. My thoughts, anyway, which may amuse ewe:

It is obvious from an orthographic perspective that many sounds represented by groups of letters in English ought be pronounced differently and emphasized, putting aside that Germanic and French derivatives are also different. Problem is that human hearing and blurring of sounds due to regional accents mean we do a lot of error checking so accurate sounds don't always matter. As such, we have homonyms which shouldn't logically exist because we learn language by hearing not reading. But humans aren't logical (and are lazy speakers) and language is living. Scent = sss sen t. Sense = sen sss with a weak seh at the end. Scent without emphasis on the introductory s sound, sent, and cent are homonyms. Scent is from the French and cent from the German. Sent is the past tense of send so doesn't count.

#Language #Writing #Author #WritingCommunity #WritersOfMastodon #Comics #Humor

https://www.gocomics.com/pearlsbeforeswine/2024/04/30

sfwrtr, to 13thFloor
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2404.02 — What books/resources have you used to improve your writing? Which ones do you recommend?

/The Elements of Eloquence/ by Mark Forsyth.

Buy it. (I'm not the author.) This book reviews, in detail, practically everything English class taught you to /never/ do: Rhetoric. Meter. Style. Cadence. Things that make prose sparkle. I've incorporated many things from this book—and bought it again when I worried I'd misplaced it—especially since my work is also intended to be read aloud (though I never say so.) The book is amusing /and/ useful. It may prove revelatory. It will make you smile.

This is a US Amazon store link: https://www.amazon.com/dp/042527618X?ref_=cm_sw_r_cp_ud_dp_KTH85RXQY5C40R72S9EM

and


sfwrtr, (edited ) to 13thFloor
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Ch 8 Nbr 03 — Do you use semicolons? Correctly?

So... I checked out the usage; I do. 😊​

I mostly use them to coordinate two closely related sentences that could be coordinated as clauses with simple conjunctions and commas. There are plenty of people who string "and" and "but" together when talking, however, there are plenty who state things, slightly pause, then continue with another whole sentence without conjunctive coordination. Not a full stop. The dialogue some characters in my stories spout use semicolons because they speak that way. They are often well-educated, self-confident, or authoritative; they're unlikely to use "uh" or "you know" when speaking extemporaneously. My narration includes semicolons when it is natural to do so; it eschews semicolons when not.

I rarely use semicolons to indicate a series because series that require them /feel/ stylistically technical. Narrative fiction shouldn't feel technical. I rewrite lists where the items in the list need their own clauses.

As you can see from the first paragraph, I don't use semicolons to set off complex conjunctions like "however." I will admit I keep forgetting that's what you're supposed to do, but that's likely because doing so makes the writing feel too formal.

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

and


sfwrtr, to 13thFloor
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Ch 8 Nbr 14 — Do you keep a log of incidental characters (e.g. shop assistants) or forget them once they've featured?

This seems like a really good idea.

No.

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

and


sfwrtr, to ai
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File this one under The Coming Labor Apocalypse.

worthy. https://newatlas.com/robotics/atlas-suspension-work/

sfwrtr, (edited ) to random
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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 using the word because I'm an as well as a .

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.

sfwrtr, to ai
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Interesting quote from an otherwise bit confusing article on and job replacement.

"...trust in AI isn't very high right now, particularly when it comes to providing false information. In fact, 49% of businesses surveyed said that they were concerned about the risk of large language AI models generating false information..."

https://flip.it/5eKKY1

sfwrtr, to Writers
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#psa Okay, learned a lesson today. I either missed this or the setting changed in an update. Both #OneDrive and #Dropbox have a setting for keeping all the files in the cloud rather than on your Mac, downloading them as you need them. This means that if you need them and the service is responding poorly, or you have no connectivity, you can't get to your files. If you use #scrivener, for example, which syncs through dropbox, this can cause sync errors between devices!

Both services appear to set all files online only. Both services have a way to change this to ensure all files are downloaded for offline use.

#Writers, #authors, as well as #artists, I strongly suggest you keep your files on disk as well as in the cloud. Change these settings now!

#writersOfMastodon #writingCommunity

sfwrtr, to sciencefiction
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The blithe use of #dystopian in this article makes it interesting to #sciencefiction #writers. It really does seem like a Hollywood idea that with a change in economic fortunes or poor acquisition of food could go horribly wrong for 9 million people. Then there's urban decay... Won't know how such things work until someone tries...

#sf #author #writingcommunity #wrtersofMastodon #writer. https://www.boredpanda.com/saudi-arabia-1-trillion-giga-project-the-line-aerial-footage/

sfwrtr, to writing
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"Well, it can't be the end of the story when [the chapter] ends on a cliffhanger..." —A reader

The MC has just stated she's experiencing death. Hers. It's written in first person, however, so...

sfwrtr, (edited ) to 13thFloor
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Ch 7 Nbr 22 — Are there any books which should be banned, or is book banning always wrong?

This question is a weedy overgrown field of unexploded land mines. I won't step there.

All I'm willing to say is I hope my books never get banned, and that some malcontent, with an axe to grind with my view on how humanity actually works, never decides to make me an example.

and


sfwrtr, to random
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Are corn tortillas unleavened bread?

sfwrtr, to 13thFloor
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265 — Which of the four seasons suits your SC best, and why?

On Home, there's really only two "seasons," if you could call them that. There's hot and humid and hot and not humid. When hot is greater than 95°F (that's 35°C and -3°B), humid is bad news. Heat is such an issue, they measure temperature as degrees below blood temperature.

Since day length does vary, longer nights limit the amount of sun you might have to seek shade from. Sadly, humidity and longer nights coincide.

So... guess which season the my SC likes best. 😇

Actually, everybody is so used to the heat and sweating that they don't notice seasons much. Timing outdoor activity, sleeping midday, and housing compensates for a lot of issues. All things being the same, Bolt likes the longer night "season" best. Gliding on night thermals over a city with your wings out is very cooling.

[Author retains copyright (c)2024 RS.]

and


sfwrtr, to 13thFloor
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Okay, applying my writing principle of "Just write it, damn it!" but I keep on getting distracted, like writing this toot. Trying, anyway, but not doing my best. It's not like I don't know what's about to happen, and can't write it, and if I /wrong it,/ I can always revise it. Arrgghh!

and

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