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Leng posted:That wall is what I'm really worried about. I'm seriously debating rewriting that entire verse just to get rid of the spelling difference. I have to do some rewrites of that stanza anyway, because the transition from one part of the verse to the next is a little awkward.
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Mar 15, 2022 11:22
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General Battuta posted:It's like being on Twitter. There's very little to gain from it and a very good chance you will get sucked into something unbelievably stupid and possibly life-destroying. It sucks poo poo and I hate it, but I don't see SFWA as being particularly unique in regards to it. SFWA weren't the ones going for the throat with Isabel Falls or Tamsyn Muir, y'know? SFWA members aren't the ones sending editors video of themselves at the gun range or calling people's workplaces trying to get them fired because they didn't denounce Today's Scapegoat loudly enough, SF/F is just a toxic loving environment. I wanted to write wizard books and somehow I ended up in a space where once a month we pick somebody at random and destroy them. I am currently a paid-up member but I'm not sure I'm going to continue with them in future; I was super excited to qualify but I've found them deeply ineffectual, but I haven't found them to be actively malicious or harmful, unlike a LOT of actors in this space. It's constant petty high-school level poo poo but they're not trying to get me killed. I'm gonna be an awful fuckin goon here, but the NCR vs the Legion seems kinda apt. (which is why real gamers say gently caress that noise and take over the lucky 38) SurreptitiousMuffin fucked around with this message at 08:37 on May 23, 2022 |
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May 23, 2022 07:50
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When they announced Lackey was getting grandmaster there was Discourse around it and ultimately people went with "look she hasn't said anything THAT bad for somebody her age and she's contributed a lot and people can change, we can't keep kicking out left-leaning people because they said something problematic once" and then immediately after being awarded she's like TIME FOR A SLUR FROM THE 1930S
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May 23, 2022 21:49
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She called Chip Delany "Colored" Which like, I know there are worse slurs but you've gotta know that's not a good thing to say, that hasn't been a thing that's been okay to say for a really long time.
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May 23, 2022 22:18
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Not really sure how I feel about the ardent defence of her. It's not the worst thing she could've said but considering how she must know there was debate around her past comments and some people were unhappy with her nomination, it feels like maybe she could've chosen her words more carefully. I don't buy "she's old", she was born in the 70s, not the 40s. I give more leeway for older folks who learned things differently, but that one wasn't considered cool in her time. The statement is an overreaction but it was a lovely thing to do and she should've known better. SurreptitiousMuffin fucked around with this message at 00:08 on May 24, 2022 |
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May 24, 2022 00:06
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It's worth noting that Chip issued a statement today saying he doesn't have an issue with it and uses word to refer to himself – there's a whole 'nother conversation about the harm of witnessing, but that's very much secondary to the person directly affected and old mate really doesn't seem to give a poo poo. It kinda feels like overkill, but knives were out for Lackey already and I don't see folks putting them away any time soon.
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May 24, 2022 03:27
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bessantj posted:So if I have an idea but not really a character I need to find a character to fit into that idea so they can carry off the story. I'm still very new to writing so hadn't really thought of that but brilliant, thanks for the advice. SurreptitiousMuffin fucked around with this message at 23:32 on Jun 15, 2022 |
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Jun 15, 2022 23:22
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Elephant Parade posted:base your terms on real-world root words instead of mashing syllables together like a caveman trying to invent fire
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Jun 23, 2022 04:25
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Caveat: all the poo poo you make up to sound cool should feel consistent if it's meant to be from the same language/culture. Like if you write like, I dunno, pulling it outta my rear end, Draxathar, you've already kinda developed a soundsystem, a feel. -athar is now a viable ending for names, kinda knightly, almost like "Arthur" but also Drax is a morpheme that people in this culture don't find weird, a punchy plosive rolling into a fricative, strike and roll and hiss, it sounds snakey. You can apply those principles to other names. Snake + knight. There is no deeper logic to "snake" beyond it sounds kinda snakey, bolt it onto a knight of the round table. Kazulad. Rasault. Zilien. Make poo poo up, just make it up consistently. Conlangs are for suckers, and trust me: I spent a lot of time as a sucker.
SurreptitiousMuffin fucked around with this message at 04:49 on Jun 23, 2022 |
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Jun 23, 2022 04:34
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Stuporstar posted:I spent years telling myself I’d never be that sucker, that I’d never go full Tolkien, and now look at me. My stupid ADD brain found conlanging too goddamn fun and now I’m lost to time forever anime was right posted:i like making stupid language rules but theyre usually just like "i am pretending to romanize this language from another language so that means no Zs or Hs and I used double JJs instead of Gs" and thats it just so names seem consistent. also every translation breaks so many rules you can kinda do whatever anyway.
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Jun 23, 2022 05:02
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I mean look, Zurich airport is called Kloten, which is the Dutch word for ballsack. Switzerland and the Netherlands aren't even that far apart, they're both speaking something that sounds like German on a trampoline, and yet, when I went through Zurich were some Dutch buddies they could not stop snickering, we is stored in the balls. There is nothing more realistic than words in one language accidentally being dirty in another. Or, to flip it, the Dutch word for staircase is trap, and all over the Netherlands there are safety signs of a dude falling down the stairs with the word TRAP above him. Language is weird. SurreptitiousMuffin fucked around with this message at 23:23 on Jun 23, 2022 |
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Jun 23, 2022 23:21
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Pththya-lyi posted:I would add the corollary that if your fantasy beings are clearly recognizable as well-established fantasy critters like elves and dragons, you should call them by their common name. If they're graceful, forest-dwelling, long-lived humanoids with pointy ears, you're not fooling anybody if you call them by another name. We know they're elves. Like, don't call a rabbit a smerp, we all know what a rabbit is and all you're doing is sounding silly, but there's this tendency to assume Western-Euro fantasy is a sort of default and everything that deviates from it is ripping it off? Like, we have our own forest people myths (Patupaiarehe) that aren't even remotely elves, but "forest-dwelling long-lived humanoids with pointy ears" actually works? If you need a Western equiv they're more like dryads I guess, but it's not "ripping off" dryads, it's a mythology that developed independently on the other side of the world. Elephant Parade posted:oh, I'm not advocating conlangs— I'm saying to base your fantasy words on real-world words. like, if everyone is carrying around sticks that shoot fire, call them pyrods, or flamberges, or maybe something derived from latin (two minutes in google translate gave me "ignum lignia"). personally speaking, I find real-language-derived words way cooler than syllable jam like "saproth" and "klofrep" because I can actually tell wtf they mean 1) Baxolazh 2) Lalethwe One of these is a scary orc/berzerker/barbarian type and one is graceful/lithe/mysterious and you get which, right? Because phonology is capable of carrying vibes. That's what I meant by "sounds snaky", you don't need Serpentor, it's often better to lean in on fricatives, you flick your tongue a bit with rolls and taps, you use your sound system to create mood.
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Jun 24, 2022 00:03
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General Battuta posted:170k is long to sell as a first novel. My first sold at 110 and crept up to around 140 in edits. If I had an MS at 170 I'd start thinking about ways to split it into two books tbh. If the cuts from 280k hurt too much, add it back in then trilogy that poo poo. That does happen, pretty sure Rothfuss wrote a massive complete MS then when he sold it they asked him to split it into three. (no fuckin idea what happened to that last third, but that's the scuttlebutt, the "trilogy" was complete in like '08) Gives you space to bulk, and bulk is sorta inevitable in revision. I'm a massive gardener who cuts like crazy and I still added around 30k working with a trad editor. Trilogies are a hard sell but having the whole thing done obviates a lot of publisher concern around completion and would help your chances a lot. SurreptitiousMuffin fucked around with this message at 00:22 on Jun 25, 2022 |
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Jun 24, 2022 23:43
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Yeah it's gonna be a hard sell, I don't think it's impossible (see: The Priory of the Orange Tree) but it stacks the odds against you in an arena that was already plenty hostile. Generally speaking, the more traditional an SF/F subgenre is, the more it's gonna be okay with longer wordcounts, your epic fantasy/space opera is probably still in with a chance, but I think 180–270k are still too big for a lot of readers and are gonna cause you problems. Not insurmountable problems, but it's definitely gonna make the climb steeper. That said, trad obviously isn't the only way to get a book out there. Self-pub is a viable avenue in-and-of-itself and also a useful springboard for trad hopefuls; I had trouble getting trad-pubbed more for thematic/tonal/genre reasons, so I self-pubbed, the self-pub won awards, then a traditional publisher swept in to pick it up. I proved an "unsellable" book could move copies, and if you believe in a project enough then that's maybe one way to go about it. It's not common but it certainly happens – the obvious big example is 50 Shades, [let's side aside aesthetic judgements for the mo and just think querying] it probably would've hit a brick wall if she'd gone straight to publishers but it used less traditional spaces in order to prove it had a solid base of readers who could be marketed to. SurreptitiousMuffin fucked around with this message at 08:29 on Jun 26, 2022 |
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Jun 26, 2022 08:27
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He wasn't trying to be confrontational, it's just that – as others have raised before – if you're gonna just post tumblr screencaps you should do it in a way that advances discussion.
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Jun 27, 2022 05:12
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I do think there's a core nugget in there that's valuable: you do not need approval to write. We sometimes act like being the Next Big Thing is the goal, but writing for your friends and family, or for your own amusement, or to blow off steam, these are all valid reasons to write. You do not need to be gunning single-mindedly for a career, that's just capitalist brainworms, art is good for its own sake.
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Jun 27, 2022 07:08
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I guess I'm just trying to like, demo what productive conversation from/around that sorta meme could look like? I had to unfollow all the #writing tags on tumblr because it tends towards extremely anodyne beginners' stuff, but we were all beginners some time and it doesn't hurt to engage with that level of discourse. Although like, please dude make it discourse instead of just hit and run posting a screenshot.
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Jun 27, 2022 09:37
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Unless you're in self-pub, do not write to market. Trad turnaround times are so long that by the time it's out, it'll be passé. I targeted underserved stuff and I'm just now coming out as part of a wave of other people who did the exact same thing, and all of us started writing in like 2013–2015. Trad can haul rear end when they need to but they very rarely do, even after however many years in the query trenches, you're looking at a year minimum to hit shelves, probably closer to two. For me it was: first draft 2013, came back to/rewrote 2018–2019, agent November 2020, sold March 2021, came out two weeks ago. Think about Dystopian YA, how long that trend actually lasted vs how long people tried to beat that dead horse. Underserved markets though? Man in 2013 I started writing gay Māori pirates and the book came out the same month as Our Flag Means Death. We're riding a wave there was absolutely no way to predict. All of the trendy waves we're riding are the result of me writing a book I wanted to read that nobody else was writing.
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Jun 28, 2022 01:14
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Yeah baby name sites suck. To help peek behind the curtain, I remember a big one had one of the top Māori names being "Aata", which means "bear or stone" apparently. It doesn't mean that: Also we don't have bears in NZ so how the gently caress did that happen? I followed the thread and it turns out they: 1) took "Arthur" 2) translated it into English 3) translated it back into Māori And like, it's a loan word. It's an English name. Nobody bothered it say it out loud. ARTHUR means "bear or stone". That seems to be what they're largely doing, just chucking English names into Google Translate, which is inevitably gonna chuck out like 90% random words that aren't names.
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Jun 28, 2022 22:13
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Re learning to write, the most important thing to do is allow yourself to suck. A lot of new writers hit a wall because they want their first thing to be perfect, so they procrastinate and procrastinate and procrastinate, do anything but writing, and it's like ... repairing the tyres on your bike hundreds of times because you want to race in the Olympics. Let yourself suck, let yourself fall off the bike, then pick yourself back up and do it again, then do that until you can't remember the last time you fell off. Thunderdome, as mentioned, is excellent: it's low-stakes (but not no-stakes) incentive to smash out 1000 words/week where you get free feedback and a built-in community. It's how I got where I am, and I'm far from the best writer in there, nor the writer who has improved the most. Otherwise, just free yourself from expectations, from yourself from needing to be perfect, just write whatever's in your head and every time your brain gets annoyed at you, tell it "I'LL FIX IT LATER" and keep moving forward. You do not need to be original, you do not need to be deep, you do not need to be good; those things come later.
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Jun 28, 2022 22:30
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Junpei posted:Well thanks for letting me know that names on baby sites are bogus, for the most part. Back to stealing names from anime and toku for me. The cheat version (that does still work, you just gotta be more cautious) is to go on Wikipedia, pick somewhere, scroll down to Notable People. Bada boom, list of first names. SurreptitiousMuffin fucked around with this message at 23:17 on Jun 28, 2022 |
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Jun 28, 2022 23:13
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Milkfred E. Moore posted:I get how and why agents pick things up, and I appreciate that some have sent me lovely replies, but my mind boggles a little bit when I get one praising the characters, worldbuilding, pacing, and how the plot widens from the initial premise... but can't offer representation because they don't think they're the right fit for it. There's no point in them lying to you, they wouldn't praise it if there wasn't something there. SurreptitiousMuffin fucked around with this message at 01:10 on Jun 30, 2022 |
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Jun 30, 2022 01:02
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They're saying marketability is the issue?
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Jun 30, 2022 07:45
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Yeah so, if they're saying nice things + that, it sounds to me like "good manuscript that's out of step with current trends." The good thing about that though is that trends change all the fuckin time. We're currently in a sorta GoT/grimdark/more traditional fantasy backlash that leans pretty heavily on gentler feelings and internality, but the backlash to that has already started in earnest (see: Gretchen Felker-Martin/RSB etc) and poo poo is changing pretty rapidly. If the MS is solid (which it sounds like it is?) then really all it takes is one agent to read the room. EDIT: quote:Which given that it's basically The Expanse meets The Boys meets Evangelion, I can see why it might be a tricky needle to thread. With one caveat: that's three TV show comps, which is death. I know The Expanse is also a book series, but if there's a TV adaptation, it's a bad comp. I try to avoid linking my own writing too much but this is one of the best thing I've ever written and still holds true re comps. SurreptitiousMuffin fucked around with this message at 22:22 on Jun 30, 2022 |
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Jun 30, 2022 08:15
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I went with Borne x Baru, Gideon would've been excellent but it came out like two weeks after I'd finished querying. And like, Baru was sort of a weird one b/c I wrote maritime anticolonial queers but with a wildly different scope, Baru's this huge sprawling thing with Space Opera levels of worldbuilding detail while my guiding principle was one town, one night, one woman (obvs blew that scope a little, but the whole book still plays out over basically a single week). But also "antimperial/anticolonial fantasy set in a maritime empire trying to speedrun all the warcrimes, where a queer agent of the state actually fights against it" IS a match; asking for a perfect match is ridiculous (I believe we call that plagiarism), you don't want perfect, you don't need to think in terms of percentages, you want "close enough that they get the idea and it convinces them to read the first 50". Baru is epic while I'm writing pretty street-level noir but there's enough similarity there to help an agent get a grip on the MS. FWIW, when pitching to publishers I believe my agent went with Gideon the Ninth x Black Sun which is not what I'd have picked at all but you kinda get why it sold? That's got teeth, there's an immediate question of how well those things work together, is it gonna be a mess or salted caramel? Should at least read the opening and find out, oh wow this is good I'm gonna keep reading etc etc SurreptitiousMuffin fucked around with this message at 04:19 on Jul 12, 2022 |
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Jul 12, 2022 03:41
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Sitting Here posted:Okay you're kind of selling me on this Luigi Thirty posted:I have no idea what the context is here but I would read this in a second. SurreptitiousMuffin fucked around with this message at 01:37 on Jul 30, 2022 |
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Jul 30, 2022 01:20
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Sailor Viy posted:but does it make you write good
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Jul 30, 2022 02:14
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(the real answer is that Clarion serves as a pretty crucial pipeline to publication, connecting you with the movers and shakers who are often otherwise inaccessible – since I never went through that system, getting a foot in the door was a loving nightmare that took years and a lot of luck. There is some debate in SF/F as to whether Clarion is sorta inherently classist, being too expensive for most writers, especially those outside the US, and its prominence in the scene results in a gatekeeping of a number of marginalised voices – I think they potentially overvalue just how good it is at helping you build a career, but it's certainly one of the most reliable feet through the door and also out of reach for a lot of people)
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Jul 30, 2022 02:20
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Writing SF/F professionally is super cool and I love it, The SF/F Community on the other hand is terrifying, it makes me constantly nervous and sad, I wish there were a way to write wizard books and have cool conversations about craft without worrying all the loving time. I have exactly two pro SF/F writers I trust-trust: one refuses to engage with social media or the broader community, the other has the patience of a saint and nerves of loving steel.
SurreptitiousMuffin fucked around with this message at 04:27 on Jul 30, 2022 |
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Jul 30, 2022 04:25
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Cons are still where the REAL horror stories emerge, Twitter is a crucial secondary cesspit, beyond that it's a network of Discords/Slacks/Group Chats/DMs. Cons tend to be more directly intimately gross while Twitter has scale, and a bunch of hotheads who seem to enjoy being the dynamite that sets off an avalanche.
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Jul 30, 2022 04:35
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No, publish things, just avoid cons and social media like the plague. If you Make It, your writer friends should remain your same writer friends from before you Made It. The two bignames who I trust both knew me/were good to me when I was nobody and that's not a coincidence.
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Jul 30, 2022 04:44
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Weirdly enough most of my outside-the-industry trusted writer circle are goons from here; TD has been shockingly drama-free and filled with cool and talented people, many of whom I know and hang out with IRL. It's sorta weird that a group that talks to each other like wrestling heels has survived a decade with like ... one major incident that E/N flung at us (Benjamin the Reptile) but otherwise it's all just pretty chill and healthy? I don't think I've ever seen a community that large exist for that long without Drama.
SurreptitiousMuffin fucked around with this message at 04:57 on Jul 30, 2022 |
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Jul 30, 2022 04:53
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I mean look, writing fiction professionally is the coolest poo poo, and I've met a ton of cool people who I really like, and been given opportunities I never could've dreamed of, I am just ... extremely cautious, I've seen what The Community has done to people I care about and I live in constant terror of it happening to me. Do submit stuff, do publish, just do it in a way that keeps you happy and safe.
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Jul 30, 2022 06:29
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I mean, having whinged about how terrible the scene is, I should say: Taz Muir is a fuckin real one, exactly as funny as GtN would have you believe and also super nice. There are absolutely good, cool people out there who are worth looking up to. I think you have the right approach too: there are a million people out there who want to be a Writer but remarkably few who seem to find joy in writing, and without that joy then there's just ... nothing? Being A Writer is alternately boring and scary, writing is the bit that fuckin slaps. That point about 50-60% of the way through an MS where all the streams flow together and suddenly the water's rushing downhill? Nothing like it. If you find joy in it, do it, do it recklessly and pointlessly, and occasionally you'll finish a short and put it down and six months later it'll still be bouncing around your skull and you know it needs expansion so you just start writing, drat the torpedos, and it's a trash draft who the gently caress cares and suddenly you're re-reading your final draft and crying because gently caress I'm good, gently caress I'm actually really good that's why I do this, everything else is window dressing with a sniper lurking around outside, write the fuckin stories and don't care about anything else, it rules
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Jul 30, 2022 09:51
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sometimes you will write a story and go "I'm super proud of this" at which point you should submit the story to an appropriate venue, take their money, act like the story is a dove you released out the window that is now gone from your world, ignore all social media and go back to writing
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Jul 30, 2022 09:55
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I think you should publish, I just think you should build up support networks external to SF/F. Do not rely on the 'community' for security, for love, for anything. Go carefully into Babylon, and do not go alone. There are wonders and joys, but many dangers too. The General might feel differently and has certainly seen more of this war than I have, so I dunno, maybe he's gonna swing in and entirely slap this down and he's probably right, but it does feel worth it to me. Like, I worry I have been crushingly negative about a thing that brings me a lot of joy, the opportunity to tell stories for a living, hot drat, I love writing, I love it when readers talk about how much they love my work, I love that I have a team who are dedicated to making my books the best version of themselves, I've met a lot of lovely people and done a ton of cool stuff it's just ... I mean Battuta's not wrong, the scene is an absolute shitshow SurreptitiousMuffin fucked around with this message at 13:22 on Jul 30, 2022 |
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Jul 30, 2022 10:55
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General Battuta posted:Make your agent do it Find their email, just ask. Writers are just people, you don't need to be any more scared of them than anybody else, and we get blurb reqs all the time. I've never resented a blurb request, if I don't vibe with the work or don't have the time I just don't reply. Send a lot more than you need, b/c most will just ignore it, but some won't. If you're self-pub it'll be an uphill battle, but talk to people with self-pub/fanfic etc pasts who are much more likely to give you the time. SurreptitiousMuffin fucked around with this message at 22:50 on Jul 31, 2022 |
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Jul 31, 2022 22:47
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Yeah nah I mean, it's a really common thing, it is vaguely transactional in the sense that if somebody blurbs me I'm gonna give their blurb requests more thorough consideration but I've yet to meet somebody who gets mad about receiving the things
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Jul 31, 2022 23:02
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This is all very good advice that should be heeded but we have a thread for this and should probably take it there.
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Aug 6, 2022 03:24
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This is more generalist dicussion, crits tend to require a bit more space/focus, it's not like a CC crime to miss the crit thread (it fell off the front page of a very slow forum after all) but I think we do wanna encourage more people to actually use it.
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Aug 6, 2022 08:30
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