Writing

I'm a firm believer that editors should write.

Why? Because we need to really understand the author experience.

Get under the hood of what it's like to create, graft and craft.

And to truly appreciate your process.

I've done it at Arvon courses and in published article writing.

Here's my story 👇

\#writing #WritingCommunity #creative #author #editing @writers @writingcommunity @writing #WritersOfMastodon #EditorsOfMastodon #AuthorsOfMastodon

https://lisacordaro.com/2023/07/31/why-editors-should-write-and-need-to/

Many times when writing, I get a very specific image in my head of the way I want something to look, or the way I want something to move. Particularly with actions where objects are moving in a very specific way, I want to describe them accurately so that most readers would see the same thing that I'm seeing in my head. The problem is, I don't want to come off as sounding too technical (the object slid along its Z axis and suddenly stopped and rotated 45 degrees on its Y axis), and I also don't want to be so vague that a later sentence contradicts what they were seeing in their head.

Is this just a psychological thing that I need to get over and stop worrying about, and just write to the best of my ability and edit when I hear critiques/comments from readers, or is it a skill that I need to improve?

I hope it's okay to share this here. I originally wrote the story in German but unfortunately it's nearly impossible to get humorous stories published in German literary magazines, so I translated it into English and sent it to various magazines.

For those interested, below is the link. I would appreciate comments on what to improve.

The story is set in the 1920s in rural Germany, so you might find some old German names.

https://www.almamagazines.com/fiction-and-poetry/the-clocks-ticking-karl/

This is the fourth NaNo event I've participated in and my fourth win. I set my goal at 25k words, so just half a real NaNo, but more focused on an area of my writing that I'm severely lacking. The month has helped improve it a bit so that's been nice. Also pretty happy that I finished a week ahead of time. Maybe for next camp, I'll up my goal a bit to push me a bit harder.

But anyway, I accomplished something important to me and got another certificate to hang on my wall which I'm pretty happy about. Figured I'd share.

I have a podcast called Entrepreneur's Enigma. I know that I have a book in me by the same title talking about the ups and downs of entrepreneurship.

I have more than 150 episodes with entrepreneurs of all types. I'm hoping to use this as source material for the book with a smattering of my own ideas.

I have the outline and the thesis done. Even the contents (preliminary) done. Just haven't started writing a darn thing.

I joined Beehaw specifically hoping to get in on the ground floor of the growing writing community here, but I have to admit I haven't had much to say.

So, for the other folks checking this community once a day or so to see what's being posted, "Hi!"

I'm enthusiastically nearing the end of the first draft of my first novel, and pretty excited to jump into revisions once that's done.

I aspire to be traditionally published, though I've heard how unlikely that is for a first novel over and over, so I'm (primarily) viewing this first novel as a learning experience, and it's very much been one of those.

I'm interested to hear where others are at.

``` Her presence intoxicating as the smell of sweet honey

her touch sends shivers down deep to the marrow of my bones

her gaze icy yet it burns me and everything within

every time I pray to hold her just for a minute longer

yet when the sun comes up she is no longer there my silent wish unanswered

the sheets next to me devoid of her warmth yet full of her fragrance

I sigh and close my eyes only to meet her again in my dreams ```

Hi! I've been writing a scifi-action-comedy starring a queer dog-man bounty hunter. I've posted a link to the first chapter, I have a few more chapters as well as some other short fiction up on my blog. Don't be fooled by the first paragraph, it is not actually a poorly written erotic thriller about mermen. Check it out! I wrote it just for you!

Cloudless sky looks down

Empty pit that was a pond

What is a farmer?

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Last quarter in slot

Surprise ball drops down the chute

Worthless toy again

I'm unsure of how many people are explicitly aware of the Bulwer-Lytton contest, but the general idea is people submit introductory one-liner sentences that are meant to be written as poorly as possible, with awards given to the best worst submissions in any year.

I've linked to the winner's catalogue. Any particular blurbs stand out to you? Any examples from your own work?

A real masterclass in analogies.

This is my work; I am also looking for constructive criticism.

Yet another post for the Diary story I've done a couple times. I'm not 100% happy with this page yet, but I figured I'd post it anyway.

I'm still having issues loading most posts / comments here, so my apologies if I don't reply here, but I'll appreciate your comment anyway.

Page One

Page Two

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(Day X-1 cont.)

After it looked at me funny it kind of... walked or sauntered or - well I am not really sure how it was moving. It wasn’t hopping like a regular frog. To be honest, it hardly resembled a frog at all but it did croak once.

But it almost seemed to beckon me, and at this point I’d say that it did. So, I followed. I’m not really sure how far I got, it must not have been far before I heard it. A low growl. After the typical shock though, I almost laughed. A growl. Here? I think at this point I’d have been relieved to see an Earth creature. Give me a wolf! A bear! Anything from Earth! But, I couldn’t find the source of the sound – not until it stepped out of the void. The steaming frog reacted at the same time – with an immediate hissing sound. Steam replaced the air, and it was hot. I scrambled backwards trying to get out of the scorching air.

I will admit to thinking that was the end for me. I couldn’t breathe. I turned to run. Then I met her. - A woman of sorts stood there. I felt a gust of cool air from her, it was a relief from the scalding air. Before I could speak or even process what was going on, she grabbed me in her arms, and the same cool air brought us into the sky. I didn’t even think to fight her off, or to try to free myself. And now, I’m thinking maybe I should have had that instinct. Allowing yourself to just be taken by someone is not a great trait to have…

Now, I’ve never flown before. Not like that. Not like a bird, through the air all… free like. It’s not at all as amazing as it’s made out to be. The wind is so crisp and cold against your face that it stings, and it’s hard to see with all the wind in your eyes. It was kind of nauseating seeing the land go by so fast…

Thankfully it didn’t last long. But as we landed, a lump formed in my throat. I realized it’d be hard to run for my life if I needed to. We were standing on something suspended in the air and I was pretty sure the only way out would be a long fall.

[End of the page]

Based on this prompt: Once every year, you have the power to swap minds with someone. However, there's a catch: the target is completely random, and the swap lasts for only one minute

The post's a bit old at this point, so I decided to make a new one. I hope that's ok.

The prompt stuck with me a bit. This story is probably a little rough, I haven't really edited this at all.

For all the marbles

Of the amount of people who ever lived, around five percent are alive today. That's what they say, anyway, the scientists. I think they're pretty close. Off by half of a percent, perhaps.

Have you ever seen one of those bowls full of marbles, where there's a prize if you can guess how many? Counting people is a lot like that, and there are multiple ways to go about it. You could count them all individually, of course, but that's usually impractical. You could measure the size of the bowl and the size of a marble, and calculate how many can fit. Weigh the bowl and the marbles, and there you go. Maybe you know how long it took to fill the bowl, and how fast the person who filled it was doing so. There's even evidence that if you just have enough people guess, their guesses will average pretty close to the real value. Perhaps you know how much the bowl cost, and what the cost of a marble is.

I was sixteen the first time it happened. Sitting in class, bored out of my mind, wanting to be anywhere else. Then suddenly I was. Now I know it was Dubai, although I didn't realize it at the time. I couldn't have. I found myself in some high-rise building, staring across the desert at some giant mirror in the distance. A desk full of papers in some eastern language. Wearing a robe. Being a man. Having a beard. That was all the time I had before I found myself back in class. In my own body, with everyone staring.

It turned out I had flipped out and cursed the class in Arabic, which of course I did not know how to speak. I tried to play it off, and it worked for a while, until it happened again. Even as a teenager, you can take one blip on your radar, but two? I'd been Chinese, that time, and once again I did not know enough about China to find the problem. I tried to explain what had happened, and my rants caught the attention of the faculty who escalated me into psychriatic care. The experience had been traumatic enough that I probably could have used some therapy, but the machine was aimed at a problem I didn't have. Psychosis, schitzophrenia, delusion, it fired bullets made of drugs, electricity and denial, and they left holes in me that have never healed. At least I wasn't born twenty years earlier. They would've stuck a pick in my eye and been done with it.

The process brought it on again, of course. The catalyst is wanting to be somewhere else, and if you've ever been to a ward, there's nowhere else you wouldn't rather be. Africa next, and institutional racism that had me thinking it was all mud-huts and straw skirts made me not question it. South-America somewhere, same deal. Then rural Pakistan, maybe. Every time an episode of me freaking out in a language I didn't speak. It happened five times before I really realized what was happening.

For a single moment every year, I was trading places with someone. Completely random, one minute long. I had some control over the timing. Like I said, the catalyst was wanting to be somewhere else. I had to wait at least one year, but I could wait longer, and I usually did. It takes a lot of self-control to force yourself to believe you want to be at work, in a lecture, or stuck in traffic. To come home to safety, and make yourself believe you want to be elsewhere. But doing it somewhere safe means not being observed. It means no more treatment, and no more holes.

I enrolled in college, and studied geography. I was twenty-three when I realized what should have been obvious, looking back. Not only was the location random, but so was the time. Some of the places I'd been, I hadn't recognized because they weren't like that anymore, or yet. I began to record my experiences. A minute isn't really time to do much other than observe. I made notes, and I tried to figure out what it meant. I was determined to learn something, and... holy shit...

Back to the bowl of marbles, and the last way of counting. But first we'll make the problem a lot more difficult. We'll make it at least a hundred billion marbles, and we'll make most of them weightless and invisible, and we don't get to know how big the bowl is or who filled it. And no one gets to see the bowl but you. That takes care of all the solutions we found before, I think. So how do you count the marbles now? Thanks to a very special tool we have in this scenario, there is a way.

First we have to count all the marbles that aren't invisible. Let's say that's about eight billion. The important part is we know how many. Then we use a magic machine to pick marbles at random from anywhere in the whole bowl. We'll have to pick a fair amount. The more the merrier, although we don't get to pick one very often. I'm sure you see what I'm getting at. After we've picked enough marbles, we tally up how many we can see. Do some maths with the proportions, and there we are.

With my magic machine, I have now picked sixty-seven marbles. I've done everything I can to tell where each marble is from. I'm reasonably sure a little over half of them happened in the last two thousand years. A little over half of those, from the last two hundred. A little less than half of those in the last fifty. Two marbles from the twenty-first century. Two. Both of them in the future. The Emirates finish that ridiculous Line, by the way.

I don't know what happens, exactly, and while my sample size is small, it is consistent: five per cent of the people who ever lived are alive today, and five per cent, give or take, of the people who ever will be.

Was curious to see what tools everyone uses for both writing and storage.

Personally I use Word for writing, Excel for planning and progress tracking, and a local MediaWiki server for note taking.

What about you?

Story is below ~200-300 words!

If you haven't yet, I suggest reading Moon to start (~200 words)., it was a little story in the form of a diary entry (~200 words) written 'by' Asiné a character who found herself in a strange place.

Today's post is a continuation of it.

Note: I am having trouble loading the entirety of this community. If you comment I will ofc try to reply, if I cannot due to your comment not loading on my instance take this preemptive appreciation: Thank You! You're amazing~ Eventually when everything loads in for me I will try to go back and give you all the updoots you deserve, and reply properly. Until then, I only have access to sporadic posts / comments. (If this is also happening to you, you can still visit the website directly (not through your instance) to see everything properly).

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Day X-1

There is no point in trying to figure out how long I’ve been here. It seems as though the time in this place is off. It doesn’t pass like it should, I think it passes too quickly. And not like in a ‘I’m not paying attention and the day escapes me’ kind of quickly either. I’ll be honest – everything about here confuses me. It's kind of maddening. - But never mind that.

Today, when the light finally filtered in to my little den, I went out. To explore, to find… something, anything of intelligence, and well – I don’t know what I expected. I ran into... a frog? of sorts. It was relaxing by the river I get water from. It looked almost like a regular frog, but there was just something about it that I couldn’t quite place. It was bulbous and wasn’t sitting like a frog. And there was the fact that it seemingly let off steam. At first I thought it was a trick of the light or the water - or something. But, the steam definitely moved with the frog… and came from the frog.

So, like a crazy person, I tried talking to said frog. I mean, it could have spoken English, right? Given everything about ...wherever I am, it surely seemed plausible... It did not speak English, but I swear it looked at me funny.

What do you do when you find a steaming frog after you’ve found yourself in some strange place? I guess you follow it. - That’s what I did.

[End of the page]

For fun, I wanted to set a scene based entirely from a diary entry. I wrote this to the prompt of "Moon". Now I think it might be fun to tell a whole story this way, but I don't know that I'll do that.

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Day 3ish X

Funnily enough, the only thing I remember from that fateful day - or night in this case, is the moon. It must have been full because despite being black, it acted as my guiding light. In fact, I don’t remember anything else. But that memory has been burned deep into my mind, it returns religiously – almost like those pesky debt collectors from back home - a continual reminder of my predicament.

You see, I am not home. I woke up in this cave. And I am not… even remotely home as far as I have been able to gather. And I’m not sure what that even means. The grass here is different. The sky. The moon. The trees. Nothing is at it should be. Well, the water is drinkable, and some of the plants have been edible.

Maybe I died. Maybe this is heav. Maybe this is hell. Purgatory? It’s something. Or, maybe I’ve just gone mad, and this is all in my mind - but I refuse to believe that. This is real. My pain is real. All of my cuts, scrapes and bruises from that day night are real.

So, my conclusion is that I have somehow, gone somewhere other than Earth. Maybe aliens brought me here, or God. I don’t know. But I plan to find some other intelligent creature to interact with. Hopefully there are others like me – humans. Hopefully whatever they are, they speak my language…

I don’t know how long I slept last night, through the entire day it seems. In the morning I will set out to find out what I can about this place – I cannot stay here in this cave. I might go mad.

~ Asiné

Hello,

As the title says this is a short story that I have been slowly working on for a few years. I've stopped and come back to it many, many times. But I think it's time for it to be shared again or else it won't (and I won't!) get any better.

So, please, I invite you to tear it apart. Any feedback would be welcome. I'm not sure how it works, since I'm still new here, but if you'd prefer to send a DM instead of leaving a comment you may do so!

Edit: Sorry for the formatting. It was too big for a single post or comment so I had to split it into 4 parts. It should all be chained together within the first comment. (Sort comments by Old)

Synopsis:

{This is a standalone piece.}

A mysterious love letter leads a man on a road to self-discovery.

#writing #shortstory #fiction

I haven't written in years, so this is a little rusty, but I was going for cute and cozy. (And practicing 2nd person for some IF I'm working on...). Constructive criticism is welcome~

Prompt was "Rays"

---- You lay in bed, wrapped in silken blankets, barely awake. You shift and your foot liberates itself from the cocoon. Freedom feels like the icy snow banks of the Northern Isles but a quick yank brings you back to solace - like a crackling campfire in the night. Rays from sun greet you through the blinds and illuminate your face, but you’re not ready for the light. Not yet. - Wait. What time is it? Surely, I couldn’t have slept too long. It can’t be that late. Not yet.

You sit up, losing the comfort and warmth that enveloped you. It’s late, it’s definitely late. I didn’t mean to sleep so late! Then you hear it. The low hum of their breath beside you and you realize where you are, when you are, how you are – who you are. You can’t help the smile that paints itself across your face. You slip back under the covers and press your body against theirs. The Warmth. For now, nothing else matters.

cross-posted from: https://programming.dev/post/240893

> The crowd went silent when the human entered the bar. You didn’t see many of their kind here. He grumbled, uncomfortable for the attention, walked up to the counter and signaled for a mug. > > That’s when the whispers started. Mayfly. Young one. The walking dead. He was happy to down his ale. > > You see, this wasn’t your average bar. This was a speakeasy, one of the few scattered across the world where the elves and the dwarves shared a drink. Where the seraphim flirted with yokai, while fae fluttered from table to table. Where the orcs played chess at their own table, practically drowning themselves in ale. Where seldom a human showed his face. > > They aren’t rare, of course, humans. No, quite the opposite. They simply didn’t live long enough. Speakeasies are illegal, you see – no self respecting elf could be seen drinking with a dwarf, or dare I say, an orc – so they’re not exactly advertised. The humans who helped found these establishments had long since died. They’re mayflies, alive just barely long enough to be young, and dead practically as they learned to walk. The new humans since simply hadn’t heard of the place. > > “There you are, Arthur! It’s been a long time since I saw you last!” > > The bar quieted once again as she walked in. Drea, high elf, and uncontested beauty. Many pairs of eyes tracked her as she comfortably made her way to the counter, where the human was nursing his second drink. > > “Has it been that long? Seems like only yesterday,” he said. > > A second passed before he cracked a smile. > > “But it is nice to see you again, Drea, after all these years. I was beginning to get bored.” > She laughed, embraced him, and for a while they simply enjoyed each other, rocking slightly as they hugged. > > The chatter in the bar changed as the pair caught up. The beautiful, stately high elf laughing as the human told some story, snorting as the ale went up her nose. She was clearly smitten, and many of the larger orcs and stronger dwarves, now more than a little intoxicated, took exception to such a lady falling for a human. > > “No!” she was saying between laughing spurts, “Surely Matt told you it was a bad idea!” > > “Was it, though? I’m telling you, my arms are pretty long, and the River doesn’t have any– Ah, can I help you gentlemen?” > > A dwarf had approached the counter in the company of a rather large orc, both wearing faces that shouted “I’m stricken by her beauty, but I don’t want her to know it.” > “Nae, nae youngster,” said the dwarf. “I’d more like if ye lady friend here’d care for another drink! So’thing stronger, maybe, with some flavor!” > > “Aye,” the orc boomed, “something stronger!” > > Arthur quietly admitted to himself, he was impressed with the orc’s bulging muscles as he flexed. Drea, apparently, wasn’t. > > “Oh quiet yourselves, my friends. I’m afraid you’ll have to drink with each other. I am quite taken.” > > A fist slammed hard on the counter, “By the human?! What can this young thing do that I can’t! I can lift a mountain!” > > Arthur believed him. He tapped the orc on the shoulder to get his attention, and felt the rock of his muscle. > > “Aye, my friend,” he said, “taken by me. I’m sure there are others here that would be more receptive of your charm?” > > “Nae,” said the dwarf, “I wan' te know what makes ye better than us who been buildin' when ye gran’father still be suckling milk!” > > “Ah but we can so easily tell you,” said Drea. > > Arthur wasn’t so sure. “We can?” > > “Sure, sure! Please continue your story.” > > He still wasn’t sure where she was going with this, but no one ever had to prompt him twice to tell a story! He swigged his ale and cleared his throat, warming back up to the tale. > > “Aye, so there I was, at the top of the cliff by the bank of the Gaiden’s Blood River with my friend Matt. We were looking at the River down below. I’ve been swimming in it, and it’s gorgeous. It’s exactly the perfect temperature and it’s so deep and wide you can swim for hours. I really did feel like a swim– it was getting rather boring up top.” > > Eyes started widening as Redbeard and Grukk began to realize where this was going. Gaiden’s Blood River, as you probably know, is the largest river in the world. As the story goes, when the blood rushed out from the god Gaiden’s wound, the force of it cut such a deep swathe in the earth that its banks are huge cliffs. How the River changed from blood to water is a story for another time, but the cliffs are so high that a dive would surely kill even the most sturdy dwarf. > > Surely he didn’t. > > “Surely ye didn’t” > > “Jump? Of course not! I’ve no wish for death. See, we have these things called parachutes – large cuts of fabric, as large as the largest dining table in the largest hall, that catch the air and slow your fall. But I didn’t have a parachute.” > > Eyes widened again. Such an invention didn’t exist among the dwarves or the orcs, and neither Redbeard nor Grukk could think of a more reckless, irresponsible, unsafe thing to do than to fall freely from the sky with nothing but fabric to stop you. Didn’t this human have better things to do? > > “I didn’t have a parachute–” > > The pair sighed in relief. > > “–but our tents were made of the same fabric, so I told Matt to hold my beer, and I cut the damn things into wings from my wrists to my ankles. See, I’ve got pretty long arms, and I figure my wingspan would be enough to catch enough air that I could glide down to the River.” > > At this point, both sets of eyes were as wide as dinner plates, and Drea was quite amused by the rapt attention with which they were absorbed. She could hardly blame them. > > “An' it worked?” ventured Redbeard the dwarf. Drea, too, was curious. > > “Worked?! My friend, it was amazing! It felt like flying! I didn’t even bother swimming! Soon as I landed, I climbed the two-day path back up the cliff and I jumped again!” > Drea was the first to break the silence. > > “You really are something, aren’t you, Arthur.” > > “Human,” said the orc, “you are lucky to be alive. What drove you to such madness? Why threaten your life?” > > “Aye. Ar' ye mad, ye dumb bastard?” > > “No, not mad. Just bored.” > > “Bored?” > > Neither man had ever heard of the term. It must have been some sort of madness to drive a human – already with so short a life – to commit to such a danger so readily. They glanced blankly at each other, clearly confused. > > “What’s bored?” they said in unison. > > “If I may,” said Drea. “I can explain.” > > Arthur gestured for her to go ahead, as he drank his ale. > > “You see, humans, and especially Arthur here, occasionally enter a state of mind that drives them to do ridiculous things. I daresay it’s a kind of madness, but we’ve been arguing about that for ages. There is a very interesting cause to this madness to which all humans succumb.” > > She waited a beat, and watched as both men were swallowing nervously. > “It’s caused by a lack of threats in their immediate environment. Humans crave threats, you see. Threats to overcome. And that is why, gentlemen, I stand by his side over yours.” > > Thus leaving both men impressed, Drea grabbed Arthur by the arm, and they walked out of the bar together. > > “You are extraordinary, you know,” she said, “I’m very glad I met you. You must’ve been mad to approach one such as me, a high elf, so many years ago.” > > He kissed her then, smiled, and said “No, not mad, my dear. Just bored.” >

Cw: suicide, suicidal ideation

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Jake fidgeted nervously. He knew the longer his grades declined, the higher a chance his mother might notice. He’d just hoped with the move, and her job, she might take a little while longer. He sat tracing mazes in the linoleum at his feet, waiting for her return. He sat like this for what felt to him like days, until a distant train horn snapped him out of it. Unlucky that, because at that moment his mother returned with a severe expression. Here’s how I’ll play it, he thought, I’ll blame the move and make sure that’s it. She only needs to know about the grades, so I can’t get distracted. “Jake, hon, are you ready to talk now?” He nodded a little, eyes glazed still to the floor. Caitlyn Winters dragged a chair near to her son, in preparation for a long talk. Jake steeled himself, as he was so used to doing. “Jake, Mr. Novak called today and... well, it’s not looking too good. 3 Fs, and the others are Ds. He’s saying if you don’t start improving, well... you can get the gist.” “Yeah, sorry mom, it’s just with the move and all, yknow? Makes it hard to focus sometimes. But I promise to fix those, ok?” His eyes remained focused on the ground. “Hon, you said that three months ago. I understand these things take time, but I understand other things too.” Crap, Jake thought, here we go. “I understand what it means when I’m cleaning all of your dinner off a plate, because you forgot to throw it out before I noticed. I understand what it means when you spend all your time in your room, what it means when I ask you to do chores and you completely forget them. Jake, I’m your mother, and I know when you aren’t doing well.” What an understatement. “I’m fine mom, honest. It’s just the move yknow, and just getting- “A train horn blared distantly, and Jake froze. Caitlyn Winters could see the sick form of desire written on his face. “Jake, do you ever...” Said as it always is, grasping and avoiding those last few words that give it all weight. Jake felt the blood boil inside him, he tried keeping calm but within seconds all he could think about was the question, the blood, the train. “Yknow why you’re asking that, mom.” Caitlyn looked shocked, and hurt, but Jake could no longer see her. “Yknow, just like EVERYONE ELSE who’s asked that question what the answer is. Don’t pretend with me. You know, you noticed, you see it EVERYWHERE. So don’t give me this moralizing, don’t pretend like you’re asking that to help because IT NEVER DOES. Yknow what I think of after that question? I think of that damn train. I think of that train blaring its horn. I think of it, rushing past at high speed, thundering through this town. AND I THINK OF JUMPING IN FRONT OF IT. EVERY. DAMN. TIME.”

Jake focused yet again on those mazes underneath him. He regretted it now, but so had he regretted everything up to this. It took him a moment to process the tight bear hug his mother placed him in. “Jake... I asked you that because- “Quick breath in. “Because I also thought about that. I still think about it. And I don’t- “Another breath. “I don’t want you to go through it alone like- like- “ And with a voice crack, water began spilling out the eyes of the Winters. It always is strange, how quickly the shields and barriers and emptiness we put up fall apart so quickly in a loved one’s embrace. A train horn sounded distantly, and for the first time in years, Caitlyn and Jake Winters felt safe.

Tried playing a bit with changing POV's and ambiguity on flash fiction, not sure on the result though.

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Anxiety weighs on the prisoner’s weary form. The one he saw as a redeemer was far from it. It was something far more complex. Exhaustion threatens to consume him, yet he strides ahead, on the verge of his limit. He raises his gaze to the top of the wall — no more room for evasion, grass or bullet awaits.

He is the cockroach, hidden within the dewy moss. No turning back now, only forward to go. Following his training, he grapples the loose bricks. His grip scratches the surface, it hurts, it weakens. He slips once, he slips twice. He thought it was going to be easy, but as it turns out, it was just more labor.

Left on his own, his dreams of crossing borders linger. Feet touch the ground, a vibration tours his body. Too much pain, his foot fell first, top over bottom. Something is broken. He must move on. Scaling the wall was the easy part, he thinks. Now, the challenge is to remain unseen. In the darkness, the cockroach moves with stealth, escaping the piercing beams that would sear his flesh and usher his demise.

The watchtower guard is vigilant, an insatiable lust for the chase keeps him alert. Sweat trickles down his forehead as he squints, determined to spot the elusive cockroach and put an end to his ordeal. The plan was straightforward — create a diversion, release the prisoner, savor the free meal. But, as he realizes, there is no free lunch.

The cockroach creeps low, the overgrown vegetation concealing him well. It's only a matter of time now, he thinks, the river holds his freedom.

The drone hounds are set loose, their keen sense of heat drawing them from afar. The guard’s fear dissipates, knowing he has everything under control. No one will slip away.

The damp earth whispers of hope. It won't be long, he thinks. Hands stained with blood from jumping the wall. The throbbing pain from his fractured toes pulses through the leg. The aroma of rain-soaked soil is strangely comforting. The dampness of his clothes, less so. Green foliage sticks to his face as he continues to crawl. He can hear the river's murmur close by.

Movement stirs the undergrowth, and the guard has no seconds to waste. His gaze darts around; the hounds trail distantly.

The guard steadies, the guard targets. The wind rustles his attire, his hat is sent flying off. A quiver runs through his arm. Too much work this was. No inclination to make amends wells within him. He presses the trigger, the sound reverberates into the distance. Recoil jolts his shoulder. He observes, he scrutinizes, he prays.

The river embraces its visitor, the roach contends with the powerful currents. The burden is lifted, he can rest now, it’s time to go home. It was too much labor. It was worth it.

This is the first short story I ever wrote. A few glitches might be there but I hope that you guys will enjoy reading this. The story contains references to illicit substances and swear words so proceed at your own discretion. You have been warned 😜

I've written a few silly things that I've already published on my blog. Will it be okay to share the link to the published post here or should I copy-paste the content here? Any ideas or advises?

This excellent piece from the Atlantic (Drive link to PDF) describes the author's process writing a fully AI novel. He used a ton of different tools, did the plotting himself, and had the AI not just write but revise, change tone, generate alternatives, etc. etc. Then he assembled the final product himself from all those components.

I think this is pretty plausible vision of how writing will be reshaped by AI. Anyone who's messed around with ChatGPT knows that it produces shit content right now. It'll get better, and formulaic tasks will be taken over—the AP apparently uses AI to generate reporting on game results, for instance—but creative work that requires bounded originality seems well outside what it can do, just by its nature. That includes fiction as well as drawing original insights from large or complex bodies of information (e.g. scientific articles, reports, white papers).

Curious what you all make of this—whether it's realistic, what it's missing, what it gets right.

What's crackalacking! Yeah, I'm actually sticking to this, since it seems like a lot of people had a lot of fun with it last week, and I'm still having fun forcing my horrible ideas onto the unsuspecting populace of beehaw. And then you lot, entirely forgetting the point of all this take the bad ideas and actually make them entertaining! How could you?! I've actually become emotionally attached to Emo-Chan and her battle to defeat Hitler. Of the drama obsessed story teller food critic. Alice and her Woman Emotions. And, of course, the late entry of Timmy's Taco Tuesday Torment. (How could you miss the alliteration you MONSTER)

Jokes aside, I'm going to do things a bit differently this time. I've always found the traditional reddit writing prompt to be a bit too limiting, so I'll be trying to include some writing prompts that don't really follow the formula of "here's a story idea." To a greater extreme. Also, feel free to post your own prompts in the comments, I'll try to edit the post to include them, and if I find the time/energy to, I'll write a few myself. No promises though, I'm a lazy bastard.

Adding onto that, I want to stress that the point of this activity is just to write. Not write a complete or even good story. Just to write. If you don't like the prompts, ignore em, or make up your own, or write about how bad the prompts are. I don't care just write!

Now, I'll stop fudging around and give you the prompts of the week.

Bad Character Ideas

• Like, omigosh, did you see that Janet was going out with Hugnthlenbar? She totes just dumped Jason for him too! Ugh, what a, like, totes bitch, right?

• A young shonen protagonist, ready to take on the world with his best friend! The parasitic alien fungus that occupies the right side of his body. He is still relentlessly positive.

• Elves... As wise as they are old. And of course they all old, right? I mean, it'd be unthinkable for the wandering Elf spouting wisdom of the ancients for the low low price of $699.99 (plus gratuity) to not be old. R-Right?

Bad Setting Ideas

• In honour of facebook market place deciding that my one and only desire in this world is apparently milk kefir grains (no I don't know what they're used for either), the story is set and explained through horrible social media posts.

• Check it out! Fashion revolution, new styles and the hottest new designs to wear in the post apocalypse world!

• Everyone knows the get stuck in the videogame plot. And that's already bad. But what if the videogame also just sucked? Glitchy, unfinished, and nearly entirely empty.

Bad Plot Ideas

• A deep intrigue story filled with deep plots where everyone has their own interests. It's for a baking competition.

• Since I'm apparently on an anime roll here right now. The plot is that the cast is trying to kill God. God is just a chill dude though.

• An adventure story where the dohicky that everyone is after is lost media from a children's TV show from the 70s. This is treated with a grand amount of severity.

Unique Idea!

• Hey, you know that piece of media that you love? The one close to your heart? Write a bias an unfair review of it where you rip it to shreds and call it shit.

Alright, once more I'm running out of time before work. Thanks for reading, and double thanks for posting! I'm off and out, see you all next week!

Most of my creative writing is handwritten. I usually use legal pads, or more preferably wire bound legal pads. It's easy to write on both sides of them and for some reason the yellow just does it for me. Every once in a while I decide to by a fancy notebook. In the past it was Moleskines, more recently it was ones from etsy made with Tomoe River paper. I have a (cheap) fountain pen, so I figured I'd try some better paper.

The problem I run into is that I never use the fancy notebooks. The paper is better, and the ink flows smoother. It has a better tactile feel to it. But it is a fancy notebook and it should only be used for the good stuff—the stuff I want to look over a decade or two from now and be proud of.

So I'll be very careful and take my time to write in the best handwriting possible. I'll last for a few pages before my handwriting gets sloppier, or a have another idea that doesn't fit, and I abandon that fancy notebook. I go back to the spiral bound legal pads which contain a chaotic jumble of non-linear thoughts. There are notes and poems in the margins, things crossed out all over the place, and handwriting that becomes only legible to me if I squint real hard at it and pick it up from context.

So how do you feel about fancy journals. Are you able to treat them as the paper they are, or do you too put them on a pedestal?

I think this is the best place to post this, but I was going through my saved posts before deleting my Reddit account and thought that a lot of writers on Lemmy/Fediverse might be able to enjoy this one.

There's some great tips in these comments but this archive snapshot will make sure that information isn't lost.

Feel free to add your own tips here in the Fediverse as well!

Do you set aside a time each day to write? Do you write five pages stream of consciousness then trim it down into something that makes sense? Are you a planner? Do you write in a notebook? Do you write once, edit once? write twice, edit once? Write once, edit thrice?

I don't have a consistent process. I've been experimenting with writing in a basic markdown editor, maybe 500 words at a time, then stringing together multiple entries as best I can. What I find is I have lots of ideas and thoughts that are separate, and critical to my ability to form complex thought is correlating multiple seemingly unrelating things, which then creates a new more complicated and hybrid whole. I can't sit down and write 5,000 words on one thing, but I can write 500 words on ten things, and then use that as the basis of a mosaic piece that (when edited well) comes together into a unique whole.

(I haven't seen any writing prompts on here so far, so I figured I'd write the first one!)

Hey all.

I've been writing a novel recently - I'm only 2200 words in. It feels like so little and so much at the same time.

Until I graduated college, I loved writing. Reading, too. Then, it feels like my ADHD got much worse and I lost all the passion I had for both. I had about a year of really intense depression while trying to find my first job during COVID. I had basically written nothing for almost three years up until recently. I started, and did not finish, a short story, and am working now on this "novel". The problem is that I love writing in the abstract, I love putting words together in interesting ways and telling a story. But I can't stop looking at the word count and feeling hopeless. I can't stop feeling like there's no point to any of it because my writing is shit. I feel like all of my passion has just left and I don't know how to get it back, but I desperately want it back.

This isn't a question, really, despite the title. I guess I needed to vent and know if I'm not alone in having experienced this.

So this post is somewhat introspective but I am curious to how others feel about a similar topic. This is going to be a pretty long post, so I totally understand and pre-emptively forgive you for skipping through it and moving on to another post.

A quick introduction: I write nonfiction in the form of personal essays; occasionally I write reviews of books/movies/etc. but for the most part my lane is the personal essay. Mostly, I publish my stuff on either my personal blog, or on Medium.

Lately though, I have felt like I am turning too much to the idea of making everything my life "content". To better illustrate what I mean, recently I decided I wanted to specifically journal my health & fitness efforts because I've been struggling with that lately. My first thoughts after deciding I was going to do that were "what platform do I post this on?" and "what do I call this??" (because I didn't think it was a good fit for my already-existing platforms). I put a stop to that thinking and relegated these journal entries to a Simplenote document and it's 100% for my eyes only. Not everything I do or write needs to be fodder for the online community.

But I still like to write, and will go through alternating periods of having a lot to push out onto page, and having no output whatsoever (right now is one of those periods, and I'm fine with that, because I'm enjoying getting some good reading time in). My issue is that I don't have a sole focus with my writing, so it's hard to get people to see what I'm writing and engage with said people. If I published a book, I could at least see sales figures or downloads or something. I don't really trust subscriber or follower numbers on WordPress or Medium to mean anything.

Where I'm going with this - many collections of personal essays that get published come from either celebrities or at least public figures of some sort - they aren't people just throwing a collection of stories at a publisher hoping they'll get a book deal. So what's the point of me writing anything for other people? Nobody knows who I am outside of family and friends.

I do have one area I'm immensely familiar with: epilepsy. In the back of my head I have a small dream of putting together a short book of my experience since my diagnosis 4 years ago but I turn back to, "well okay, but will anyone care if they don't know who I am?"

So right now I am in a weird rut. I want to write things, but at the same time I don't feel upset about the fact that I'm not writing (apart from journalling). But I'd like to write something meaningful to me, that other people could be interested in reading.

Does anyone else feel this way? What are you doing about it? Am I just beating myself up for no reason?

I love writing and reading reviews. It started with film reviews. Reading Donald Clarke's scathing review movies in the Irish Times when I was younger was a formative experience. Often I find myself enjoying the critiques more than the movies! I've developed a soft spot for restaurant reviews as well.

During the pandemic I set up an Instagram page to start sharing food reviews, just for fun. They're not serious at all, I write them in a very tongue and cheek fashion and often try to incorporate what is happening in my own life in them. I love being honest about my own biases and having controversial takes about something as simple as ice cream flavour, I find it leads to some really fun discussions!

Who are your favourite critics? Do any of you here write reviews for fun or even for a living?

Hey there!

I try to find some new interesting writing content, mostly about lifestyle, self exploration, relationships etc. I'd love to get some fresh readings :)

Two of my current favorites: https://ava.substack.com/ https://mindmine.substack.com/

Share a haiku about your day!

A moment of peace,

That's all that I'm asking for,

Please go to bed now.

I’ve been working for several years on a novel, and in a lot of ways it’s been fun. I have some very interconnected themes, some plot twists that tread the line between being surprising, and meaningful, and a fair few characters that develop through a lengthy confrontation.

I’ve started to consult an editor about tuning it into something publishable. Due to the way I was writing it, I only recently got the tools to calculate a total word count, and we realized that in the end, it’s far longer than I wanted it to be; on the order of 370,000 words.

Apparently people like George R. R. Martin can sometimes get away with this length, but I understand this is way out of line for a first time author. I’ve been looking at ways of trimming this down, and admittedly, there’s a few chapters with low hanging fruit I can get rid of; but I think I’m in need of a lot more than that. My editor was suggesting getting rid of entire main characters that don’t have as much development as others.

But at a lot of turns, it feels like trimming out X causes 5 other problems (plot points lost, throwbacks disconnected) that might threaten to either make the book soulless, not make sense, or even fail to reduce word count when I tie things together.

The option of simply splitting it into 2+ books has been there, but…it doesn’t seem practical. There’s a very clear villain, with a steady buildup to their dethroning, that would feel unsatisfying pushed off to another story.

If I assume publishers, or even just readers, would show only mild interest in a 300k word book, it makes me feel a bit stuck. I’ve already committed a lot of time to the story, and it feels grueling to go back and redo large parts of it; while also aiming to make it shorter.

Curious if anyone has thoughts on what they’d do in this situation.

So, Grammarly is correcting me a lot on a phrase I tend to use, and I don't entirely understand the difference.

On a sentence that expands upon a previous sentence in dialog, I tend to have a character say "Which means [...]"

Grammarly wants to fix this to be "This means [...]"

It's become clear to me that I tend to use 'which' instead of 'this' when speaking, but I am not sure why one is preferred use over the other.

Can anyone offer me some insight? I already tried googling "which vs this", but I got results for "which vs that" instead, which is an entirely different use case.

Hello! I was curious how you guys like to share your work, particularly long-form works. I mean, excluding publishing because that sounds like a lot of effort I cannot be bothered to put in. I've been wondering what other people like to do, I don't really share my work that often.

Welcome to the first (unofficial) Bad Writing Prompt day of the Beehaw Writing instance!

I've been reading a bit on the instance, and I agree with the consensus that we're going to need something weekly to bring and keep a community together. So I'm doing my part!

Wait, what do you mean by bad writing prompts? Partially inspired by this post here.

“Don’t try to prove you’re a good writer, you’ll never write anything. Try to prove you’re a bad writer and you’ll write everything.”

So, here's my general idea. For now, I'll be posting 3 different things.

• Bad Character Ideas
• Bad Setting Ideas
• Bad Plot Ideas

For you to mix, match and use as you please! Again, I'm writing this off the cuff and with 20 minutes before work, so apologies for the short post, but without any more delay, here's what I got for you all!

Bad Character Ideas

• The disgruntled younger sibling of the "Chosen One"

• A food critic who actually suffers from no sense of taste, getting by on charisma and faking it alone

• A magical anime girl who has a strange hobby and obsession with taxidermy (Thanks to my coworker for giving me this one haha)

Bad Setting Ideas

• Cowboys and digimon. How that works I have no clue. Just. Cowboys and digimon combined. If you do this you have my eternal gratitude.

• Told entirely through the lens of the endless blurb you skip before a recipe.

• An office building set within purgatory itself.

Bad Plot Ideas

• The main character has traveled back in time to kill Hitler. Little do they know is Hitler is now a skilled killer of time travelers.

• A love story where two people are fated to be with one other, lest the world end. They hate each other.

• A heist on the Vatican vault.

Alright, I'm running out of time, and need to skip off to work. Hope to see some posts, and remember to make it awful. I want some real schlock and cringe. Feel free to use all of the prompts, or none of them! Your reward will be nothing. Ciao ciao!