#WritersCoffeeClub Ch 10 Nbr 08 — Do you agree with Michael Moorcock, who said: "Ignore all proffered rules and create your own, suitable for what you want to say"?
The advice boils to down to learn how to write and practice enough that you understand the basics (items 1 through 9), and understand what about all that gets in the way of you telling your tale... then tell your tale the way you need to tell it instead. I kinda agree...
To the extent you can be truthful with yourself and keep your ego at bay. This took me decades.
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.
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.
#WritersCoffeeClub Ch 10 Nbr 03 Part 2 — Should books include a content warning?
Well, I inadvertently conducted an experiment in content warnings. I added a content warning for Ch 10 Nbr 4 (here: https://eldritch.cafe/@sfwrtr/112560345961576143) consistent with my eldritch.cafe instance's standards. It stated:
How do you handle highly intimate scenes? CW: Intimacy. Nothing graphic, but, really, if intimacy or discussion thereof bothers you, don't read.
In my opinion, it worked a little too well. 😊 I generally can count on more response. Yeah, maybe the post wasn't deserving.
The "experiment" does allow me to discuss my fears about CWs—despite agreeing to use them in the spirit of their requirement. In warding off people who need them to be sufficiently detailed, or want them, reading a CW forms in the reader's head a preconception without actual knowledge of the facts. It's a cudgel not a scalpel. In my cited CW, I overwrote it because in the back of my mind I fear picking up a hater. I've dealt with getting badgered because someone's interpretation of reality wasn't mine, and I became an evil to be purged for the good of the world. As a shy person, this is a very difficult thing for me to deal with, so I use CWs.
And if you haven't read The Way of the Wielder yet, no worries! You can buy your copy on Amazon now (or read it on KU for free): https://a.co/d/hRZOw8j
This is a very good comic, and it describes every author (or #artist) who is unsure of themself. Don't let this be you!
Complete stories (your vision) regardless of the merit you see in them.
Start a next one. Full stop. Then another.
Complete and send out more stories even if some editor (or commenter) doesn't buy or like them.
It's all practice, every single failure or not-good-enough. Practice makes you better, whatever they think, or you think. Keep practicing.
Take from criticism only whatever helps you identify or fix problems; reject being put in your place or ridiculed. It's practice. Your art is unique to you. Be truthful with yourself, though.
Keep starting and completing stories. Statistically, some will be good—and you will start to recognize the wheat in the chaff.
Their first stories weren't fabulous. Neither may be yours. The difference? They kept on starting, completing, sending (or posting), until they found success. Let that be you.
Please remember: #boostingIsSharing and boost to give others a moral boost.
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.
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.
I have so many short story ideas, but I write only the first paragraph and just can't continue, yet the entire story is sitting there in my head anxious to come out. Because I've thought so much about the story that I know how it starts, how it ends, who the main characters are, but I can't get it out of my head..... Not sure how to get out of this state. It's been going for about a month now 😭
#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: ☑️
#PennedPossibilities 322 — What piece of advice, as an author, did you once receive but hadn’t followed? Looking back on it now, you might wish that you had.
Advice: Don't only write novels. Write lots of shorter pieces.
When I started I saw that you could only make a living if you sold novels, so I wrote novels. That completely discounted the fabulous practice you get completing lots of smaller stories. Completing a novel takes lots of time and there's a mounting anxiety that in the end the plot will fail or no publisher will be interested. Yeah, true with short fiction, but the investment is far lower (or should be if you're doing it right). There used to be lots of magazines you could sell short fiction to... for pennies a word, but it was something, and it offered a chance to build a brand name and a following. Such notoriety could help you sell novels, too.
SLOW RENGA Respond with #haiku using the suggested first lines & start each haiku with the same first lines below: DISSONANCE… or LISTENING TO RAIN… Post haiku in comments, enjoy mulling over the first line and considering your options at different points during your day. Look forward to reading your haiku and seeing where these lines take you. #Writing#poetry#creativity#wellbeing#write#writingcommunity#amwriting#poem#writer
Someone is either selling pirated copies of my book, or they're trying to scam people using my name and book. They even uploaded it under the name "River Hopkins" instead of "River J. Hopkins."
Can y'all please report the seller? This is the link. They're selling it for $14.99, and there's absolutely no way they have new copies for that price.