So If You're In The UK You Have Probably Heard About The Proposed Changes To Disability Benefits. If

Never have, never will. If someone couldn't be bothered to write that shit, then I won't waste a second of my precious time on Earth reading it.

a writing competition i was going to participate in again this year has announced that they now allow AI generated content to be submitted

their reasoning being that "we couldn't ban it even if we wanted to, every writer already uses it anyway"

"Every writer"?

come on

Fanfiction is great because you can see so clearly how people learn to write.

Some people, it's clear, learned almost entirely through absorbing the world around them. Grammar and punctuation will be all over the place, spellings are approximate, but the voice of the narration will come through so clearly. You can hear the dialect of the people around them as of they're telling the story. It's not a written story, it's a transcription of how they talk in their day to day life.

Some people learned through reading a gazillion books as a kid. Grammer and spelling will be rock solid, formatting occasionally based on the single tab of physical books rather than the double tab of online scrolling, but dialogue is often stilted and overly formal. You might notice a lack of contractions and very rigid rules they made for consistency that actually have a lot more flexibility than they think. They tend to have a fantastic grasp of sentence flow, though.

And other people formally learned how to write. This could be anywhere from taking school classes seriously because they enjoyed writing stories as a kid to literal certifications and jobs in the field. Grammer is flawless. Punctuation is triple checked. Foreign words are in italics. Characters have distinct voices. But their self indulgence is tempered by perfectionism. They know precisely what they want from a fic. Authors notes often feature mutterings about their happiness with the chapter. Kaomojis often appear! They seek a style to their writing, and it makes for some wonderfully clever plots! These are the ones most likely to get fun with formatting!

And some people.... Some people examined it all. They dissect dialogue, people watch, cross reference behaviours and compare characters to people irl. You can tell almost immediately who had formative experiences with Terry pratchett and/or ghibli, because it's these people. While others see writing as fun, expression, craft, they see it as art. Plain and simple. Sure, the grammar is occasionally sacrificed on the altar of creative freedom, and the occasional sentence might miss a full stop, but these people seem to self reflect on themselves as part of the art making process. On occasion, these people have the most masterful grasp of dialogue and invocation and hand sewn characterisations. Formatting is pretty standard because all the focus is on the actual words. These fics can be edited to the moon and back!

All of these can vary wildly in forethought and quality, and betas can often catch individual problems before they hit post, but just. Isn't it so cool? What's that one Oscar Wilde quote about every mask just being another fragment of yourself?

Did you recognise yourself?

Slow progress is still progress, dammit

It's been a hot second (i.e. an ungodly amount of time) since I posted anything to do with my third and final AoD-sequel novel. Suffice to say I'm genuinely uncomfortable talking about the progress – or lack thereof – of WIPs, especially when they've been WIPs for so long they've started sprouting little purple tendrils and have knotted together into a Lovecraftian horror under the sink.

This is in no small part because of my ongoing health issues. Privacy is very important to me, but it's also no secret that I'm disabled with multiple chronic conditions. I'd hoped, back at the launch of Path of the Black Alchemist in the summer of 2023, to have wrapped up this project and published the final book by Christmas. Or at least spring 2024. Or the next Christmas for certain.

Life, of course, has had other ideas...

The important thing is that the third book IS coming and I AM making progress – even though at times it feels so unbearably slow that it's in danger of being overtaken by hibernating snails. It's no coincidence that part of Lara Croft's arc in this story is about coming to terms with her limitations and accepting/offering help; a huge part of my own life's journey has involved deconstructing my internalised ableism and learning that it's okay – even necessary – to embrace support from others. We're so conditioned to be perfect little self-sufficient, independent individuals that reaching out during hard times can automatically make us feel like a failure.

In reality, nothing could be further from the truth... as Lara finds out the hard way.

Another factor of this challenge is trying to reach out more online. To connect and grow with other creative minds. Hence, this post. Fatigue/energy limitations are a HUGE part of my daily life, so setting spoons aside purely for this is a Big Deal (TM) for me. Tumblr feels like a safer, more welcoming place to write more of these long-form musings than other SM platforms, so we'll see. It's counterproductive for me to make grandious promises about posting every day, or even every week, but it'd be cool to reach out more and try to open up a little after so long retreating into myself these past few years.

I'm also considering (but haven't yet committed to) sharing my works over on AoE. On the one hand, it's more work in the short term. But on the other, I'm seeing a lot of engagement and encouragement in the AoE community even here on Tumblr. Those of you who use it regularly: what would you recommend?

Bon chance xxx

started doodling my Hero of Kvatch and made her look a lil evil in the process

Dont know if this actually works still, haven’t tried it but ya know…if it does then you're welcome 😂

Can we talk about Kurtis Trent massive glow up please?!!!! WTF!!!

I’ve come to the harrowing realisation that the only way to write my book is to write my book

I may never recover

A Positive Writing Rant

It's like 3am for me rn but I gotta say it dude, writing is so much fun Like real talk for a second, this might be a lil cringe but here we go Truthfully, I've been writing since I was 12 years old, and started attempting to write full novels for my main characters at the time (I got a grand total of 27 pages on my first one, to no one's surprise) Because of that first novel, though, I wrote a sequel which I never completed, but it managed to get to 18 pages before I finally called it quits with those characters because I had lost interest, which continued into me taking a creative writing class that sprung up a few stories that I plan on fleshing out in the future alongside my other projects, which continued into a LOT more adventurous projects Despite that, for a very long time, I never considered myself a writer in any capacity because I simply wasn't good at it to start and thought I couldn't become good(as just about any artist is) but in the last couple of years I FINALLY accepted that I enjoy writing at least a bit more than the average joe I don't know why I decided to keep writing despite thinking my writing was objectively terrible but I am SO glad I did, truly a hidden spark discovered much later than I care to admit So here I am now, working on 2 full length novels (one of them has already FAR beaten out my first attempt at a novel, all while not even being 3 chapters done) and I'm genuinely enjoying writing as well as considering it a potential career For all you beginner writers please don't let that little spark go out, it might be tough getting over that first hill but I promise you that the reward on the other side is so so worth it, even if you think your writing is "bad" or "cringe", it doesn't matter as long as it makes you happy Even if you never pursue writing as a career and stick it as a hobby, or for giving your characters lore or for even building your own personal fantasy world, do not let that spark die This may not hit a lot of people but I do hope it will at least inspire a few to keep writing Thanks for coming to my TED talk

You’re not just a writer.

You’re a goddamn survivor of your own imagination.

You live with noise in your head that never shuts up until you bleed it onto the page, and even then, it whispers, “Make it better.”