It's no doubt annoying when it's a topic you care about, but there's a certain je ne sais quoi to watching folks on social media try to have a serious discussion where it's clear all present have simply inferred what the words they're using mean based on vibes, and no two sets of conclusions agree.

popping in real quick to remind anyone who needs it... rejection DOES NOT MEAN you are a bad writer! sending my various communities some creative vibes and lots of affection.🥰 ⌨️you got this!💪🏽

I loved Leech and I'm looking forward to this!

5. Contract terms that are not "trust me bro" I saw a contract that had iffy language about rights reversal for a short story. When the person pressed gently about changing it, they were accused of not trusting the publisher and had the contract immediately cancelled.

V. boring answer but teaching myself to outline -- once I have my particular shape for the story, I find it much more fun to pour whatever I want into it in terms of voice, style, rhythm, tone, whatever (see especially AND WHAT CAN WE OFFER YOU TONIGHT for example)

Recycling my darlings. Sometimes a character or scene in my meticulous outline doesn't feel right when actually written - e.g the ubercool character doesn't have a unique plot function - so I move that chunk to another document and see if I can use it some other way.

Remember folks: If lots of men like a particular story, that’s fine and good. If lots of women like a particular story, that’s super sinister and deserves at least a dozen hand-wringing think pieces.

Once upon a time, there was an outcry over the proliferation of foreign scholars of all things Indian dominating their fields, and the colonialist bias that some were bringing, and many people agreed that we should engage with these fields ourselves, and be proud of our own history. 1/

It's the 3rd of January 1939, your name is professor James Smith and you are staring at a drawing of a fish. It's not a regular fish. It is a completely impossible fish.

Copy Editing Matters, from HHS's release on the new childhood vaccine schedule: All the diseases will still be available to anyone who wants them

We frankly need a term for these neo-imperialist dreams that fail to take into account that it isn't 1600 and so end up throwing away a million lives and all the tanks seizing some farms in Ukraine, or wasting time with Venezuelan oil. I propose 'Idiotperialism.'

weird hill to die on but friends please, its not Dosahhhh, its Dosa (or Dosai, if you are being formal). Its a quick and sharp word, with a stressed start and a short uh at the end. Please, i beg thee, stop the dosaaaaaaaaah propaganda

This has been the default imperialist position for centuries, so really the oddity was that brief period of comfortable unipolar hegemony where it seemed gauche to say it out loud. No clearer sign of late imperial anxiety than the contemporary return of this old ass monocle and pith helmet blather

A new year cartoon for @theguardian.com books

Three million people live in Caracas, five million in the metro area. It's one of the densest cities in South America. Remember this in the morning when they try to spin this as anything other than a cold-blooded attack on a major civilian center.

A very fond farewell to 2025, year of my first publications at @innerworlds.bsky.social and @nightshadesmag.bsky.social If you missed them the first time around: inner-worlds.ghost.io/issue-9-wond... www.nightshadesmag.com/the-wound-i-...

Anyone Else Here xkcd.com/3188/

Readers also returned repeatedly to The Murderbot Diaries in 2025. Favorites from the @marthawells.com series with up to 4 books in our top 15 at a time – after the hit Apple TV series aired. hardcover.app/labs/popular...

"Peace, LitRPG friends, we *liked* Dungeon Crawler Carl!" mythcreants.com/blog/the-top...

novel: u gotta accept that sometimes u need to kill people me: for the purposes of the fiction, sure novel: sometimes, actually, murder? Good! me: you seem very invested in this novel: there's Good People and Bad People, u gotta kill the Bad People, for the Good People, me: novel: & that's Feminism.

Man Spends Whole Day Dreading Fun Activity He Signed Up For https://theonion.com/man-spends-whole-day-dreading-fun-activity-he-signed-up-1819579571/

“many angry posts should have been naps or little packets of crackers” is deep wisdom and you don’t need to reproduce to embrace it!

My end-of-year publishing roundup: I had zero books and zero short stories come out this year. I did write, I just didn't write anything that came out in 2025. In 2026 I have a novella coming out from Tor! You can preorder it! us.macmillan.com/books/978125...

You’re going to be okay. Someone will hate your book. You’re going to be okay. Someone will not get what you’re trying to do with your art and judge you. You’re going to be okay. You’re going to keep creating, in 2026, because you need it and because the world needs you to. Okay?

I'm truly honored that the Transfeminine Review has awarded Notes from a Regicide "Best Transfeminine Representation by a Non-Transfeminine Author." This whole award page is full of incredible recs, including some work that was not on my radar before -- they do such good work at TR!

I had a dedicated writing routine and actually followed it, through hail or storm! And I dared to write more science fiction.

My year in writing: my resolution going into 2025 was that I would write one short story every month, in addition to my larger project. That... ended up being one every other month, more or less, but it was fun to try out anyway, and was tremendously helpful for my project as well.

Recommend reading this whole thread, but I need to print this part out and pin it somewhere.

Some highlights of my year in reading. That is, books I read and particularly enjoyed in 2025 and recommend to you, in approximate order of publication—partly as reminder that one can never be "late" to a book, this list begins in the previous century (with books I am very late to indeed)

I read a lot of interesting books this year. Most were SF/F or non-fiction. Looking back, here are some highlights from 2025, in no particular order... (1/?)

She voted for the guy whose campaign was based on "you people have too many personal freedoms I will stop this" and regretted it because he was against personal freedoms.

Walk to the store today y'all

I once made a note on my phone (for the next time I opened my laptop) which went something like: "write the 'sexy plato's allegory of the cave' scene". Yes I did in the end figure out how to make Plato's allegory of the cave sexy, no I will not be taking questions.

The Delhi Police detained Congress leader Mumtaz Patel and several other protesters who were staging a sit-in near the Parliament complex to oppose a Delhi HC order suspending the life sentence of former BJP MLA Kuldeep Singh Sengar. Read more: scroll.in/latest/10896...

Finished! I'm really glad I read this, for several reasons. If you're also a fan of queer cultivation stories and sci-fi, I recommend it! @aliettedebodard.com really made some loveable characters with a great group dynamic.

I love it when period media about ancient cultures depicts the stonework in their architecture as very rounded and blobby in a way that makes it 100% clear that the designer was simply imitating the way it looks now. Like, what the fuck is erosion? Obviously it just started out that way.

The fact is that to this day, the top earners in genre fiction (and everything else) are straight white men. Sure, in most cases (Sanderson, Martin, King) they’re straight white men who established themselves a looooooooong time ago. It’s harder to break in. For everyone. You’re not special.

Brb, building a time machine to tell Mary Shelley that the only reason she invented the field of modern science fiction is because of woke.

In many cases, this slogan is no longer an expression of faith but a political signal—often associated with intimidation, street-level vigilantism, and ideological indoctrination. The likelihood that such youth have been radicalized or are aligned with goon-like behavior is disturbingly high.

you don't suck at art. you're learning. you aren't an awful writer, you're still understanding how things work. You aren't horrible, you see the places in your work that have space for improvement. Even if you think your art isn't the best, you still created something and you should be proud of that

Just got around to reading this one and I loved it. Excellent choice to end the 4th (or 9th, depending on how you count) year I've spent away from home.

Banu Mushtaq's "Heart Lamp", translated by Deepa Bhasthi

there is a genre of person who hates AI in *their* field but sees how it could be useful in *other,* less prestigious, fields; ignore them. they are not trying to save the ship. they are just racing you to the lifeboats

People are harshing on some “diverse reading challenge” thing that’s going around, and I get it, but looking at what you read and asking yourself “what isn’t represented here?” is imo a good and healthy practice

“Write to the market.” You’ll never catch the market. By the time you’ve written it, the market is gone. Write what you’re on fire to write, and sometimes the market shows up.

Small note: if you see a fat person out exercising, you don’t need to give them advice!

Most publishing workers don't want to use AI, and being able to point to public outcry and contract language helps us push back against it 👇

The survey is open to non-members (I am not one) and to readers (who here is not &c.) so I encourage you to share your feelings on the matter. Don't assume that everyone already understands that AI is bad or why! I mean, people *should*, but you could say that about a lot of things.

there are characters I love and there are characters whom I want to splice open to climb into the crevices of their brain and never leave

Enjoy the quiet moments of beauty, like these winter bell jellies, this season.❄️🔔🪼 There’s wonder in ocean life, and caring for it helps us all.