Today’s random Google searches while editing a chapter: Ozymandias poem Define: Detente Lorentz transformations Powers of 10 notation Dramatic Personae #amWriting #WriteSky #WritingCommunity #SciFi

“Convention like metaphor is never dead, but always dying, and the Author must always work to outwit it” How Fiction Works by James Wood #WriteSky #WritingCommunity #Authors

When reaching for metaphor for your POV character, choose that which is near at hand to them and extrapolate from there. #WriteSky #WritingCommunity

Icy mountains of PLUTO captured by NASA’s New Horizons probe after 9 years and a 3-billion-mile journey

The waning moon and what I’m told is Jupiter. On a very late walk with the pup~

Fiction is both artifice and verisimilitude, and there is nothing difficult about holding together these two possibilities together. - How Fiction Works by James Wood #amReading

My personal rule is don’t write the chapter the same day I’ve written my chapter outline. I need it to simmer atleast overnight to do my best work! Maybe this is just an obligate plotter’s issue~ #amWriting #WriteSky #Authors

Burning question: could you use an 8mm Kodak pistol-grip camera in space? Would it function? Does it need specials shielding or anything? #SciFi #WriteSky #PhysicsQ

Today’s writing music track. Fitting since I’m conjuring a coup on a space station. 🚀 #scifi #WriteSky #amWriting #amOutlining

couple of thieves #art #illustration #birdart #myart #magpie

My partner just got an old iPhone 13 mini and I LOVE the form factor. I’m tempted to downgrade from my 16e just to have the mini. The only thing stopping me is potentially being locked out from app updates~ So sad they stopped making mini’s, I DONT WANT a GIANT PHONE!

If you talk about Michelle Obama today, please make it about this video

Ive recently discovered several books under an imprint of Amazon publishing. I’m all for competition to the big five. Diversification. But these novels aren’t available on Apple Books, or Libby, or anywhere that isn’t kindle, so they’re not really doing what other publishers do, right? #WriteSky ✍️

So many stories threaten a hero with circumstances they must overcome to return to a homeostasis or stop something bad from happening, but some of my favorite stories are heroes reaching for more, doing something great. Not under mortal threat, but simply because it’s possible. #amReading 💙📚🪐

Amazing bite sized writer’s ✍️ craft series that gets me to stop scrolling every time one comes up in the feed. The way he explains things is just different, a fresh perspective on rules we’ve heard a million times before. A way to rethink the fundamentals~ #WriteSky #WritingCommunity

Just finished Butcher Of The Forest by @premeemohamed.com and it really spoke to me. The archaic suspicions and rituals of childhood are what keep you safe in the forest. But the children act much like adults, rationally, and it causes them no end of issues. #amReading 💙📚 #BookSky

Absolutely loving this podcast I was introduced to, where agents interview authors about their process, querying and the state of the industry. A lot of focus on romance and book club fiction so far, but universal advice. Highly recommend~ #WritingCommunity #WriteSky #Agents

I love craft podcasts/youtubers. Can’t get enough. Most are literary, fantasy, romance-focused. Which is fine. Advice is universal. BUT I would LOVE to have one that’s sci-fi focused. Just once Id love to hear an example that appeals to my genre & demographic. Does such a thing exist? Dare I hope?

Nothing like discovering new and exciting structural issues in a manuscript during a third edit pass when I thought I was finally in the polish phase of the work. 😭 Jus’ one of those moments that separates the men from the boys. Time to re-dawn the big boy pants. 👖 #WritingCommunity #Authors ✍️

Hot 🌶️ take: As a sci-fi writer I’m tired of defining concepts like speed of light, time dilation, or centripetal gravity for every novel. It’s genre convention. As long as the stakes are clear, readers will either pick up on it, already be aware of it, or can ignore it as sci-fi “magic” Am I wrong?

Having just started DCC book 3 I found this not only a useful tutorial I can apply to my own writing but also an exploration of why DCC works so damn well at what it does! #WritingCommunity #WriteSky

Oh, to be a writer with $250 canadian to drop on a short story edit, (almost) singlehandedly carrying this anthology over the 10k line...

Just finished Create Your Writer Platform by @ChuckSambuchino which is an excellent book for nonfiction and fiction that helps rationalize the social media and promotional space for writers. It’s an older guide, 2012, but still holds up~ #AmReading #Authors #WriteSky

So fresh figs are growing in our neighborhood and now each morning dog walk is doubling as a fig eating walk. (Yes this is a variety that ripens green)

If nobody buys your book who cares? You can write an even more stupid one after that

Anyway, happy Friday! "Mine isn't happy," you're saying, but at least you're not in charge of building the bone-gallows, being squished by giant gears on a theatre stage, dealing with your personal devil, or extracting the souls of dead men from the mud? psychopomp.com/product/one-...

It baffles me, this sci-fi book I LOVE is virtually invisible online. No one talking about it, no reviews. Some of the best deep worldbuilding and technical accuracy I’ve ever seen. I may read it again now that I’m thinking about it. 🚀 The Ouroboros Wave by Hayashi (Have you read it??) #BookTok 🪐📚

I miss Borders.

Sometimes I have a successful 2000 word morning and sometimes it comes with the knowledge of a plot hole discovered at the end of the writing will involve rewriting 70% of it tomorrow… #WriteSky

Fuck yea, I love reading the news.

Super interesting exploration of economies of scale and the real impact of the rocket explosion (and the value of aluminum recycling) ♻️ Worth your time!

Highly recommend listening to the Writing Excuses podcast (and supporting it, if you can). Great tips, and they've got the right approach: tools, not rules. #Writing #Editing

I have to brag, today was our biggest showing for Davis Fiction Writers! ✍️ A successful meeting where we shared critiques, covered ch2 of Save the Cat Writes a Novel, and did some productive shut-up-and-write! The only person i can tag on Bsky is @micahflee.com #WriteSky #WritingCommunity

Went and saw Backrooms last night. Let me tell you, it was EVERYTHING I wanted from a movie about the backrooms. A24 is the only studio I trusted to do it right, it was so much fun and so eerie, perfectly captured the liminal uneasy tension (and then escalated from there) 10/10 #FilmSky 🎥

The best furniture I’ve ever found has been at any one of several estate sales from some former centenarian. Full hefty wood, deep rich color, enough to weigh down your car. And often cheaper than any veneered particle board assemblage you find at a furniture store.

Case in point, some agents are asking for supporting evidence to prove human authorship. This is coming. #WritingCommunity

This morning’s random search terms while I was writing: Dewey decimal classification Deep sea anglerfish biology Types of sequoia tree The telegram from Hochiminh at the beginning of the Vietnam war #AmWriting #WriteSky #SciFi

Is it weird that the first short story I ever got published was written in second person? I feel like some of my early trunk stories are just too clear cut straightforward which is why they never piqued an editor’s interest, but second person is exotic and frustrating to do correctly(?) #WriteSky

I know it’s long. Read it. If you’re a creative at that low crest of the sine wave that is the creative life (questioning your worth and life decisions) this message is ABOUT YOU. Read it. #WritingCommunity #Authors

I’m interested in some way to certify my human authorship, to avoid false-positive AI accusations There’s alot of tools out there, human-authored (via authors guild), verifiedhuman, human proof registry, writermark… None stand out, any recs? Is it as pointless as using those AI detectors? #WriteSky

Happy Trek Tuesday!

Spectacular and serious episode that somehow spawned one of the most unserious meme gifs in Star Trek history 🚀

#WIPSnips on this new novella I’m writing with a supermassive black hole as its centerpiece. Would you believe this is the beginning of his story? #WriteSky #WritingPrompts #AmWriting #SciFi 🚀

To the question: “why is sci-fi obsessed with realism?” To extrapolate the social and ethical implications of what is possible. To bring a technology to its logical endpoint and use it to question what it means to be human. When you deviate from what’s possible, it just becomes magic. #SciFi 🪐📚

OMG YESSSS a long rich history of exploring the idea of a synthetic mind, in science fiction, ruined overnight. It’s like telling fantasy writers they can’t write about “magic” anymore. My critique group is STRUGGLING with this. #WriteSky #SciFi #WritingCommunity

I’ll know I’ve made it when my name is the largest piece of text on the cover of my published book. #WriteSky

The GOAT

Sometimes I read how to ‘show not tell’ in a craft book and I absolutely would NOT catch the subtext in the ‘show’ example if not for the ‘tell’ that precluded it. It feels like it’s actually LOST nuance in random physicality and too-clever implications to be interpreted. #WritingCommunity #WriteSky

First drafts are just like here's 900 different ideas. Is anything I'm saying interesting to anyone including even myself?