I got myself a lil office downtown and I've been finishing my to-do lists (never heard of her) and today - I just finished... early? And am leaving? I don't understand.

One of my students just got not one but TWO nominations for the Pushcart Prize in poetry, and I couldn't be more proud. That's two of her editors saying, hey, this was one of the best things I read all year. Dang. PS - are you on my writer's email list? I'm good at helping. rachaelherron.com/write

Are you doing Nano2.0? Is writing getting a bit harder this week? I gotchu! nano2.org/posts/2025/w... @nano2point0.bsky.social

This is also my favorite writing conference, hands down. Hoping we can come through for them and keep this con going. It's the best.

If you live in Wellington, enjoy your brand new trampoline.

I can no longer say I haven't done aquarobics since the nineties. I wish I could. (That was very unpleasant!)

I have a client whose work I LOVE to read. It's hard to read because it's so enjoyable I just want to crawl into the words and stay there rather than editing it.

Working at a coworking spot and looking down the highrise tunnels, I just saw a peak Wellington moment during which a man's umbrella flew all the way inside out; he fought with it until it was ripped from his hands and blasted into traffic just as he was blown off the sidewalk. (He was fine.)

I need you to know I'm not an apologist for the defunct Nanowrimo — I just have no other T-shirts.

Will this be the year of the hihi?? 😍👀 It's #BirdOfTheYear time!! #hihi

It's almost that glorious time of year again! (John Oliver, stay out of it.)

I am packed for my bike trip tomorrow. Leaving the house in the morning and going to another island for the weekend. I am nervous! But everything fits. I might even take my slippers! A luxury!

did you know that september is library card signup month? @queerliblib.bsky.social is such a fantastic FREE resource www.queerliberationlibrary.org/members

highly recommend doing this right now

Honestly not even sure what I said, but whatever it was, I said it well!

The Queen's grey pinstripe suit 😍 and I NEED to know more about that blue knitted wrap/blanket

I like to say, "no, thank you" when told to do something dumb — it leaves them strangely off-kilter as if I just refused their offer of milk in my tea

yesterday i went to a jeopardy taping and someone in production asked me to take off my n95 for when the camera sweeps the audience. i said “…no?” and then i didn’t do it. and nothing bad happened! so: try saying no more. it’s good practice for the fascism.

This is Nora and Sophie. Their family was a little nervous how Sophie would react to Nora. Had no idea their cockatoo has always wanted a puppy of her own. 12/10 for both (TT: iamtylerrayn)

"Harvard can't use race as a factor in admissions, but ICE can use race as a factor in detentions" is a retrenchment essentially to a pre-Civil War understanding of the Constitution. It's vanishingly few steps removed from "Latinos have no rights which the white man is bound to respect."

Fermented fiber, initially inspired by squid proteins, that rivals wool and is better for the environment? Color me intrigued. (Also, who knit the sample? I'd just walk around saying "it's fermented squid" which would be inaccurate but irresistible.) www.textileworld.com/textile-worl...

First they came for Bill Clinton, and I said, yes, that man is a sex pest, get him

@courtneymilan.com dumb Q, and thanks for your hard work! I have about 15 books that qualify and sent in the form before Sept 1 but I am LAZY and only wrote the titles and left the ISBN part blank, telling them to look it up 😬 bc I thought it wouldn't be a thing. In your opinion, should I resubmit?

This is lovely

I crocheted Patti Smith’s Horses cover

Just a photo of Epstein happily holding up a novelty check, made to look like Donald Trump paid him $22,500 in exchange for a “fully depreciated” woman from Epstein.

A coaching client recently turned in a piece of writing that was at once much better (more lyrical) and also more boring than her normal writing. It was like a diva singing seven notes of an aria on repeat. AI, I thought! My first piece of it! I ran it through some checkers.

When the Stasi asks for your papers, all you have to do is show them your papers and then they famously let you go on living your life. Easy breezy.

IT'S ADORABLE! New fish species just dropped: the bumpy snailfish at 10,000 ft down in the ocean gift link: www.nytimes.com/2025/09/08/s...

Every time I see these stories about people relying on AI for conversation without judgment I am haunted by the idea that this is awfully close to prayer, if prayer did not include pleading for mercy and protection. A kind of individualist prayer.

I can get almost all the way from my house to downtown without pedaling, 20 min ride. ⤵️ You know what that means about going home. 😬 🆙 The plus side is I feel like I have a lot more control (I don't like going too fast downhill).

*alien crying* Me: And that’s the end of Watership Down - a book about rabbits

ACHIEVEMENT UNLOCKED: distracted the drug dog because I had left cheese in my bag. Dog shoved his whole head in my backpack and I said “Uh, I have cheese…?” and the handler sighed deeply and waved me on.

Surprised to find out people don’t want to pay 2 grand to ne detained in an ICE detention center run by psycho men

I'm a USA Today and NYT bestselling author who got a rejection this week from a big 5 publisher saying "the slightly elevated voice may present some barriers to entry for our commercial readers" so this checks out 🙃

The stadium Trump is in is named after Arthur Ashe, the tennis legend. What many people today probably don't know is that Ashe was literally arrested in front of the White House in 1992 for protesting the George H.W. Bush administration's treatment of Haitian refugees. www.upi.com/Archives/199...

Great work everyone keep it up

There's no difference from these actual nazi propaganda posters.

Honestly, I did occasionally wonder if we were overreacting when we fled the US. We weren't.

Everyone is all about diversity until someone does a temperature in Fahrenheit

Wow. Authoritarian censorship at its finest! I hope they can't help but show the disruptions because they are so wildly unmissable and embarrassing for him.

One of the beaches in question where I dipped at dawn a couple of weeks ago. There is snow on the hills just under those far clouds, but spring is finally here!

I rode 20+ km through Wellington today on my bike, along the harbour in the sun, went to see friends, and then to get a coffee, and it felt pretty great. Still scared of cars (I know that's a good thing). Getting more confident.

What does it mean to feel successful as a writer? It can vary from writer to writer. This conversation on the Ink in Your Veins podcast between authors @rachaelherron.bsky.social and Evelyn Skye offers some great perspective. www.howdoyouwrite.net/episodes/523 #BookSky #AuthorSky #WriterSky

if someone offered me 3k to license my book to train its model so it could write like me i would tell them to fuck off into the sun

My early thoughts on the Anthropic settlement: a) good, fucking pay us b) no, that’s not enough c) shouldn’t have stolen our shit to train your stupid mediocre plagiarism artbarf robot in the first place, you fuckers d) this isn’t something to celebrate; it is a Pyrrhic victory at best

"it fits a tech industry playbook to grow a business first and later pay a relatively small fine...for breaking the rules...Anthropic (is valued) at $183 billion." It's what I suspected: Anthropic did the maths on how many authors have registered copyright (only 500k out of the 7M titles stolen)

Read that last line again… #ToitūTeTiriti #nzpol 💔 “Key changes include shifting Health New Zealand's focus towards infrastructure, increasing national oversight, enshrining government health targets and to remove requirements for the health system to deliver equitable outcomes for Māori.”

Yikes, and NOTED