I solemnly swear to write stories that teach morals and basic reasoning.
Joined May 2025
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Writers, we need to develop a community where everyone is more willing to follow people. Dont shame them for being bad at something and dont shame them for being good at something or bragging about it. Quit talking about irrelevant stuff! Inspire better and new discourse!!
Tell me what your favorite books are and why! Tell me your favorite writers and cover arts! Tell me your favorite publishing strategy! Tell me how long it took you to publish that first book!
Ethically used AI...
I believe you shouldn't use it at all when learning to draw and write, but at the same time you can never know how much you don't know about writing and art.
When does it become acceptable to use? I'd argue never.
Writers, consider what changing the gender of a single character might do to improve your story.
Maybe a Malfoid is hiding in plain sight.
I had a random idea for a car company that sells renovated cars to people saving up for a house. It would provide them with a bed, fridge, and stove on the road. Unfortunately, I don't have the skill or money to make it a reality so into the writing idea bucket it goes.
a black cat retweeted
Striving for efficiency with words does not always mean writing less.
"In the blink of an eye" the word "eye" is redundant, as the word "blink" already implies it.
The extra words create a fractionally more measured, familiar cadence. It's a matter of pacing control.
Hope all my indie published friends are seeing numbers like these. His advice may help.
Monthly Transparency Post!
🟣 $2,300 in royalties
🟣 500 orders
🟣 275K Kindle Unlimited pages read
As always, here's a small breakdown of what I did!
🔽⬇️🔽
a black cat retweeted
The Navajo nation is the largest Indian tribe in the United States. It has the best-organized government, police force, lobbyists, and so forth. I love Navajos. In 1978 I had a conversation with a Utah college professor. He told me when he was teaching Arthurian legendry, the class read the tale of Sir Marrok, about King Arthur's encounter with a werewolf. The next day in discussing the tale, he mentioned that werewolves don't exist, and a Navajo student spoke up, "That's not true." She said. "Werewolves are real. I've seen them."
The professor, no dummy, didn't argue. He had her explain to the class. She told him about the skinwalkers - Navajo wolves. These are evil men or women who commit terrible crimes (murder, incest, and more) and thereby gain the power to turn into a supernatural wolf. The Navajo girl told the class that one night, she saw a person atop a rock formation hunched over. When she called to the person, it sort of "fell inside itself", and then a wolf loped off. She also told about the time her cousin was driving down Route 666 (since renamed 491) and a wolf chased his pickup. He was racing down the road at 50-60mph and the wolf kept up for miles. Her uncle told her a wolf once ran up to his pickup and tore off the door. (Navajos drive a lot of pickups.)
Navajo wolves are frightening not only because they are wolves, but because they are evil. They are not hapless Larry Talbot victims of a curse. They WANT to be wolves. During the day they can seem normal, though their souls are devoted to evil. They could be a doctor or a cop or your grandma. You never know.
1/3
An excellent example of words having multiple different meanings depending on context.
In Japan, a guest never asks for food twice. He waits, with honor.
In Oklahoma, I was offered food fourteen times. Fourteen times, I answered with honor.
"I am good."
In Oklahoma, "I'm good" means no thank you. Nobody told me for six hours.
Fourth of July. Big Ron's backyard outside Tulsa. Ron built his smoker from a 250 gallon oil tank and a boat trailer. It had been running since Thursday. He calls it Mama.
I had fasted two days out of respect for Mama.
Ron sliced the first brisket. Juice ran to his elbow.
"You want some, Nobu?"
I stood tall, so he would know I was worthy.
"I am good."
"Alright, no worries!" He handed my plate to his cousin.
A samurai does not ask twice. I waited.
Ron's son Tyler came by with ribs. "Ribs, man?"
"I am very good."
"Right on." The ribs left with him.
A neighbor named Crystal brought corn, butter running off both ends. "Corn, hon?"
"I am extremely good."
"Well, good for you!"
My stomach made a sound like a war horn across a valley. Ron's dog turned around to look at me.
Hour four. A boy offered me a Coke from the cooler.
"I am good. I have never been better."
"Cool." He drank it right there in front of me.
Grandma Pearl, who is 84 and still mows her own acre, carried a whole pecan pie across the yard.
"Baby, you want pie?"
I bowed low. "Madam, I am as good as a man can be."
She patted my cheek. "Bless your heart." The pie went back with her.
Hour six. I stood beside forty pounds of brisket like a guard at a gate. I could hear it breathing.
Then Ron's wife, Brenda, looked at me over a bowl of banana pudding.
"Honey. When did you last eat?"
"Tuesday. I am good."
She set the pudding down slowly.
"Ron. RON. He thinks 'I'm good' means he's GOOD."
Ron dropped his tongs.
What happened next was a rescue. Ron threw Mama open and smoke rolled across the yard like a battlefield. Plates went hand to hand down a line of eleven Oklahomans, smoker to chair. Tyler ran ribs. Three kids sprinted pie. Grandma Pearl returned with the pecan pie and a second pie nobody knew she had. A man I never met aimed his truck headlights at me so nobody would miss a bite.
The whole yard chanted. "EAT! EAT! EAT!"
Nine plates. I unbuckled one piece of armor. Then two more. The fireworks started. They were for America, but the timing was excellent.
At midnight Ron sat beside me. I could not lift my arms.
"You good, Nobu?"
I was full to the eyebrows. I told him the truth.
"I am good."
Ron shot out of his chair. "BRENDA! HE'S GOOD AGAIN!"
Eleven people ran for plates.
a black cat retweeted
Self-loathing is rooted in the inordinate attachment to that perfect image of who you could be. Counterintuitively, it's a result of excessive pride.
a black cat retweeted
With enough skill, an author can make a conversation between two people in a parked Studebaker fascinating.
How?
Because he understands that things aren't interesting because they're unfamiliar or exotic or unusual. They're interesting because they matter.
When you start a story, you give the reader things to be care about. Reasons to turn to the next page... curiosity, sympathy, anticipation, emotional investment, whatever.
Think of them as a series of promises you make to the reader. Not promises about what will happen in the story, but promises about what he will experience.
Each reader who likes the beginning and keeps reading does so because at least one of the promises pulls him in.
After that moment, "interesting" means anything that makes progress on or fulfills those promises. "Boring" means anything that doesn't.
So if a beta reader tells me a chapter is "boring", that doesn't mean "the chapter is boring", it means "I was bored while reading the chapter", and often the solution isn't to put it a car chase or a flashy setting piece. It's to fix the part three chapters earlier that was supposed to make the reader understand the relevance of this bit.
Starting your story on a burning airship that's falling out of the sky isn't going to save you if you don't know how to set a hook. And you do, you can set your entire story in an office cubicle if you want.
Isaac Asimov's entire Foundation series, which I think it's safe to call "successful", is mostly just a long series of conversations about scientific abstractions.
But he makes them interesting by making them *relevant*.
Relevant = interesting. Irrelevant = boring.
The reason you find the mountain boring is not because the mountain is a mountain. It's because the mountain is irrelevant.
You don't have to cover the mountain in purple grass.
You don't have to hang it in the sky.
You don't have to make it out of alien skulls.
Just make the mountain matter.
Reasons why you should edit your own work:
1. You can add or remove things in the story that aren't working or need more development.
Reasons why you should let someone edit your work:
1. They can point out all the technical flaws with your writing from grammar to pacing.
It just depends on the audience. You just might have a young adult demographic.
Narnia fans, take a look at this!
True Narnians, I'm about to bless your timeline.
Behold this manga version of The Magician's Nephew.
Japanese artist Tamaki Iori drew these glorious and book-faithful illustrations. HarperCollins (Japan) published the book as a digital serial in 2018–2020.
It's not released in English. Fans made this translation.
As with any manga, always read from top right to left!
(And yes, they also released versions of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and The Horse and His Boy, but have not manga-adapted the other four books.)
Her first sentence is exactly why I hated getting my Master's in English. It's not just nonsense, a run-on, contains a spelling error, or pure ego boosting, but a symptom of a bigger issue in education. Everyone else in my classes were this bad or worse.
a black cat retweeted
THEY keep screaming: "WOMEN COULDN'T HAVE BANK ACCOUNTS UNTIL 1974!"
That's a FLAT OUT LIE and you are embarrassing yourself.
Let me educate you like you're 5 years old.
FACT: Single women have ALWAYS been able to open bank accounts. In 1910, 1920, 1950, 1960. Always. Even before women got the right to vote.
The line you purposely skip over says: "MARRIED women faced more restrictions than UNMARRIED women."
WHY? Because the law said A HUSBAND PAYS HIS WIFE'S DEBTS.
Read that again. HER debt = HIS problem.
So if a married woman in 1962 wanted a credit card and then spent $10,000, guess who the bank had to chase? HER HUSBAND. Even if she had her own job.
Do you think ANY bank is dumb enough to give money to Person A when Person B is legally forced to pay it back?
Of course they want Person B's signature. That's not sexism. That's BUSINESS.
The Equal Credit Opportunity Act of 1974 didn't "finally allow women to have bank accounts" you dumb illiterate.
It did the OPPOSITE of what you think. It said: Women can now be SUED for their OWN debt.
Women can now be held LIABLE. Women can now go BANKRUPT on their own without hiding behind their husband.
You weren't oppressed. You were SHIELDED from the real world that men had to deal with.
That’s your evidence below.
Guys, even C.S. Lewis argued against calling Aslan an allegory.
From the letters of C.S. Lewis, paragraph 6, page 283:
