After talking to a young writer last night, I want to remind you all that it's okay to write without an assignment or goal. Write to explore a new technique, get an idea out of your head, or as emotional exhalation. Write for the raw joy of it. For you alone. It doesn't need to go into a portfolio

EHRC Code of Practice comes into effect today so remember to be an absolute pain in the arse to any service provider who is trying to actively enforce it.

COVER REVEAL! My next novel, The Animals We Became, retells the medieval Welsh tale 'Math fab Mathonwy'. It's a book about gender, trauma, and compulsory heterosexuality expressed through non-consensual animal transformations and some deeply unreliable narration... finnlongman.com/books/the-an...

I'm a full playthrough and a half through Heaven's Vault and I think it FINALLY clicked what this video game is doing, but also that 'it just clicked' is maybe the fourth time I've had that impression with this game. This game is SO SMART wtf

a university is not for generating profit, it provides cultural enrichment via weird little gremlin people who love visigoths or haikus, and very occasionally a scientist who figures out faster than light travel

Squinting at a potential venue for a short story I finished earlier this month like hmm. "We just like good work and aren't interested in the latest trend or mediocre prose for the sake of prejudiced editors" feels like a red flag actually. The entirely white editorial team does not help matters

Half the planet is having a massive fight about how to correctly interpret an Ancient Greek poem but go ahead, close some more humanities departments.

Of course I am DESPERATE to write just at a time when I have one million trillion (like two) things to do

I am so sympathetic to people on a pre-9am train. I, too, am sleepy. I do not need to hear the entire contents of your TikTok FYP, however,

heat

the message is clear: put a trans man in every film

DiscussingFilm@discussingfilm.net · 2w ago

‘THE ODYSSEY’ is now tracking to pass $1 billion worldwide in its box office run. It is expected to become Christopher Nolan's highest grossing film ever.

Late to the party on much-beloved authors as ever but oh, Star Shipped by Cat Sebastian is GOOD good, huh

Clear Convergence, acrylic

My favorite way to put this, as someone who studied Classical History in actual college (not just on Twitter): If you told an ancient Roman or Athenian that his culture had "more in common" with a German or Briton than with an Egyptian or Ethiopian, he'd punch you in the throat.

I think the only way we get out of this is solidarity between artists, including artists whose work is too weird or explicit for your taste but also including artists whose work is too twee or insipid for your taste, no one's work is so bad it should be considered fair game to plagiarize and exploit

Logging back in at my day job to finally do real work after two speeches from upper management about the wonders of AI, an AI-generated training task, and a lunch with my boss where he mostly just talked about AI. I open my work. The text I am assigned to edit this afternoon is AI-generated.

:deep sigh: I see we are again doing "[romantasy] gives women an access point to fantasy, a traditionally male-heavy genre, both in authorship and fandom," as if there have not been women reading and writing fantasy for literal decades

summer has had its fun but I now call forth a long and unyielding winter

To be a historian is to speak ill of the dead and the rest of you should take more history classes and join us.

I've got a short story in @arvwriter.bsky.social's upcoming young adult anthology called Extraterrestrials: Another Autistic Trans Anthology (following their first autistic trans anthology, Changelings, from a few years ago). eARCs are now available! Request one here: docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...

Extraterrestrials ARC Application

Complete this form to receive an eARC (digital advanced reader copy) copy of Extraterrestrials: Another Autistic Trans Anthology. Extraterrestrials: Another Autistic Trans Anthology will be published...

docs.google.com

Waiting for my summons (bread maker beeping at me so I can put the cheese in) so I can go to BED ough. The things I do for my beloved friends

So what if I told you about this retelling of Dorian Gray that's cyberpunk and dark academia and also really queer with a non-binary Dorian and a trans, autistic Basil, would you read it? EXQUISITE DECAY comes out December 1st from @tinyghostpress.bsky.social Link in bio. #booksky #coverreveal

Periodic reminder that if you don't like writing, you don't have to do it. By which I mean find another hobby, not outsource the writing you claim to be doing.

The most recent "constructive" feedback I received included 'this is confusing unless you were doing [description of exact thing I was doing]'.

S R Jones @aegisimmemorial.bsky.social · last mo.

If you see this, please tell me the worst/most baffling bit of creative feedback you've ever recieved. Mine is still the time somebody told me my aliens had names that were too alien. Not that they were unpronounceable, just that they didn't sound enough like human names.

Has anyone else read The Incandescent by Emily Tesh. It's on the Hugo shortlist but I feel like I've never seen anyone talk about it and it was SO GOOD what the hell.

I have to level up my project-finishing skills so one day I can write a trans poly romance set in a SFF world with absolutely batshit and charming worldbuilding details and a strange but adorable creature or two. This would achieve the ultimate writing goal: explode (positive) my partner on impact

We report: as we were walking, the sky ahead of us was a milky white, certainly nothing like rain. We stopped for a sip of water, and finally noticed the clouds pooling behind us. We almost immediately felt a raindrop on our cheek, the wind pushing our hair into our face.

Our second anthology is open for submissions! We're after short stories on the theme of sorcery, from writers living in the North of England. Take a look, send us a tale - and if you could help spread the word, that would be magical 🪄 🔮 carnyxpress.co.uk/submissions/

Oh also WICKHILLS got a STARRED REVIEW from @libraryjournal.bsky.social which I am pretty sure is my first star from them ever! 🤩 "This gas-lamp urban fantasy combines an exciting adventure, a walk through dangerous, secret places, and one man’s crisis." www.libraryjournal.com/review/wickh...

The reason why it is essential to read IN BULK when studying history is not simply to amass empirical knowledge—though that is important, too, of course—but because *interpretation* requires thick contextual awareness, and there is NO SHORTCUT for building that up that awareness.