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• Post #3623236

  #ScribesAndMakers 20 How difficult is it for you to receive criticism of your creative work? I'm there for it. What's the point of a critique group, if nobody's going to critique? When I draft something and present it, it's as good as I'm going to make it in the moment; so the group's purpose is to extend my writer's mind into areas I'm not seeing in that moment. I certainly don't agree with all of it, but I do consider...

• Post #3623235

  #ScribesAndMakers 22 Have you ever worked collaboratively on a creative project with others? How did it go? My last collaboration on something novel-length didn't go so well. 70+ years experience in art gave him an excellent basis for world-building, my characters would populate that world, and we'd develop story together. Except the story he wanted to tell delved far enough into the realm or porn that I began to think of the project in "Flesh Gorden" terms...a...

• Post #3623234

  #PennedPossibilities 1053 How far would your characters go to get what they want? Heh. Zane effectively sold his soul in chapter 1. The rest of the story is about what that means as he slowly figures out what it was he wanted in the first place.

• Post #3623233

  #WritersCoffeeClub 26 Have you ever included subtle (or unsubtle!) homage? Tell us about it. Perhaps this counts? I recently wrote a flash piece about a food fight that reached deeply, and with no subtlety whatsoever, into the Scottish play. Samples: "Is this a ladle which I see before me? The handle toward my hand?" "Who would have thought a single cup to have had so much pudding in it?"

• Post #3623232

  Sinister Minutes 3:7 Ancient Lights - Lonely Ghost II A classic Algernon Blackwood tale, plus a T. Virgil Parker original. https://www.sinisterminutes.com/episodes-season-3 or wherever you grab your podcasts. Narrated by @KurtHohmann (me), music and soundscapes by Tim Parker. #writing #writingCommunity #podcast #podcasts #Podcaster #Podcasting #fiction #horror #AudioDrama

• Post #3623231

  #ScribesAndMakers 27 What's your favorite woodwind? Saxophone. I learned to play when I was 9, but gave it up by 13 due to the vilest "teacher" I ever met. Years later, I learned to appreciate the greats from Charlie Parker on up, and I think my limited time playing helped me to better understand the nuances. Coltrane, though? The absolute GOAT. I listen to his work and only half envision how he's creating that magic.

• Post #3623230

  #WritersCoffeeClub 28 Can a reader ever truly feel what a writer felt while writing? I don't expect them to. I'd like them to feel *something* but story touches each of us in different ways, often in ways that the writer/storyteller cannot begin to envision. I might try to use story to forward an opinion, but emotion? I simply don't know what words/symbols might have what effect. For that matter, I don't always have the same reaction in reading my own work that...

• Post #3623229

  #ScribesAndMakers 29 Share the last line of dialogue you wrote. "You interested in more than jamming?" (context: Zane's tired of being an online spectacle, and wants instead to pick up his old bass and get back on stage again. The regular bass player in the band he's jammed with a couple times just happens to be out of commission for a few weeks...)

• Post #3623228

  #WritersCoffeeClub 1 Recently, how excited have you been to sit down to write? "Excited" is a term I rarely apply. "Inspired" is more appropriate. And with temperatures now in the dangerous level, distractions involving time outdoors have been minimized and that inspiration is ever higher as a result. Plus, I kinda know where I'm going on the WIP, and that helps a lot.

• Post #3623227

  #ScribesAndMakers #TTMD Talk To Me Day, Featured Creator: @ElyseMGrasso Happy birthday! May the cities in your wake, Burn like candles on your cake. Now that we've gotten that bit of SCA-ish stuff out of the way, I'll ask a related question. How has your participation in SCA influenced your writing, and vice versa?

• Post #3623226

  #WritersCoffeeClub 2 What are the limits of critique? Back when we used to still meet face to face, my local critique group had a couple new members join us one evening. We were critiquing a piece written by one of them, and the other opened with "This is just boring. You shouldn't be writing." I don't think she was expecting the severity of the backlash from the rest of us. Needless to say, neither of them ever joined us again. Above all, critique should be...

• Post #3623225

  #ScribesAndMakers 3 We have some new people in the community. Re/Introduce yourself and tell us about your creative work I'm immersing myself in creative pursuits after retiring from a soul-sucking tech career. My dark humor comes out in my writing; my WIP is a novel, plus I've published a few shorts, and narrated a lot more via: https://www.sinisterminutes.com/ Always looking for story submissions for that podcast... Creativity also occurs in the kitchen, garden, woodshop, or...

• Post #1169985

  #ScribesAndMakers 11 Talk to me day. #TTMD @orionkidder There's a common perception that English professors tend to shun fiction that falls under any category that might be called "genre." Do you often encounter this bias amongst peers and colleagues when they learn what you're creating (as well as the material you're covering in class)?

• Post #1063935

  #ScribesAndMakers 8 Victuals? He emerged from a crowd of lickspittles To promote his own fiction submittals I read over his work Then he thought me a jerk When I ground that sad book into victuals

• Post #911781

  #WritersCoffeeClub 20 Who is your ideal reader? A member of my critique group told me that he would be unable to offer any feedback on my current WIP because of the subject matter. Apparently having a protagonist who makes a deal with a demon is a fictional line he won't cross. So while I don't know who my ideal reader is, I do know who he is not.

• Post #911780

  #ScribesAndMakers 22 Create a micro-story in six words. The cost of words? Your soul.

• Post #911779

  #PennedPossibilities 964 MC POV: What area of your life do you tend to enjoy in excess instead of moderation? It's the food. Even more than the music. Don't get me wrong, I'm not ready to give up either of them. You tell me I either have to lose my hearing or my taste buds, I'm gonna be pissed, but I guess I'll at least be able to feel that satisfied purring noise I make whenever I take the first bite of Bò Tái.

• Post #911778

  #ScribesAndMakers 23 Do you consider yourself a frood who knows where their towel is? I usually know where my towel is, but I'm also quite certain I'll be caught without it when I need it most. OTOH, I will certainly not be the first against the wall when the revolution comes. I'm just this guy, ya know?

• Post #911777

  #WritersCoffeeClub 23 What's the most you've worked on a WIP before deciding to scrap it? What happened? Scrap? No. There have been too many tales that I pulled out of the "Unfinished" directory, looked at with fresh eyes, and turned into something, years or even decades after setting them aside. The longest piece in that category today is one begun a few summers back when I thought I'd try my hand at romance. I got about 15K words in, then something m...

• Post #911776

  #WordWeavers 24 Tell us about something positive you experienced because of writing. Catharsis. I can choose to internalize like a good Scorpio when somebody pisses me off, or write them into a poem or tale and skewer them with words. The latter leaves me feeling a lot better. Camaraderie. For what's supposed to be a "lonely" pursuit, writing has meant meeting so many wonderful people: writers and writer-adjacents, both in-person and virtually.

• Post #911775

  #PennedPossibilities⁩ 969 Do your stories have happy endings? "Happy" is a relative concept. What makes my cat happy may make the mouse she caught rather unhappy. Much the same is true for my characters. The important thing at the end of any story is that *I* am happy. If I'm not, it's rewrite time.

• Post #911774

  #WritersCoffeeClub 28 Do you ever sacrifice blunt clarity for prose that flows well? Sometimes a lovely turn of phrase leaps into my head and demands placement on the page, but honestly, I don't set out to craft lovely phrases. What I set out to do is to tell a story and if, in revision, that lovely turn of phrase no longer fits the story? It gets set aside for some other time, some other tale.

• Post #911773

  #ScribesAndMakers 31 Are you satisfied with how your creativity went this month? Not really. I struggled to keep up with the progress I'd been making on the WIP, and overall a lot of my creative work felt rushed. Between unexpected requests for assistance on others' projects and a need to catch up on some organizational projects of my own, I've not been allocating enough time to creativity and feeling a bit cranky as a result. So I think I'll toot this and get o...

• Post #911772

  #ScribesAndMakers 1 How many creative projects do you have going right now? Off the top of my head... -Marked (WIP/novel) -Sinister Minutes (biweekly podcast: writing and narrating remarks, promos, ad parodies, etc) -flash fiction (1 per week) -Pagan/Unitarian sermon (1/month) -dinner (almost daily) -woodshop redesign (ongoing) -garden planning (ongoing)

• Post #911771

  #ScribesAndMakers 2 What does imposter syndrome mean to you and do you think you have it? -sensing what I've written is barely competent, relishing each snippet of positive feedback from strangers -wondering how the "real" clerics do it, forgetting that feeling as soon as I open my mouth -seeing the dovetail joint that isn't quite perfect, realizing no one else has ever noticed -questioning the meal that took hours to prepare, watching everyone come back for...

• Post #911770

  #PennedPossibilities 975 SC POV: What did you get into trouble for the most when you were young? Maeve: "Oh man, where do I start? That field trip to the zoo? That elephant sign would have looked bad-ass if they'd let me finish giving him all eight trunks. Fire department gave up after I painted a face on the hydrant for about the ninth time. And it took way longer than I thought for city hall to shut down my projector. "It was always art that got me into trouble. And...

• Post #680484

  #WritersCoffeeClub 28 How well did this short month go for you, in terms of writing? #ScribesAndMakers 28 How did your month go? Late in Jan, a friend unexpectedly asked if I wanted ALL of her woodworking equipment. My free time since has been spent helping her fully empty a house/garage—thus my relative quiet here. She and her partner are now refugees, escaping from the US for the crime of being trans. I have gotten a little writing done, somehow. And have LOTS of angry inspiration.

• Post #680483

  #ScribesAndMakers 1 How much time do you expect to have for creative work this month? I suspect creativity will flow out of necessity in the month ahead. For one, I seem to have acquired a non-trivial amount of tools, lumber, and miscellaneous hardware that will require creativity in terms of both storage and community distribution. I will also make daily time for writing, as I suspect words will simply explode from my head if I don't provide them an outlet.

• Post #680482

  #ScribesAndMakers 2 #ttmd @NaraMoore I'm curious about your profile mention of horror-adjacent fantasy. Horror and fantasy are certainly familiar partners, so I'm curious about what, in your worldview, separates "horror" from "horror-adjacent." Also, I hope you're not feeling besieged by requests to define the genres you create in. Birthdays should never be spent being besieged (unless that is what you desire). I hope your day is a de...

• Post #680481

  #ScribesAndMakers 3 Ripple? I can't even consider this word without diving into the Well of Wyrd. Every action we take causes a ripple in that well, and since all of us are connected there, we are constantly affected by our own ripples and everyone else's. Some are bigger and more wide-reaching, some are tiny and are noticeable only to those closest, but they all have an effect. So the words you write, the picture you paint, the clay you sculpt...they all affect a lot more tha...