#writing about writing

theaicollective:

turing-tested:

male ai: arcs about the realization of their humanity and independence, what it means to be alive, always the god, sometimes the son

female ai: love arcs despite their naivety regardless of their knowledge oft being infinitesimal, likened to children despite their love arcs, always the daughter, sometimes the mother

me, eternally bitter:

#story shape#sci fi#it’s because male ai stories are about defining humanity#while female ai stories are about defining women (tags via uovoc)

This sent me down a warm spiral of thinking about Breq/One Esk Nineteen.

I think there’s probably plenty interesting to say about One Esq as both a caring parent figure and a helpless child figure to Lieutenant Awn, and the asexual expression of their role as both a pining lover and an object of affection.

One of the things I loved so much about this series was the way Leckie made more generalized care the locus of its ideas about personhood, and so decentralized romantic love as the ultimate expression of humanity (especially in relation to a feminine AI!).

Growth

My hands raise to my face–
homing pigeons returning
(always returning)
to roost. Hide my

(horrified)

mouth behind a curtain of
blood and bone and flesh.

And just as fast, these hands
move to the keys to offer
an opinion unasked for.

Write out the hurt, the shame,
bleed pain into pixels, to carve
through eyes thousands

of miles away.

Something shifts, a weary sigh
from the old woman I am becoming.

I delete the comment, let the screen
go dark. Give some stranger

an ounce

of grace. Give myself the time I
would have wasted on a mind
unchangeable as the sun.

Instead, I wrote this poem.

– S. E. De Haven

For this contest: https://allpoetry.com/contest/2801930-Inner-transformations-for-LNPs-Part-Sinner-

’ . ⁣

Everyone talks about how being a writer, requires discipline… It seems unnatural and weird but it is absolutely true! Writing is sometimes difficult though. Sometimes, you want so badly to say something but the words feel lodged in your throat; your fingers feel broken, joints lacking the strength to create the proper movements to press down onto the keys and it hurts. ⁣

I feel like it compares to being nauseous but never being able to throw up and relieve yourself from that uncomfortable feeling until one day… it happens. Word vomit everywhere. You sit down and you force yourself to write and there it is… The end of the discomfort. Some people might call this writer’s block but I think it’s more like “ ” or “ .”

I’ve noticed that most of the time when I feel like I can’t write, it’s because I haven’t sat with myself and the emotional issues or energy issues I have been having. For me, it’s easy to write when I’m sad but not when I’m angry, annoyed, frustrated, feeling helpless, etc. Those feelings tend to send me more into a little depressive season than anything else and lately, I’ve been a little angry or a lot angry, if I’m honest. So, I’ve been sleeping. I’ve been practicing my French (a lot), I’ve been washing my face more (which is crazy… I’m the worst at this kind of thing), I’ve been watching TV, answering emails, and messages… No writing. ⁣

Then two nights ago, I decided to take to my manifesting journal and write an entire page for someone who I care about so deeply who is going through a rough patch and boom… I felt better. I wrote about how I wished I could manifest a life for her, one that she so deeply deserves but never seems to get her grasp on and put all the things that I thought she deserved into a beautifully painted image with my words. ⁣

I wrote a gratitude list for the first time in a week after that. Then I received a reminder for a deadline for an anthology that I was thankful to be invited to submit to and here I am writing for you now. I’ve written two poems this morning and am now going to work on two different anthology projects because it’s like I have remembered what I wanted to say…⁣

Our energy and our feelings/emotions have so much control over everything in our lives; even writing. So if you have been feeling “blocked” lately… Try to sit with yourself and figure out, what emotion/feeling/problem/bad energy is blocking them? I’m not a guru or anything (yet?) but it’s worth a try right?⁣

ReBecca DeFazio⁣

#Morethanaflower

I feel funny sometimes when I look back at overviews of all the works and words I’ve posted through the years. I’ve been posting my writing online for almost eight years now and I’ve always been relatively good at keeping track of how much I’ve written when (even more so in the more recent years). 

I’ve got bundles of stats of all of my writing. Whenever I posted personal posts or fiction. I’m a prolific writer and it’s an incredible amount of words. Many more than my little brain feels like it can comprehend, even though it’s the very same brain that have written them all. Word after word, building worlds and stories out of nothing but a blank page. It’s an incredible feat. 

And whenever I allow myself to think about this, I get this dread in the very pit of my stomach. I have written so much, but there is no guarantee that I can keep writing like that. Maybe one day there will come a writer’s block that will absolutely cripple me. Maybe a personal tragedy will rip the will away from me. Maybe I will simply just fall out of love with writing for no explicit reason at all. 

I think the last one scares me the most. The knowledge that one day it might all be behind me. It will be a phase - albeit a long one - and I will eventually move past it. That shouldn’t scare me. Even if I do one day stop writing, I do know that it cannot take away all the words that I’ve already shared. But it still scares me. 

It scares me because for years now, I’ve found escape in writing. I’ve found that there is nothing quite like being able to disappear into these worlds with my characters and let them out of my head. It cathartic and liberating and I’m good at it damnnit! I think we all like being able to do something well. There is a specific kind of rush when you feel capable. I know I am many things besides my writing but it has been an essential part of my life for so long, for big stretches of months at times, even a daily part. I simple become scared of who I am and how I feel when I am not writing.

Sometimes, I worry that I am too dependent on it. How I can directly trace low writing periods crashing with poor mental health. It is most likely because the writing desire dips when my brain becomes cloudy, but occasionally it feels like it’s the other way around too. As if I feel shit because I haven’t been able to write. On busy days too, when I do not have spare strength to write, I feel just a little upset about it.

I think perhaps it is a good thing that I do not make a living writing, or write professionally. I’m not sure the added pressure of having to write to be able to pay rent would do my mental health any good. I set more than enough goals for myself. Daily and weekly word counts to hit. Making sure to journal and empty my head every day. Yearly challenges of posting for a whole month straight. Taking on new fandoms, new tropes, and continuing to indulge and explore every idea entering my brain. 

Writing is a steady companion and I hope it is perhaps a lifelong one. I have  hope, deep down, that should it leave my side eventually, it would be okay. After all, we might just find each other again down the road. Even if we don’t, all the steps we walked together can never be taken from us. 

I’ve forgotten what it’s like to be tired from obligations to the point that it stuns your creative endeavours. I shouldn’t have forgotten this fast but the last couple months, I’ve been doing very well and now circumstances have shifted me around.

It’s even a happy circumstance this time around - not like the previous dip that came from a panic attack. This is a job change, a positive one, and one that I’ve been excited about. But it has also happened remarkably fast and I’m bound to stumble for a bit while I find my footing. Logically, I knew this would happen and I tried to prepare myself for it. 

And yet, I found that I reached out for what felt like low-effort and “cheat” activities while I was at home after work. I didn’t keep watching the show I was going on or the videos in my Watch Later on YouTube, but I could scroll on TikTok. I didn’t feel up for reading the fics I’ve planned to read in relation to a bingo event with friends, but I could dive into a massive nearly +500k for a pairing I haven’t read in months. I didn’t feel up for writing on my wips that I should be finishing up, but I could make silly notes for a new video game inspired fic that’ll probably never get finished and pour myself into my journalling. 

All the things I normally do, but like the low effort version of them. None of what required a little more effort and concentration. I think it’s particularly that last part. Concentration. I feel like it’s all been zapped out of me by this big life change, understandably so, but it leaves little left-over to get writing. 

I always feel the most settled and productive when I’m writing lots and consistently, it’s my own little form of control, creative freedom and safe space. I’ve been writing for so many years and I know the ups and down comes no matter what. I was in a good place, spring on the horizon, old work down to perfection already, predictable and safe and the words just poured out of me. 

But change is good. Challenging new changes bring about growth and I know that my ability to concentrate on writing will come back as soon as I am more sure of myself again and now expending massive amounts of energy trying to get to know a whole bunch of new people, get used to new tasks and carved out a position for myself. And on the other end of it, I’ll be a better writer too. 

Every time I learn something new, it helps me down the line. This will too. I’ve just got to find my patience and bear with the process. And in the meantime, I’ll have to accept I can’t be a bustling river but can be a small stream instead. That’s okay. 

pilferingapples:

fremedon:

pilferingapples:

I do not have energy for the rant about the incredible Bad Read that is “characters dying in a story means the characters are supposed to be Morally Wrong by the narrative’s lights” but like 

what a Bad Read. What a terrible stunning lack of interpretive skills. What the hell.  The rant is alive in my soul. 

Clearly if we’d been meant to sympathize with the Little Match Girl she would have something something bootstraps and survived.

see here’s where I’d make a sarcastic remark like “obviously Romeo and Juliet were just stupid for trying to make peace between their warring families” but I’ve seen that one so much

something something Just World fallacy but applied to fiction

Sometimes bad things happen to good characters. Or good characters make bad choices (sometimes unwittingly). Can you imagine how dull the world of fiction would be, if that wasn’t the case?

glasswaters:

i’m thinking tonight about masterpieces. michelangelo looked at the sixtine chapel and saw; nothing to preserve. virgil wanted his aenid burned and forgotten; only to be saved at the behest of an emperor who thought it flattery. kafka instructed his friend to burn everything he’d ever written - too personal was it, too unfinished.

they were ignored.

instead, their work was taken and held and published and thrown to be gawked at. instead, an emperor, a pope, a friend, took from within the cavities of them their choices; their art.

tumblr rolls out post+. twitter rolls out tip jars. youtube takes half of what creators earn. on social media, there is a ko-fi or a patreon and a polished face in every bio. i show my poems to my mother and she asks if I will publish them before she says anything else. emily dickinson instructed her sister to burn her poetry.

her sister did not listen.

we are a community, says tumblr, we should give back to creators. my last poem had 50 notes. six of those were reblogs that weren’t mine. i lie in bed at 2am and stare at my bright phone screen and the way netflix’s library grows thinner and thinner. the first ad on tumblr that i can reblog is for amazon. amazon takes more than half of what authors earn.

kafka’s friend took barely finished work and hammered it into structure. he is the only reason we know of him.

my father wrote a book and a play when I was barely big enough to reach his knees. when i try to talk to him about writing, he shrugs.

no one wanted to publish it, he says. so i don’t write anymore.

i am filled with poems I have never published, books I haven’t written. There are little snippets of them scattered throughout my life. I link to my ko-fi on my tumblr.

-

asked capitalism of the artist: what is art, if not for consumption? who does art benefit, if it is not consumed? why create at all if you do not market it? who are you, frothing at the mouth about someone publishing someone else’s poems? who are you to hate your magnum opus? what is art, if not in relation to its reception? if no one sees it, how is it art?

said the artist, baring their teeth: it’s mine.