Blogging instead of writing

Max (they/them) / (i actually write way more than i blog) / icon is from a picrew by arideo

[stjohnstarling]

The reason most indie novels are written like the author is terrified of doing something wrong is because the overwhelming majority of indie novelists get their start by networking in the violent panopticon of the social media indie publishing community, which favours the people who are able to win at the social policing game.

[gr8writingtips]

writing tip #4157:

if you don't like writing, why do you want to write?

[queerliblib]

Do you have any aroace recs? Preferably exploring the aroace experience, not just without a romance subplot?

yes! here is one adult title:

Limitless: Poetry of an Aromantic & Asexual Journey by Patrick Bex

three ya titles:

Summer Bird Blue by Akemi Dawn Bowman (questioning aroace)

Loveless by Alice Oseman

Dear Wendy by Ann Zhao

and one middle grade title: Just Lizzie by Karen Wilfrid (mc reads as aroace but the focus is on asexuality)

thanks for writing in!

[aroaessidhe]

I have a database of aro & ace books which has at least 150 aroace books, if you are interested in browsing more!

[hagiomoto]

Does no one realize how racist this assumption can be? Most LLMs are trained heavily on Commonwealth and other standardized English corpora, yet now when people from Commonwealth countries naturally write in polished English, others immediately say it “sounds AI-generated.”

I fear this is the beginning of a really awful trend that will make it even harder for non-white writers to get published.

[fjordojustice]

Got curious, so I went and read it myself. The AI accusation is completely absurd to me. The story is small scale, personal, laden with metaphor, and clearly draws heavily from the writer's cultural history. It's not conventionally told, but the ideas set up in the beginning are woven throughout the narrative nicely - nothing is extraneous, no threads are dropped, and it ends on a thoughtful and somewhat poetic note that explores its core themes. Unless I'm sorely mistaken, this is not kind of writing AI generally produces (at least not without significant human intervention - at which point who cares?)

The idea that it's AI generated because of a couple difficult-to-parse similes (in a piece that employs flowery simile multiple times per paragraph) is so insidious. Oh I'm sorry, this Trinidadian writer's piece exploring the cultural intersections of the Carribean and Indian diasporas on the island wasn't instantly understandable to me, an ignorant anglophone reader - so therefore he must be a fraud? Ridiculous, and in my opinion clearly racist.

[txttletale]

first off the bat, "ai detection tools" are certainly worthless vaporware. i am fully agreed on this point. like hagiomoto, i also worry about the weaponization of AI accusations against authors of color, especially ones writing in englishes other than american or british english.

that said, these posts have the absolute wrong end of the stick. first of all, the very first to call this story out were -- understandably, because they were the ones most closely watching the commonwealth prize regional winners -- Black and caribbean writers and poets, like chiemeziem everest udochukwu and previous commonwealth prize winner and fellow trinidadian kevin jared hosain.

secondly, OP (and many, many people in the notes) correctly describes a phenomenon -- the way in which AI writing can resemble styles of writing common in nations that were formerly colonized by the UK -- almost certainly in reference to marcus olang's essay I'm Kenyan. I Don't Write Like ChatGPT. ChatGPT Writes Like Me. but this phenomenon has absolutely nothing to do with jamir nazir's piece. the similarities olang' draws between kenyan english and chatgpt are strict structure, the use of specific sayings, and a propensity to use 'wow words' --

The third, and perhaps most important commandment, was that of structure. An essay had to be a perfect edifice. The introduction was the foundation, the body was the walls, and the conclusion was the roof, neatly summarising the moral of the story and, if you were clever, circling back to the introductory proverb to create a satisfying, if predictable, loop. We were taught to build our paragraphs around a strong topic sentence. We were taught the sin of the sentence fragment and the virtue of the compound-complex sentence.

whatever you might think of "the serpent in the grove", i think it is extremely safe to say that this very much does not describe it.

and now i want to get onto the reblog, which really truly bothers me because of the ways it is unintentionally closing ranks around the profoundly racist and imperialist set of pre-approved conceptions of 'postcolonial literature'. because frankly, the serpent in the grove is not thoughtful or complex--it is barely coherent, in very obvious ways. everyone who has written about it has pulled all the same quotes, but here's a few of the nonsense metaphors to illustrate:

A man who had cleared brush like a conscience

Hard living lays itself on a man like wet sacking; it never asks permission

Coffee and cocoa leaned wild on a slope that wanted either rain in teeth or none at all

She had the kind of walking that made benches become men

(this sort of bluntly failed similie is incredibly characteristic of ai creative writing by the by, far more than any of the elements olang' complains about being accused over, which mostly show up in technical/conversational AI material. @nostalgebraist calls it the "eyeball kick". my favourite exmaple i've seen over the years is “the moon was truly mother-of-pearl, the white of the sea, rubbed smooth by the groins of drowned brides.”)

what it is, however, is essentially an intense pastiche of all the frankly racist tropes of "prestige postcolonial literature". i mean, look at what judge sharma taylor said about it:

Jamir Nazir’s language is sublime—precise yet richly evocative—conjuring vivid, lush imagery with remarkable economy. Through sharp sensory detail, he renders the Grove as a living presence, where labour, landscape, and memory are intimately entwined. Polished and confident, this is a story with a melodic voice that lingers long after the final line. Jamir Nazir’s prose pulses with a voice of restraint and quiet authority—a beautifully told and assured piece of storytelling.

writing from the global periphery, from the caribbean or africa or south east asia or latin america, is always "rich", it is always "sensory," "lush", it is always "about landscape and memory", it is always "melodic." these are exhausted tropes that have been used to describe basically all literature from ex-colonies for the last 50 years, regardless of what they're actually like

latin american writers and critics like sylvia molloy and jorge volpi have talked about the "choke-chain" of 'magical realism', this titanic sweeping label that gets applied to anything coming out of latin america, something that for a long time sreved as a measuring stick to evaluate Real Prestigious Worthwhile Latin American Literature.

there is a commonality there, and that is that literature from The Third World is meant to be about the Land, about the Peoples, about the Personal Struggles, about the Rich Fantastical Vibrant Melody History Memory--this is a mold that has been imposed first by the european and usamerican literary establishments and from there internalized and adopted in literary scenes around the world. volpi criticizes the picture of latin america that the "magical realism" wants to push onto all latin american ltierature as one of "irrationality [...] a lack of reason".

incomprehensibility--the very reaction in the reblog of "oh, i don't understand this, it must be some Cultural Element i'm not understanding" is treated as a de facto mark of authenticity. it's the mass exoticization of this literature, treating it as some endlessly mysterious Other whose incomprehensiblity gives the white literary world a look into the Mysterious Foreign Mind

and it is genuinely really frustrating after years of authors from the global periphery (and in various diaspora, because this type of ritualized Authenticty Signalling is a huge feature of prestige diaspora literature and the subject of the exact same ongoing fierce internal debate, e.g. this piece or this one) trying to escape these stifling tropes, these exotifying expectations, to have a story that--AI or not (and i don't think the 'not' is very likely)--thoughtlessly and mechanistically repeats them, drowning itself in florid incoherence, get this kind of defense from people who earnestly think they are being anti-racist.

i leave off with a couple of good pieces on the story itself and its reception:

[Opinion] Jamir Nazir’s Commonwealth-Winning Story “The Serpent in the Grove”: A Beautifully Told Story or an AI Mash-Up Job? - Afrocritik

Can we say that between the prize and the story and Jamir Nazir, there is something perverse and disrespectful to other writers, because it

How to read postcolonial writing

The Granta controversy surrounding a Commonwealth Prize-winning story tells us less about AI than about the enduring metropolitan expectatio

[hagiomoto]

This has given me a lot to think about. From the perspective of postcolonial literature, I agree. I'd read that choke-chain article before this.

All in all, I'd rather writers be accused of poor writing than of using AI based on mistaken ideas about what good literature is and on AI detectors, which at this point are basically snake oil.

[elwenyere]

-- Ted Chiang, from "Why A.I. Isn't Going to Make Art"

[oldshrewsburyian]

I'm so glad they got Ted Chiang -- a wonderful writer of science fiction and thinker about technology, in my opinion -- to write this essay. My favorite line was this:

Generative A.I. appeals to people who think they can express themselves in a medium without actually working in that medium.

[encrucijada]

LAS CABEZAS DEL DIOS by ester cuervos

aka THE GOD'S HEADS

✹ genre: soft high fantasy ✹ category: adult ✹ pov: first person retrospective

✹ themes & tone: the horror of emptiness, co-habitation with divinity, the weight of duty, destiny, loneliness, confrontation of day and night

a b o u t : a woman is willfully banished to the land of her ancestors as part of an ancient ritual. her duty is, first, to keep in check the god her people created after failing to worship the original god of the land; and second, to manage the beings known as prodigies. caeleste is just the latest witness in a line of them and solitude has been her destiny since birth. the empty land and the watchful gods have been waiting for her.

c h a r a c t e r s :

caeleste. name is a combination of the latin word caelum (meaning sky) + celeste (spanish word for sky blue/light blue but also celestial). pronounced like cah-eh-less-teh. unlocks agarophobia as soon as she enters the valley. raised for this, fed for this, indoctrinated for this.

hidra. caeleste's she-dog and the only living being allowed to enter the valley with her. scruffy and long-legged, almost like a maned wolf in appearance but she's got more of a dusty-grey-black colour. partial to water, that's why her name is hidra.

la eídola. from the word εἴδωλον. eidola is plural but in this case the use of -a is meant to signal that she is female and the accent marker is just for the sake of directing readers on how to pronounce it. a winged creature that's like a cross between a griffin and a wyvern. caeleste's mode of transportation around the valley.

e x c e r p t !

✹ from chapter one ✹

a e s t h e t i c : pareidolia making you see eyes on mountains and the sky, the burn of the sun on the crown of your head, overgrown ruins, the sheer cry of birds overhead, the vast emptiness of a clear blue sky, prey animal fear, mismatched body parts stitched together, megalophobia, the whisper of the wind through the grass, rain and sunshine, muted screaming, a blade unblemished by the elements, tapetum lucidum, butterflies gathering around a festering wound, the blood-like stains of fresh fruit, gigantic bones taking over the landscape, intricately forged iron spikes, the danger signaling of vibrant colours, massive architecture, a mirror-like still lake, bruised clouds

✹ recipe: shadow of the colossus, the last guardian, ico, the tombs of atuan, haibane renmei

✹ realised i have free will and i can put all my favourite fantasy concepts in a blender to create my ideal fantasy book, i love putting a small cast in a location and watching them go insane, the vibe visually is so eclectic but i'm loving that, all characters are either sexless or female

✹ cw: the horror of open spaces, being watched, unquestioning religious practices, cannibalism

[ellipsus-writes]

Today is the biggest day for Ellipsus since we launched in 2023... 👀

Back then, we began building Ellipsus out of a simple belief: writers deserve a place to create, collaborate, and share their work without handing over their words, their data, or their creative process to bad actors and Big Tech—a promise that matters now, more than ever.

Nearly 600k writers and counting are writing on Ellipsus because of this promise. We see everyday how writers are rejecting Big Tech's data mining model in favor of tools that respect user privacy and reflect our values.

We’re a small full-time team building, maintaining, supporting, and improving the tool every day. And to keep doing that sustainably—without compromising the promises that brought people here—we’re introducing Ellipsus Plus.

Plus is a set of optional features on top of free Ellipsus, designed to help fund the continued development of Ellipsus for everyone, free and paid; while helping us stay independent, ad-free, and working to improve the tool well into the future.

That means the Ellipsus you know is staying free: you can keep writing with unlimited documents, drafts, collaborators, and core features. Free Ellipsus will continue to receive updates, improvements, and new features too, including major work already planned (like offline syncing and native apps).

Plus features have been designed alongside community feedback, our pricing shaped by our users around what felt fair and sustainable.

Every Plus subscription leads to ultimate ownership of the tool. Not metaphorical ownership, but real ownership, including all future updates to the Plus plan. No endless subscriptions. Once you’ve paid, it’s yours. Really.

Our introductory Plus features are designed to be fun, creative, practical, and help you get the most out of the tool! We really hope you enjoy them. Here’s a quick overview:

Custom themes

Make your writing space feel like home with custom themes! Use any colors, gradients, images, or .gifs you love. Share with friends and readers. The choices are infinite.

Writing Insights

See insights into your writing process and spot patterns faster across ten AI-free metrics—like vocabulary diversity, sentence length, sentence rhythm, word frequency, and more. Writing insights are opt-in only, and run on local data, so your text never leaves the editor. 

Customizable Snippets

We all love snippets! Now you can give your words an extra personal touch. Customize your snippets with media backgrounds (GIFs, images), fonts, text colors, and custom themes—you can even add byline credits for authors and characters!

Emboss

Emboss is our AI-free proof-of-work layer for human writing. Show your readers the time, labor, and love that went into your work. Instead of relying on unreliable “AI-powered” “verifiers” that judge a piece after the fact, share your writing journey, with authorship metrics that help inspire trust. You can also show how your work evolved with snapshots of your version history. Emboss is fully opt-in.

We hope you’re as excited about Plus as we are! Try Plus free for 7 days, no payment required. You can read more (and sign up!) on our Plus page.

Again, there’s tons more to come, and we can’t wait to build it for you. Free or paid, Ellipsus is going to keep getting better. Thank you for your support.

Have questions about Plus? We’re hosting an “Ask the Team” doc where we’ll be answering your burning questions. Please make comments there! Now please, go forth and explore!

- the Ellipsus Team xo

[throathole]

Oh thanks but what the fuck does any of that mean

[anariel-the-elrond-apologist]

I’ve seen quite a few of these in my time, but this one takes the cake.

[throathole]

This is fucking killing me

Golp: a roundel purpure.

Repeat this to yourself until it begins to have meaning

[a-book-of-creatures]

Okay then since some of you need to be reminded of this:

Roundels are circles in heraldry. They are named according to their color, which also has its own lingo. Let’s meet them!

Bezant: roundel or (gold) 🟡

Plate: roundel argent (silver) ⚪️

Torteau: roundel gules (red) 🔴

Pomme: roundel vert (green) 🟢

Hurt: roundel azure (blue) 🔵

Golp: roundel purpure (purple) 🟣

Pellet: roundel sable (black) ⚫️

If your field is strewn with roundels, you can describe it appropriately as being bezanty, hurty, golpy, and so on.

[cognitohazardous]

[thatdisasterauthor]

I think the thing that annoys me most about AI on a personal, day to day, level is what it has done to grammar checkers. If you've never done a lot of editing, or used to 5+ years ago but haven't really in the last couple years, I can't even begin to describe how fucking BAD this shit has gotten. And as an author it is EXHAUSTING.

I just want to catch spelling errors and accidental double spaces and repeated phrases and whenever I use the wrong too/to or affect/effect and shit. But no. They've shoved AI up the ass of every grammar checking software out there and now they all fucking suck and make the most random, obnoxious, nonsensical suggestions.

And yeah, I can ignore all the times it's trying to get me to cut out any semblance of my own voice, or shove things into the wrong tense, or make the most random suggestions on comma usage. But if it's getting all that WRONG, what is it just straight up missing that I SHOULD be correcting? What real spelling and grammar errors are still lurking in there?

[scenerwiththegreenery]

Okay, so I don't spend a ton of time using these features, but more than a lot of people, because I'm in school and so I have to write papers, emails, etc. I thought I was going crazy because the suggestions just.. do not make any fucking sense. Increasingly over the past few years (started back to college in 2023), Word and Outlook are both making terrible suggestions, and I don't get it because I've been using Word since the late '90s and it has never been as bad as it is now...

Did they add AI to Micro$oft's products? I already turn off Copilot, but is there anywhere else to turn off AI?

[thatdisasterauthor]

Disabling copilot will turn off the generative AI features, mostly, but the problem isn't coming directly from generative AI. It is coming from where these grammar checkers are pulling their data from, because they are essentially crowdsourcing their data now, rather than relying on real, determined rules.

You CAN make it somewhat better in Word at least by going to File>Options>Proofing>Writing Style>Settings, which will open up this big long list:

Unchecking everything from the "clarity" and "conciseness" sections will get rid of A LOT of the suggestions that try to really change your voice. It won't fix a lot of the stupid ass suggestions it makes for other stuff, but it at least gets rid of a bunch of the distracting junk.

However, the settings never seem to stick for me so I have to go back in and check this list pretty often, sometimes even in one editing session where I haven't closed and reopened the document at all.

[birdofork]

Yes, the spelling/grammar check has grown increasingly horrible, but Microsoft DID add AI a couple years ago and didn't tell its customers!

I have a shit computer and was wondering why Microsoft Word was basically unusable and it's because the AI takes up so much more processing power than normal, it was basically crashing my system.

BUT!

You can delete the AI without affecting the rest of the program.

Instructions under the cut cause they got long.

How to delete the AI assistant (in Windows):

Open your C: drive which can be found in "This PC" as OS (C:)

Then open the following folders:

Program Files Microsoft Office root vfs ProgramFilesCommonX64 Microsoft Shared OFFICE16 AI

In the AI folder, there will be two application files called ai and aimgr. Delete both of those.

Unfortunately, every time Microsoft updates, these files will come back and need to be redeleted. I've saved myself time by adding the "AI" folder to my Quick access in the file explorer folder (on the left of the image below) so I can just click on it and delete the ai/aimgr every time I need to (which is pretty much every time I use Word).

This forum also has the instructions about how to delete the files if you scroll down https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/answers/questions/4649157/outlook-how-to-disable-artificial-intelligence-(ai

On a related note, Microsoft 365 also started charging users more for a subscription

because they added the AI (that we didn't want). The only way to get the normal pricing back when you're up for renewal is to go into your online Microsoft account and basically go through the motions of cancelling your subscription and they'll offer you the old option.

Absolutely insane that we have to do this for a basic word processor...

[thatdisasterauthor]

Thanks for the tip!

[boundwithpurple]

the 2010s era of “how to write xyz” blogs covering various marginalizations had their uses, but it created this clear mindset re writing outside one’s “own experience” where it’s like “there’s a checklist i can tick off that ensures no one will ever get mad at me” which i think is ultimately very restricting. i have definitely had to fight internalizing this mindset and the superficial assurances it offers. i do think it very important to try to be very thoughtful and deliberate, to put in real meaningful effort, in performing such imaginative work to be shared in a public forum. but writing to a checklist…you can see when people are doing this, where they are like trying to achieve this market tested product where their writing could not possibly offend anyone, and it lands on this equally dehumanizing note where there are no marginalized people involved. very eerie. because any given demographic is actually diverse in manifold ways, and also simply made up of idiosyncratic opinionated individuals, and will actually disagree quite strongly among itself on many points re what is realistic or unrealistic, what is respectful or disrespectful. there’s an ethics of care that is important to me, but distinct from and in many ways antithetical to the checklist model…

[thebibliosphere]

Absolutely wild to find out another indie author has been referring to you as "the competition" this entire time. Like there can only be one disabled werewolf Romance novel.

I'd like there to be more, actually. I'd like them to hold hands. I would have liked us to hold hands, but alas.

[thebibliosphere]

We could have gone on mailing lists together. We could have shared readers. We could have had a beautiful Fall wedding under the eldritch glow of a blood moon. Why, why must we be forsaken?!

[thebibliosphere]

Wait, could this be our enemies to associates arc? Hot.

[derinthescarletpescatarian]

Absolutely insane to consider any other indie author "the competition" unless they're directly attacking you. Readers are (usually) not going out there like "hmm, which is the one single disabled werewolf romance book I will read?" More often, they will read one and if they like it, go ahead and get the other one. It's such a rising tide lifts all boats type of profession. Other books in your genre (assuming they're not reputation-ruiningly terrible) bring more readers to your genre! Ten amazing disabled werewolf romances is so much better than standing alone! It increases audience size for everyone!

"The competition" do they even understand their job?

[unbearable-lightness-of-ink]

also I absolutely love when one author tells me the other authors they like that write similar things! like, yes, thank you??? I have read everything by this one author and need something to tide me over until they have more out, and oh thank god they have a list for me to go through! now I will always think of them when i read something by any of these other authors! this is good!

[catgirlforeskin]

trying to make a creative project without men and uproot any masculine words will drive one insane. There's the obvious stuff, right, swordsman becomes swordsmaid, count becomes countess, gladiator to gladiatrix and so on.

But did you know that "-er" is a masculine suffix, for which "-ster" as in "sister" is the feminine equivalent? Baker means a man that bakes, the historical feminine equivalent is a bakster, a webster is a female weaver. Some words already have the feminine as default, youngster, teamster, mobster, but most? Trying to be a principled feminist has you saying shit like goonster

[gwenadier]

Wait for real? Fascinating.

[catgirlforeskin]

for real! Lots of other examples too, anything "patr" comes from father, "patriarch" is the obvious one, but patriot, patron, patronym all would need "matr" for mother is instead. Pope and Papacy derive from "Papa" and would be Mome/Mamacy if you want yuri catholicism (hellworld!!) it's EVERYWHERE

[catgirlforeskin]

My favorite example, beyond the obvious ones like lord/lady, waiter/waitress, steward/stewardess, is housekeeper, which is now the more acceptable term for a maid, when maid, of course, just means "woman" and keeper is masculine, would be keepster or keepess but (to my knowledge) neither were used historically because, well, keeping wasn't something women got to do!

Likewise, waitress has fallen out of favor for host or server, which are also both gendered terms. (hostess or serving girl, respectively. Servant is also gendered, maidservant and servantess were used)

There's been a concerted push with a lot of these to phase out the feminine variants of these words and just treat the masculine variants as neutral, or find neutral alternatives like fireman -> firefighter (even though fighter is also gendered) because the feminine variants are seen as inherently lesser, which, yeah that's how women are seen.

There is a line you have to draw somewhere of "okay let's just treat this and below as gender neutral because, frankly, most words that just mean "person" mean "man" historically because women weren't (and still largely aren't) considered people, and otherwise we're going to shred the whole English language" and I get that.

BUT. I think a lot of folks draw that line at the start and insist that man/guy/dude/bro can be gender-neutral which is obvious stupid. And I think it's always worth having this investigation and questioning how we speak, it shapes how we think about worlds and people real and fictional.

Okay one last silly aside about barista, which is supposed to be gender-neutral from Italian but men got weird about it and then invented baristo so now -ista is kinda feminine? Typically it's just borrowed into English to sound Foreign (Sandinistas leading to the exonym Corbynistas)

[catgirlforeskin]

Bucket, Captain Lieutenant are gendered masculine btw, it'd be buckette captaine and lieutenante. It's not just an issue of suffixes being "ignored"(masculinized) when borrowed from french because we write Debutante with the e. Multiple times a month I stumble into new examples, the battle never ends

[gooned-out-tgirl]

hey i'd just like you to know ever since i saw this post it's been the only thing i think about when at work. Because of it i've tried imagining a version of english that is more feminine or even 100% fem. 1. it's been such a wild ride just going "my god how we speak is weird." 2. I has been a pure joy coming up with an idea for a world for a bee species and a lesbian lizard species to speak in this language.

[catgirlforeskin]

we are now sisters in arms in an eternal war 🤝

[rainintheevening]

Okay, we got a new one, boys.

[fleshengine]

Close enough welcome back Chekov's gun.

[comma-souptra]

Prev you can’t bury this in your own tags

[luna-azzurra]

The specific type of person who finds out you're a writer and immediately goes "oh i have a great idea for a book, you should write it, we could split the money." we could split the money. you have a half-formed premise you thought of in the shower and i have seven years of learning how to do this extremely difficult thing and you want to split the money. i am so calm right now. i am the calmest i have ever been. we will not be splitting anything.

[nondelphic]

unfortunately my story needs a middle. i personally think this is excessive

[malewifesband]

the setting is also a character. many do not know this but its true. it has a history and a future and often an arc of its own, and the other characters all have personal relationships with it

[malewifesband]

sometimes it gets anthropomorphized into a character or a divine figure or symbolized by something more tangible like a river or a car or a boat but it is a character in its own right and you should think of it this way

[redxwritingxhood]

When you get the advice to “read more” to get better at writing, it’s not very concise and really sounds unhelpful after the third time you’ve heard it. So here, this is what you’re getting out of it (besides grammar or whatever):

You observe the way a story is organized and how it achieves its flow

You become familiar with tropes and archetypes

Story structure becomes an easy to recall memory, and every novel you’ve ever read becomes a reference book

You develop how you write stylistically, the things you hate and the things you try to emulate

You gain the skills to critique books in a smart manner, and therefore can recognize flaws in your own works that you remember bashing a novel for