This is why so many people end up quitting brain drugs that are actually helping them stay sane. Your brain is EXTREMELY good at telling stories about how you're all better now because of that new shirt you bought or the fact that you had a salad last Tuesday.

Just not always so blatantly. Anyway, taking previous material and twisting it and playing with it and cutting it up and rearranging it is just, you know, how art works.

Or because you know Lancelot is popular and will move copies! Nothing wrong with that. Now, it's true that, say, someone writing a story where Scrooge is really the hero possibly says something about their values and opinions. But everything we write says something about our values and opinions.

You call the MC of your bizarre Arthurian take Lancelot because you want your readers to think of other Lancelot stories as they read, because you got here by pondering Lancelot stories, because you've got a comment to make about Lancelot.

Also, I honestly don't get the outrage of "how could you make X when you're making X's main themes into Y, you should just not call it X anymore" when in fact, this is exactly how literature has worked for centuries, if not millennia. Signed, A Fan of Arthurian Literature.

I'm not sure changing her personality would change that, so much as it might change *some* of her reaction to that, which is an interesting thing to ponder. If you tell me "she wouldn't have been bullied if she were that kind of person" you are wrong and I will block you. SOURCE personal experience

OK so maybe I'm not that much of a Stephen King reader, but it seems to me that the "point" of Carrie wasn't that she was shut down and traumatized and fearful, but that she was mercilessly bullied and would be no matter what, and had that coming from all sides.

treat your body like a data center. consume as much water, art and literature as possible. upset local municipalities with your existence.

my takeaway from Book Discourse is that a number of people don't seem to know that canon is just a fancy term for "I'm the writer so I get to decide and you don't" which means another writer can also do this when it's their turn and the only one who gets to say no is the person who owns the IP

More trade reviews! this one from Library Journal who say "fans of Nnedi Okorafor's Who Fears Death and Claire North's Slow Gods should race to place this thrilling, thought-provoking story on hold." 🙏🏾📚 Wheeeww

This is pure bad faith from MRM—they are not new to this business and are perfectly aware this is all bullshit. These magazines essentially no longer exist: they were bought simply to use their reputations as a trap to suck IP out of writers and artists who don't know any better.

I have never ever understood this phrase because to me it has always sounded like "get a gun and you can be a complete asshole and ppl will put up with it in case you shoot them" like if you need to be armed to get ppl to be nice to you maybe you should just go fix your fucking personality chad

Agreed. I also feel like, sometimes there's a presumption that a character death will invoke Feels in the reader, and while that's certainly true if your character is at all interesting, it's a super lazy way to evoke feels and will be wasted if the death isn't really part of the overall structure.

🧵

This is a brilliant thread. While there was a lot of violence in the Middle Ages, it is crucial to acknowledge that our contemporary attitudes - in their myriad varieties - are all born out of our own historical context. The abhorrent ones are not relict medieval sentiments, but equally modern.

In light of some magazines pulling scummy things on creators lately, I’m doing a little thread on short story rights. I don't want anybody getting taken advantage of. Also, if you're new, this stuff can be confusing!

I would be EXTREMELY annoyed to discover my PR is "AI"-generated, and as someone bombarded with dozens of "AI"-generated emails daily, I assure you the stink of "AI" is immediately noticable and immediately dismissible. Publishers are not doing their new books any favors in using it.

I converted to Catholicism six weeks before running for office. Here’s what the pope gets wrong about live-streamed executions.