[#]WritersCoffeeClub Day 7: In your writing, what is the best thing you've done (or might do) to a reader's state of mind?
Open their mind to new ways of thinking, give them joy and hope, and lift their spirits.
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[#]WritersCoffeeClub Day 8: Authors love to show off a book stack. Post an image of your stack or a collage of your digital work.
I haven't completed anything yet. 😢
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[#]WritersCoffeeClub Day 9: In your work, do you include short sections in languages other than the primary language?
Some of my characters are multilingual, and sometimes speak in languages other than English.
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[#]WritersCoffeeClub Day 10: What's your favourite summer read for a getaway/holiday/vacation?
I've got to be honest, when I go on vacation, I'm generally scheduled up to my eyeballs. I don't have any time left over for reading. So, after a bunch of trips where I came home and said, "Wow, those books were a waste of luggage space and weight allowance," I don't bring them anymore.
(Fallback answer: whatever's already in my Kindle account and hence accessible on my phone.)
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[#]WritersCoffeeClub Day 11: Do you consider any of your work to be unfilmable?
Not really. I'm trying to keep it kind of filmable, actually. That may or may not be the best idea; I've pondered on it occasionally and considered that I certainly could lean into the ability of the written word to convey non-visual ideas. But it's hard for me not to try to picture everything in my mind's eye, which makes it a little more filmable.
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[#]WritersCoffeeClub Day 12: Someone asks permission to use AI to write a book in your style outside your usual genre. Do you allow it?
When I first wrote my answer, back at the end of last month when the questions came out, I just said, "I don't think I would, no."
After seeing so many other people's excellent replies, though, I think I have to rewrite that to: Holy flaming fuckballs, absolutely not!
(Also, I think I've gotta stop being so kind and mild about these AI questions.)
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[#]WritersCoffeeClub Day 13: Would you ever serialize your work? Have you done it?
I have no strong objection to it, and might be open to trying it. I'd want to research what other authors think about it, if there are any pitfalls or challenges I should be aware of.
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[#]WritersCoffeeClub Day 14: Have you helped other writers on their journey, or is it every person for themselves?
I'm a newbie myself, so there's a limit to what I could possibly have done to help others. I have answered a few things on r/writers and r/writing, which I hope helped some people. That's about it.
I definitely don't feel that it's "everyone for themselves"; I do want to help other writers when I'm better situated to do so.
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[#]WritersCoffeeClub Day 15: Have you used any form of AI to help in creating your work? Do you have a red line? Where is it?
I have not, I do not plan to, and I actively plan not to. My red line is that I won't use it, and am not interested in doing so.
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[#]WritersCoffeeClub Day 16: In a maximum of 500 characters, can you write us a short story, poem, or words of wisdom?
Afternoon rain
doesn't break the heat —
but leaves drip.
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[#]WritersCoffeeClub Day 17: What was your motivation for choosing past or present tense?
Past tense is more standard, and there was nothing about this story that seemed like it would gain from breaking that convention. (I'm already doing enough other non-standard stuff, so I figure it's good to stick to standards and defaults where possible.)
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[#]WritersCoffeeClub Day 18: Coolness, humour, strict necessity. How do you balance them in your work?
By paying attention to how much of each one is present, and whether it needs to be increased or decreased. And then doing so.
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[#]WritersCoffeeClub Day 19: What are the top five things you've learned on your writing journey?
I don't feel like I've learned that much in any big, important sense. Okay, I've done research on lots of things, but that's just to get details right; I'd be hard-pressed to consider things like "Thai names are really quite diverse and each one is nearly if not completely unique" or "the SFPD's 'inspector' rank is basically obsolete" to be "top" or anything like that.
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[#]WritersCoffeeClub Day 20: How would you react if a fan had a tattoo of one of your characters?
I would be very impressed that I'd touched someone so deeply. I'd be honored. And I would try very, very hard not to be at all bothered by the fact that their image of the character would probably not quite match my own.
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[#]WritersCoffeeClub Day 21: To what extent does politics play a role in your work?
A fair bit! My book is about (among various things) the way that San Francisco is at a crossroads, and about people trying to influence its future. That necessarily gets into politics.
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[#]WritersCoffeeClub Day 22: Hollywood wants to turn one of your stories into an animation/anime. How do you feel about this?
Dubious. Hollywood has a history of making weird decisions in adaptations. I would want to write certain things into the contract, just to keep them from de-queering or whitening any of the characters, or injecting copaganda, etc.
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[#]WritersCoffeeClub Day 23: Would you ever collaborate on a book or other literary work? How do you feel about sharing the limelight?
I'd be open to a collaboration. It would depend on the collaborator and the project, of course.
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[#]WritersCoffeeClub Day 24: In your writing, what is the worst thing you've done (or might do) to a reader's state of mind?
Bore them.
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[#]WritersCoffeeClub Day 25: Do you format all your writing similarly or use special formatting for specific sections?
The only thing that comes to mind is that I'll probably include occasional text messages, group chats, and emails. Those should be indented for clarity. Other than that? No, I don't foresee any kind of special formatting.
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[#]WritersCoffeeClub Day 26: Where do you think the line exists between homage and plagiarism?
Honestly, "plagiarism" is pretty hard to do in fiction writing; it's a concept that applies more in academic writing. In academic writing, you're supposed to cite your sources absolutely always, whereas in fiction, it's assumed that you're leaning on the work of others, and the major thing you're supposed to do is come up with new variations on them. 1/3
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So outright "plagiarism" in fiction would just be "literally copying someone else's work and trying to claim you wrote it". This hardly ever happens.
What's more of an issue would be "writing something that's very obviously based on someone else's work, and not even doing anything new and different with it". Which we'd generally call "a ripoff" rather than "plagiarism". 2/3
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As an example, I understand that Terry Brooks's The Sword of Shannara is generally considered a ripoff of Lord of the Rings (though I haven't read it myself and so can't confirm that).
Anyway, given all that, I've already said where I think the borderline is: how much you do new and different things with the material you reference.
(This is important to me because I have an homage to a major fantasy writer in my WIP.) 3/3
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[#]WritersCoffeeClub Day 27: To what extent does technology impact your story? (Bearing in mind that technology is just "a set of methods and practices to do something")
Given that clarification, it impacts it a lot. At various times, magicians analyze certain spells or charms — magical "technology" in the meaning of this prompt — to see what they do. Other wizards are trying to come up with spells to do certain things, or trying to obtain certain items.
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[#]WritersCoffeeClub Day 28: Do you incorporate poems, songs or letters in your work? How do you format them?
There are various times when my characters sing special songs for magical (or more like ritual/quasi-religious) purposes, and there's a standard chant that gets used in certain types of spellcasting. Those, like the emails (i.e., modern-day "letters") and text messages that I mentioned on day 25 (https://wandering.shop/@kagan/113025058725586049), will get indented in the style of block quotes.
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[#]WritersCoffeeClub Day 29: What's your favourite story structure? Three-act, four-act, eight-sequence (8-reel), or what?
"The one that works best for the story I'm telling." That said, the story I'm currently telling works well as a three-act... and it may turn out that most of the stories I ever decide to tell will be three-act ones. That's something I'm going to have to find out by doing it.
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[#]WritersCoffeeClub Day 30: Would you consider using AI for a book cover design or an audiobook?
No. I am more than happy to pay human artists for their work, and I think they'd do a better job anyway. Furthermore, I refuse to contribute to devaluing human artistic work.
Even furthermore, I refuse to contribute to any demand for the large-scale plagiarism machines that power AI "art".
Even still furthermore, I refuse to burn down half a rainforest just for one book cover.
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@kagan I am the living embodiment of that meme with the golden retriever that says "Me" and the werewolf that says "My art," but the whole ai thing turns me into the Hulk. Like, get the hell off my lawn with that shit. 😂
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@kagan yup no more Dirty Harry’s
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@kagan Terry Brooks :)
It's funny I hadn't heard that until much later in life, after reading and loving his Shannara series. To me it's one of those.
“Oh it's a rip off..."
because it's a group of disparate people, coming together on a quest to do a thing..
I mean, what book isn’t that? LOL.
I know I'm an outlier but I don't love and barely enjoyed LOTR but have re-read Books' works more than once.
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@jwilker Oops, Brooks. Thank you!
Glad you liked them!
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