#I don't get to write for ME often because I ghostwrite for work

[its-monster-mash]

This has been sitting in my drafts for 1000 years oops Rules: Post the names of all the files in your wip folder regardless of how non-descriptive or ridiculous. Let people send you an ask with the title that most intrigues them, and then post a little snippet of it or tell them something about it.

Thank you so much for tagging me @venus-haze!! I am also excited to participate in the self-callout lol

I don’t actually have a “WIP Folder”, I just have. A lot of WIPs. About to expose myself on a lot of different fandoms lol(I have a million different sideblogs that I organize a lot of the things I like by)

• Didn’t Your Momma Ever Tell You Not to Talk to Strangers? — Bo Sinclair x Reader (House of Wax) *I am also converting this one to an "Original" piece so I can publish it as a serial, so if you see the other version on Amazon under the pen name "M.E. Roselli" that's me. I'm still going to keep writing it as this fanfic, but there IS an alternate version. The other version is about a cult instead of Wax; instead of Vincent, Bo("Buck" in the alternate version) has a twin sister who was raised to be the cult's messiah. The cult is dead and gone along with their parents, but she's still living it. I just know that a lot of people's fanfics are being stolen, so I wanted to clear up that that is NOT the case with mine.

• Holmes and Dracula VS. Jack the Ripper — Original Work (Sherlock Holmes and Dracula team up to stop Jack the Ripper from bringing about the Apocalypse)

• Tides of Lust — Original Work (Meliora, a traveling bard with demonic blood, goes on a pirate adventure with a feared disciple of Davy Jones and also meets a Vampiric Warlord)

• What The Dead Men Say — Original Work (Ivar Ragnarsson ends up in Victorian England, where he has little choice but to team up with an archeologist; was technically an ACV fic originally, but I hate the ISU stuff and refuse to include it so really it’s just a history fic tbh)

• Playing House with Private X — Original Work (A cryogenically frozen super soldier navigates the modern world with the help of a would-be super soldier who slipped through the cracks. Very slice of life; it started as a Soldier Boy fic—American Pie, but I scrubbed it of IP so I can continue it as an original work and publish it as erotic shorts)

• ‘Til Death Do Us Part — Original Work (Would-be Murder victim Judith “Jude” Carpenter tries to start a new life in a small town…where her would have been killer has taken up residence as the priest. The two must work together to survive the town’s dark secret.)

• Careful What you Wish For — Original Work (Janie, a serial killer hitchhiking to avoid capture, ends up being held prisoner by Levi, a recluse out in the middle of nowhere, and she pretends to be a helpless victim in exchange for food and a warm place to sleep. The story focuses on her disturbing inner monologue through her act.)

• Lord of Roses, Master of Thorns — Original Work (Ancient Vampiric King Alistair Val Mirron must fall in love to end his curse of immortality; Myrinthe, an odd Peasant introduced to him by and old flame, seeks to remain in the castle at all costs to avoid being forced to marry the annoying rich boy in town.)

• Taken From the Ren Faire — Original Work (This was meant to be a cheesy erotica short but I accidentally gave it a plot. Oops. Fantasy Author Vera Fox is spirited away into a fantasy world after drinking some strange mead from an interesting new vendor. She ends up in a fake relationship with a former bandit while he tries to help get her home; when they get separated, she questions if she even wants to go back to her old life, and this is only compounded when she finds her Ren Faire lover is trapped there too. This one is full of tropes because I'll be honest, I'm "Writing to Market" here, but I love the characters anyway. Owen-her Ren Faire lover- has a huge Clydesdale named Stormbreaker that he rescued from a roadside medieval themed attraction, and I love him.)

• A Marriage of Inconvenience — Homelander x Reader (The Boys; Amazon Show)

• Woven Sagas — Eivor Wolfkissed x Ivar Ragnarsson (Assassin’s Creed Valhalla)

• Mother — Skyrim Fic about my Dragonborn raising Aventus

• Critical Darling — Homelander x OC(Darcy Hayes, Dreamweaver) (The Boys; Amazon Show)

• In All My Dreams I Drown — Reaver x Sparrow (Fable 2)

Tags: I am abysmal at remembering URLs off the top of my head, but I will try. @sketchy-rosewitch @visceravalentines @rottent33th @ventiswampwater

[txttletale]

Hey this is only tangential to the AI art thing, but I'm curious how you feel about the distinction between plagiarism and information property infringement?

I take issue with plagiarism (which isn't what AI art is doing anyway) but I don't think copyright law is the place to solve it. IP as a concept and copyright as a practice I feel only have meaning within the bounds of capitalism and are mostly vehicles for capitalists to extract more value from creative labor, but I still think plagiarism would be wrong even if there was no publication-as-means-to-survival element.

Like, passing off someone else's work as your own at the very least feels different from owning the right to profit from that work. But simultaneously it does seem like even that is veering toward an 'economics of clout' if that makes any sense. Like, I would still be upset (albeit, much less so than if I relied on that work to eat) if I made something cool and someone else got the credit, but I think I lack the vocab to articulate why or whether a meaningful difference actually exists.

For clarity, my background is in research rather than art so maybe that affects my thinking?

If you don't feel like writing a full response, name-dropping a book or an article for me to get started would be greatly appreciated too.

yeah i mean i think the thing about plagiarism that differentiates it from copyright infringement is that imo the crucial part of plagiarism is taking the name off the thing. like, plagiarism fundamentally is not a crime of taking or distributing something, it's about refusing to name the author, about purposefully lying about the origins of a piece. & i think it is bad while copyright infringement is not because it inherently muddies the water of truth -- like, to take the recent high-profile somerton case, i think one of the really bad things about his plagiarism was that he was mixing plagiarised research and journalism with ad-libbed nonsense like "the SS was teeming with homosexuals", and without attribution people were led to assume that the well-researched accounts of queer history were from the same source as the insane claims, which lent somerton's editorializing totally uneared credibility.

but yknow i think that in many cases copyright law legalizes plagiarism. like the only difference between ghostwriting and plagiarism is that one is legal -- i often think about how atari didn't credit game developers on their early games, or how game studios still find bullshit reasons to not credit workers now. hell, i screenshot someone in the notes of an AI art discourse post sayting shrek was "the hard work of Dreamworks Studios", which to me is just as much of a misattribution of credit as saying james somerton wrote his videos.

[bettsfic]

I really don’t understand the concept “if you write you’re a writer” because “if you sing that doesn’t make you a singer”, “if you paint doesn’t necessarily mean your an artist” I feel like the first phrase is used so often to be inspirational but it also doesn’t make much sense. I’m not coming for anyone who uses that phrase I just want to understand the mindset behind it

i mean, that's a really good question.

first, i would argue you could also call yourself an artist and singer using the same logic as "if you write, you're a writer," so let's try a different comparison. if you fix a leaky faucet or a broken toilet, are you a plumber? exactly how many things do you have to fix to consider yourself a plumber? is it when you begin accepting money in exchange for fixing things? or is it when you receive licensure? or is it when it becomes your primary source of income?

it may seem easy. you become a plumber when you get a job as a plumber. to get a job you have to get a license. to get a license you have to apprentice someone and receive training. to receive training you have to find someone to formally mentor you. there's a process, a series of barriers to entry, and for each barrier there's an identity. you're an apprentice, then you're a plumber.

let's try with becoming a doctor. you're pre-med. you're a med school student. you're a resident. you're a doctor.

inevitably someone is going to send me an anon and correct my knowledge of plumbing but i'm not about to start googling information about plumbing just to answer an ask. please take it as an analogy.

plumbing is a lucrative profession. it's specialized knowledge of something that we all require in order to have running water.

being a doctor is a lucrative profession. it's specialized knowledge of the human body and life itself.

writing...is not a lucrative profession. there's no licensure. the only tool you need is a word processor and therefore a computer. the only education you need is basic literacy. no one gives you a full-time job to write creatively. copywriting, sure. ghostwriting, sort of. but to sit down and write what you're passionate about? there's no 401k there.

so without those barriers to entry, without that series of identities at various points in your path, at what point can you call yourself a writer? is it when you accept payment for your work? you can be a formally published, award-winning author and never have received a penny for it. is it when your primary income comes from your work? there are writers on the NYT bestseller list who have day jobs. in fact i don't know a single writer whose primary income is their writing. is it when an editor accepts your work for publication among a pool of other entries? editing is like writing; anyone can start a press or launch a lit mag. moreover, self-publishing is a thing, as well as vanity presses. is it when someone reads your work for their own enrichment without being asked? that's kind of a bizarre gate to have to walk through.

there is no single barrier for entry into writerhood. there is no calling. there is no natural-born talent. and no one is going to tell you you can't do it. well, they may try, but no one has the actual authority to stop you, even if it feels like it.

all creative pursuits are a choice you have to make for yourself when you're ready to, when you've decided your own barrier for entry into that identity. because there is no formal structure, no one else gets to define that identity for you. and so when people say, "if you write you're a writer," what they're really saying is that the only true measurable difference between someone who is a writer and someone who isn't is the act of writing itself.

[trilobiter]

After reading into this story, I think that it's worth saying that the situation is a bit more complicated than it has been portrayed, or as the headline suggests. A human being, Jason M. Allen, used an AI program called Midjourney to create a work of visual art to his specifications, a process that he says took him over eighty hours. He entered the finished result into a contest and won first place.

I'm not an expert on art, but like many people I have a very strong relationship with it. Much of my thinking on art has been influenced by the common mythology around art and its role in modern society, a mythology which expresses the values we place on art. As I value art, I can't help having opinions on this - but since I'm not a visual artist, I'm not qualified to speak to the way this will impact those people economically. I am not optimistic on that front, but I won't get into it too much.

I think creative people of all types are right to be apprehensive about AI, because it seems that there is no reason, in principle, to suppose that it won't upend their livelihood in some way. Jason Allen says he was an active participant and creative controller of the process that resulted in his winning artwork, but as the technology improves it will be used to generate content in an increasingly automated way. I say "content" because what we're talking about is a kind of capitalist production of art-as-commodity.

If an AI program can generate an image that can win an art prize, then it can compose and record a number one pop song, write a best-selling novel, or direct an award-winning film. And I believe that when these things happen, the public will mostly accept it, because as odd as it sounds, it's not that different from what we've been trained to accept as culture. Pop music, popular books, and popular films have all been created in assembly-line fashion for over a hundred years, in a corporate structure aimed at maximizing returns from a market. Most people don't care that much about the ghostwriter of a bestseller, or the technical crew named in the end credits of a blockbuster. When AI gifts us with a bop, most people will shrug their shoulders, say "it's a bop," and dance.

A lot of people believe, intuitively, that making art should be difficult. AI makes art a lot easier, but in that sense, so does modern industrially produced paint, which comes in a variety of colors that Michelangelo could only dream of. We lionize the Renaissance masters because of what they achieved with simpler tools, though I haven't heard many people suggest that painters today limit themselves to whatever colors and techniques were available in 15th century Italy. Still, there's an inherent tension between possible through innovation, and what is thereby lost.

Like most things, issues like this make me think of Star Trek. Specifically, I think of Data from The Next Generation. Data is an android character with markedly android mannerisms, and is a futuristic depiction of what can only be called AI, who nonetheless is presented to the audience as a person with an interior life that is equally valid to a human being's. When Starfleet Command wants to compulsorily reassign and disassemble him, the show explicitly compares this to human slavery. We are meant to evaluate Data's character as we would a human crew member, and not as we would a typical piece of the show's futuristic technology.

Data wants to be seen as human, and he does human things like making art. He is shown to practice several creative arts throughout the show's run, including poetry, comedy, music, acting, and painting. He studies these arts, and attempts to replicate them, struggling along the way to find his own creative voice. His early attempts often seem to bear out the claim that, not being human, he cannot produce anything that is both original and genuinely moving. As time passes, however, this is no longer clearly the case. Attentive viewers will note that Data grows into an artist who does create with an original voice, even if that voice is characteristically like an android - in other words, characteristically like Data.

Optimistically, we may be looking at a future where an AI personality not unlike Data will create works of art that will move us all. But it is important to remember that Data is not just an AI, he is a person - and not simply because he is portrayed by a human actor. We as viewers can accept Data's legitimacy as an artist because the show takes pains to reinforce his legitimacy as a person. But Midjourney is not a person. It lacks anything like the interiority that defines Data as a person in our eyes. Midjourney is not learning how to paint so that it can become a real boy.

What Jason Allen did probably qualifies as art, and Midjourney can probably be seen as analogous to a brush or any traditional artist's tool. A tool like this could, conceivably, help artists achieve breakthroughs of the same magnitude as the discovery of perspective, or the conceptual leaps of modernism. But put that tool into the hands of people who aren't artists - say, the hands of a CEO who wants to cut costs on the latest product of the content assembly line - and I'm afraid I have to say that the result will only cheapen the art. It could be visually indistinguishable from the most beautiful human artwork I have ever seen, and it won't be worth remembering. It will have value only as a commodity.

When I think of some of my favorite works of art, music, or writing, I reflect on how what makes them my favorite is not simply that I appreciate the shape of a line, the resonance of a harmony, or the word order of a sentence. What makes the experience of engaging with these things meaningful to me is not just that they exist, but that they represent the attempt of a real human being, just like me, to communicate with other human beings just like me. What use is art without artistry?

The joy that makes art worthwhile, even art that was produced for commercial purpose, is the knowledge that it wasn't just produced for commercial purposes. It's not enough that the thing was made because the maker believed some one would buy it, but that they felt in their own soul that they could reach that person in a way that had nothing to do with money. If I can't believe that about an artwork, then I can't care about it the same way as the works I truly love. It has to be more than something to consume, at the cheapest prices available.

I don't think it can be denied that AI will change our relationship with media, or challenge some core assumptions we have about creativity. The real question is, what are human beings (and the truly sentient AI of the future) going to do about "art?"

[literaticat]

Hi, Jenn! I don’t know how to phrase this without seeming arrogant or whiny, but I write a LOT. I feel like I would be a good candidate for IP work. I think I’m listed on my agency’s site as being open to IP, but how does that actually happen? Should I push the IP idea with my agent? Do I need to reach out myself?

It doesn't sound arrogant or whiny, it just sounds like a fact. You write a lot and think you would be a good candidate for IP work. Fair enough!

In my experience that usually happens in one of two ways:

-- An editor approaches me about a specific published author I rep. Like, they are looking for somebody who is already published or "known" in some way -- like, "Because Maggie Tokuda-Hall is known for her YA sapphic mermaid fantasy, would Maggie be interested in writing a gay YA romance between Aquaman and Namor set in the baroque underwater world of Atlantis?" -- they might then want Maggie to write a little sample, or they might consider her already-published work to be sample enough, either way, the point is, they are coming to me in this example BECAUSE SHE'S MAGGIE, they aren't looking for some random other person. IF she doesn't want to do it, they'd choose somebody else, but it would likely also be somebody who has something of a name.

-- An editor approaches me (or the agency as a whole) and says something like, "Hey, we are looking to do an IP series about a diverse team of junior league Pickleball players -- think "MG League of Their Own but for Pickleball" -- let me know if you have any authors who do voicey and heartfelt MG that have an interest in pickleball!" And then we give them some names of some potential candidates who do contemporary MG and play pickleball (or whatever), who might "audition" by writing a sample. In this case, they aren't going for a specific author, they'd likely be open to newer authors, though it would have to be somebody who fits whatever demographic (in this case, sports-loving, does voicey contemporary MG), and is good at writing quickly and to a specific kind of brief.

The problem of course is, if you aren't already somewhat well-known/well-published, the first one probably isn't going to happen. The second one might! Though of course, we can't control how often these opportunities come up, OR if you'd necessarily be the appropriate choice for every opportunity. Like, if it was about a group of teenage Mexican-American pickleball players, they might want a Mexican-American sporty YA author. If it was a ghostwriting gig for a Picture Book by a specific Chinese-American pickleball child prodigy, they'd want a PB author who is into sports and is Chinese-American. You get the picture.

So while we probably have a handful of these kinds of IP / ghostwriting type opportunities come in every month, they are usually targeted in such a way that a fairly narrow swath of our possible authors would be appropriate.

ALSO: Some editors have databases of possible IP writers and agents who rep them, and are happy to add to those databases. Even if they don't have any projects cooking RIGHT NOW, your agent can reach out to editors who do a lot of IP and say, hey, I have this great person, please think of them if something appropriate comes up. This just makes it more likely that an editor will reach out to your agent when they DO have something.

So I don't think it would hurt to remind your agent: "Hey, just putting it out in the universe that I'm very keen to be considered for IP opportunities, if you hear about something that would be good for me, please throw my hat in the ring! I'd be especially interested in: [XYZ]. And feel free to be kind of specific here if you like, giving both appropriate categories (MG series? YA? PB? Chapter Books? GN texts? etc) and fave genre/style/topics (fantasy? romance? contemporary? sports stories? animal stories?) and, if applicable, any possibly relevant cultural / pop-cultural / demographic components that might come into play (I am LGBTQIA, I'm into theatre, I'm a Blasian comic book nerd and obsessed with all things Wakanda, I'm a horse person, I'm into martial arts and baking, whatever)

In other words, don't say EVERYTHING, nobody is good at and interested in EVERYTHING, and if you are being a little specific with some key words, that will help you stand out from the crowd when an editor is looking for something specific. (Like, if they are looking for a writer for a MG superhero project, they are unlikely to notice EVERY author who just puts "MG" -- but WILL notice somebody who has MG + superhero, or MG + Marvel, or MG + comic book nerd, yanno?) Yes, that WILL leave you out of some potential opportunities -- but if you're a MG/YA person, you probably wouldn't be the best fit for a PB or whatever anyway -- and IMO, it's much better all around to get an IP project that really is a fit for you, rather than just taking a flyer on something that isn't in your wheelhouse. Once you have some under your belt, and you've proven that you're reliable and good, people will think of you for further ones, too.

[obsessivelollipoplalala]

Did Roger basically claim that Jim's book was written for money? Or did I dream that? He was quite derogatory about it IIRC.

You didn't dream that. It's a Spanish interview from like 2011 where the interviewer asked if Jim and Barbara were going to be in the film, which was back in production hell at that time. Roger said Barbara was a bad influence, and while Jim was a good man, what Roger didn't like was that Jim wrote the book with a member of the press and, "They did it for the money" (and then people tried to act like Roger was using the gender neutral "they", as if that was a common thing in English over a decade ago, and it's non-existent in Spanish, the language the article was written in lmao).

And everyone just glossed over it or justified it, because no one likes to think Roger is capable of ever doing something wrong in this weird ass fandom. But I don't care anymore lol so I'll briefly say what I said back then: 1.) Jim was not a writer and it's understandable why he'd need a ghostwriter to help organize his thoughts, and indeed, Queen books that did not have some professional help are often difficult to read. 2.) It was likely a lot easier to get the book published with the help of a professional journalist. 3.) That journalist actually wrote a preface to the book after Jim died which, to my recollection, was perfectly respectable. 4.) Sooo how was Jim supposed to tell his story without professional publication, and how would money not be involved in that? Publishers require money be made, that's how the world works. 5.) There was nothing actually scandalous in the book, which Roger would've known if he'd read it.

Now onto the Roger stuff which people don't want to hear: It's so disrespectful to assume the worst intentions of your dead best friend's widower like that, and remember that by that point, Jim was dead too and couldn't defend himself anymore, so getting in a little dig like that is just shitty. Why do it? Why look at a man who you just said was good and assume malice for.......writing a book? I remember people being like, "Well that's because Roger hates the press!" Yeah, as if Jim didn't also deal with the press tearing the man he loved apart. It's just such a knee-jerk, immature thing to be like "idc, fuck the press!" in response to someone in that situation. Jim telling his story and not letting himself be erased from the narrative was more important than Roger's feelings about the press (and it's not like Roger has literally ever talked about the homophobia involved in the press' treatment of Freddie, anyway, so maybe he could be quiet and let the gay man publish his "I love my husband" book). It's also sad to think of Jim thanking Roger in the acknowledgments of the book (Jim thanked sooo many people) and then decades later, Roger was like, "Nah, he just wanted money" (and as if that isn't the most common, bad faith accusation thrown at Jim for writing the book...). Jim really got such little respect after Freddie died, it's truly a shame.

It's also such a bad look for Roger to have trashed Jim's book and his intentions while praising Ratty's book, which is filled with bigotry against women, gay people, and trans people, and I know damn well that's a big reason why a lot of Roger simps die on the hill of defending that book, because god forbid their fave do something shitty. Give me a break. It was completely unnecessary to make a public dig at Jim after he died and it's unempathetic at best to have that take on the book.

[abalonetea]

Hi, question: how can you manage to write 10k words per day? How much time does it take?

I write 1k in an hour and I feel my brain being fried in the process... In 15 years I think the maximum words I've written is 2000 in a day, so to me you are really impressive!

Hi! Honestly, it's just because I do ghostwriting for a living, so it functions as my 8-4 job.

On average, I can do 10k words for work in 6 hours, and I can do it in 8 hours on a bad day, and 5 hours on a good day. The most I've written in a single day is 26k words and it nearly killed me, tbh, I never want to do that sort of word count in a single day again.

Keeping a running word count on tumblr helps motivate me a lot, and so does making sure you aren't hungry, thirsty, too hot, or too cold. Make yourself comfortable, and find somewhere that is JUST for work.

For example, I do my work-writing at a desk in my room, and my personal writing in Everywhere Else (usually the living room). The desk is ONLY for work-writing, which means it helps get me in that kind of head space.

Also, plan out your writing the day before. For example, I'll figure out the night before whether I'm working on Project A or Project B, how far into it I'm going to try and get, and what the vague idea for the scene is going to be.

An example would be...

decide to write for Fantasy Story A

decide to do 5k words for Fantasy Story A

decide that it will be split between scenes one and two

decide that scene one will cover the Bar Fight and scene two the 'soft meeting' afterwards

That way, you don't sit down to write and have to waste time figuring out what you're going to put on the paper.

Another tip for large word count sessions is to figure out your start point/end point. So, I often do ghostwriting based off of outlines.

If the outline has one sentence for four chapters and I need to get the story to 10k words, I will write the full outline how I feel the pacing should be. Then, once I've hit the end of the outline and the story is completed, I scroll back to the top and add any remaining word count into it.

So, I'll write four chapters at 2k words (or close to it) each, and then start at the beginning to add in scattered sentences to make up that last round of 2k words!

[mediaevalmusereads]

Born a Crime. By Trevor Noah. Spiegel and Grau, 2016.

Rating: 4.5/5 stars

Genre: memoir

Series: N/A

Summary: The memoir of one man’s coming-of-age, set during the twilight of apartheid and the tumultuous days of freedom that followed.

Trevor Noah’s unlikely path from apartheid South Africa to the desk of The Daily Show began with a criminal act: his birth. Trevor was born to a white Swiss father and a black Xhosa mother at a time when such a union was punishable by five years in prison. Living proof of his parents’ indiscretion, Trevor was kept mostly indoors for the earliest years of his life, bound by the extreme and often absurd measures his mother took to hide him from a government that could, at any moment, steal him away. Finally liberated by the end of South Africa’s tyrannical white rule, Trevor and his mother set forth on a grand adventure, living openly and freely and embracing the opportunities won by a centuries-long struggle.

Born a Crime is the story of a mischievous young boy who grows into a restless young man as he struggles to find himself in a world where he was never supposed to exist. It is also the story of that young man’s relationship with his fearless, rebellious, and fervently religious mother—his teammate, a woman determined to save her son from the cycle of poverty, violence, and abuse that would ultimately threaten her own life.

***Full review below.***

CONTENT WARNINGS: descriptions of violence, racism, colonialism, misogyny, domestic violence, corporal punishment, animal abuse, alcoholism

This book has been on my TBR for a while, and I finally got around to picking it up. I watched Trevor Noah on the Daily Show from time to time, but I've never been an avid viewer. Nevertheless, his story intrigued me, and he had always been pretty open about his childhood in South Africa, so I figured I'd check out his memoir.

Overall, I found this to be an incredibly moving and insightful work. Part of what makes it so compelling is the juxtaposition between the big picture, political/historical facts and the individual lived experiences that Noah describes. Noah will talk about how the law worked in apartheid South Africa, but then paint a much more complex picture; for example, black and white people were officially banned from mixing and racism strove to keep races apart, but Noah describes integrated parties, the effects of language, proximity to whiteness, and other things that portray reality as much more nuanced. I found this big picture/individual picture pairing to be especially memorable because it reminds the reader that beneath all the policy and prohibitions, there are people who behave as people are wont to do.

I also really liked that this memoir was as much about Noah's mother as it was about Noah himself. Noah portrays him and his mother as a kind of team, always fighting but always respecting one another, all while trying to navigate apartheid and its aftermath. Though some of the descriptions of beatings may shock some readers, it's very clear that Noah adores his mom and understands how she was shaped by the world around her (without trying to make excuses or portray her as a victim - she very clearly would not want that).

This book is also written very accessibly in that the sentences flow together well, humor is balanced with more serious moments, sentences vary in length to create a rhythm that matches the content. I don't know whether or not Noah used a ghostwriter; some passages very much feel like his voice (based on what I know from his stand up and unscripted Daily Show segments), but he does thank someone in the acknowledgments who could have had a hand in getting all the words down. Regardless, I think the writing does a good job balancing anecdotes with big picture I sights without sounding like an essay, so a lot of readers will find the book easy to navigate and immerse in.

If I had any criticism, I would say that I think the memoir ends a little abruptly, but that might be a personal preference as opposed to something "objectively bad." I like books to have a conclusion or afterward that ties everything together, but that's 100% my preference and not at all a requirement for any memoir or nonficton.

TL;DR: Born a Crime is a powerful memoir that offers not just entertaining stories from Noah's childhood, but insight into human nature and social dynamics during apartheid (and post-apartheid) South Africa. While I wouldn't recommend it for people who want to go in expecting something akin to the Daily Show or Noah's stand up, the stories are a compelling mix of humor and seriousness, reminding us that despite all the pain in the world, one can still find meaning in the relationships one makes.

[sometimesrosy]

Hello! Do you happen to know any prompt generators? I'm trying to write my main project but have been feeling blocked. Some authors actually say they immediately switch to another project when they start feeling "weird", for a few hours or for the whole day, and then they can come back to their main project with no block at all. I have all the characters and relationships and a part of the plot for the side project but am missing a main plot. So I'm gathering ideas! Thank you!

Hmm. I don't use plot generators because I think I have been randomly picking tropes to move me forward. Oh and I am DEFINITELY using tropes when I ghostwrite. I'm just like, what will happen here? And maybe the client gives me some tropes and maybe I just throw in my own.

Let me put a search into pinterest. I didn't find any in my own pins but there's this from Reedsy:

This one kept popping up. A lot of people seem to like it.

This one has whole bunches of plot generators from characters to worldbuilding to genre specific that you can choose from. Although the one I looked at didn't work. That might just be my internet though.

I actually love using prompts. Because there is no limit to what can happen in a novel, and that can be overwhelming. So to take the challenge of a prompt no longer means that you are struggling to know what to DO, but instead, working to figure out how to fit that prompt into your story.

BUT the reason why I don't use prompt generators for my own work generally is that I want my plot to be guided by my characters needs and goals and flaws and strengths. And while I can often figure out how to do that with generators, it can also take me off track and get me distracted by fun tropes and, like, side quests which don't directly relate to what I'm trying to write.

So how to get the main plot you need?

FIRST you need to figure out what your character's GOAL is. There might be an external goal-- to save the kingdom or get the shipment to the other side of the galaxy without the empire finding out, or to get your crush to fall in love with you, or to solve the murder or escape the murderer or WHATEVER. But there should also be an INTERNAL GOAL. What motivates your main character/s? Is it to find belonging in a family? Is it to make peace with a tragic past? Is it to learn how to love themself? Is it to become strong so no one can hurt you again?

The KEY is to entwine that external goal into the internal goal. The external goal COULD be the antithesis of the internal goal, that would cause a lot of tension. Or it could work with the internal goal. Maybe the heroine's goal of becoming a rock star is going to destroy her inner goal of finding love and acceptance. Or maybe the heroine's goal of learning to become a powerful magic user supports her interior goal of no longer feeling like the weak, powerless orphan. Or not, maybe she thinks it is but really what she needs is to protect others? WHO KNOWS?! That's the fun part actually. Trying to figure out what the characters NEED in order to fulfill the promise of all their struggles.

I guess that's why I don't use prompt generators. Because I want the goals to fulfill the character promises. And yeah I can click a generator enough times to find a prompt that could work. Yeah. That would work. OH, I remember when I was writing fanfic, I would ask people for prompts, and then I would make a list of all the prompts and would CHOOSE the ones that would best fit the story I wanted to tell. SO it wasn't totally random.

As for getting stuck... getting stuck is part of writing. That doesn't mean you need to abandon your story, but it DOES probably mean that there's something you need to address that's not working. The tricky part is figuring out WHAT'S not working. It might very well be something in the story, and if that's the case, you need to go back in your story and figure out WHERE you went off track. If you kept pushing, it might be sentences, paragraphs or even CHAPTERS back. If you are sensitive to that "something's wrong here" feeling, you can start catching it much sooner.

Sometimes you're not stuck because of the story. Sometimes you're stuck because of fear or self esteem or exhaustion or you're disorganized and confused or who knows? Figuring out why you're stuck is one of the challenges of writing.

Good luck and happy writing.

[sometimesrosy]

Hey Rosy, hope everything's well! I would be great if I wasn't so frustrated with I don't know what. I've bought my writing computer. I have read in it as well, but I've been writing two days in a row now. It feels weird because, this time, I'm not having a super urge to write. On the contrary, I'm writing so little and I just don't feel the inspiration coming... I'm writing a relatively new story to my head. Should I grab an old one? Why am I not excited? Sorry for bothering...

Ahh yes I see.

You've come upon the little writer's secret that we all struggle with. And here it is.

The biggest obstacle to writing is not your set up, it's not your time, it's not your day job or your kids or your education or your health or your computer or your outline or your story.

No.

In fact, the biggest obstacle to writing is you.

Always.

The writer stands in the way of getting the words on the page, because if you really want to write then you can find a way to get through all the other problems, as you did, finding the right computers that is working.

You are feeling discouraged because you're not EXCITED about writing and you don't feel inspiration and you're slowing down and considering writing something else.

This is a trick courtesy of your brain. You removed the writing obstacles and now your brain is like, "meh, I'm not inspired."

Tell your brain to shut up and sit down infront of that writing computer and get to work.

Writing a book is not all fun and games. Sometimes it's a drudge. If you want to be the kind of writer who puts your stories away when they're not fun, go ahead, but you won't finish your book. It will always get boring. At some point.

What you need to do now is sit down and WORK at it. You need to commit to getting it done. If you're not excited about writing it, fine. Do it anyway. Set yourself a certain time for writing and write for the entire time. Or set yourself a certain word count and you GET THAT WORD COUNT DOWN. You keep writing until you get excited again.

Sometimes I'm not "into" a story, like when I'm ghostwriting. Baby, those aren't even my stories. They're pretty meaningless and just popcorn. Does it MATTER if they don't excite me? Nope. I've got a deadline. Sometimes, in order to get INTO the story, into the mindset, I'll go through the pinterest board I made for the book, or search for a setting or outfit or menu that I'm writing about. Often, that kind of warmup will get me back into the story enough to know where to start again and as I write, I get invested in the writing again.

Or maybe you need an exercise. Perhaps an interview with your main character to find out their motivations. Or your villain.

Or maybe you need to read back over your work... go back over what you wrote yesterday or the last chapter and read it. Fix it where it isn't working and go from there. Or even realize that you went off track somewhere, find where you're offtrack and cut it and go from there. Sometimes writer's block is actually about going off track. If there's something wrong with your story, your subconscious sometimes protests and refuses to go any farther, like a tantrumming toddler.

Figuring out what's wrong with your story and why you are having trouble moving forward is something you need to work out.

But don't let those little voices con you into not writing. That's the fear speaking.

KEEP GOING!!!

[sometimesrosy]

If you're ever feeling up to it, I think it'd be interesting to see you 'talk through' your process in how you research something specific for a book like that. Like what sources do you use, how do you narrow your search, if it's scientific in nature do you consult someone? I always get so overwhelmed by the idea of researching for my writing. But for this ask, something lighter: what tropes do you enjoy writing? (And, what tropes do you avoid writing, if you want to answer the reverse as well.)

My research process. Hmm. I think it's different every time. This is going to be long.

A lot of the time it's just your general google search. But I have a tendency to allow myself to follow my curiosity.

I have a character whose company makes polymers and I realized I didn't know what the heck a polymer was. It just sounds vaguely techy and industrially. I right now still have a tab open on a company that makes polymers (for construction i think) and I will probably leave that tab open until I decide I don't need it, I have internalized the information, or I actually use it in the book. This is for the ghost writing, whose time line is very condensed. I wouldn't really leave a tab open for my own work, I'd save it to my "to write..." book board on pinterest. If I can. If I can't save it, if there are no images and I really want that information, I'll write it out long hand into a commonplace book I have. It's just a notebook, but I keep it around and store info I want for later, of all types.

I have a filofax with book tabs, but to be honest, I don't use it. I have some info for a planned third book in my urban fantasy (book 1 is done, book 2 is first draft) and I will definitely go back to that when I need it. I saved it maybe 8-10 years ago, since I switched over to writing science fiction again. And at some point, I started keeping some of that research in my Scrivener files.

You would think that writing something in a book and leaving it would be bad writing practice, but let me tell you, I am so thankful to past me for writing down things like the composition of the moons in the solar system and their chances of being able to support a colony. Because I've forgotten all that info, and I don't want to research it again.

Especially when it's techy stuff having to do with numbers or composition, not just feelings or impressions, I need to write that stuff down. Store it somewhere. I won't remember it.

When I am actively writing, I often need to have the characters names and the place names written down somewhere visible. Either an open notebook or (lately) a white board. Especially with the ghostwriting when I'm writing so many characters I don't remember anyone's name.

OH. And things I've learned that I need to write down. This lesson came from BOTH ghostwriting AND getting back to old books that I'd put aside.

I need to have a character list, with all the physical attributes as well as personality, relationships, important events, their backstory, etc. For sff I add stuff like their powers or tropes or whatever. When I write romance, listen to me. Write down the PARTICULAR color of their eyes. Not just blue, but glacier blue or summer sky blue or pale as ice or whatever. Eyes are important in romance tropes. ALSO write down what they smell like. Don't change that according to your mood. It's part of their romance character AND part of what happens when the LI gets close to them. It's about the feelings the LI has as well as the character.

For all novels, I keep a list of the settings. I use sketches, outlines, maps. Floor plans of houses or spaceships. This is where I need to know where the habitable moons and planets are, what kind of space stations there are, the distance of things and how they get there, the style of interiors-- which also help with characterization. My pinterest boards fill up with movie sets and specs, resort sites, scifi art, real estate listings. It helps me see where the characters are and write them clearly moving through space as well as setting up mood and characterization. Like, one group of people is casual and easy going-- it's reflected in their space. Another group has a dark history. Gloomy space. One is total high tech and sciencey. Clean lines, cool tech.

One thing I've had to do for my Space Opera, which is set, like two hundred years in the future, is create a glossary. Because they have slang words that we don't use. They have tech we don't have. They live in spaceships. What are the terms that they use for the parts of their ship? Is it a door? A portal? A gate? Hatch? Entry? I need to pick a word and stick with it, even though they're all synonyms. Choosing the vernacular helps, again, with characterization, as well as story, and creating a complex universe that seems real.

Keeping an outline helps to wrangle all that difficult research. I keep my ghostwriting outline on google docs so the client can share it. It's also good because you can reach it from any computer. And now you can keep it organized with subtitles, and it will give you an outline of your outline in the margin of the doc. I keep my SFF outlines in Scrivener, and to be honest, I think I like the simplicity of google doc better. Scrivener can be overwhelming.

For a series, I keep a separate outline with all the characters and major settings and events AND A TIMELINE. (This has become a necessity with the more complex series, and I started doing it from the beginning, instead of trying to keep when things happened in my head the whole time.) The timeline has pre-book events as well as book/series events. So I can follow everything.

But it's also where I keep any of the major research I want immediately at my fingers.

When I have tough scenes that need a lot of research, I put the vague info into my book outline. Any of my pre-writing research goes on pinterest and/or the series outline. When I get to the scene in the book, I go to the saved sites/research and pull out what I need. This is when I'll open it all up in my computer, leave a zillion tabs up, so I can double check on the things. Or search deeper. Then when I finish the scene, I close all those tabs.

For those scenes I mentioned before, like the plane crash? I wanted a first person account of that. I wanted to know what it FELT like, what they saw and the choices they made, not necessarily a technical explanation of what happened. That can be hard to find, so I will often spend a while googling to find that. I'm like that with a lot of action scenes. What is it like to fight? (I never have.) What happens when a hurricane floods your yard? (IDK) What does space smell like??? (metallic if I recall my research.)

I like pinterest because you can just pop things on there whenever you like and going over your pinboards can then serve as inspiration and mood setting.

I am surprised that a lot of my talk about research actually ended up being about outlines. But then, if you know more about the world and characters and actions of the story, then you need less actual "this scene comes next and this is what happens in it," because your research will help you create a world that you can live in vicariously through your characters. And then it's just, like, well, what happens next? Next he saves himself from flying into a mountain and lands shaking in a field in south america. (hurry research which south american creature's bite is poisonous enough to disable but not poisonous enough to kill. [now research the medical treatment for that.{now research south american villages and where they could stay how about a cafe so they can have a romantic interlude and what kind of music is playing?}])

The research for that plane would be, before hand, to find out if it is actually possible, then I don't worry about it until I get closer to the scene, and find out what kind of plane they're flying and what would cause that plane to crash. THEN I get to details. Will the plane land in intact? Find a photo. Oh, now I see there's a wing they can shelter under. Okay now move on to the next part of the story. I know they're going into the jungle, but what happens there? More research.

Little bits at a time once I get the main set up, honestly. You don't need to know everything all at once. Trust yourself that you'll figure out what comes next.

Google is always there waiting for you