#ScribesAndMakers 2025.05.02 — If you paint, do you have “recipes” or tricks for mixing colors, or do you eyeball it?

I paint with light. My two main recipes is to recognize bright colors on a dim background (which will render black in posts) or to recognize contrasting colors that will render a bright foreground (orange, purple, yellow, white) against a contrasting background (usually blue, brown, or green). Though it's a bit harder, I try to imagine the scene as bright against dark, as monochrome. This renders as either painterly (low contrast) or blown out (solarized). I do these things instinctively without having to raise the camera. Lots can be fixed in post.

Technique described in #altText.

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#ScribesAndMakers 2504.30 — How did it go? Were you able to work on the things you wanted to?

Pretty well. I did a full pass revising all 31 chapters. I could still do a little in-writing (additional composition) in lean areas, though I worry about padding out in some places what is also a sinewing gracefulness.

I did work on the things I wanted to, but true to form adding in the epilogue (aka Chapter 32), which includes a female character asserting her womanhood, I'm sticking on what is appropriate and what might be over-the-top. Same old same old. Grrr(l).

Observation: I work BEST with deadlines. If I absolutely must get the chapter done by midnight, I almost always get it done. In March, I missed the deadline 4 out of 31 times, and wrote two chapters the next day without fail. I REALLY need to think about this!

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#ScribesAndMakers 2504.29 — What is your proudest or best moment with your creative endeavor this month?

No exact best moment. But I proud of myself that, despite 11 days of COVID, I did plow through most of the revisions to Mars Needed Women, expanding the rather terse alpha version that I posted and later deleted from Mastodon. It has gone from 23K to 38K, adding 16K more words. This does include a glossary, map, and an essay of the meaning of all the chapter titles, all of which have significance to the women's rights movement and gender equality. It also includes most of an epilogue… which I would be writing if I weren't procrastinating by writing this!

I had hoped to send a copy to my beta readers tomorrow, but I'm going to take a holiday. Probably by Friday.

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#ScribesAndMakers 2504.21 — Do you create for a certain niche or do you hope to have as broad an appeal as possible?

"Creating for" and "generally writing in" are two different things. I have an aversion to heavily researching things (bore-ing), which means I can't write historical, detective, military, modern settings, or hard sf. Too many things I can get wrong, and will! A story for me always needs be set in a place and time where I, as was once said so eloquently, "…We will control the horizontal. We will control the vertical…"

This generally means I'm writing soft or social SF or I am writing fantasy that had more in kin with Theodore Sturgeon than Tolkien. If you can say I write to a particular niche, my stories will appeal to readers who enjoy female protagonists and feminist messages where the effect of gender roles play an important role. I don't consider that to be a "broad" appeal, but I think my writing ought appeal to SF and Fantasy readers, though maybe not hard SF fans.

As for my photography, I go for eye contact, dramatic color, and/or stateliness. I have no idea whether any of it is appealing. What do you think of the attached picture?

As for my cooking creations, I appeal to an audience of one, though sometimes two. My spouse approves. Check out my media tab on my profile for photos.

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#ScribesAndMakers 2504.20 — Is there a movie that inspires your creative work?

Not in general, but I did write a very emotionally difficult story after watching The Edge of Tommorrow: Live, Die, Repeat, based on a manga, and if you are well read in SF you'll know its not an original plot devise either, but the movie is extremely well done Hollywood SF, possibly one of the best for sticking to the SF premise and not mucking it up to dumb it down or make it more artistic.

Anyway. I wrote a story about a teenage girl (maybe 13) who could literally cut off her past with scissors and relive it, and does so repeatedly to save lives, and shows evidence of PTSD when explaining it to her friend. It might have been titled, Cuts Deeply. The story was well received. I have an idea for a more epic version of the story, which I may write at a later date.

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#ScribesAndMakers 2504.17 — Marketing can be difficult. As a reader/viewer, what catches your interest and makes you want to buy? CW: The opinions are solely those of the author and don't reflect those of any marketeer or designer.

I am a golden retriever. Movement and color catch my eye. Squirrel!

I am also like a crow. What is the shiny thing??? Must. Have. It.

I am a baby. I've not seen that thing. Stare…

Recently, it's been authors writing about their work or their books that have made me buy. I like seeing the self-promotions, if they don't come at me like spam (or look like it). Thusly has mastodon marketed your books! I can't say whether I'm typical or whether I'm unique, but there you go.

If I'm browsing without aim in the bookstore, cover art and title play equally big roles. Your presentation doesn't have to be like all the others. I like the imaginative, the primitive, the abstract, and the non sequitur as much as I like the interesting hunk or princess on the cover doing the outrageous thing they're not supposed to be doing. A bit of abstract art on a shelf or the beautiful people will catch my eye. A puzzler title, or one of innuendo or doble-sentido, or stating the obvious forcefully will get me to think, though. Combined with the art, they will make me pick it up.

Not helpful, I know. No secret sauce recipes here. However…

AI art will cause me to place the book pages-forward, or hide it from view behind other books. Won't buy it! No I won't. If the publisher cheaps out, I'm assuming the author did, too.

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#ScribesAndMakers 2504.16 — What one thing would you tell your older or younger creative self if you could time travel?

The agent said don't write in 1st person. Ignore that commandment.

You sold the novel. Write the sequel now. While the day job is important, opportunity has a limited lifespan, as do editors who like your stories.

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#ScribesAndMakers 2504.14 — Would you enjoy living in a creative village/house/shared accommodation? Or do you already?

The question did not ask if I had enjoyed living in a creative space (past tense).

I did.

I attended the Clarion Writers Workshop (Clarion West). It's for Speculative, SF, Fantasy, and (I think) Horror Genre writing. It's for professionals or professional wannabes. You have to submit work to qualify.

It was literally (pun intended) the best six weeks of my life as an author.

Don't get me wrong, selling is fabulous, but the feeling lasts only a moment (like sex). The sense of community and actually living the life of an author while attending the workshop cannot be beat.

We lived together (except for a few locals) in the dorms of a college in downtown Seattle, cooked together, used the showers together, had our own floor to ourselves. We spent many hours in the common areas gabbing and blue-skying. Mostly, however, we wrote.

Then read what others wrote.

Then critiqued. Learned how to do that well, learned how to anticipate certain critiques from specific authors and to fix our stuff (assuming we thought we need to), learned how to have a hard shell by accepting criticism that helped us, and rejecting what didn't. Largely, we also helped each other through our fears.

Week days we had a guest lecturer who was a professional writer or editor. One day a week, we attended readings, usually at Powell's, by a local writer, though once at an author's place (I think that was for Octavia Butler).

The feeling of community and support was amazing. One time I wrote a 15,000 word novella in 15 hours for critique the next day. That was my max output per hour or per day ever.

I never felt burnt out. Those six weeks seemed to compact six months of life into a short span. When I returned home, I barely recognized my surroundings or old life. Ask my spouse!

Highly Recommended

PS: After reading other responses I want to qualify that I am cripplingly shy, introverted, and write fiction that doesn't go much with my persona. Nobody knew my gender despite an enormous email thread until I arrived, and I got the nickname Ambiguous Spice (and Oblivious Spice) for a reason. I warmed quickly because these were people like me. Kinda weird, some introverted, some extroverted. All in love with words and stories. I warmed up quickly.

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#ScribesAndMakers 2504.12 — Shameless self-promotion day. Show us what you're proud of. Let's boost away.

Mars Need Women is a hopeful yet deeply dystopian feminist SF web-novel that leans heavily into Women's right's issues thanks to a set of writing prompts on the subject. It is a woman-centric adventure story of overcoming adversity while being female, with all the warts and frustrations, not as a man in disguise.

Our wannabe engineer heroine May Ri escapes a disheartening life, faced with becoming little more than a housewife because she lacks "blessings," to help colonize Mars—if you can call being shanghaied escaping and being contracted to have children a benefit. (She does get to choose the gorgeous supportive guy, though, so that's a positive.) As she learns to make martian machines, she keeps putting herself at the center of a global martian dust storm with her children as power shifts from being male-dominated. As the daughters of the Martian immigrants increasingly control Mars' future (how is spoilers), May Ri together with her five daughters shape a world (Mars) the way unfettered women might imagine it.

When the men of Earth take affront—of course they do—they learn that women don't fight like men, especially when their children's lives are threatened, and their wellbeing is at stake. #RSMarsNeededWomen

It remains free-to-read on Mastodon for a few more days:

https://eldritch.cafe/@sfwrtr/114088945266387178.

If you start reading it now, a comment or a private mention will tell me not to delete the posts until the end of next week. I consider it a beta read. I'm already revising an augmenting the original story, tying up loose ends, and might add more chapters along the path to publishing it as a book. Meanwhile, I'm going to start boosting chapters for a last hurrah.

See #alttext for book cover description.

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#ScribesAndMakers 2504.10 2/2 — Show us a book cover you like. What makes it special?

Well, I like the cover I mocked up for my web-novel. What makes it special other than I did all the work? It sets the tone for what isn't seen in the story since most of the scenes either occur inside domes on Mars or inside an arcology on Earth. There's a lack of contrast between living on Mars and Earth.

The image is from Jezero crater. When the protagonist's eldest daughter finishes training 2,000 young people her age to wear Mars suits, in celebration, she asks to visit in a scene late in the book because it's so "famous."

The Mars globe in a Triskelion is the tattoo all the Mars contract colonists imported from Earth wear on their right forearm.

I like the overall effect of the image and the metallic wire lettering, with the tiny bit of asymmetry, as it evokes a sense of quiet desolation. With a very thin atmosphere, Mars is often very quiet and I see the cover as contemplative.

Not sure whether a publisher's marketing department would think it would sell the book, however.

More in #AltText

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#ScribesAndMakers 2504.09 — Are or were you taking courses for your creative activities?

Are? No.

Were?

1. I took a writing seminar a very long time ago run by Theodore Sturgeon. I really really REALLY wish I remembered ANYTHING about that other than it was him, he was nice, and it was at Antioch.
2. After writing a couple of novels and short stories, when I was attending UCLA, I decided to sign up for a creative writing course. Seemed like a slam-dunk. I remember it was in Royce Hall. After I turned in an SF short-story, the instructor informed me that it wasn't a "Christian" story, and that's all we were allowed to write. I dropped the course.
3. I attended Clarion West, a six-week live-in intensive writing and critiquing course. You have to already be a writer, and you must provide samples. It's hosted by six professional writers or editors, each for a week. I learned that under pressure I could write freely and copiously. It's infamous for getting you out of your mundane world and isolating you in a community of writers in a very art-centric district of Seattle. I would 100% recommend that any SF, SFF, or Fantasy (possibly horror) writer who could take the course consider doing so. I admit the date I attended in my profile.

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#ScribesAndMakers 2504.08 — Share a song lyric you've written or heard that resonates with you. (Give credit if it's not your song.)

I'm not religious, but that doesn't mean that allegorical songs can't impress me. Allegory (incidentally as it were) by Murray Attaway is a strangely uplifting and mystical song that never fails to bring pictures to my mind and a sense of awe that brings me chills.

Coincidentally, or perchance not, the lyric snippet below inspired a chapter titled "Allegory" in Reluctant Moon. Thorn Rose takes her friend Streak outside the city to watch a meteor shower, knowing the precise time it will start. Seems the weather service had tracked the trajectory of a piece of the sky struck from the heavens.

I've included a listen link and a lyric link.

Lyrics: https://genius.com/Murray-attaway-allegory-lyrics
Listen: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wYVYSLS04Z0

Sudden move in the stars, whenever I look to the skies
I can get lost, stand in a mirror and know that I
Am a fragment of something greater than I
Specks of dust in a moonbeam gathering shape
And potent of greatness waiting to light

Even the wind in the trees is the allegory
Everything that is and ever will be is the allegory

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#ScribesAndMakers 2504.06 — Talk To Me Day. Featured creator: Lydia VVinters ( @HeliaXyana ) #TTMD

It's now April 6th in London, so here's my question:

I see a lot of imagery on your website (https://lydiavvinters.com). How to you characterize yourself as a creator? A poet? An Artist? What do you focus on?

Also, is your last name of your pen name intentionally a double-V so it looks like a W (double-U)?

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#ScribesAndMakers 2504.03 — Would you like to form a writers/creative group? Share what you're looking for to see if anyone would like to join you.

Me? Form one? Shy. Not likely.

Were I to join one, I would hope for one with a Clarion ethic towards critique, and one that's strictly limited to 1 or 2 pages per person. Can't be writing if'n I am critiquin'.

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#ScribesAndMakers 2504.02 — What do you want to work on this month?

1. Now that I've completed Mars Needed Women, I'm going to turn it into a book. I've already figured out how to create an ePub for my beta reader. The web version will disappear, so if you haven't gotten to it, you've got until about April 10th. So far, I've added material to almost all the chapters, and a glossary. Since it's only 25k, I am thinking of adding some writer's processes appendices. Since I was restricted to 5,000 words for each of the 31 chapters, 350 of which were hashtags, I had to practice samarai concision, becoming hyper focused on word choice, and ellipsis such that the words implied what needed to be said but couldn't be included. The prose is sometimes too sparse. I'm also correcting some science errors and fixing foreshadowing faux pas.
2. I am returning to writing Reluctant Moon.

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#ScribesAndMakers 2504.04 — Can you handle praise well, or do you get embarrassed and play your achievement down? CW: self-analysis

Oddly enough, this devolves to gender roles and the confusion an autistic can discover in any social illogic. As a child, I quickly evolved into a listener, observer, and a pleaser with my shyness providing me an escape route from any confrontative situation—things I worked on (had to!) as I became an adult. Wanting to be an author is not entirely compatible with these personality traits regardless of gender—there is a definite forwardness and egoist nuance to insisting on communicating one's ideas—and I couldn't rely on others to meditate for me.

I got praise growing up, especially when doing well in school. Then again, my mother had me convinced I'd die if I didn't bring home top marks. I mostly got to hide from praise. It's not that I don't, didn't, like it, but I could better process it unobserved and generally make it appropriately and comfortably undeserved. A pleaser can't accept being pleased well!

Yeah, I got help. If you've heard of EST, I did that.

Now my reaction to praise is a Venn diagram of who, what, and where. If it is online, where nobody has to see me physically react, I'm a lot more copacetic with it. In person, it can be uncomfortable. I can still find ways to minimize the input but as I get older I'm better at fairly assessing my abilities. I do remember having this one fan at conventions that would greet me. She really wanted a sequel. Maybe she sensed I was shy, I don't know. But I grew to like her reminder.

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#ScribesAndMakers ##TTMD @sfwrtr @Nisaa

I see you are coming back from burnout. Any tips on how to avoid it?

I did answer that one so be sure to search the #TTMD hashtag, but my best answer was to ensure you can communicate to someone with your writing, if communicating is what counts for you. Since 2015, I have had a fan fiction outlet that generates feedback and page view to which I can write. However, being able to write replies to all you folk on Mastodon is also good.

I’m excited to see you are publishing your book to Mastodon in chapters. What made you decide to publish it that way?

I found a set of 31 women's rights prompts for March. Since the card was in French, the month name read "Mars." An SF feminist idea popped into my head. I took up the challenge. The result is pretty good (says the author immodestly), likely commercial quality with careful revision after fixing some science mistakes. Sadly, I've burnt my 1st Publication Rights sale by publishing even temporarily online. I'm now busy revising and adding material, and think I can make a go of selling it, probably as a self-pub.

Wanna read the completed story? It should be available for the next week: Mars Needed Women: https://eldritch.cafe/@sfwrtr/114261812977623863

What’s a question you wish someone would ask you about your work?

How do you think Mars Needs Women does feminist lit differently?

I interpreted your question asking for a question as specifically for the web-novel, but it's applicable to my other works. How? By writing women embracing being female, but neither shamed nor accepting their fate. The story depicts women both as stuck in their role models thanks to their society, and redefining themselves and their roles when they seize the opportunity. The main character has to get married (but she does choose the gorgeous guy!) and has five daughters, but she's avoided the housewife trap on Earth as an engineer on Mars. Women are shown liking sex, nursing their infants in social situations, working on important projects, and convincing their husbands to assist in child care. Because the MC has a temper, she fights back when men in power interfere with the developing women's society. With the help of her daughters who become important side characters in the story, she finds cunning opportunities for the first generation of martian girls, and together they break open the patriarchal power structure that the conditions on Mars is causing to unravel.

PS: Sorry I took so long to answer. I was pretty messed up after the marathon compose, revise, publish grind during which I wasn't sleeping well.

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#ScribesAndMakers 2503.31 — How did it go? Any changes you want to make next month?

It went well. I also realized that I could only write one intense story at a time if I insisted on writing that story each day. Needless to say, the writing of both stories did not happen. Actually finishing a novel in a month (and though it's a novella in length it was a novel in scope) is mind expanding.

What's astounding though is that I tackled my Reluctance series writing demons in a microcosm. Demons-lite, let's say. The women characters in the work feel subversive. They're not as I feared, somehow unrealistic or men in disguise. Breaking the mold of patriarchy doesn't make women less female; it makes them less compliant… It's setting up the conditions to make that work that proves hard and my enculturation makes that so.

Next month? I don't think it's in the best interests of my health to drive myself so hard! If at 75K, the Reluctant Moon is half-written plot wise, I am setting a goal of writing the female MC's missing early chapters and bringing the story back to the present.

I also want to read an actual novel this month. Maybe I'll go out with my camera one day and only take pictures.

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#ScribesAndMakers 2503.29 — What is your proudest or best moment with your creative endeavor this month?

I finished writing my web-novel (#RSMarsNeededWomen) and, surprisingly, I think I ended it well.

That was 31 days of one chapter composed, revised, and published† per day. I really didn't know where I would go when I started (other than the blurb I wrote on day one), but each day I chose a prompt from a list and ran with it—or rather the characters ran with it. With six days to go, I knew I'd be killing off a character so sympathetic I almost couldn't do it. With four days to go, I was introducing new characters. With three days to go, I had no idea how to end the story, let alone with a climactic moment. Yet. I did. The characters asserted their humanity, and that they were women. For all its warts—and this story has plenty because I could not go back in revise, fix plot holes, or foreshadow—I'm rather proud of the result.

My announcement: https://eldritch.cafe/@sfwrtr/114261812977623863

† That was in addition to and in parallel with my Talk to Me Day appearance.

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