I'm the same way these days =/ I bruise like a pack of Skittles.

I hope you're feeling a little better now that you're out of the hospital. I can never sleep when I'm stuck in one.

Also works to the tune of 🎶Pink Pony Girl🎶

I like that everyone who reads those three words in a row thought of a name. We all have a cool butter friend.

Though it would've been funny if they'd looked out the window one day and saw a trans girl in a gryphon pride shirt walking a tabby cat dictating a GryphIns book to herself.

I think I accidentally gave myself away because they had general questions about the city but I answered one with "Oh god, no, don't go to that one. It's grocery jail. Just go five minutes down the road to..." which made them kinda go "wait, are you like RIGHT here right here??"

Ever since someone who loves the series happened to move into the neighborhood I feel like I should specify that while these posts are mostly a joke, they're also welcome to swing by. So far, they've scored popcorn, cheesecake, and a lot of other random goodies.

Instead of "said is dead" or "adverb = badverb," maybe we need a quippy saying about lie vs. lay errors to pass around.

Like it is completely normal to pick up a famous book on writing and go "this is useless" for most of it, "this is harmful and bad and outdated" for a quarter, but then that last 5% clicks into place and makes you much more effective. And baby writers haven't learned that yet.

And we never even got to "how to break what feels like a rule for effect or as part of your style and voice."

I used to say my creative writing degree was maybe 30% useful for being a fantasy author, but the percentage has shifted as I realize some new writers don't know how to learn.

And it gets tiring to talk about when adverbs make writing better, where you can improve a miserable scene by changing three pages of show into half a clause of tell, or just... everything around dialogue.

I wish podcasts and YouTube did this heavy lifting, but they don't =/

I just want to hug new writers, sit them down with a magical writing spirit who will answer all their questions, and let them experiment and learn without quippy sayings and bad advice.

I hate that genre fiction is not part of creative writing programs so there's no good resources anymore.

Of course, once you're a professional writer, WhisperSync enters that chat. But self-published authors are savvy and then give Audible a different audiobook than every other store and library.

But also, the rules on both sides there are just... the wrong framing entirely.

"A hundred audiobook listeners told me 'said' annoyed them, so I removed it, and a thousand ebook readers wrote me angry letters about how they had no idea who was talking in my books, so I put it back in... for just the print and ebook editions," as I think Martelle said?

Dialogue tagging doesn't seem to get taught at high school or early college levels, and if you're alone in a room with just your best friend reading, you don't know the general effect of said or untagged dialogue or the nuance. Or that your audio book can be tagged differently from print.

I sorta see how it starts. Baby writers don't know why vocabulary is important, so their verb use is iffy, and the adverb thing nudges them into learning more verbs and understanding the importance of connotation. But, of course, it's poison long term and they yell it at other writers.

I feel bad for baby writing groups. I never hear instructors or teachers parrot these rules, but somehow, writing groups get these weird myths about dialogue, adverbs, showing vs. telling, outlining, and writing every day, and they spread like gospel. Or maybe a virus.

It's good for the soul.

While I know it's a scientist origin story, it feels a little like the beginning of a superhero movie, too.

Aaaaaw