I'm Still Here

While you are worrying about whether beta readers will steal your ideas, there is a more genuine threat on the horizon.

When offered a publishing contract, please do all your research before you sign. There are a number of fakes and scammers out there, as well as good-intentioned amateurs that don’t know how to get your work to a wide audience. I won’t tell the heartbreaking stories here - there are too many.

Being published badly is worse than being never published.

It can destroy your career and your dreams.

The quick check is to google the publishing house name + scam or warning.

But, to be sure, check with these places first. They aren’t infallible (nothing is) but they can help you protect yourself. They are written and maintained by expereinced writers, editors, publishers and legal folks.

Absolute Write: Bewares and Background Checks

Preditors and editors

Writer Beware

and the WRITER BEWARE blog

Keep yourself and your work safe.

Equally important to know is that you can SELF-PUBLISH through a number of platforms these days. @ean-amhran and I used Amazon’s CreateSpace and Kindle Direct Publishing to publish both of our books. No editors, no contracts, no finagling with publishers who want to change your materials. Just direct-to-market material.

(Granted, it means you’ve got to do a LOT more work yourself with editing and formatting and cover art, but it’s worth it to miss the headache of trying to bargain with publishing houses or avoid scams.)

It lays out how to neatly format an e-book in a wonderful step by step format, and you can get it free from Smashwords. Just leave off the couple of things that are (very obviously) Smashwords specific.

Writer Beware is a wonderful resource, and I highly recommend it. It’s both a good general guide to the scams people run/red flags to watch out for (such as giving up your copyright entirely as opposed to specific rights, or being charged to publish something or have it edited, when they’re trying to act like they’re a “normal” publisher), and a frequently-updated list of the latest specific known scammers, both in “fake agents” and fake/scammy publishers categories. (The company formerly known as Publish America is one of the most famous and egregious cases, but by far not the only one)

Also related to agents: Should you go this route and seek one, DO NOT PAY ONE DIME TO THEM upfront! A real agent only gets paid when he sells your book to a publisher! The average cut is about 10-15% of the first sale profits, if I remember right, with cuts of film and other rights maybe being more, when sold. At most, writers should only be responsible for the costs of phone calls and postage.

For more information see: How Literary Agents Get Paid. Standard Commission Practices and Payments for Literary Agents

Edited to Add: Some other great, highly respected resources for writing and getting published are:

Writer’s Digest

The Writer

So I apologize, but I must take on this task. A new hand must touch the beacon. The knowledge must be passed on. The chain can not be broken.

So.

The Game.

The following are the rules of The Game:

there is no winning The Game

once you know of The Game, you are always playing the game

the point of The Game is to not think about The Game

if you think about The Game, you have lost The Game, and must announce this to those around you - causing them to also lose The Game

A "reset period" of roughly an hour or two before loss announcements is common in colloquial rules to allow yourself and those around you to properly temporarily "forget" about The Game, however that is not an official rule.

PERCY JACKSON AND THE OLYMPIANS

"Neurodivergent" is not just a select group of autistic, adhd, and anxious people. "Neurodivergent" as a word includes literally anyone who is mentally ill, mentally/neurologically disordered, or mentally/neurologically/intellectually disabled.

Do u think people with ASPD, NPD, psychosis, DID and/or OSDD are more commonly infantilized or demonized? Or even, like,,, do u think ND POC are more commonly infantilized or demonized?

Even I, a white AFAB autistic teen, am still demonized far more than I am ever infantilized. I have low empathy, high alexithymia, difficulty with emotions, and little to no interest in making friends or socializing on most days. How I tend to be treated can be summed up by the time my mom genuinely sat me down and said "I'm so glad I saw that, I'd been worrying you were heartless" after I comforted a friend who'd been crying.

I was 12.

I'm always assumed to want to argue or be rude, I'm seen as a person who won't give a shit if you're sad, I'm painted as being contrary on purpose just to make your life worse, I've been called a future murderer/serial killer/criminal more times than I can count. For fuck's sake, none of that is true. It's just what people assume, because I am autistic, and not in a way you can infantilize. You can't easily infantilize someone you see as a heartless robot.

If you accidentally misgender yourself, you’re still valid. 

If you accidentally use your old name, you’re still valid. 

If you accidentally use your old pronouns, you’re still valid.

If you turn around when someone calls out your old name, you’re still valid. 

If you don’t correct someone who misgenders you, you’re still valid. 

It doesn’t mean you are fake or your gender identity is not important. 

It just means you’ve lived with your old name/pronouns for a while and so your brain got used to them, even though they didn’t represent your gender. The same way, people sometimes turn around when someone calls out a nickname they had as a toddler - which in no way means they are a toddler. Nobody would argue “You have to be a toddler, you just reacted to a childish nickname.” and that’s just how ridiculous “You have to be girl, you just reacted to a female name.” or similar is. 

You are valid. 

With all my love, 

to get a popular post you need a lot of followers

to get experience you need a job

to get a job you need a car

to go to public places you need to become more comfortable with social interaction