Writing Stuff

I use no Generative AI to write for me.

I use no Generative AI to create images for me.

I do not wish to write with people who actively use Generative AI.

If you write with me, you won't ever have to fear any AI being used to doing my replies for you. I will not feed your writing to ChatGPT and the like, and I would appreciate it if you don't feed my writing to any kind of Generative AI either. You do not have my consent to do so.

It's the inverse of Chekov's Gun ("If there's a gun on the table in act 1, it should go off in act 3" or someone like that). Asimov's Tail is like saying "If a gun goes off in act 3, it should be on the table in act 1."

You don't need that for guns because we all know what guns are. A character in a modern setting pulling out a gun to win a fight on page 120 isn't going to bother the reader. But a tail is unexpected: You need the reader to buy in to and expect the tail before it becomes plot-relevant, or it'll read like a deus ex machina.

(Another comparison is Chekov was talking about the stage, and Asimov is talking about books. Asimov's Tail may not be as applicable to the stage, where the audience can all clearly see the character's tail in his costume.)

If you haven’t heard yet, Draft2Digital has made the decision to suck.

Beginning May 14,2026 new accounts will be charged a $20 activation fee. Going forward any account that makes less than $100 a year will be charged an annual maintenance fee of $12.

You can check your account status to find out when you are set to be charged. No one should be charged before May 14, but some authors have reported already being charged.

Check your account!

You can contact support here. Let them know you are not happy with this decision.

Most recently, the Admin for 20bookto50k on Facebook scored a Zoom Call with someone from D2D who has stated that as long as books are not being distributed, you won't be on the hook for the $12, HOWEVER accounts are still giving a date for the $12 will be billed, even on accounts not distributing books.

And NO PUBLIC statement has been made by Draft2Digital at this time.

My billing date isn't until August, so I have a bit of time to see what they do and if they make the smart decision to reverse this action, but whatever happens I will NOT be publishing Darkling via Draft2Digital and risking them taking that $12 straight out of my royalties.

It READS as though, WHEN you upload a book, you're charged the first $12 fee immediately, and your yearly payment date will be set to THAT date, every year, moving forward.

I am used to Word autosaving relentlessly; for the last few years it didn't really even have a "File>Save" command that I could see--it just autosaved like every five seconds or something. It took me a long time to get used not clicking File>Save at the end of every writing session, and I never really trusted it--with good reason, it turns out.

Apparently, when you turn off Word's new ai features, AutoSave is disabled and cannot be turned back on. There is toggle button in the upper left for it, but when I try to toggle it on, it says "Autosave is not available because of your privacy settings." I worked in my document yesterday, put my computer to sleep with the doc still open on the taskbar (my usual habit), and when I opened it today, the new work I did yesterday was gone.

This time I only lost about 300 words, which I had typed into my document from my longhand-writing in a notebook (so I guess I kind of autosaved them that way!), but if I'd really been on a roll, this could have been a disaster.

 But if you ask people who think about things, the answer is vague. Killing a hibernating bear would just feel… impolite? You can’t fucking shoot a man when he’s sleeping, that’s just fucking rude. It’s just not the right thing to do.

 Long before hunting laws were established in Finland, you couldn’t kill a sleeping bear, and what commands you is something older than law: tradition. Even at a time when hunting was a matter of life and death, and a bear fighting for its life is mainly a matter of death, you just didn’t kill a hibernating bear, you have to wake it up first. Hunters risked their lives, the lives of their brothers and everyone in the hunting party, who were friends, family and men that they loved, to give the bear a fighting chance.

 In the modern time, the hunting season of bears is in the summer, for the warmest summer months. There are many reasons for why they are allowed to tread safely in autumn and to sleep in peace through the cold months, almost all of which are rational and scientific, and do not touch the old traditions.

 Old faith says a living thing has many souls - henki, luonto, itse. Plants only have one - the one that wills them to grow. Animals have two, both the spark of life and nature that enables them to act. A human being also has the third, one that makes them a person, personality, itse, literally “self”. But the soul that travels in your dreams is not the soul that defines a human - animals have that one as well. When your dog runs in her sleep, her soul is elsewhere, where a dog is needed.

horn ideas

free to use and open for more suggestions ^^

Some five thousand years ago, a 27-foot high granite standing stone was erected by the Neolithic people of future Dartmoor. In the 12th century, a monastery was built on the spot, incorporating the stone into its foundations. The monastery became a manor house in the 14th century, then an inn in the 15th, which it remains to this day as The Oxenham Arms.

And there is a word for it! It's called a palimpsest!