Fiction Scribe

Found on Eneit’s Page

“English doesn’t borrow from other languages. English follows other languages down dark alleys, knocks them over the head, and goes through their pockets for loose grammar.”

From The Writer’s Well

Craigslist Poster Says It All

washington, DC craigslist > district of columbia > writing gigs

Regarding Writing Gigs
Reply to: gigs-576026168@craigslist.org
Date: 2008-02-16, 12:13PM EST

A notice to all you folks who post ads looking for writers to work for free: Please stop. This is an insult to our profession, and is a waste of our time. If you want someone to write for you for free, ask your mom.

* Location: DC/VA/MD
* it’s NOT ok to contact this poster with services or other commercial interests
* Compensation: no pay

PostingID: 576026168

Though humorously portrayed, too much blogging, like too much of pretty much anything, can be bad for you.

You knew that.

But could your blogging be ruining your writing abilities? In writing communities, this can be a very hot topic. What writer would want to do something to permanently ruin their ability to write?

You writing stopping your creative writing sounds a bit far out there, and it is. Blogging in itself won’t ruin your creative writing abilities by any means. It may influence them, but it won’t ruin them.

As a blogger, what you have to worry about is blogging too much. Do you spend more time blogging than you do creative writing? And no, you can’t count your character blog(s) as creative writing. It’s still blogging.

Do you blog more about what you’re going to write than you do actually writing? Do you spend more time reading other’s blogs than you do writing?

As with everything, moderation is key. I’m a feed reader woman myself with entirely too many blogs on it, but I still only spend a half an hour maximum reading it. I have a weight loss blog site, a personal blog, and a book/character interview blog. With those three combined, I still don’t spend more than an hour blogging.

The thing about blogging is that it can easily sweep your time away. If you want to know how much time you’re taking for both blogging and creative writing, keep track of the times and what you do during the day. If you’re spending more time blogging than creative writing, then something needs to change.

That is, if you want to get that novel done any time soon.

One of the little known perks of being a writer is that you can always get to the worst case scenario in 0.2 seconds.

- Sandi Kahn Shelton

Because I’m in the mood for some humour.

The Washington Post’s “Style Invitational” asked readers to take any word from the dictionary, alter it by adding, subtracting, or changing one letter, and supply a new definition.

Foreploy:
any misrepresentation about yourself for the purpose of obtaining sex.

Doltergeist:
a spirit that decides to haunt someplace stupid, such as your septic tank.

Giraffiti:
vandalism spray-painted very, very high, such as the famous “Surrender Dorothy” on the Beltway overpass.

Sarchasm:
the gulf between the author of sarcastic wit and the recipient who doesn’t get it.

Impotience:
eager anticipation by men awaiting their Viagra prescription.

Reintarnation:
coming back to life as a hillbilly.

DIOS:
the one true operating system.

Inoculatte:
to take coffee intravenously when you are running late.

Hipatitis:
terminal coolness.

Taterfamilias:
the head of the Potato Head family.

Osteopornosis:
a degenerate disease.

Karmageddon:
It’s like, when everybody is sending off all these like really bad vibes, right? And then, like, the Earth explodes and it’s like a serious bummer.

Hindkerchief:
really expensive toilet paper; toilet paper at Buckingham palace.

Deifenestration:
to throw all talk of God out the window.

Acme:
a generic skin disease (alt: the *best* skin disease).

Dopeler effect:
the tendency of stupid ideas to seem smarter when they come at you rapidly.

Courtesy of Inky Girl

Courtesy of Inky Girl

Courtesy of Inky Girl

Courtesy of Inky Girl

Courtesy of Inky Girl

Created by Inky Girl

Created by Inky Girl

I mentioned clichés yesterday…

I’ve left my favorite questions.

3. Is your main character the heir to the throne but doesn’t know it?
7. Does your story revolve around an ancient prophecy about “The One” who will save the world and everybody and all the forces of good?
8. Does your novel contain a character whose sole purpose is to show up at random plot points and dispense information?
10. Is the evil supreme badguy secretly the father of your main character?
13. Does “a powerful but slow and kind-hearted warrior” describe any of your characters?
19. Would “a fearless warrioress more comfortable with a sword than a frying pan” aptly describe any of your female characters?
21. How about “a half-elf torn between his human and elven heritage”?
27. Does your novel contain a prologue that is impossible to understand until you’ve read the entire book, if even then?
28. Is this the first book in a planned trilogy?
29. How about a quintet or a decalogue?
30. Is your novel thicker than a New York City phone book?
34. Is your novel based on the adventures of your role-playing group?
35. Does your novel contain characters transported from the real world to a fantasy realm?
36. Do any of your main characters have apostrophes or dashes in their names?
37. Do any of your main characters have names longer than three syllables?
41. Do you have a race prefixed by “half-”?
44. Have you done up game statistics for all of your main characters in your favorite RPG?
47. Do you think you know how feudalism worked but really don’t?
49. Could one of your main characters tell the other characters something that would really help them in their quest but refuses to do so just so it won’t break the plot?
50. Do any of the magic users in your novel cast spells easily identifiable as “fireball” or “lightning bolt”?
53. Heaven help you, do you ever use the term “hit points” in your novel?
54. Do you not realize how much gold actually weighs?
55. Do you think horses can gallop all day long without rest?
56. Does anybody in your novel fight for two hours straight in full plate armor, then ride a horse for four hours, then delicately make love to a willing barmaid all in the same day?
61. Does your hero fall in love with an unattainable woman, whom he later attains?
63. Is your hero able to withstand multiple blows from the fantasy equivalent of a ten pound sledge but is still threatened by a small woman with a dagger?
64. Do you really think it frequently takes more than one arrow in the chest to kill a man?
65. Do you not realize it takes hours to make a good stew, making it a poor choice for an “on the road” meal?
67. Do you think that “mead” is just a fancy name for “beer”?
69. Is the best organized and most numerous group of people in your world the thieves’ guild?
72. Is “common” the official language of your world?
74. Is your book basically a rip-off of The Lord of the Rings?
75. Read that question again and answer truthfully.

Read all the questions here.