#ScribesAndMakers 2025.05.23 — If you make clothes for yourself or others, do you follow fashion trends?
Does knitting a Dr. Who scarf count? [Bob Baker, 4th Doctor]
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#ScribesAndMakers 2025.05.25 — How does photography shape your perception of the world? What subjects or moments do you find most captivating to capture?
Taking a few semesters of drawing shaped my photography and my perception of the world. When you need to manufacture the illusion of depth in a flat medium by hand on blank paper, you learn to see shadows and highlight, not just the subject. In my sketch and drawing class, working with pencil and charcoal, I learned to focus on the shadows and darkness in rendering volume and a 3D effect. In my color class, I learned I could do a similar thing using color, creating "color contrast" between the tonal qualities of the colors. I worked in pastels, chalks, and with colored pencils.
It was when I used my first digital camera, that I finally got to tie it all together in my photography, which was poor and snap-shoddy before. See the image of my Nikon Coolpix 950. A beast for the time. See #AltText for more details.
When I could take a picture and immediately see the 2D effects of color, shadow, highlight, aperture, and shutter speed, it changed my perception of the world. Whilst that camera was rudimentary, later digital cameras and then DSLRs allowed me full and simple manual control, to learn to see the picture I might capture before even lifting the camera, or even reaching for it. Not any Hollywood shtick where I see photo frames superimposed on the world, but my subconscious does draw me to focus here, there, and over there. Experience. Playing with the controls. Being able to delete any number of failures rather than paying for rolls of film and processing 36 images having forgotten what I had done to capture the good ones.
Don't read me wrong. I still post-process most images. And. I shoot RAW. If you're a serious photographer, it is a must.
I am attracted, as you might guess, to color contrast. I admit to taking lots of pictures of flowers and trees, but old buildings are also my thing. I am complemented on my portraiture all the time. Oh, right, and... Recently, I've been taking lots of pictures of the meals I've cooked, doing both in-process documentation and, having paid special attention to plating, the final result.
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#ScribesAndMakers 2025.05.10 — Have you done collaborative projects? If so, how did you divide the work?
I have. I was the minion. I did what was told. I rather liked it compared to be responsible for the whole project.
Wait... By work, you mean something creative, not work at work type work.
For all my trying, I've not yet enticed someone to work on a project. I have shared cooking together with someone. Does that count. It's easier if the kitchen is big enough, and like we do, we have an extra sink…
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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 2504.06 — 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 2504.04 — 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 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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#ScribesAndMakers ##TTMD @sfwrtr
I think a cooking section on the website is a great idea. Could also be a teaser in a newsletter.
Content is king, but it has to be interesting to keep people coming back for more. Like a restaurant, I suppose…
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#ScribesAndMakers #TTMD @sfwrtr
What is your favorite thing you've written & why?
You b evil!
My main characters tend to get sorely abused and pummeled by reality. Twice as much work for half the credit, right? All so the moment of victory can be bittersweet and worth it. There's this one scene; I'll endeavor to minimize spoilers.
The setup: She had finally found friendship and love. Previously injured, she still ends up saving her lover (okay, one of her two lovers), and saving the life of her assassin, too, and died. Thought she had, only to wake, barely healed, to find the other antagonist had had them arrested and undone the good she'd done to prevent a foreseeable war.
The denouement: Though wit and persuasion, and the loyalty of the people she's protected, she proves everything she's said is right, literally causing the antagonist to throw her helmet on the ground in frustrated resignation. Clang! It does mean she reveals she's pregnant, because that's one of the keys, and has to agree to bare the child…
It's the intensity of the emotions and the integrity this cynical character displays that grips me. I can hardly believe I wrote it.
That goes equally for a more recent work. One of the MCs is male, and I usually can't relate enough to men to make them work as male in the story. He's different, as is the world he lives in. How he ends up noticing the woman antagonist's hidden anguish and solves the problem, in an albeit naïve but heartfelt uniquely male manner, has left me beside myself. It's one of the few times a male character might be carrying the story instead of his female co-MC.
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#ScribesAndMakers #TTMD @sfwrtr
What's your favorite comfy / cozy ritual? (E.g. curl up with a book and hot beverage?)
This may make me seem much younger than I am, but...
At the end of the day, I watch anime on Crunchyroll. Let's just ignore that I may also be snacking and I shouldn't be. Keep in mind that I am a feminist writer, so some of the series are really offensive, but it is in equal parts really stupid and meaningless, and subversive as to how the male characters get their comeuppance. There are also amazing truly feminist and traditional stories I'd highly recommend. I like slife-of-life stuff the best.
But, to answer your question, anime helps me forget the day.
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#ScribesAndMakers #TTMD @sfwrtr @saposcat
Did 'Laugh In' contribute to the imaginary play at all, or was it just background? Do you still like some sort of background noise when you're creating?
I was maybe 7 when I played in front of the TV with LaughIn while playing with my… were they dolls or action figures? I used to have a unique skill at multitasking, so I probably followed the comedy, but I was unlikely playing pretend with Artie Johnson on a tricycle annoying Ruth Buzzi.
When I was a teenager, all through high school, I always had the TV on, especially when doing my homework. When you've seen all the reruns of Doctor Who, Speed Racer, Kimba, Green Acres, F-Troop, Gilligan's Island, and Star Trek, it's easy to use it as background and still enjoy the best parts!
More recently, I love electronica, house, and progressive music. While programming. While writing. The beat can accelerating my heartbeat and my thinking. But it becomes truly background to a point that I forget to turn it on unless I need it to block out noise.
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#ScribesAndMakers #TTMD @sfwrtr
- When do you write your cookbook?
Probably never. However, if you follow me I show photos of my cooking, and sometime share enough of a recipe for those who cook to follow. When I get my act together and make an author website, I may have a RS Cooks section with this stuff. Remember, you need to keep people returning to your website over years so they remain aware of your new books!
- Do you bake (like that) too? I mean, I'm a lousy cook but when I cook I often improvise too. But never with baking.
I used to bake. I had two breadmaker machines! But I am very much low-carb now. (It's why I substitute cauliflower for rice in my paella, for example.) I have to watch my salt intake, too. My pork chop on the bed of kale, onions, butter, pecorino, and edamame linguine was low-carb. The edamame pasta has 1/5th the carbs of regular pasta, much of them as fiber instead. It has a better taste and a similar mouth feel, too.
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#ScribesAndMakers #TTMD @sfwrtr @willelm
How are you trying to keep from burning out in the future? Any tips or tricks to share for others when they get burned out?
My incessant answering prompts on Mastodon surely helps! Especially this one thing I learned here, which reaffirmed something I knew:
Write stories you want to read. For crafters or artists, craft what you want to use (I love what I cook) or paint what's beautiful to you. I love my photos. Be your first audience.
But it's up to you whether you are your only audience. Is that okay for you?
For me, sadly, no. That's why I burnt out. I was failing to communicate. Getting my ideas into other people's heads was very important. Worse, I was writing in the way publishers and my agents insisted I must. It made made my efforts harder and my lack of success more sour.
However, you asked for tips to prevent it:
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#ScribesAndMakers #TTMD @sfwrtr
[I] fear sending my female MC into the kitchen as it might be considered anti feminist. Are there any key aspects I could keep in mind to avoid this?
It is all about the point you are trying to make.
All cultures cook.
Sure, she could be trapped by her gender role; it can be the only creativity she's allowed; you can emphasize subservience and frustration that leads to a break. That's one story. Or the kitchen could be a solace she escapes into, a place where she can stop fighting and eat by herself where nobody will judge her cooking her mother's recipes as weakness.
For me, feminist writing is about self-determination and agency contrasted against either the gender roles in the story or in those in the reader's head. As a writer, you must entertain. That doesn't mean you can't enlighten.
My current story breaks the rules. She's a fighter, but learns it works better when she works with the system instead of against it. She marries because she has to, but does get the pick of the litter. Gorgeous. She has five children, all girls. She even cooks for her husband, whom she adores, but we get that scene is a special occasion. What's important is she's also escaped being a housewife to become an engineer (her dream) on colonial Mars, and her specific efforts shapes that world's female future (and maybe ours). Along with her woman friends and her girls, the reader watches gender roles melt to insignificance..
To answer your question: Assert what's true for the character in her quest to become more than she's allotted. The fear you feel is you imagining other people's judgement. Feminist writers always make somebody angry.
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#ScribesAndMakers 2503.27 — Were you ever discouraged by great art of someone else?
Only a practicing artist, author, or crafter would ask such an insightful question, from experience; okay, maybe a psychologist would. I believe it is human to compare oneself and one's creations to those who teach us, whether they know they're our teachers or not. We've learned to simulate in our heads the parents or teachers we've grown up with, who mean well or not, who critique without encouraging, who don't emphasize and collaborate with us on next steps, too. We've learned to hear echoes of their voices.
This is one of my personal flaws. Not the comparison part. The part where I judge my effort lacking, never good. Shit. I just experienced it a few days ago on book recommendation day, having encountered an indie writer so good at writing 3rd person that it felt like 1st, whose first chapter compelled me to buy the book.
I compared.
My energy crashed.
I didn't want to write.
But I'm getting better at this, and if you're empathizing (and face it, if'n you're read'n this up to this point, you are), you are learning how to tell your negativity, "Begone!"
I had a chapter to write and publish that day.
I didn't "feel" it. I did it anyway.
I focused on my unique style and how it entertained me. And the story, which surprised me. And that it was practice, regardless.
When I see others self-deprecate, I tell them to stop (or at least tell them notice how poorly they'd treated themselves). Recently I caught a follower deprecate their web-comic. I saw abstraction, minimalism, and a uniquely primitive style and smiled. I think the artist saw themselves as barely able to draw, but their rendering was strong, it set off the dialogue, and had showed motion. Nobody starts off a Rembrandt, and there was only one, ever. Or ever more than one of us. I tell myself this. The first impressionists were ridiculed as lazy. Picasso... Did cubism hit the first day? It's best not to be dear Vincent, tho. Best to strengthen that of which we're capable.
Just write. Just create. If it pleases me, I vow I'll do it better the next time, or I enjoy the thing I've created and move on. Hard. Yes. Persistence? It's key.
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#ScribesAndMakers 2503.26 — Ask the expert: if you're a specialist in something, would you answer questions for writers/artists regarding your specialty?
I'll answer, but in public threads as one of my things is helping as many people as I can. Jack or Jill of many trades, but an expert in none? Let's see:
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#ScribesAndMakers Question
Yes. In high school. Pan-X. I remember the smell of chemicals, with vinegar flooding all else out, but that might be thanks to chem lab at university. It vaguely remember seeing the submerged image darkening. Enough to lampshade the process in the few instances I needed to. There's multiple reasons I didn't really get into fine art photography until I had digital cameras.
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#ScribesAndMakers 2503.22 — Tell us about a book you love by an indie author.
Well, fan fiction seems to me to generally be written by indie authors who rarely get paid (though some make a living), and that's probably not what you meant…
Really, I went from reading and buying books all the time to writing all the time and not reading books. (I had my phone reading my manuscripts or fan fiction to me while exercising.) Previously, I only read conventionally published authors. Now, I'm trying to crack a book now and again. I understand that Indie books offer fresh blood, and please note the fact that you are all promoting on Mastodon is getting me interested in reading your books.
I'd definitely recommend Liana Brooks All I Want for Christmas is a Kiss Gargoyle. (@LianaBrooks) Found it in my feed. Enjoyed it muchly.
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/all-i-want-for-christmas-is-a-gargoyle-liana-brooks/1144187212
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#ScribesAndMakers 2503.23 — How do you feel about puns?
Ha! Puns, double-entendres, innuendo, turns of phrase. My specialties. I don't work to create them, they simply present themselves during composition. I say, "Thank you very much!"
Personally, as in my writing, I always go for the joke. My spouse is not always amused. My autism sometimes makes for very subtle puns.
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#WritersCoffeeClub #WCC 2503.21 — Happy World Poetry Day! Share your most poetic line.
I feel that prose benefits from rhythm and allusion if not meter, as does poetry. Words evoke feeling and meaning regardless of the form, and can come off as dead if poetic attributes are ignored or brushed off as frivolous.
Some of my writing is arguably lyrical, some evocative and metaphorical. To radically oversimplify the following excerpt, Rainy Days is the wizard professor of a university of magic. This is how a surprised male student sees her upon entering her office.
Well, she floated. As did a half dozen open tomes, three black notebooks, two colorful quills—with matching ink bottles, red and indigo—and one drink that lacked a container. The liquid sphere of chopped cherries, magenta water, and rock ice danced and bobbled and clinked—sporting a long silver metal straw that glimmered where poked within, perfectly and precisely angled toward expectant reddened lips. Rainy Days floated as if herself immersed in an unseen pool, her spine, arms, and legs slightly curved waifishly, for an instant merely a girl now a young woman laying a-drowse on her side, on her sleeping mat, fighting off a daydream. She glanced around a sheaf of blue-lined student papers darkened wetly by a summer squall of cramped cursive, briefly displaying her curious crystal blue eyes veiled through her faint golden halo. She grabbed the red quill. Around her, like a mostly invisible bonfire crackled—? What could you call the phenomenon? Energies and forces? Half-seen static discharges and regions of air reflected slightly, intermittently; they were ephemeral cirrus clouds suddenly luminously painted orange or blue or gold or pink, visible in that last gasp of dusk before slipping into the abyss of night.
—from Reluctant Moon.
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#RSstory #RSReluctanceStory
