Sewers, Drive-Ins, and Dives!
“It’s like fondue!”
“More like fondon’t.”
“I’m starting a society called PETER. People for the Ethical Treatment of Evil Rats.”
“Ah, the -1 halberd of tetanus.”
“No, no, that’s Inquisitor Max, not Miracle Max.”
“What’s your haircut for?”
“Blowing up moons.”
“I’d like to summon Gritty.”
Dragon: If the dungeon fits, I sits.
As an author, I need to be present on a lot of social media platforms in order to raise visibility for my books. That’s a reality. Right now I’m on:
And all of that is a lot of work. I have to try and keep all of these pieces in the air somehow and post both the same and different content on all of them. Because they all serve different purposes.
I know I’m not obligated to be active on all of them, but they all have benefits and downsides. I do use a lot of my content in other places. For example, I can post the same videos to TT and IG pretty easily. I also take my YT videos and carve them up into reels and TT videos on occasion. I need to get back into YT on the regular, but I fell out of that around Christmas. Life got the better of me.
I know Tumblr is a blog, but honestly, I use this app more like a diary than I do my website Blog which is deeply focused on writing advice and writing content. This includes that, but it’s also kind of my personal place. Just a brain dump zone. Some folks seem to like that enough to follow me. Which is kind of neat.
Does anyone have recommendations on how to balance all the different social media platforms? I can’t really just drop any of them outright, though I admit my Tumblr and Reddit are very quiet. My newsletter is monthly; my blog is weekly. I have those all laid out and planned for. It’s more the… Twitter, TikTok, Facebook, Instagram quadfecta? Like a trifecta but four. I reuse some of my content still, but that’s an awful lot of content to create.
Being disabled sucks. Yesterday I busted my backside helping move snow away from the cars. Then got roused again at midnight with a fire scare (everything is fine).
This all threw me into a heinous pain flare, and I’ve barely been out of bed today. Being this miserable is hard on me because, frankly, I hate it. I want to do literally anything but sleep but have no alternative because my body is a jerk.
Ehlers-Danlos is miserable.
Sure, this isn’t entirely about writing but it’s not not about writing either. Today I spent some time working with my watercolor paints because I’m learning how to use them effectively. I’m trying different techniques and so on. It’s fun.
Practice is necessary for art. You learn your tools, what you like, what you need to work on. It gives you a chance to try things you might not otherwise share with anybody. Things like that are really important.
Too often we expect ourselves to be great out of the box. To be perfect without practicing. Without taking time to learn. Obviously that doesn’t work. We can’t be perfect without being imperfect for a long time. And even then we won’t be perfect; we’ll just be better.
I’m not an amazing painter. I’m not the best there is. I’m still learning, and I’m still enjoying the process.
Treat everything else the same way. Writing included. Take time to just… do the thing for fun and learn about it. Don’t expect yourself to do more than you can.
I am unbelievably deep in burnout. And I am not able to just… step out. I’m so tired. The conference was amazing but took literally everything I had and more out of me. Now I have to plan a memorial for a friend because nobody else did.
I’m so tired. I’m trying to keep pushing. I have things I need to do. People I can’t let down. But I am so tired.
I just hope I can get everything taken care of. I have to clean up and get chores done, and I just can’t. I just want to go back to bed and sleep.
Burnout’s a real problem. I can’t tell if it’s autistic burnout or vanilla burnout at the moment. It’s hard to know. What I do know is that I am trying to do the things I need to for self care, but the things I need to do contradict the things that the world needs done and nobody else is doing.
I am not a fan.
I’ve been working hard on some mapmaking stuff. I have a bunch of symbols I’m drawing for ProFantasy Software’s next round of symbol releases. It’s a lot of fun, but also a lot of work. I’ve got 130 individual symbols that I’ve needed to put together as well as a bunch of textures.
I’m doing them in black and white to start with, but after that, they’ll be getting a bunch of color, which should be exciting. The textures are going to be done with watercolor, but I can’t do all the symbols in straight up watercolor. They’re too small.
I also finished up the last self-edits on my book on how to write a book.
Book launches are stressful things. I have done a bunch of them for other authors, but doing one for myself is a different beast because not only do I need to load all the files correctly, I also need to do all the marketing.
Honestly, I’m trying to decide if I should have a launch event or not. I’m leaning toward not. While it was fun the last time, it didn’t do much to sell more books. Granted, the last one was my first one. I might do a live over on TikTok (@ehprybylsk) but we’ll see what I do. I also need to plan my newsletter blast.
Honestly, I’m just so damn tired. My husband broke his foot a month ago, and I’ve been trying to take care of him which has been huge as well as planning for my writing conference (Neurodivergent Publishing Conference, February 2023).
I’ve just been so busy with everything including editing for folks and just… argh. I feel kind of burnt out, which sucks. I don’t want to be burnt out; I have too much to do to be burnt out. Which is ironic, now that I’m reading that.
Overall, I’m grinding toward the launch of my second book, Hot & Cold and working on editing book three. Which is coming along pretty well. Granted, I’m probably on about thirty watch lists since I was studying the CIA while I wrote it, but that’s, you know, part of my charm.
Or something.
This scarf pattern is gorgeous. I’ve never done color work or intarsia before at all. Heck, I’ve only made four scarves in my entire life.
And here I am!
(Non-authors, please RB to signal boost to your author friends!)
An astute reader informed me this morning that one of my fics (Children of the Future Age) had been pirated and was being sold as a novel on Amazon:
(And they weren't even creative with their cover design. If you're going to pirate something that I spent a full year of my life writing, at least give me a pretty screenshot to brag about later. Seriously.)
I promptly filed a DMCA complaint to have it removed, but I checked out the company that put it up -- Plush Books -- and it looks like A LOT of their books are pirated fic. They are by no means the only ones doing this, either -- the fact that """publishers""" can download stories from AO3 in ebook format and then reupload them to Amazon in just a few clicks makes fic piracy a common problem. There are a whole host of reasons why letting this continue is bad -- including actual legal risk to fanfiction archives -- but basically:
You can search for your fics by title, or by text from the description (which is often just copied wholesale from AO3 as well). If you find that someone has stolen your work and is selling it as their own, you can lodge a DMCA complaint (Amazon.com/USA site; other countries have different systems). If you haven't done this before, it's easy! Here's a tutorial:
First, go to this form. You'll need to be signed into your Amazon account.
I am the author of this work, which is being sold by [publisher] without my permission. I originally published this story in [date/year] on [name of site], and have provided a link to the original above. On request, I can provide documentation proving that I am the owner of the account that originally posted this story.
Please share this information with your writer friends, keep an eye out for/report pirated works, and help us keep fanfiction free and legally protected!
NOTE: All of the above also applies to Amazon products featuring stolen artwork, etc., so fan artists should check too!
Piracy is wrong. Fanfic is double piracy since it’s stealing the original creator’s IP as well as the fanfic creator’s IP. It’s absolutely awful and should be stopped.
fixyourwritinghabits
youwishyouwerealioness
Who killed the evil King?
He killed the evil King!
If you can answer a question using the word “he” the word will be “who”
Whom did you send the King’s head to?
I sent the head to him.
If you answer the word using “him” the word will be “whom”
