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   Crystal_Fish_Caves (crystal_fish_caves@universeodon.com)'s status on Thursday, 04-Jul-2024 05:23:54 JST Crystal_Fish_Caves

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   • Kagan MacTane

   @kagan My most important achievement was getting sober after half a century of binge drinking my life away. Had a good job a great car a so so bf and my first retirement fund. 6 months into #covid I lost all that so ditched the sobriety too. Couldnt go on without my comfortably numb.

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     Kagan MacTane (kagan@wandering.shop)'s status on Thursday, 04-Jul-2024 05:24:00 JST Kagan MacTane

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     #WordWeavers Day 3: MC POV: What's your most important achievement?

     Ángel Castillo says: Getting myself out of poverty, out of a toxic hell family life, and into a successful career as an architect.

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     Kagan MacTane (kagan@wandering.shop)'s status on Thursday, 04-Jul-2024 05:24:07 JST Kagan MacTane

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     #WordWeavers Day 2: What is the biggest sacrifice your MCs are ready to make?

     Are "ready to make"? Or actually do make? Sometimes we make sacrifices we weren't expecting to. Sometimes we don't even know what we have available that might help if we sacrificed it.

     (On a very different level, Ángel at one point tries to "sacrifice" — or at least, just plain kill — one of the villains. Their main regret about that is only that it didn't work.)

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     Kagan MacTane (kagan@wandering.shop)'s status on Thursday, 04-Jul-2024 05:24:15 JST Kagan MacTane

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     #WordWeavers Day 30: Is your current book turning out the way you expected it to?

     It's certainly taking *longer* than I expected. Last fall, I had hopes (which I *thought* were reasonable) that by now, I'd be barrelling through my 1st draft. Instead, I'm doing vignettes (which *are* useful; they're giving me writing practice and helping me find both my own and various characters' voices) and revising the divination system.

     I now doubt that I'll finish the 1st draft by the end of the year.

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     Kagan MacTane (kagan@wandering.shop)'s status on Thursday, 04-Jul-2024 05:24:15 JST Kagan MacTane

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     #WordWeavers Day 1: Introduce your story as if it were a person. What is their character, style, etc.?

     TITLE_TK is a complex, multi-MC tale that delves deep into the heart of San Francisco, and of what makes cities so special. By turns wonder-filled, action-packed, hopeful, heartbreaking, and just plain fun-loving, this story of people fighting to make a better world wears all of its hearts on its sleeve.

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     Kagan MacTane (kagan@wandering.shop)'s status on Thursday, 04-Jul-2024 05:24:17 JST Kagan MacTane

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     #WordWeavers Day 28: Do you include inside jokes for friends or fan groups in your stories?

     Not really "inside jokes", no. Definitely a few "hat tips", though. Like, I don't want to put in things that only make sense if you know XYZ, but I do like putting in things that gain an extra level of meaning if you do.

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     Kagan MacTane (kagan@wandering.shop)'s status on Thursday, 04-Jul-2024 05:24:25 JST Kagan MacTane

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     #WordWeavers Day 27: Do you have any sort of marginalized group representation in your current book?

     Loads. To begin with, each of my 5 MCs is a member of at least 2 marginalized groups:

     Ángel: Latine, non-binary, bisexual
     Carlos: Latino, disabled
     David: gay, Jewish
     Jessie: Japanese-American, bisexual, female
     Margot: Chinese-American, fat, female

     Other SCs are Black, autistic, trans men and women, poly, demisexual, mixed-race, lesbian, and a guy who walks with a cane.

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     Kagan MacTane (kagan@wandering.shop)'s status on Thursday, 04-Jul-2024 05:24:30 JST Kagan MacTane

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     #WordWeavers Day 26: Do your MCs truly fix stuff, or are they duct tape types of fixer?

     Sometimes all you've got the time, or tools, for is a quick duct-tape patch. (David wants to chime in with something about the pull request he had to get past code review last week...) But all of them, if given the option, would *strongly prefer* to do a real, lasting fix that addresses the underlying issues.

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     Kagan MacTane (kagan@wandering.shop)'s status on Thursday, 04-Jul-2024 05:24:31 JST Kagan MacTane

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     #WordWeavers Day 25: When in danger from another, do your MCs fight, flee, or fawn to escape?

     Note that "freeze" is the 4th option.

     And honestly, for all of them, it's very situationally-dependent. How big or scary is the threat? What's their relationship, if any? How active and confident is my character feeling right now?

     Some people have a strong bias toward one of the 4 "F"s, but I think my 5 MCs are all more balanced on that particular score.

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     Kagan MacTane (kagan@wandering.shop)'s status on Thursday, 04-Jul-2024 05:24:35 JST Kagan MacTane

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     #WordWeavers Day 24: What would it take for you to give up writing your current book?

     If I no longer had the time and energy to devote to it. I can actually see that happening if I got a job that demanded an excess of either of those things; I think the job I had until the end of 2021 did that, and that's why I started on this project in early/mid 2022 — I finally had the time and energy.

     [Edited to add: Major props and kudos, though, to those saying things like death, major disaster, etc.!]

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     Kagan MacTane (kagan@wandering.shop)'s status on Thursday, 04-Jul-2024 05:24:44 JST Kagan MacTane

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     #WordWeavers Day 23: What writing craft skill are you focusing on improving at this time?

     Actually writing text, as opposed to building the world or characters and their backgrounds. (And I've honestly gotten off-track on that; I've gotten sucked back into developing the divination system when I really should write more vignettes. 🙄 Okay, that's a thing I can do today!)

     (Then again, I've also been editing. That's not a bad thing to get better at.)

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     Kagan MacTane (kagan@wandering.shop)'s status on Thursday, 04-Jul-2024 05:24:45 JST Kagan MacTane

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     #WordWeavers Day 22: Could your MCs manage keeping plants alive?

     Carlos, Ángel, and Margot could. Jessie probably could, but would agonize about it the whole time. I'm not sure about David; I feel like he'd be okay at first, and then something would happen after a couple of months and the whole thing would just go sideways... but I'm not sure where I'm getting that from.

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     Kagan MacTane (kagan@wandering.shop)'s status on Thursday, 04-Jul-2024 05:24:46 JST Kagan MacTane

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     #WordWeavers Day 21: What's the most useless or humorous writing feedback you ever received?

     I can't recall ever receiving any that was either useless or humorous.

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     Kagan MacTane (kagan@wandering.shop)'s status on Thursday, 04-Jul-2024 05:24:50 JST Kagan MacTane

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     #WordWeavers Day 20: Under what circumstances would your MCs side with the antagonists?

     If something threatened the entire City, forcing them all to band together to face a greater threat.

     That's not going to happen in my book, though.

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     Kagan MacTane (kagan@wandering.shop)'s status on Thursday, 04-Jul-2024 05:24:53 JST Kagan MacTane

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     I'm *not* going to do any "rape as a plot point" or anything like that, but if I try to tell myself, "no really, maybe this guy hasn't committed rape?" I immediately get a look of disbelief on my own face.

     I'm not going to put any of the actual rapes on the page. It will just be either deducible or obvious from things that he says that he must've done so. 2/2

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     Kagan MacTane (kagan@wandering.shop)'s status on Thursday, 04-Jul-2024 05:24:54 JST Kagan MacTane

     One of my villains is a rapist. Like, not necessarily that he frequently goes out intending to rape, more that he just doesn't take other people's feelings into account much, and so I cannot possibly imagine that this dude hasn't raped a few people. 1/2