Notices by Stephen Cox Author (stephenwhq@mastodon.social)

Hello Authors of Masto?

Short story collections. Strong theme, or just the best stories? Can a collection include nightmares + light-hearted stuff? (An experienced author says a good collection does not vary wildly in tone. My stuff does).

what do you think as a reader, and what do you do yourself?

EDITED TO ADD - broadly SFF

#amwriting #amediting #wordweavers #writinglife #PennedPossibilities @bookstodon #author #shortfiction

PS I have some free on my website

https://stephencox.co.uk/?page_id=184

@fredbrooker @ryanhoulihan

I'm not talking line editing I'm talking turning a first draft into something fit to go out in public.

@ryanhoulihan
I think editing is most of the effort.
Getting something down and tidying it up is perhaps a third of the job. Making sure everything fits perfecting, working in new ideas and streamlinging, deciding what is really needed two thirds.

@ryanhoulihan

From a professional experience, I now understand that people who admire person X are capable of disbelieving, minimising 'even if true', and eventually simply discounting the harm of some ordinary person that X has abused. In cases where the law, basic human decency and professional codes of conduct were all flouted and the implications for the broader field enormous.

@dcjohnson

The same people inevitably argue

'high marginal tax rates are bad for rich people'

but
'high marginal tax/withdrawal of benefit rates should be imposed on poor people"

@georgetakei

The Republicans think you are old enough to have a baby at ten but not old enough to vote until 25.

@aaribaud @roomey

"alien names should follow the same rules (phonological, structural, semantic) within a species;"
mate, this isn't even true for European languages (and Europe is in linguistic terms, much more uniform than say, Papua New Guinea.)

@nova Couldn't an algorithm include a random element?

@Gargron It's a big change and I think it would have mixed results.

@Gargron how can I donate to the mastodon.social instance