Any Writers?

[Gerontius]

Well all technology has failed. Desktop computer is too old. Phone has screen glitch. Not a good enough single for a hotspot. So laptop won't work either.
Hand writing is it.

If you lived nearer here I would set you up with one of my old manual typewriters. They work pretty well & can type more text in a smaller space than handwriting usually can--saves on paper.

 

[Tom]

I do, on and off. It's always been in Sci-Fi/Horror or Historical fiction themes. For me it is not really to produce a finished product but to imagine exeriencing things I could not in RL. A little like a Holodeck. It can also be cathartic. For instance I had retained anger towards some co-workers at my last job. So I had them eaten by giant mutant crabs.

 

[Raggamuffin]

I know I've got at least one book in me.

Thankfully, I mean that in a creative writing sort of a way, as opposed to a smuggling contradband into a prison sort of way.

Ed

 

[Captain Jigglypuff]

I have an idea for a version of Snow White where the Queen isn’t actually the villain or even evil but rather misunderstood and the true evil villain is actually Snow White and after she tricks the Dwarves minus Dopey, Happy, and Bashful, into pushing the Queen off a cliff, Snow White begins a reign of pure terror and bloodshed that everyone in the kingdom refer to her in whispers as Snow Terror. Meanwhile the Queen survived and Dopey, Happy, and Bashful have left the other Dwarves and are helping the Queen overthrow Snow Terror. This story would also explain why Dopey never speaks.

 

[Darius]

I'm trying to write, and so far some of my non-fiction scribbles ended in queer anthologies (one way or another). I also wrote poetry, hopefully I will publish it too one day.

 

[Azul]

I wish I could write fiction sometimes, just to express some experiences. I struggle to imagine things too far from my own reality, though. When I was a teenager I had a vivid imagination. Now not so much.

So I just write and ramble in my journal.

 

[Zhantera]

My autobiography was published, but I chose to move it to blog form- because I decided it just wasn't finished. So it now exists as an ongoing blog.

 

[Callistemon]

@Wolfy Smurf, you know how you handwrite manuscripts? (And anyone else too...)

Have you ever noticed any difference for your writing process depending on whether you write by hand or type something?

Personally I have, but the effects may be different for everyone. Typing is much quicker and allows me to write reams of stuff very fast. Handwriting is a slower process, and something about it actually has me in a different brain space than typing. The physical formation of the letters, which I do carefully when writing in a journal because I want it to look nice (compared to the throwaway scribble on my shopping lists), puts me in a similar brain space as doing a drawing or painting - it sort of engages the "arty" space, it's more right-brain I suppose. So when I want to write poetry, I never do that on a screen, for example - although I may "type it up" later on.

Similarly, I'd never consider handwriting a technical article, or non-fiction. There, the handwriting gets in the way of the word count per unit time without adding anything useful.

I actually think that doing handwritten journals for so long shaped me positively as a writer. It gave me practice at writing complete pieces in one sitting - thinking carefully, thinking ahead about the order and what you wanted to say. So as a result I've never had to do much editing, e.g. essays, when I type them on screen, don't get massive edits, just a few tweaks here and there after re-reading.

I don't know I'd be able to do that with novels - I imagine they would take quite a bit of re-working and re-drafting!

 

[Callistemon]

I do, on and off. It's always been in Sci-Fi/Horror or Historical fiction themes. For me it is not really to produce a finished product but to imagine exeriencing things I could not in RL. A little like a Holodeck. It can also be cathartic. For instance I had retained anger towards some co-workers at my last job. So I had them eaten by giant mutant crabs.

That's hiliarious, Tom! Humour is so cathartic, isn't it? I can really relate to this.

I spent a couple of years on a music forum, on an alternative band. It was a bit dire and I was mostly there to write material, so I stuck out like a sore thumb. There wasn't much interaction, which made it a bit freaky - just once in a blue moon, and that was kind of the culture of that place, being like kids in a sandpit saying things out loud in each other's presence without actually engaging significantly with each other's ideas, let alone on a human level as people. (Whereas here, people regularly engage on both those levels - just as had happened in a good general forum I was with for a long time.)

But I did get to observe the kind of fandom I just wasn't - when people put their favourite bands on pedestals, like people do with cult leaders, and then they go about making dogmas about it all, like the "best" album is this and that and if you don't agree, or talk about "I prefer ABC for reasons XYZ but it's all pretty subjective" or you disagree with people constantly knocking a band member who wasn't in the original line-up and saying nasty things about him and his musical ability (which was so ridiculous and rude), you clearly aren't "with it" and then you get hostility from people in those closed mindsets.

At one point, a band member made a probably kneejerk social media post about feeling betrayed and leaving the band, and this caused such an outpouring of baseless speculation and existential woe from a section of the fan base I really was flabbergasted, but of course it is quite typical for people to be like this about celebrities. I thought, "Well, this is a human being, he probably had a painful disagreement with someone which they've not yet come back to sort because these things take time, and really, whether or not he continues in the band is about his own future happiness and life goals and the public actually don't own celebrities so why do they act as if they do?"

But on and on it went, and people were bombarding the social media accounts of band members and their connections with demands for explanations, venting, etc etc. To no response - the band member in question deleted their account, and eventually appeared to privately resolve his issue with another person/persons, as it ought to be, and eventually someone non-random asked him if he was still in the band and he was like, "Yeah, of course."

And I thought, "What is it about so many people, that when something like this happens they can't just step back and give people in the public eye privacy and space to sort out their personal stuff, and let whatever is going to happen, happen?"

Anyway, because immersed in all this silly furore at the time which went on for weeks, what I did is to write a little sci-fi spoof explaining the situation in terms of space aliens invading earth because they were getting impatient about the time it took for their favourite band to make their new album, so they wanted to prod them a bit and messed impishly with a social media account. It became a six-part modern fairytale with secret excursions into each band member's home to create a bit of mischief and to try out various instruments (octopod aliens, instruments built for hominids ), and a de-briefing session at the end about the ethics of it all and what they might have done differently, and how they could make amends for some of their failings. It was great fun to write and all the laughter was very good for my endorphin levels!

 

[Wolfnox]

@Wolfy Smurf, you know how you handwrite manuscripts? (And anyone else too...)

Have you ever noticed any difference for your writing process depending on whether you write by hand or type something?

Personally I have, but the effects may be different for everyone. Typing is much quicker and allows me to write reams of stuff very fast. Handwriting is a slower process, and something about it actually has me in a different brain space than typing. The physical formation of the letters, which I do carefully when writing in a journal because I want it to look nice (compared to the throwaway scribble on my shopping lists), puts me in a similar brain space as doing a drawing or painting - it sort of engages the "arty" space, it's more right-brain I suppose. So when I want to write poetry, I never do that on a screen, for example - although I may "type it up" later on.

Similarly, I'd never consider handwriting a technical article, or non-fiction. There, the handwriting gets in the way of the word count per unit time without adding anything useful.

I actually think that doing handwritten journals for so long shaped me positively as a writer. It gave me practice at writing complete pieces in one sitting - thinking carefully, thinking ahead about the order and what you wanted to say. So as a result I've never had to do much editing, e.g. essays, when I type them on screen, don't get massive edits, just a few tweaks here and there after re-reading.

I don't know I'd be able to do that with novels - I imagine they would take quite a bit of re-working and re-drafting!

Yes. I have noticed a difference.
Lots and lots of reworking.

 

[Nonamedjohn]

My YouTube Poetry4cents has all my writing on audio. Except the adult stuff which I put on fet.

 

[Taylor Baker]

I'm looking forward to making my own brand of comics! Granted, though, I'm stuck designing characters and not making stories.

Like these guys.

 

[Luca]

I used to write a lot of short stories, but my writing energy has been completely zapped since the pandemic, and I don't know why