Melinda 🌻

I'm on draft 3 but more full of 😱😱😭😱😭😱😭😱😱 with every step forward. How much mixing is too much to not feel grounded in historical? It's hysterical, ha ha HA... 🤡

🎵 Somebody saAA—ve me— (name the show 😂)

#ShortStoryChallenge2026

To trust your intuition at the risk of being disqualified or write unlike yourself to be safe?

Guess which one is winning 🤓

Now I just have to figure out what the heck happens in the middle to get to the end 😂

#ShortStoryChallenge2026 #writerproblems #writerslife

Scared Spongebob GIF ALT: Scared Spongebob GIF

And never wanted to write anything in! 😭😱😭

... welp, definitely a threat this time 😭

#ShortStoryChallenge2026

YES TO THIS. 😔 I recently was trying to find the words to describe the way AI slop steals our appreciation of beauty, our curiosity, and sense of wonder.

It isn’t just about truth in political matters, etc.

Wow that feels weird, please don't call me that 😂

Anyway, rewarded for my good deed by a bunch of adorable fluffy birds flitting adorably (upside down, even) on a tree on the quiet back road.

Naturally, I had my croissant when I got home. 😋 (Next time, I'll get it fresher in the morning...) 4/4

Ah ha! Makes more sense.

I double check no cars are coming, go get the ball (nearly dropping the bag with my eggs in the process) and toss it back over the fence to them.

I'm thanked profusely, and I even hear one kid say "bonne chance avec les courses madame" and. 3/4

Immediately the thought is followed by a stranger one: ils demandent l'aumône? (Are they asking for alms?)

As I get closer, the only pedestrian on this side of the street (and/or at the moment), they start pointing and asking me to get the ball which is in the middle of the (two lane) street. 2/4

I just wanted a croissant...

(What a stereotypical French phrase to say 😂 #sorrynotsorry) #storytime

My first outing since arriving, jetlagged, in this small French town. On my way back (WITH 🥐,) I see a dozen kids' arms sticking out the schoolyard fence.

Strange, I think, is it a new game? 1/4

I think the shortest version of why LLMs are an anti education technology is that education is fundamentally about making shared context to understand ourselves, each other, and the world

And by design LLMs destroy shared context

The Short Story Challenge — nycmidnight The Short Story Challenge is an annual creative writing competition that challenges writers around the world to create short stories based on genre, subject, and character assignments in as little as ...

I guess it's time for another installment of the Short Story Challenge by @nycmidnight.bsky.social! What better way to start the year than with a deadline and the threat (thrill?) of an avoided genre. 🫣

Starts January 23rd, info here: nycmidnight.com/ssc

["When your selling point is: 'This thing is great, it'll write your high school essays for you, it'll create your artwork for you if you're an artist, so you don't have to actually learn how to draw and paint anymore ... You don't ever need to learn how to read a map or use a compass ... this this will wipe your butt for you.' What's left to live for? The creative spark in human beings - it's one of the most precious, wonderful things we have. What is more important than being creative?'"]

I need everyone who uses AI to generate art & text to notice what Vince Gilligan says here. You're surrendering your brain, your creativity, the divine spark within you to a machine. Someday you'll wake up and find you're no longer capable of writing or thinking. And for what?

I'm very grateful to @jasonkoebler.bsky.social for letting me speak on the relationship between AI and book bans.

This is a great and thorough article, and I'm glad I got a chance to say a thing I say a lot but that-- without the context Jason provides-- makes me sound a little conspiracy minded.

To #shortstorychallenge 2026 or not to, that is the question...

Pros:
✔️ deadline(s) & word count provided
✔️ new genre(s) exploration guaranteed
✔️ create new! (ideas/stories/worlds/characters/etc)

Cons:
✔️ deadline(s) 🫠
✔️ new genre(s) 😨
✔️ writing 😱

#writerproblems #writingcommunity

Good morning! AI is being force-fed to you by a handful of billionaires who will lose a bunch of money if they fail to convince you that you need it. You do not need it 🫶

Some writers sticky note their brain (for a time)

Some doodle the vaguest lines barely resembling a shape but better than misplacing the brain sticky... 🫠

Too many people have resigned themselves to not reading because they fear they no longer have the focus for it. You only need to limit your screen time for a few days to begin feeling the effects on your brain. I promise you, you are capable of reading books again.

In huge positive news, the Australian government just ruled out handing the work of their country’s creatives to AI companies for free 🙌

They resisted the well-funded tech lobby & shut down proposals to upend copyright law.

Other governments should do the same!

www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

If you want to push back against tech's encroachment into every corner of our lives, you have to read books. They're eager to create a future in which most people are illiterate and hooked on slop, a world without imagination or knowledge. Reading is resistance.

This is one of the absolute toughest things about predatory inclusion — the predation is often fun or a little useful. Criticism makes a reasonable person sound like an asshole. LowerEd weathered me for this kind of social death.

So I’ll say it: your enjoyment does not matter & should not matter.

If an individual offering consensual nudes of themself on OnlyFans is considered “illicit” but a program generating nudes of women without their consent is fine, the powers that be have made their priorities clear. And they’re the same as they ever were.

*leans in real real intimidatingly close to your face* even if they're a protagonist

Hmm, I do have a virtual group during the week and technically writing to a prompt (assignment, potato potahto? 🤭) but the contextualizing is louder than the scene 😩

Maybe I'll add a word/space goal and see if that helps 🤔

You don’t have to like, approve of, or engage with porn and nsfw work to see how right wing extremists are using fear and stigma around smut to ban queer people from public life, define “good” sex as only between married people for procreation, and otherwise further force white supremacy on everyone

I'm going to outline for you exactly how the christofacists win, because it's an obnoxiously simple strategy but a reliably powerful one. You know that post that's like "I don't trust y'all to eat the rich because you'll just target a bunch of doctors and actors and forget about the people who do the real damage?" That's our communal Achilles Heel. Here's the play: Collective Shout organizes a bunch of phone calls to payment processors demanding the elimination of NSFW/LGBT/ETC content. Payment processors go "oh, that's a lot of phone calls, we should do something" and then tell Steam and Itch to comply with those demands or be cut off from being able to do business. Then Steam and Itch have to make a decision between cutting off an arm and clamping down, or take a stand and shoot themselves in the head, functionally nuking their entire platform which, especially for Steam, have exponentially farther reaching ramifications.

Then our community gets mad at *them* and start calling them cowards and boot lickers and profess never to support them again. And like, yeah I get that getting mad at Itch is easy when you've got nothing to lose, but what the fuck with "I'll only support you, the comparatively small business with no real power as long as you can singlehandedly and successfully fight off the international might of the owners of theocratic capitalism with no further action from me?" like do people really not see the distance between creators and Itch (that's like, what? 30 people?) vs fucking Mastercard?? When the Goblin has Spider-man under his glider, we start throwing shit at him, we don't go "Damn, Spider-man, you said you'd save us. I guess you suck. Fuck you." So if you want to be more than a useful, reactionary pawn, I'm linking to a bunch of posts where smarter people than I are sharing payment processors phone numbers, scripts on how to talk to them, and other resources. If you do not pick up your phone and make that call you have *no* right to be mad at a company that has historically been pretty good about their support for creators and are likely trying to figure out how to weather this storm in real time.

grumble grumble

This, and also,

Aromantic ≠ doesn't want romance
Aromantic in fact = experience little/no romantic ATTRACTION

You can be aro and desire relationships. You can be aro and desire intimacy. You can also be aro and desire neither.

It is so, so important to learn to understand the difference between A Gross Thing That Freaks Me Out, versus A Thing Which Causes Actual Harm In The World

because as long as you can't navigate the difference, your disgust is a lever that can be used to manipulate you

Has anyone found the perfectionist off switch? I'd like to get words on the page, not spend an hour stress dissecting the scene I haven't even written yet... 🫠

#writerproblems #writingcommunity #writerslife

"But this is just about porn games!"

Yes, and weird religious fascists regularly mischaracterize queer people and queer art as inherently pornographic, they shouldn't be given an inch because there's no line for them, no cut-off point, they'll never be satisfied. Do you think they'll stop at porn?