Nick Codignotto

Its a good night of editing when you start with a draft at 95k words, and you end with a NEW CHAPTER, and the draft comes down to 88k words. Go me.

Haven’t decided yet!

Book 1 of 3!

Going to ruminate a bit more, thank you!

Thank you! If I self-publish, copy…

Stoked to be polishing the 4th draft of my debut novel. I need an editor, or an agent. Query or do it all myself? Wrestling with positioning a kaleidoscope of genres: a hard sci-fi techno-thriller superhero story, chilled with cosmic horror and told as a New Adult adventure.

My WIP is a hard sci-fi new adult superhero techno-thriller served on a cold platter of cosmic horror.

This is how my morning went.

Gareth L. Powell | Patreon writing novels and encouraging aspiring authors

Do you read well-written science fiction? Do you want to be a writer? Join @garethlpowell.bsky.social Patreon to get instant access to 20k words of no-nonsense writing advice, behind-the-scenes exclusives, and advance notifications of upcoming releases and events. www.patreon.com/c/GarethLPow...

It usually takes me weeks to read a novel. My book? 3 days.

I created a Jupyter notebook so I could calculate stuff for a scene in my book. When something happens based on some math I did, I like to stick the equation in my book as a markdown comment in case I ever need to remember why I wrote the scene that way.

It’s exciting when you let a plot problem simmer long enough that an elegant solution distills from it.

I started submitting chapters of my speculative cosmic horror superhero story to my critique group. I’m excited about this draft, and somewhat anxious (terrified?) about it.

Just eliminated an entire character. That was a tough threshold to pass through, but once it was done lots of stuff fell into place.

That Project Hail Mary trailer was FIRE. It almost brought me to tears. I guess it’s time to read the book a third time.

Finished editing first 20k words of my fourth draft. I am excited about this revision.

I wish we could rollback the sycophants in DC as easily as OpenAI.

Just killed a darling.

I miss webrings, those cooky little site widgets we used link up our interests. The Web was so wild then: you didn't know what awkward hand-coded html greatness you'd come across. Now we have anyone's BS thoughts on social media and, now, you don't even know if they are real.

Today’s sourdough dough was sticky, and rose way faster than normal. I was clueless. Overnight, it was huge in the banneton, no idea why. I baked it and it rose weird, still mystified.

Then I tasted it. I FORGOT THE SALT!

What a lesson. Salt in there for more than taste. It affects fermentation.

[today's] AI technology is _easily_ capable of moving us from "Will a bot find my post on social media lock out my account" to "Will a bot find my post on social media and direct officers to my home." I'm talking about American citizens, not just immigrants.

I'm working on a mind-bending prologue that's fascinating me, yet confounding me.

The anti-American rhetoric put forth by our current leadership is wrong. What's being suppressed ARE American ideals. Our country has fallen short of the ideals described in the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, and moving that goal post to make us feel better is wrong. We need to be better.

The ongoing takeover of the American government by the oligarchy gives us the foundation for every dystopian mega-corporation depicted in modern science fiction: Tyrell Corp (Blade Runner), Weyland-Yutani Corp (Alien franchise), and the corporate city-states depicted in Snow crash, to name a few.

Look what you can do with with Celestia, zoom out to the galactic scale and see the relative positions of the Milky Way, the Small and Large Magellanic Clouds, and Andromeda. So cool! Research for my novel :-)

The Unbelievable Scale of AI’s Pirated-Books Problem Meta pirated millions of books to train its AI. Search through them here.

Interesting read => www.theatlantic.com/technology/a...

I just resurrected very old c/c++ code I wrote in 2000. Me and two friends published a computer adaptation to the Mayfair Games Iron Dragon board game. Now defunct, I was contacted by an old fan who wanted the site back.

Looking at this code I wrote as my younger self has filled me with nostalgia.

I hate when I’m reading a headline on Apple News on my phone and just when I’m interested in clicking on the headline, the headlines refresh. Plus to find it again it literally impossible.

I have a lot of projects going on. Despite moving forward on just about all of them, a herculean effort, I’m making sure I get enough sleep. I’ve banned my typical all-nighters. I’ve limited my alcohol. I’m trying to think long-term.

But my brain, it’s on 🔥.

<rant>
This new user interface paradigm on all my platforms where scrollbars are invisible until you scroll is MADDENING. UI targets for your eye need to be predictable! It’s not always something you can disable, either. I can’t wait for this trend to die.
</rant>