If you don’t want people to talk about it, STAY SILENT

I've always been of the belief that if you want an idea to die, then you need to stay silent. I'm not talking about the situations where one needs to take a stand against political injustices. No, I'm talking about the book that you want to see removed from the shelves… or the bit of misinformation that needs to be buried… or the embarrassing events that happened the other night.

The fastest way to ensure that anyone knows about whatever it is that you wish would disappear and never resurface is to tell others about it. And if you share it on social media, it spreads even faster.

In today's post, I want to talk about some of the instances that I've encountered over the years where people just didn't know how to keep their mouths shut, spreading that tidbit of information that they wanted to hide because of it.

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Trapped in the Internet World

AI-training is being thrust upon us

I don't know about anyone else, but I'm getting really irritated with all of these systems insisting that we use AI… but I'm even more irritated by the fact that I'm being forced to grant permission for the companies to use my data to train their AI systems whether I like it or not.

I'm okay with the idea that AI technologies seem to be the way of the future, but I'm not being given a choice as to whether I use it myself or not… not really. I either stop using a computer altogether or I have to lump it and just let the big companies do what they want with my data.

Before anyone gets all righteous on me, let me explain a few realities of what is going on.

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2024: Reflecting on a Year of Change

I will be the first to admit that my writing career so far has been one hell of a roller coaster. And there are a lot of ups and downs still to come. But as we approach the end of the year, there is one thing that I can say with pride about 2024.

It was a year of mental growth.

It's time to take a step back, slow down a bit, and reflect on the year that has just been. I need to celebrate my growth and my little wins for what they are. Only then will I be able to move into the new year with my head held high, ready for whatever roller coaster dips and twists are coming my way.

So, let's get into the nitty-gritty of 2024.

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Sorry, I have not read every book

Wouldn't it be nice if we could just read day in and day out? But life has to happen and reading every day from the moment you get up to when you go to bed is not possible.

However, because I'm a writer and editor (that's my day job), I encounter so many who assume that I have all this time on my hands to read every book on the planet. And it's another assumption that makes an ass out of all parties involved.

Far too many times, I encounter someone who starts talking about some random book, assuming that I've read it. Yet, more often than not, I don't have a clue what they're talking about.

"But surely you've read that book. Oh, you know the one I'm talking about. It only came out… um… last year. Ohh, why haven't you read that book yet? It's in your genre."

Well, I haven't read it because I didn't know it existed. Or I have too many other books to read. Or I just don't have enough time in the day.

It's time to put a little reality in this equation, and highlight that there are only so many hours in the day, and sometimes, I don't want to read.

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Woman watching the sunset

Goodbye NaNoWriMo

When I first started writing, I was introduced to this idea of NaNoWriMo. It was presented to me as a writing challenge, where writers aim to write 50,000 words in a span of a month. The idea was that short novels are roughly 50,000 words, so writing those 50,000 words in one month would mean that you wrote a novel in a month.

Novels for me are much longer than 50,000 words, with most of my drafts clocking in at upwards of 98,000 words. The novel I'll be releasing next year is just under 140,000 words. However, I saw NaNoWriMo as an opportunity to get my butt in the chair and just write. It was about turning off the internal editor—which is not easy for me, especially these days.

So, in 2014, I joined NaNoWriMo… and wrote just shy of 70,000 words during that November. And those 70,000 words turned out to be the skeletal bones of two (2) different novels in my high fantasy series, along with some additional scenes that happen in later books.

In 2015, I became the municipal liaison (ML) for the Christchurch, New Zealand region. In 2020 (in the middle of the pandemic), the New Zealand Elsewhere region was added to my portfolio.

But there were seeds of discontent that had been brewing… and in 2023, it all came to a head. The demise of NaNoWriMo as an organization was on the horizon, and I refused to go down with it. So, I, like many other MLs around the world, jumped ship at the end of the 2023 season.

But the idea of NaNoWriMo was still important. So, I was hoping that things would turn around. I was secretly hoping that someone would be willing to step up and take my place—though I knew no one would. Still, as we head into the 2024 NaNoWriMo season, I'm saddened to see that there are zero MLs in New Zealand. It's seven (7) NaNoWriMo regions in New Zealand, and no representatives of the organization in this country.

I'm not surprised, but I'm still saddened.

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