Category Archives: Random

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

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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

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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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Woman watching the sunset

Goodbye NaNoWriMo

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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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Mental health trumps who is right about events

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There's an old saying: History is written by the victors.

The viewpoint of the history books becomes tainted by the viewpoints of those who wrote them—often those among the victorious. And because the viewpoints are tainted, we often find that the other side of whatever situation is ignored and their experiences lost. We see this time and time again. But we can also see this in our own lives.

Our memories of events become tainted by our emotional responses to those events. And when certain events have lasting consequences, shaping our viewpoints forever, the truth of the events (and our memories) get lost among the emotional responses. Whether it's by way of omission of fact, or by way of having a skewed perspective, when we strip away all the details, we are left with only one truth that we can properly cling to: That the event changed us.

In today's post, I want to explore this idea that every story has two sides to it, but how at the same time, the details of the story are irrelevant. It's the lasting emotional impact that matters. This is especially the case when it comes to depression, anxiety, and other mental health issues.

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Woman looking at what it means to be diverse.

Has Woke Culture Become Too Much?

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I have been thinking about this for quite some time, trying to understand why film, television, and books seem to be filled with stories that want to push some form of political correctness agenda. They push into the foreground sexual relationships and gender identity issues that seem to have no context or relevance to the story. For me, this is a problem.

Before I get too far, I need to highlight that I deliberated for a long time about whether I should say anything about this on public channels or not. In the end, I decided that this push for diversity has created a gap within storytelling that is harmful to the industry as a whole. As a developmental editor and writing coach, I can't let it go by without it being addressed.

I have zero issue with LGBT+ stories, as long as that sexual orientation is just a part of the character. I adore reading stories about characters from other cultures and different backgrounds, as long as those cultures are put into context. And as far as I'm concerned, the physical appearance of a character almost has no place in written stories, unless there is something significant that has an impact on the way the characters interact (or impacts on the plot). Everything that is on the page (or on the screen) needs to have context.

And in my opinion, that is the heart of the problem. In many stories being produced today (enough to be noticed), the push for diversity is without context within the storytelling.

If you are willing to humor me for a moment, I will explain why context is vital when it comes to diversity in stories.

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