Kaymyth

This is, I feel, a very subjective definition. I'm not sure you realize this, but I'm a Kemetic Pagan. The gods I worship are those of ancient Egypt, and they fit none of these criteria. But I'll tell you now, I will get very offended if someone starts trying to explain to me how my gods aren't actual gods.

With punctuation, it really comes down to memorizing a bunch of rules. It's annoying and dull, but that's the only way to learn it. Take notes, make a cheat sheet, whatever works for you. This is one piece where having a writing group can be really useful, but only if you have the right group of people. Ideally, you want folks who all have different strengths and weaknesses, so you each have something to contribute to the others. And y'know, even when you're good at a thing, sometimes you'll make a mistake. In my group, we're constantly fixing each other's grammar/spelling/punctuation all over the place. I have been told that dialogue in particular is difficult to get right, and that I'm freakishly good at writing it, so I'll share the trick I use to get mine smooth. Even if you don't talk to a lot of people, I assume you watch at least some TV/movies, right? I tend to imagine my characters on the screen. I visualize them, build the scene, and run them through it in my head over and over, working the scene until I have the emotions right, the movements, and the conversation. Once I have it sorted, well, I just write what I've pictured. It works well for me, though as always, your mileage may vary.

UPDATE: So apparently the introduction of the Cultivation bot has been so popular that the sprint messages spammed the heck out of the #writing channel. We have created a new #sprintspam channel (located conveniently directly below #botspam) for all your writing sprint needs. I shall edit my first post to bring all information up to date. Also: feel free to use this thread to coordinate and collect sprint groups if you like.

Okay, I have maybe half an author credential crumpled in my back pocket; I've got a short story published and a weekly writing critique group I'm part of, so there's a halfway decent chance I know what I'm talking about. I'm going to take a moment to kick my imposter syndrome to the curb and chime in with opinion in three parts: 1. The kudos: You show a lot of promise as a writer. You've already got a good grasp of narrative flow, and you're demonstrating skill at painting a picture with words. These pieces are huge and, in some ways, the harder things to teach. You're clearly an avid reader, as it shows in your writing. You understand the feel of how writing words. That's invaluable. 2. The harshest truth: Writing is work. Growing as a writer is even more work. The old saying goes, "It takes at least a million words of crap in order to learn how to write well." And it's true. It's going to take time and a lot more words before you're writing at the level you want to be. But know that every single writer out there has done the same, and you have the spark. You can do it, if you've the will. 3. One thing to work on: I want to leave you with some concrete feedback without making you feel like I've picked your selection apart with a red pen, so I'm going to give you an assignment of one single thing you can improve: punctuation. Study up on your comma placement and, particularly, the correct punctuation to use around dialogue. It's an easy thing that you can learn that will give you immediate results. It's a small piece that will have a big impact on the overall look, flow, and polish of your writing. Good on you for being brave and sharing your work! I know that first time can be hard, and getting any kind of criticism can be crushing for a newbie writer. So I have one final piece of bonus advice for you: keep sharing. Keep putting yourself out there. It's hard, I know, but the only way for any writer to grow is to take the feedback and use it to improve your writing. Because no matter how successful, every writer has been exactly where you are right now. All of us. Every single one. (And, in fact, some of us may well have started a lot further back!) Even now, Brandon Sanderson himself will sometimes write something that turns out to be broken. He's shelved projects that didn't work. (See: Apocalypse Guard.) Good writers aren't born, they're grown. Keep growing!

Brandon has done one hell of a job in reaching and supporting new/emergent writers. Reading Alloy of Law cracked my brain open, and activated my Writer Mode. I hadn't asked for it, hadn't been expecting it, but it just happened. I still don't know whether I happened to hit some kind of "words read" threshold that auto-triggered something or if Brandon hid some kind of secret Konami Code in the book that specifically worked on my brain. What I do know is, now I can't shut it off. His writing lecture videos made a huge impact, too. I learned an extraordinary amount from watching them.

Hello my fellow writers of the 17th Shard! Do you find accountability helpful for your daily writing productivity? Maybe you find that a little friendly competition spurs you on? Or perhaps you simply enjoy a bit of camaraderie now and then? Well, starting Monday, September 6, Rasaar and I are going to be running regular writing sprints on the Shard Discord! We’ll go Monday-Friday, 2pm-5pm Central Time US. That is, for reference: 12pm-3pm Pacific Time (US) 3pm-6pm Eastern Time (US) 8pm-11pm London Time (UK) What the heck is a writing sprint? A writing sprint is a focused, timed period of writing designed to increase word count by dissuading distractions and, with multiple participants, add a little competition. NaNoWriMo calls them Word Wars, but the principle is the same: set a timer, WRITE, then report on your progress! We’ve also added a new bot to the Discord server to facilitate tracking sprints (more on that below). Why are you doing this? Well, for me specifically, I have ADHD, which comes with it executive dysfunction issues. Experience has taught me that I work best when I am accountable to some other human(s) in order to be at my best. I’ve had good luck with joining others’ writing sprints, but they aren’t always at the most convenient time for me, nor are they as consistent as I would prefer. As for Rasaar, she has expressed to me a similar desire for some structure with getting into the writing groove. We actually came up with the idea of running Shard writing sprints independently of each other, and by a stroke of luck, our preferred writing times line up very well despite being in wildly different time zones. How exactly are you going to structure three hours of sprinting? We’re planning to do multiple sprints per session in 30-minute blocks. We’ll probably do something along the lines of 25-minutes of writing to a 5-minute break. We can tweak the details as we figure out what works best. This is a great idea, but Crazy Unicorn Lady, these times don’t work for me! Worry not! The Discord bot we’re using for the sprints will be accessible to everyone, though will be limited to the #sprintspam channel, located near the bottom of the Discord channel list. If there are other times on any day that work for you and a few of your friends, you are more than welcome to hop onto Discord and utilize it! And while you may be familiar with Sprinto, we’ve renamed it to Cultivation to fit in with our snazzy little theme. We’ve also created a new voice channel -- Creative -- for the sake of all writing and arting discussion. You can verbally coordinate sprints there and, if you like, chat during the rest minutes between sprints. I’m in! But I can’t do it every weekday. Is it okay if I only join a couple days a week? Of course! Join when it works for you. Barring holidays, vacations, and emergencies, we plan to keep a regular schedule so you know when to expect us there. (Having two mods running the event together will help there!) Neat! I’m on the Discord now and I want to run my own sprints. How do I use Cultivation? Cultivation is a fairly simple bot that has been programmed with basic commands. She can start a sprint, keep track of time, and even track your word count during the sprint! Bear in mind, though, she doesn’t work in every channel. Mostly, we expect member-run sprints to happen in #writing. Moderator-run sprints can occur in #writing or #chat-for-voice. Per the first update comment: all sprints should take place on the #sprintspam channel. Bot Commands: **Starting the sprint:** _sprint 20 -- in 1 minute, start a 20-minute sprint _sprint 20 in 5 -- in 5 minutes, start a 20-minute sprint _sprint 20 now -- start a 20-minute sprint right now (The maximum sprint time is 60 minutes.) **Participating:** _join -- join the sprint with starting word count of 0 _join 100 -- join the sprint with starting word count of 100 _wc 200 -- set your word count to 200 (the bot will ask you to do this after the sprint ends) _= -- join the sprint with starting word count equal to the last word count you've given the bot **Stopping:** _forget -- you will not be pinged for the next sprint (otherwise, Cultivation will ping you for 3 sprints after the last you participated in) _cancel -- stops the sprint you started So, say you’ve got some people ready to write and you want to start a sprint. No problem! Simply go to the #writing channel in the 17th Shard Discord and start her up! Say you want to run a 15-minute sprint -- you’ll type “_sprint 15” into the chat, hit enter, and the bot will respond. If you don’t want the sprint to start immediately, that’s fine, too! You can instead type “_sprint 15 in 3” and a 15-minute sprint will begin in 3 minutes. Now, you and everyone else needs to officially join the sprint with your word count. Cultivation makes it easy to track based on your current document count - just tell her where you’re starting at the beginning of the sprint. You’ve already got 1,257 words written in your current Work in Progress, so you’ll type “_join 1257” to set the starting point. When the sprint is over, Cultivation will ping an alert and text marking the end of the sprint will appear on screen! Say now you’re document is up to 1,513 words - you’ll type “_wc 1513” into the chat. The bot will automatically calculate the number of words you’ve written and save the data. Once everyone has input their final word counts, Cultivation will send a message to the chat with a ranking of every participant and their final results. Cultivation’s command list will also be pinned to a message on the channel, so if you forget how to work her, the information will always be at your fingertips. Happy writing, and we hope to see you in writing sprints on the Discord!

Oh, hai there, ADHD/OCD twin! (My diagnoses are fresh, but I've been dealing with this crem basically my entire life. OCD is annoying.)

I think the primary point that needs to be made at this juncture is that Shallan burying her trauma actually is "sucking it up and moving on." That's what it looks like. That's why sucking it up doesn't work: actually processing trauma involves months, if not years, of work and in 99.9%* of cases, requires the guidance of a therapist in order to make progress. It's just not something a person -- let alone the Earth-equivalent of an 18-19-year-old (my gods, she's young enough to be my kid) -- can do on their own. And in a world that doesn't even know how to treat mental health problems, there are no therapists for Shallan to go to. And given the level of trauma she's sustained, even with help it wouldn't be an easy road. Shallan is, in a manner of speaking, trapped in the lies her own mind tells her. She lacks the necessary perspective to even understand how to properly process her trauma. She needs help to dig her way out, but she doesn't know help is even possible, let alone who to ask for it. Can it be frustrating to read? Sure, and it's completely reasonable to get a little uncomfortable during her passages. But is it really fair to judge a teenager for failing to fix herself when even an experienced therapist would likely need years to help her untangle it all? I'm gonna go out on a limb and say no. It is not. And as frustrating as it can be for some people to read her POV sections, I invite you to take a moment and try and empathize with her, because living in that kind of brainspace is much, much more difficult than reading about it. *I'm one of the 0.1% of people who managed to muddle my way through on my own. It wasn't easy, and was only possible because I have an abnormally high level of self-awareness and ability to analyze myself. And it took years. I didn't really reach a reasonable level of functioning until I hit about 30, and I'm still not completely 100%. I'm finally getting some support for the ADHD and executive functioning disorder. The OCD is never going away; I just have my tics under enough control that I'm able to mask them well enough that it's rare for anyone to notice them.

They haven't quite gotten that far. Up until the pandemic hit, it'd been a steady increase year-to-year. 2019 had around 900 people. 1,000 is their current venue's maximum, I think, hence this year's cap of 500. They're doing their very best to make this as safe as possible - half capacity, limited events, and a vaccination requirement for attendees.

I will, of course, be there! (I'm always there.) And, as usual, I will have my little stash of 17th Shard badge ribbons to hand out to any Sharders wandering about. I should be easy to find - just spend some time in the Sandertrack room and you're bound to spot me on a panel sooner or later. Planned hair color is purple, or a pink-to-purple ombre. Also, to everyone who is going, I'm going to shamelessly plug myself for a moment: be sure and grab yourself a copy of the JordanCon anthology! My very first published story "Urban Planning" lurks inside awaiting the eager eyeballs of readers. Reeeeeeaaaaaad.

That is correct.

You did. "Double posting" refers to any time when you post twice in a row in one thread. That's a no-no on the Shard.

Thing the first: please do not double-post. This is one of the basic forum rules. You can edit your second post's text into the first and hide the extraneous one. Thing the second: now you have met one. I am a Kemetic Pagan; my gods are the ancient Egyptian pantheon. I need you to understand that you just deeply insulted my faith.

So, the scientific truth about gender and biological sex is not that simple. There's a lot of scientific study that's been done on this. Reams of data. Here are a few links: UCLA - Challenging Gender Identity: Biologists Say Gender Expands Across A Spectrum, Rather Than Simply Boy And Girl https://socgen.ucla.edu/.../challenging-gender.../... NY Times - Anatomy Does Not Determine Gender, Experts Say - (this one might be behind a paywall) https://www.nytimes.com/.../transgender-trump-biology... Scientific American - The New Science of Sex and Gender https://www.scientificamerican.com/.../the-new.../... Harvard - Between the (Gender) Lines: The Science of Transgender Identity http://sitn.hms.harvard.edu/.../gender-lines-science.../... AP News - Sciences Says: Sex and Gender Aren't the Same https://apnews.com/2a67da6515aa48e68e56cd97817b097a... World Health Organization (WHO) - Gender and Genetics https://www.who.int/genomics/gender/en/... Medline Plus Encyclopedia - Intersex https://medlineplus.gov/ency/article/001669.htm... That's a pretty basic primer, I think. Genetics are weird y'all. Chromosomes can trade genes - including the one that expresses biological sex, ending with a switch between X and Y chromosomes. A ton of different genes control hormone generation and receptors, leading to a huge variety of different hormone balances per individual. And that's just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to biological sex and gender expression. None of this is simple.

I mean, if you want to go hang around in corners of the internet where people are freely allowed to be terrible to each other for the lulz, be my guest. We, however, have a very reasonable desire for the Shard to not be an awful place with awful people saying awful things to each other. That's good, because we're not going to be changing them.

Locking this because while there are good reasons to necro threads, this just...wasn't. Sorry.

It really depends on the topic of the thread and how relevant it is to current knowledge/events. I know that some forums frown on thread necros, but honestly, we're not that concerned about it. There are plenty of cases in which an existing theory thread may get data from a new book where it makes sense to continue the existing conversation (even if it's 19 months old) rather than start a new thread. This is doubly true when the original poster wants to pull it back up and discuss the new developments. Granted, I do get a little amused on the odd occasion when somebody pops in and quotes one of my posts from, say, 4 years ago and says, "But this this is wrong! Here's why." I usually giggle to myself and then respond and point out that I made said post X years before the book in question proved my devilish cleverness to be nothing more than a flight of fancy. So it's not bad to necro threads. Just pay attention to dates and things when you pull up an old discussion so you don't feel embarrassed later.

This is a thing of gloriousness.

Come to the Discord. Joooin usssss.

But there's all these people you DO know, too! And people you can get to know and then have new friends! Yep; that was right around the time a hurricane hit Ireland. He did pop back out and let us know he was okay. @Quiver Hey there! We still like you! It's okay to come out! @Kobold King We have had a Discord for several years now. There's literally a sideboard of it on the main forum page.

Of course I'm still around. I've been a lot more active on the Discord over the last couple of years, but I've started to try to boost my presence a bit more on the forums again. Kobold King still drops periodic status posts; Twi, too, though more rarely. Quiver probably forgot to log in for months. Mestiv is around on the Discord and does a lot of code-stuff behind the scenes for the Shard.

I had several at the top that were pretty closely clustered - Edgedancer, Lightweaver, and Windrunner.

Write an essay, spend 3 1/2 months revising it, accidentally end up with a novella.