Kaymyth

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!

2 hours ago, Boomerang Guy said:

Well I'm going to be honest. I don't have a whole lot I can add to this. I am a man of few words. Its hard for me to get my true thoughts and feelings portrayed accurately sometimes. I have pretty bad social-anxiety, and just anxiety in general, as well as sever ADD, and though I was never diagnosed with OCD, I feel like I am with certain things. I

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.)

3 minutes ago, Jofwu said:

Kaymyth knows better, but I think they were breaking 1000 the last couple years. Various Covid-related issues obviously keeping attendance a lot lower this year.

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.

2 minutes ago, Chiri-Chiri<3 said:

Okay I understood, But if someone else had answered before it would be fine to post again there. So I am not supposed to answer my own questions or add information to a post  with another post, but i should edit the original one, except someone else has postet in between.
So if I post and you post i can post again, but I post and i post is  a no-no

That is correct.

Just now, Chiri-Chiri<3 said:

Did I double post? @Kaymyth
I did not want to. my RAM could not handle to many open browser windows with text in it. So I copied everything into a word, closed the tab, wrote the rest in word and then opened the same tab again. i assume, you already deleted it, because I can not find it anymore.
 

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.

21 minutes ago, Chiri-Chiri<3 said:

I've never met someone who actually believed in one of the ancient gods of the Greek, Egyptians, or Vikings. And by today's standard (western world) their gods are not gods at all. They are not all powerful or all knowing. They are not good.
 

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.

8 hours ago, Chiri-Chiri<3 said:

Another thing would be "Deliberate misgendering or misnaming other members."

So, one of my basic rules is not to lie. What do you mean by gender? There is this huge discussion which is not politcs but philosophy in my opinion.
What is truth. And for me truth is scientific truth. So basically XX is female and XY is male. Thats the truth for me. But if someone wants me to refer to them as the other gender and the definition of gender is not the topic of the discussion I deliberately use the gender they want me to use. But I assume that this is okay because a third party would have to complain? 
Usually I do not care about that when referring to a person but It is unclear to me. And if somehow this topic comes up, especially when we are discussing the gender of people not involved in the discussion, than again I should be allowed to state (my opinion) the scientific truth. That topic always confuses me and I assume people should accept the opinion of others and do not get offended by it. Has that ever  been an issue here?
 

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:

50 minutes ago, Frustration said:

I love freedom more than safety, so if one has to go...

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.

50 minutes ago, Frustration said:

I find the conditions of the shard if not ideal, acceptable.

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.

2 minutes ago, Kobold King said:

 

Come to the Discord. Joooin usssss.

3 hours ago, Delightful said:

Hello! 
Discord intimidates me tbh, when theres all these people I dont know. 

Remember the first time Quiver just disappeared for months and we were scared something had happened? Hope he's doing ok.

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.

3 hours ago, Comatose said:

That second response is soo Brandon.  He's definitely more of a "write an essay" type of guy.  

Glad to see a response from him.  

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

What Shallan has is definitely not Dissociative Identity Disorder. A lot of folks come to that conclusion, but there are some distinct differences between what Shallan is doing and what happens with DID.

Brandon is indeed very conscientious about the mental illness and non-neurotypical representations he puts into his work. He's also admitted to making some mistakes in his earlier books, and works hard to improve as he learns more.

Unlike some of the recent mod voices, I am...mostly keeping my mod hat on. Not because I feel like I need to mod anyone right at this moment, but because my mod hat comes with a heavy filter that is absolutely necessary for me on topics like this. I can't talk here like I can on my personal social media, because when it comes to social justice issues I'm kind of a firebrand. I'm know that ultimately, I'm not capable of keeping a cool head discussing this subject.

Which means I'm not capable of moderating this subject.

So I'm trying not to read too many of the replies here. The mods who are watching the thread directly are better able to keep an even keel on things. And in return, there are situations in which I can keep a level head when some of the others get riled up. But it's part of the responsibility of moderating to know what we can handle and when we're about to lose our cool - so if it seems like some of the mods are being inhumanly dispassionate about moderating the thread, it's because we self-select for who can keep that level head in any given discussion. Sometimes it'll be a distinct set of people, sometimes one person will handle it until they start getting frustrated and then pass it off to another. I do keep up with the staff chat, and will chime in on those discussions, but this post is really about as deep as I can get into the discussion here without losing my crem.

We talk to each other a lot. We know each other really well, and do a lot of teamwork behind the scenes when it comes to moderating. Sometimes this means we're slow to respond to a situation, either because we're hashing out a lot of different opinions or we're having trouble coordinating time zones to get one or more voices in that we absolutely need to hear before we act. I know sometimes people can get a little frustrated when we don't act on something as quickly as expected, but we're never not paying attention. We just all have jobs and families and pets and a wild variety of different sleeping schedules. It may take us some time to juggle things to where we can figure a thing out, but we absolutely will get there.

Surreptitiously eyes the first draft of "Clear and Present Discord" that currently sits in Alpha-reader-torn-to-proper-shreds form on Google Docs.

Oh, look. A thing I have not finished.

6 hours ago, Slowswift said:

Noooooo

I caved and bought every episode individually on Amazon, but it looks like they've got a season pass up on Prime Video now. (Still don't understand why they didn't offer a season pass from the beginning. Jerks. ) 

Ooh, the season cost has dropped a LOT since I last looked at it...like a week ago. That's something I might spring for. But I wasn't gonna pay $55 for it.

It's still not on Netflix.

I don't think anyone closed the poll on purpose. It might be that Chaos getting a vote broke it and tore a hole in the fabric of the universe.

On 10/19/2019 at 0:33 PM, John Flamesinger said:

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How could this happy train kill anyone, even in his sleep?

This pony however...

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I can easily picture Mr. Bill or some other innocent clay-based life form losing their precious life on those tracks. (In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if Robot Chicken has done a skit on this idea.)
 

Bzzt! Unauthorized use of non-canon fan art, 5 demerits and you owe 20 hours of community service, preferably in the form of watching MLP:FiM with your closest child relative.