Have machines stolen our dreams? It was a line from a Queensryche song, long ago. Similar enough, anyway. It was hard enough dealing with the human. But of course our current AI is all too human, in design (hallucinations) and use (theft). There are voices in academia, and online, who confidently say every story has …
Tag: Advice
Finishing again, new tools acquired for next time.
I finished The Red Palace (TRP) again today. How many times does a writer finish a book? A lot, in my experience. But I’ve only done this a few times. The attributionless experiment is over, who says what is now clear. More than that, revisions and rewrites have been included, small excisions, small elaborations. I …
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Rules and Rebellion: An Attributionist’s Diary
Disclaimer: This was written for my own amusement and is not meant to be taken seriously as writing advice, only my opinion on some writing advice I want to ignore, perhaps because I’m lazy, so I’m going to rationalize my laziness into an act of courageous rebellion. He said guiltily. Just realized I haven’t put …
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Blogging or Writing? It’s Writing For Me.
Hello, my friends and the occasional relative! In January 2023 I started blogging regularly again, initially spurred by my concerns about AI in writing. You can read them here and here, and see how my concerns match up to where we are three short years later. I haven’t re-read them as I write this column, …
A Good Weekend
Hello, my friends and the occasional relative! Progress. Never as much as you want. Always motivated when I need to go to bed. It is January. I’m not dieting, just trying not to eat as much. I am doing the basic rehab exercises for my knee(s) every day. 30 years in nursing (I’m counting my …
The Inner Game of Writing.
Hello, my friends and the occasional relative! In the land of bots does the genuine human rule? Unfortunately not, at present. The Gardener and The Goddess ebook is on sale for the next week! Grab it now! I am reading The Inner Game of Tennis (again) as part of my re-engagement with playing pool regularly, …
An Unexpected Path to Literary Freedom. (Spoiler Alert – it’s Obscurity!)
Hello, my friends and the occasional relative! I watched an interesting video on why folk do not read self-published fantasy. You can watch it here. I get the concerns of readers. I understand the option offered by published works, and the great undiscovered fantasies of the past, of around the world. There’s a lot there …
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Ebook sale and Collage Construction
Hello my friends and the occasional relative! Second October sale of ebook version of The Killer and The Dead starts later this week! Check it out! I have begun to assemble my collage of pieces that will become The Red Palace this week. Why, because I wrote a section that ended with the single biggest …
Fuck Doubt
Hello, my friends and the occasional relative! I have a cold. I’m still writing. Four more collage pieces since the last blog. The book is beginning to take shape. Key moments have received their first pass. The act of writing is the act of decision making and consciously or not, plenty of decisions have been …
Writing, practice, and Mindfulness: A Meander
Hello, my friends and the occasional relative! Pool and life, pool and writing, it really does offer a lot of lessons/provide interesting parallels for me. Thank you to some of my regulars here who said hello over there on my pool playing diary! It really is just me talking to myself in public, which I …
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Roderick T. Macdonald 