Some connections with Self-Publishing
To be integrated
The human mind is not always straightforward and consistent, especially with regards to dispositions, intents, wants, and needs. In stories, reflecting this variance gives the character a realism. Whereas if they are portrayed as being single minded and having no wavering of thought, they’ll likely be thought to be poorly developed, flat, and unrealistic. I imagine this happens a lot for historical depictions based on few accounts, especially if/when those accounts all suggest the same thing.
The writing bundle is still available, thru Nov: https://www.humblebundle.com/books/get-ready-for-nanowrimo-2023-books
Write that which you feel within your soul that you must explore. — For those who [are lost in terms of knowing what to write, or who struggle…]
- from a dream, the early morning of Nov 11th
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magic_realism
https://www.reddit.com/r/SLEEPSPELL/ original fantasy writing
Fantasy writers! https://www.reddit.com/r/fantasywriters/
Fantasy subreddit, what about one for fantasy writing? https://www.reddit.com/r/Fantasy/
https://moxiebooks.co.uk/writing-advice-from-professor-sir-terry-pratchett/
🟩 For language learning
There is something creatively freeing about writing and thinking in a second language, even (or possibly especially) as you’re learning it
WriteES subreddit to practice writing in Spanish https://www.reddit.com/r/WriteStreakES Lots of resources here in sidebar: https://www.reddit.com/r/learnspanish/
Pieces, ideas
🟩 Peak: From a dream the early morning of 11/6/23
Space station hijacked and brought back to earth, crashing in metropolitan area. People who came in contact with the crash items start developing strange growths, seeable on X-ray scans, etc. Green growths.
Peak - selling it to the public as that you’re becoming better, enhanced, when in reality it’s a live experimentation, using willing guinea pigs. Notion is that you’ll never know your peak until you go through this; it’ll get you there, to your highest level of performance and health.
People wearing woven patches on their head or on their back. Usually the patches have some white showing, other times green specks among the white, other times full green to light green (like it’s dried out)
It’s like a mix between mold and moss. The people are getting transformed into people whose systems are actively being hijacked by a space parasite. The effects of it aren’t too clear, but more advanced cases seem to mostly disintegrate.
Saw pretty much a mound of moss that was a person. Saw a proud parent, wearijg a path, pushing a stroller with a fully green baby.
Saw a person’s face, scaled up in size and all but sewn into a wall - though it was not green, the skin seemed weirdly taut and cracking. This is one of the early strains, a way they manifest, but it seems to move slower than the general green one and thus is less prominent. (Multi strain, multi effect)
- these wall forms are horrifying to behold.
- their existence is a major surprise, as they’re quite shocking. But the reason they’re a surprise is that when the people were initially infected with this strain, it overtook them very quickly and completely. But it can’t spread easily and it can’t be mobile, so it can’t go around spreading itself out. (Immediate contact only, no spores)
Somewhat common to see people with the eye infections squinting the affected eye and moving it around to (actually) regain use of it, but for them it just restores a feeling of confidence that they can move it around and that it’s working correctly.
In a lot of ways this feels like the Expanse books with the protomolecule and how the firm is testing it on people. But they didn’t do open trials and try to sell it to the public. Also with this the effects aren’t fully revealed. This is all from a dream so it’s unclear what it’s inspired by, if anything.
God Magic
Some magic is much more plausible than others. God more readily uses things that are likely to escape notice, such as little things, slow things, invisible things (the wind), etc. This is not to say that he doesn’t use other things and that he doesn’t use things when it’s likely that they’ll be noticed.
In fact, some of the best known stories are those about occasions where God just went for it while everyone was watching.
But what I was getting at was that he tends to use the lesser noticed things. Mushrooms, for instance. If a person is having a bad day and suddenly they see a pretty little mushroom, they might feel better. And God likes that, so he sets those sorts of things up. He also likes, in that situation, a little bit of trickery that escapes the person’s attention. Yes, they might start to wonder about if they’d seen the mushroom in that spot once before. They’re pretty sure it wasn’t there the day before. And they “know” that mushrooms grow slowly, so they assume that it might have popped out of the ground sometime between yesterday, when they saw that the ground was bare, and today, when they see the little one. And with this, they feel extra contented. Little do they know, however, is that this was no conventional mushroom. Well, it is a regular mushroom, but it’s a regular one used in an irregular way: with God’s help, it formed only seconds prior to the vision of a mushroom appearing in the person’s peripheral vision. They’ll never know it, but he will.
God as a reality warper and weaver
Magic and miracles are violations of conventional reality. Not in terms of just how humans have conceived of reality, but, well, who’s to say that God truly doesn’t just make exceptions sometimes?
Magical realism, speculative nonfiction, fantasy