If this isn't the stupidest career-fouling way to try to make a couple hundred bucks or so, it's definitely in the top five. Deeply embarrassing. It got me thinking of gen AI and the creative process though. This is about my own process because that's what I know. 🧵
![Deaged SQH diary showcasig their day.
Page 1: [child drawing of mbj and sqh inside the lake. mobei jun has a big smile on his face while he laughs] The text says "Year 84 of the Black Dragon Emperor (Luo Binghe), sunday. Today I made mobei laugh. He looked so funny. Luo-ge did not believe me. But I remember. He laughed so much his eyes closed! It was funny, but also nice."
Page 2: a visual play by play in crude child drawings of how they fell into the lake, walking near the water, when sqh stumbles and they fall. By the second image of them falling, sqh writes "mobei didn't feel cold, that CHEATER! (but he made me not feel cold too, so it's fine..)"](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_fullsize/plain/did:plc:wyo4hja2oabo5oueisk3kcjz/bafkreieel2diwndjbjwknow5bwxvw4qfi6tpwehobbdlnve7tlizsduoiy@jpeg)
![page 1: a drawing of half of mobei jun's face, with his eyes as focus. Text reads: "Year 84 of the black dragon emperor, wednesday. The kids on An Ding today got really scared when mobei looked at them. I heard one of them whispering he has scary eyes, but that's a lie! I know, I took a good look at them and they look nice, like pretty stones, or a galaxy in the sky. P.S.: Mobei asked me what a galaxy is and how come he doesn't know it!? I shall ask luo-ge to teach him if he wants to know. He must know!!"
page 2 is a collection of drawings of mobei jun's eyes and the chrysoberyl stones luo binghe has shown shang qinghua before. Scattered across are various comments made by sqh, who is comparing the two: "So cool" (about mbj's pupils going from a slit to an open shape), "kinda like a cat, right? It's nice! Sometimes ti gets really big like that. I wonder why.." and "what did luo-ge call these again? [crossed failed attempts at writting 'chrysoberyl'] cris, chrys, curist [and then normal writing again] something 'beryl'"](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_fullsize/plain/did:plc:wyo4hja2oabo5oueisk3kcjz/bafkreidwpks6zhdxt2lmu54r6tvincdjngyzqxio6rlpfqqzt24bhmyvxq@jpeg)
If there are only two pieces of advice I could give to writers they would be: 1: go out and live more; experience the world in all its pleasures and pains 2: read better books, the ones that make you jealous of a writer's skill Your input feeds your output.
Good doom metal music. Good advice in the album title, too
6 track album
This hasn't been my experience. (Yeah, yeah, I should post more or whatever. I barely have any energy left to write, I'm not wasting it on shouting at the void in the hopes somebody will start listening.)
This is absolutely right. And like OP says, the problem isn't that these books exist, but that their readers can't stay in their lane. Even if you're not writing for them, they assume you do and react accordingly. We're talking about the kind of readers who assume "Lolita" (1/2)
Yeah, I have seen this in online book circles and some (not all) of this can be laid at the feet of the kind of purity culture quick to label anything that causes the tiniest discomfort “problematic.” Authors feel pressure to make their books as bland as possible from fear of social media pile-ons.
i've started just saying "twenty gallons of water" immediately and flatly whenever someone tries to tell me how they used ChatGPT on some work project and boy it's pretty effective to dissuade people from using ChatGPT