Recently, I've recieved an email telling me my application for a creative grant to write my book has recently been approved! I can finally work on my book full time! Not to mention that the funds I recieved is going to go towards hiring voice actors to voice in a audio book format along with paying me to create visuals for the book to!

Now, the thing is I'm caught in a conundrum. I am going to be going through with this audiobook but I do want my finished manuscript published. So, do I distribute the book myself through the socials or do I wait and send my manuscript to publishers first?

I'm aware of finding beta readers, maybe hiring an editor, but, honestly I'm not sure what to do.

As far as I know, the beehaw's instance has the most active writing community, but lemmy.world is currently defederated with it.

As I understand, that means anything I post will only be a 'shadow' on the actual instance - only visible from behind the block.

Does anyone else still think its worth posting here, where if we ever refederate, our posts will be 'lost' into the future? Or does anyone else think it'll add a little more illuminati spice?

What's crackalacking! Yeah, I'm actually sticking to this, since it seems like a lot of people had a lot of fun with it last week, and I'm still having fun forcing my horrible ideas onto the unsuspecting populace of beehaw. And then you lot, entirely forgetting the point of all this take the bad ideas and actually make them entertaining! How could you?! I've actually become emotionally attached to Emo-Chan and her battle to defeat Hitler. Of the drama obsessed story teller food critic. Alice and her Woman Emotions. And, of course, the late entry of Timmy's Taco Tuesday Torment. (How could you miss the alliteration you MONSTER)

Jokes aside, I'm going to do things a bit differently this time. I've always found the traditional reddit writing prompt to be a bit too limiting, so I'll be trying to include some writing prompts that don't really follow the formula of "here's a story idea." To a greater extreme. Also, feel free to post your own prompts in the comments, I'll try to edit the post to include them, and if I find the time/energy to, I'll write a few myself. No promises though, I'm a lazy bastard.

Adding onto that, I want to stress that the point of this activity is just to write. Not write a complete or even good story. Just to write. If you don't like the prompts, ignore em, or make up your own, or write about how bad the prompts are. I don't care just write!

Now, I'll stop fudging around and give you the prompts of the week.

Bad Character Ideas

• Like, omigosh, did you see that Janet was going out with Hugnthlenbar? She totes just dumped Jason for him too! Ugh, what a, like, totes bitch, right?

• A young shonen protagonist, ready to take on the world with his best friend! The parasitic alien fungus that occupies the right side of his body. He is still relentlessly positive.

• Elves... As wise as they are old. And of course they all old, right? I mean, it'd be unthinkable for the wandering Elf spouting wisdom of the ancients for the low low price of $699.99 (plus gratuity) to not be old. R-Right?

Bad Setting Ideas

• In honour of facebook market place deciding that my one and only desire in this world is apparently milk kefir grains (no I don't know what they're used for either), the story is set and explained through horrible social media posts.

• Check it out! Fashion revolution, new styles and the hottest new designs to wear in the post apocalypse world!

• Everyone knows the get stuck in the videogame plot. And that's already bad. But what if the videogame also just sucked? Glitchy, unfinished, and nearly entirely empty.

Bad Plot Ideas

• A deep intrigue story filled with deep plots where everyone has their own interests. It's for a baking competition.

• Since I'm apparently on an anime roll here right now. The plot is that the cast is trying to kill God. God is just a chill dude though.

• An adventure story where the dohicky that everyone is after is lost media from a children's TV show from the 70s. This is treated with a grand amount of severity.

Unique Idea!

• Hey, you know that piece of media that you love? The one close to your heart? Write a bias an unfair review of it where you rip it to shreds and call it shit.

Alright, once more I'm running out of time before work. Thanks for reading, and double thanks for posting! I'm off and out, see you all next week!

Most of my creative writing is handwritten. I usually use legal pads, or more preferably wire bound legal pads. It's easy to write on both sides of them and for some reason the yellow just does it for me. Every once in a while I decide to by a fancy notebook. In the past it was Moleskines, more recently it was ones from etsy made with Tomoe River paper. I have a (cheap) fountain pen, so I figured I'd try some better paper.

The problem I run into is that I never use the fancy notebooks. The paper is better, and the ink flows smoother. It has a better tactile feel to it. But it is a fancy notebook and it should only be used for the good stuff—the stuff I want to look over a decade or two from now and be proud of.

So I'll be very careful and take my time to write in the best handwriting possible. I'll last for a few pages before my handwriting gets sloppier, or a have another idea that doesn't fit, and I abandon that fancy notebook. I go back to the spiral bound legal pads which contain a chaotic jumble of non-linear thoughts. There are notes and poems in the margins, things crossed out all over the place, and handwriting that becomes only legible to me if I squint real hard at it and pick it up from context.

So how do you feel about fancy journals. Are you able to treat them as the paper they are, or do you too put them on a pedestal?