I've decided to found the "inconveniently competent" club!

Qualifications:

What the club does:

Applications will be received but not looked over either because I hate being administrative or I suck at it

Call me carbon, 'cause I can only make four meaningful bonds

A quote I'd like to share with you all, courtesy of Fen (@phoenixradiant [if he's just going to tag me randomly so will I]):

"I'm sure that down there somewhere, she's got a heart of gold."

"What, heavy and not worth as much as people pretend?"

...

It should be noted, should any of our mutual friends inexplicably find this post, that it was said in jest. I just thought it funny.

Hello. My name is theidealistcynic. You followed my blog. Prepare to cry

Sometimes I take a pause from my reading of fantasy classics and go "This author really seems to think stupidity and getting screamed at every ten minutes is hot"

Original Fiction writers be like "Is this a self insert? Am I writing a self insert? Am I committing writing's greatest sin?"

First off, self-inserts aren't even in the top ten sins of writing. Unless you really drop the ball with it, it's not even as bad as forgetting Oxie. Take a note from the fanfic book and don't worry about it.

Second of all, as an original fiction writer you're not "inserting" anything into anything. The rest of this came from you too, didn't it? You're carving up your soul to make this story; don't be ashamed you're leaving part of it a little more intact.

While I'm at it don't be afraid to write in other people either. Fen has a Chesterton analog in his book, and the way he's explained it it's not very subtle either. Write in your mom. No one will notice, and the ones who do won't mind.

Basking in misery like a lizard in the sun, I slowly open my eyes. I gaze at the paradoxically too-bright and too-dim room around me. Though I am still in the grasp of the earth, I feel that the earth itself is in free fall. Something is wrong with the world.

"I could be writing right now," I realize. The world makes sense once more.

"There is no reason on this planet I should be this proud of sending an email," I say, knowing full well that sending emails is the most excruciating of tasks I must complete second only to compiling my research paper bibliography

Common writing wisdom is to make sure actions have consequences. I don't disagree, but consider: the consequences don't always have to be external. I'm not even talking emotional turmoil, my advice has more to do with the lack of external consequences being a form of internal consequence. If your characters don't feel the weight of their actions for awhile, you can justify them making big mistakes with capital C Consequences.

Example: one of my characters avoids attachments and prioritizes survival. There's a few characters who love him anyway, but he doesn't really reciprocate. They're used to it, and most of them are stubborn to a fault, so they stick with him anyway. But when the group was put in danger, he left one of them to die. When they get rescued by someone else, now he has to deal with the fallout of that in a much sharper way than he had to when he let them down in the past. The sudden whiplash from being cared for to being abandoned wouldn't have meant as much if they'd dropped him the first few times.

I'm running into a problem. One of my characters did a bad thing so now he's in time out. The problem is I have to write him if the plot is going to go anywhere. But he needs to be punished. I can't just... let him out.

"He's just a fictional character." Maybe to you, Ivan the Terrible Reading Comprehension, but to me he's the outlet for my judicious tendencies and the manifestation of evil!

Made the poor decision to leave off my current read of RoW (temporarily, ofc, life just got a bit busy for a few days) while Kaladin was *heavily* depressed, and whaddya know? Now I don't feel too good either! Better read the rest of it if I want my life not to fall apart!

I want to write

I need to sleep

I will do neither

What do you call a Rosharan elk with only one antler?

An antelopen

So WoB the pulse from the Well of Ascension is a pure tone of Scadrial, just like Honor's tone is a pure tone of Roshar. This has implications for the world itself, but guess what? It also means that, long before the advent of recording technology, long before the advent of genre, long before the advent of the electric guitar,

Scadrial had metal music

I'll see myself out