In today’s Journal
* Quotes of the Day
* A New Semi-Regular Feature
* You Can’t Make This Shup
* Of Interest
Quotes of the Day
“If you’re interested in AI and creativity, I have articles, interviews, and resources at https://thecreativepenn.com/future.” Joanna Penn, The Creative Penn
“Of the three wingback chairs in my library, only one is upholstered in human skin. There’s a reason for that.” Charles Claymore “Charlie” Task in Confessions of a Professional Psychopath
A New Semi-Regular Feature
Because I’m a cynic at heart, which I define as a grouchy old guy who believes in humans even when they refuse to believe in themselves, I’m trying out a new feature. It’s called “You Can’t Make This Shup.”
In the world at present, and I’m sorry to say in our nation at present, I suspect the new section will contain at least one item per day. And that’s without me having to search at all.
I plan to include items from only two newsletters I currently receive: 1440 Daily Digest, a news report that is politically unbiased, and The Blueprint, a newsletter from Interesting Engineering.
The Blueprint, like the vast majority of news and even special interest magazines (Smithsonian, Air & Space, Archaeology, et al) is not politically unbiased, but it’s less than blatant so I can ignore its unnecessary slant long enough to scan the stories and links it provides.
Items in this new section won’t always be about writing. In fact, they seldom will be. But I expect they will be excellent story starters, and that’s the point. So here we go with the first installment of
You Can’t Make This Shup
A new bill proposes prisoners trade their organs for shorter sentences.
What? So can anyone get in on that? Murderers? Rapists? (Which begs the question, does the trade have to be crime-specific?) Also, if this bill passes, how far away are we from convicted folks being sentenced to give up a body part in lieu of jail time?
There’s also this: Man’s prostate cancer leads him to speak in an Irish accent.
Again, what? Has anyone else ever heard of Foreign Accent Syndrome (FAS)? Apparently it’s a thing.
On the other hand, per the article, “Some common speech changes associated with FAS include fairly predictable errors, unusual prosody, including equal and excess stress, consonant substitution, deletion, distortion, and voicing errors.” So maybe it isn’t a thing after all.
Believing one can speak with a different accent doesn’t mean one can do so accurately.
I’m a fiction writer. I regularly speak with an accent different than my own and less regularly in a language not my own, seldom with absolute accuracy. Apparently I need to recruit more scientists, oncologists and other doctors to my readership.
Talk with you again soon.
Of Interest
See “Reader Friday – Inkblots” at https://killzoneblog.com/2023/02/reader-friday-inkblots.html. I encourage you to play. I did.
See “Ryting Song Lyrics” at https://www.thepassivevoice.com/ryting-song-lyrics/. More on AI-generated stuff.
See “Doctor ChatGPT? AI-bot almost passes the US Medical Licensing Exam” at https://interestingengineering.com/innovation/chatgpt-medical-licensing-exam. Calm down. AI is still an amalgam of human thought and utterings, nothing original.
See “First Day Superstars” at https://deanwesleysmith.com/first-day-superstars/. Dean mentioned speaking with Joanna Penn about AI. I left a comment. It will be interesting to see whether he offers a take on writers’ use of AI in a future post, and what that take will be.
The Numbers
The Journal…………………………………… 540 words
Writing of “Hortencia Alvarez” (shrug—I dunno)
Day 1…… 1089 words. Total words to date…… 1089
Writing of Wes Crowley: Deputy US Marshal 2 (WCG9SF4)
Day 1…… 3231 words. Total words to date…… 3231
Day 2…… 2990 words. Total words to date…… 6221
Day 3…… 1805 words. Total words to date…… 8026
Day 4…… 2025 words. Total words to date…… 10051
Total fiction words for February……… 1089
Total fiction words for 2023………… 47962
Total nonfiction words for February… 8500
Total nonfiction words for the year…… 28850
Total words for the year (fiction and this blog)…… 76812
Calendar Year 2023 Novels to Date…………………… 1
Calendar Year 2023 Novellas to Date……………… 0
Calendar Year 2023 Short Stories to Date… 0
Novels (since Oct 19, 2014)…………………………………… 72
Novellas (since Nov 1, 2015)………………………………… 8
Short stories (since Apr 15, 2014)………………… 217
Short story collections……………………………………………… 31
Disclaimer: Because It Makes Sense, I preach trusting your characters to tell the story that they, not you, are living. Duh. This practice greatly increases your productivity and provides the fastest possible ascension along the learning curve of Craft because you get a great deal more practice at actually writing. This is not opinion. It is all numbers and facts.