#WritersCoffeeClub #WCC 2025.06.03 — Have you ever done a writing challenge? How did it go?
In March, I took a monthly long set of 31 writing prompts as a writing challenge. I completed a novel: Mars Needed Women.
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#WordWeavers 2025.06.03 — Is your MC a good cook? Any special dishes?
None of the current crop of MCs are particularly exceptional cooks, though cooking and dishes are mentioned.
When Streak's uncle left them and at the age of 10, Streak became responsible for caring for his younger and older sister, which meant cooking for them and his mother. School had taught him to cook as part of Men's Studies. He never says whether he has any skill, but maybe that's one of the reasons his sisters dislike him?
The devil-girl never mentions it as part of the past she ran away from, but the estate had to have had cooks. They put on state dinners she had to host. Nevertheless, she is not snobby about food other than never demonstrating a skill or inclination. Early on, I have her eating her world's equivalent of a ramen cup, you know, the ones you pour boiling water into and wait three minutes? She is happy when a guy buys her something like a Philly cheesesteak, made with eggplant. They are vegetarian. At one point she dumpster dives…
May Ri in one sequence makes chicken soup, but from her tenor it seems like a strictly recipe type thing. With the help of a friend she gets a freshly dressed bird and collects the vegetables from the farm, carrots, leeks, napa cabbage, squash… Mind you, this happens on Mars inside a domed city.
There is a lot of restaurant food in the recent stories, otherwise!
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#WritersCoffeeClub #WCC 2025.06.02 — Do you write linearly? Why or why not?
More often than not, I DO NOT write linearally, even for shorter works. I like to present the thrust of the story, to enter the action quickly—but, when POV actions require explanation, rather than doing an info dump I shift the action to whatever scene or adventure derives that information.
For example, for the reluctant prizefighter story I start the story with the soon-to-become prizefighter enduring being wolf-whistled by a gang member. When she ends up needing to "avoid" the miscreant, I jump back to where she learned to fight and why she likes being forced to defend herself, why she likes to fight. Then I return to the main story where she feels she's been given permission to toy with the man.
Rinse, repeat.
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#WordWeavers 2025.06.01 — Share your favorite fact about your story.
Streak (unquestionably a man and male) cares more about the women in his life than about himself. The tract I wrote today brought that home decisively.
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#WritersCoffeeClub (JUNE 2025 : restriction) #WCC 2025.06.01 — Are there ethical principles fiction must adhere to? What are they?
Going for writing in general here because filtering information from the real world through a human brain almost always creates a subjective reality, which is arguably a fiction.
Ethics in writing (beyond the taboo of plagiarism) isn't something I've thought much about because I find it incredibly difficult to lie, setting aside what fiction actually is by definition. Distorting fact or history intentionally and passing it off as somehow true, especially for a political purpose, is reprehensible AND unethical. It should, at very least, be pointed out explicitly and unmistakably as fantasy, satire, or porn. Even then, malicious intent should render it unethical.
Furthermore, I think malicious intent, the knowingly or willingly not caring about harmful consequences for personal gain, is also unethical. A recent book about a man who has now been reported with likely terminal cancer, regardless of the subjective veracity the author creates and that the book was written and released before that bit of news, fits this definition. Reprehensible.
I like books that harm people as much as ones that throw out the baby with the bathwater. Whataboutism and LCD (least-common-denominator) thinking fielded as a rhetorical weapon should be considered unethical, too. It should signal a villain, not someone trying to be reasonable or protective of others.
It comes down to intent.
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#WordWeavers 2025.05.31 — If everyone doing WordWeavers met for a party, what favorite food would you bring to share and why?
A vegetable beef pie with a crispy flakey strudel crust. I won my spouse with that… or maybe it was them reading my feminist SF novel while they traveled in Mexico?
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#ScribesAndMakers 2025.05.31 — How did it go? Any changes you want to make next month?
Got the beta out to beta readers; this was good. Worked through pushback from the internal censor. Got only one chapter finished, but boy howdy: it clarified the antagonist's motivation in starkly scary terms, and it made one MC quite proud.
Next month. More composing; revision should be subservient to that work. If I can gain momentum, finish the novel.
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#WritersCoffeeClub #WCC 2025.05.31 — What fact of your life would give a reader a new appreciation for your work?
My gender.
Not stating, though. R.S. is a #gender #fiction #writer #author and that "fact of … life" adds subtext to anything I write. As does my orientation. The question was in the singular; please ignore I added that.
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#ScribesAndMakers 2025.05.30 — Did you have a teacher who either supported or hindered your creative activity?
Weird story.
I had an AP analytic geometry class. I'm bad at arithmetic but good at logic. So long as I don't have to plug in numbers, I can solve math problems. I don't usually do good at these things, but I was excited that I might get a good grade and studied very hard. Very. Hard.
I arrived and the final was open book. Easy.
I had so much creative energy built up, I went home and over Christmas break wrote and completed my first novella (25K typewritten) in two weeks.
True story.
Okay neither supported nor hindered, but I give the teacher credit nonetheless for inadvertently starting my career.
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#WordWeavers 2025.05.30 — What’s the worst betrayal your MC has experienced?
The devil-girl for all her bluster and pugnacious decisiveness is also fragile. She's autistic and when she was young, getting her to understand others was an achievement in itself, and that she had a good friend that supported her, perhaps more surprising. Was he as flexible as she was fragile? After saving her life (or, at least, she thought so), and a squabble, he disappeared (or, at least, she thought so). She decided he'd used her for his advancement.
They were pre-teens at the time. It taught her that emotional relationships could not be trusted, not that she really understood emotions. Managed? Yes. Trusted? Never.
She did not realize it, but her life quest had begun. Finding him wasn't all of it, of course.
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#WritersCoffeeClub #WCC 2025.05.30 — Who do you write for?
Now? Me. I hope a greater audience will appreciate it one day.
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#WordWeavers 2025.05.29 — Have you ever doubted you’d finish a draft? If so, what kept you going?
(By "finish a draft," I'm going to assume this means "first draft" or "composing the story." Revision is free time without completion anxiety.)
Plenty of times. Assuming that I think the story is worth completing or isn't damaged plot wise, all of which are non-starters that lead to abandonment, it's a matter of writing it.
(By "what kept you going," I'm going to assume this means: How did I eventually complete composing that first draft?)
When composing a story, especially being a pantser like me, it's best to realize that the subconscious plays a role in writing at least as great as the conscious. Things that I do, therefore vary.
The last point has been a big deal for me, writing some stories that are by design rather racy. The internal (eternal) censor, which is actually an external censor programmed into me by role models and societal brainwashing, has been awful to me these last months, trying to make me cry at every juncture. To combat that, I've written the following mantra—which can be found in my Introduction post, pinned to my profile.
And something that works for me: Are you blocked by your internal censor? Do you worry you're revealing your embarrassing true self? Say what I say to myself:
I am not telepathic.
Repeat that: I am not telepathic.
Louder: I AM NOT TELEPATHIC!
I DON'T know what the reader is going to expect.
I DON'T know if the current scene is going to frighten, trigger, or be too explicit for my audience...
Because I DON'T have anyone looking over my shoulder, clicking their tongue, and saying, "Tch, tch, tch!"
I am going to take a deeeeeeep breath, now,
clear my mind,
and write the flapping scene—
full stop.
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#ScribesAndMakers 2025.05.29 — What is your proudest or best moment with your creative endeavor this month?
Got the novel out to beta readers and an author associate has agreed to also look at it.
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#WritersCoffeeClub #WCC 2025.05.29 — Tell us about an epiphany that changed your writing.
Of those (edited) definitions below, of those that are remotely applicable, definition number 4 is most suited. Since I'm no longer religious and I stopped thinking I saw ghosts a few decades ago, 1, 3, and 5 have only occurred in a dream state; besides, I don't remember them. 
As I began writing again 2015 after the burnout in 2001, I chose to write in 1st person, mainly because nobody remained who could tell me I shouldn't and also that writing 3rd person close POV and staying in POV is very hard. As I cranked out short stories, novellas, and a few novels in that mode—always practicing, I told myself—I realized I had been wrong to rely on conventional genre wisdom presented me by my agent and much seconded by publishers. I'm not saying I know that my 1st person will sell, but rather that I write fluidly and more powerfully in 1st than I did in third. Quicker, too. As the definition states, "an illuminating realization or discovery," that resulted "in a personal feeling of elation, awe, or wonder." It changed my writing.
As for definition 2. I had one of these in the last week, not that it changed my writing, but my attitude toward the story. I can see it as being done at some point. After writing about 40K of backstory about one MC, I wrote another 40K of intertwined ramblings for the other MC. It's a detour from the forefront main moonshot story, which I visualized as a novella not a novel. Then, suddenly, the second MC reflected upon all she'd endured. It was an epiphany to her as much as to me. She had glimpsed the main antagonist's motives (and I wasn't sure of them myself). It terrified her. Then she realized it also made her special. No spoilers here, but it justifies the 80K of backstories inside the main story and makes the ending more justifiable. I had experienced "a sudden insight or intuitive understanding."
Epiphany /ĭ-pĭf′ə-nē/
Noun
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#ScribesAndMakers 2025.05.27 — Think of something really boring. Now try to describe it in an interesting way.
Like an ameba, it flowed in a long drip that eventually reached the shellacked oak moulding, then flowed over, down slowly and deliberately, before it puddled, forming a quarter-sized lake of weakly yellow milky mud. The smell of latex filled the room and it drew the housekeeper, who stood aghast. Sky blue, Swiss Mocha, Pearl White, Passionate Pink, and off-grey spatters littered the wall as if someone had thrown spaghetti at it to see what stuck, and at this moment it hadn't stuck enough as the pink drip started spattering over the dark century-old walnut floor. The spaghetti thrower sat in the corner with open cans, themselves dripping and forming rings on the unfortunate and unlikely ever to survive-unmarred floor, snickering quietly, the screwdriver he was stirring with clicking and clanking, an equally dripping ladle under his arm, wetting is blue striped white shirt. He even had paint in his hair.
The housekeeper tasted blood as her teeth dug into her lips, before she shouted, "Percy!"
[Paint drying by itself might be MORE boring, but it needed conflict! —R.S.
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#ScribesAndMakers 2025.05.23 — If you make clothes for yourself or others, do you follow fashion trends?
Does knitting a Dr. Who scarf count? [Bob Baker, 4th Doctor]
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#WordWeavers 2025.05.28 — Would your story still work in a vastly different location? Why or why not?
Reluctant Moon: The story is nominally about a moonshot and the lives of the two astronauts (friends and then lovers). In a sense it is an allegory for 1960s America with the prejudice, racism, and sexism; it even has a JFK character (if you squint). It would not work because my world allows me to scramble gender roles throughly and allows the story to be appropriately racy.
Mars Needed Women: Takes place on Mars. It must because the E.M. in EM Mars Colonization Corp is the basis for the satire of the times we are living in and changing that would lose impact and the story's raison d' être.
The Reluctance Series stories featuring the devil-girl are conceptual rewrites, as in the basic plot and character-building is somewhat preserved, but the universe is totally changed to create SF stories the earlier "location" could not support.
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#WordWeavers 2025.05.27 — Do you specifically design your characters, or do they develop as you write?
I addressed the part before the conjunction to my subconscious.
My subconscious answered,
"Of course I design them—from your desires and from your fears, from what is troubling you and from draws your attention, from images that flood your eyes to make you dream and from what I reject to populate your nightmares, from what makes you feel safe and from what makes you worried… Then? Then, I wake you at precisely 3 AM so you can write. Thank me. You're welcome!"
Otherwise, they develop as I write.
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#ScribesAndMakers 2025.05.24 — Do you have a favorite pair of socks? Are they lucky?
I have a favorite socks, one brand (Puma) that supports my feet by having multiple sewn-together swatches of differently tensioned fabric. They allow me to walk a lot without calluses developing, so in that sense I feel lucky I found them. I bought dozens,
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#WritersCoffeeClub #WCC 2025.05.26 — In your work, how much of an active character is your setting?
To any extent that a setting is an active character, it is as an antagonist. Mars is toxic and dust must be dealt with when entering and leaving. Gangsters when transporting "product" across town have to deal with buses and subways and bridges. When wanting privacy for a triste, the pair must deal with Death Valley type heat as well as their own sweat, and (because they are nocturnal) sunshine.
This isn't to say my settings don't have character. They are what the MC will either notice when they look (like shining a flashlight into a black room to illuminate important bits) or remember (exclusively what they like or annoys them) as it becomes a venue within which MCs and SCs interact. Take the following setup (the entire description of the setting):
... [It was] a dance studio. Two walls of French doors. Two walls of mirrors. A barre with a brass top. Golden oak wood floor. A black tin ceiling with an embossed red fleur de lis pattern. A tiny kitchen and a smaller loo. She threw open all twelve windows; breezes billowed the thin drapes. ...Draperies flapped like a sail as they played noisily. Pepper trees spiced the air.
The following happens:
If my settings are anything else, they're background characters.
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