Transformative Works Statement 12-28-25
Dec. 28th, 2025 10:46 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ysabetwordsmithPeople keep clamoring for this sort of thing. Ideally, everyone should have a "blanket statement." While I don't have a stance on many of the points, it seems useful to post the ones where I do have a stance. (See the 2020 version.)
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Writerly Ways
Dec. 28th, 2025 10:29 pmcornerofmadnessI was thinking about writing communities and how I feel like I'm missing one at this point. I don't like this feeling. Other than that twice a month zoom meet up I feel like I have no community (and even there I feel like an interloper but if not for me, there would be almost no one there) My friend and I tried to restart the local group on Nov. It was a miserable failure (other than us enjoying each other's company so it wasn't a complete waste of time)
So I was curious, do you feel like you have a good writing community? I'm not talking about the writing every day sort of thing. I shared plenty of them. I think the closest I come to on DW is![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
ushobwri and getyourwordsout. Both are good communities.
And there is every chance the emptiness is in ME and nothing I put into it will fill that hole. And I'm not even sure I have words to articulate what I'd like to see in a group (and it could be that I'm looking for a street team of alpha/beta readers but I'm not even sure that's it either)
So do you have a good one? Is it open? I'm curious.
Open Calls
Gramarye: Now Seeking Submissions
Verify You’re Not Human The main character of the story must be therian (identify as a non-human animal) with a strong focus on what that means
Obsidian: The Dark Space Novelette Anthology Darker 9000-25000 word stories about exploration, isolation, and the harsh conditions of space
Sapphic Spec Fic Anthology of Identity and Purpose Stories that explore sapphic identity and purpose through the lens of fantasy and speculative fiction
Black Horror, Then & Next Stories that recognize the legacy of Black horror, its literary milestones, cultural roots, and innovative voices, while pushing the genre into new, daring territory. (for Black authors only)
Newsela Original Fiction For Elementary-High School 1,500–5,000 word genre works that are targeting Upper Elementary, Middle School, and High School readers
Sci-Fi Ireland Science Fiction where if the science/technology element was removed the plot would not function
Note: To submit, you must be living on, or were born on, the Island of Ireland
23 Publishers Accepting Memoir Submissions
The Knight Before Christmas Christmas romances
From Around the Web
Notes from the Editor’s Desk: December 2025
An Argument for Writing Short Stories
When We Believe
Five Common Motivation Issues and How to Address Them
160 Christmas Writing Prompts
My Open Letter To That Open Letter About AI In Writing And Publishing by Chuck Wendig (in case you missed it last week the Nebula awards decided to allow AI writing and Publisher Weekly wrote how to use Ai and the authors went nuts (as they should have)
15 Rules for Negotiating a Large Book Sale
How to Make an Author Website in 8 Steps
Rules for Capitalizing Titles and Chapters.
Amazon Metadata Mistakes Every Indie Author Must Avoid
Self-Publishing Your Book: Quick Guide (Updated 2025)
Why Selling Direct Beats KDP for Long-Term Author Profits
17 Exciting Fantasy Novel Ideas for Authors
From Betty
How to Avoid Melodrama in Your Writing
Avoiding the Planet of Hats
Five Common Ways Fights Get Contrived
How to Write Scenes With Lots of New People
The Value of Writing Shock and Avoiding Valueless Trauma
Is Your Novel Ready for a Film Adaption? How to Begin the Process of Adapting My Story for Film
The Complete Guide to Self-editing for Writers Part 2: Practical Tools and Techniques to Strengthen Your Manuscript Before Outside Feedback
So I was curious, do you feel like you have a good writing community? I'm not talking about the writing every day sort of thing. I shared plenty of them. I think the closest I come to on DW is
ushobwri and getyourwordsout. Both are good communities.And there is every chance the emptiness is in ME and nothing I put into it will fill that hole. And I'm not even sure I have words to articulate what I'd like to see in a group (and it could be that I'm looking for a street team of alpha/beta readers but I'm not even sure that's it either)
So do you have a good one? Is it open? I'm curious.
Open Calls
Gramarye: Now Seeking Submissions
Verify You’re Not Human The main character of the story must be therian (identify as a non-human animal) with a strong focus on what that means
Obsidian: The Dark Space Novelette Anthology Darker 9000-25000 word stories about exploration, isolation, and the harsh conditions of space
Sapphic Spec Fic Anthology of Identity and Purpose Stories that explore sapphic identity and purpose through the lens of fantasy and speculative fiction
Black Horror, Then & Next Stories that recognize the legacy of Black horror, its literary milestones, cultural roots, and innovative voices, while pushing the genre into new, daring territory. (for Black authors only)
Newsela Original Fiction For Elementary-High School 1,500–5,000 word genre works that are targeting Upper Elementary, Middle School, and High School readers
Sci-Fi Ireland Science Fiction where if the science/technology element was removed the plot would not function
Note: To submit, you must be living on, or were born on, the Island of Ireland
23 Publishers Accepting Memoir Submissions
The Knight Before Christmas Christmas romances
From Around the Web
Notes from the Editor’s Desk: December 2025
An Argument for Writing Short Stories
When We Believe
Five Common Motivation Issues and How to Address Them
160 Christmas Writing Prompts
My Open Letter To That Open Letter About AI In Writing And Publishing by Chuck Wendig (in case you missed it last week the Nebula awards decided to allow AI writing and Publisher Weekly wrote how to use Ai and the authors went nuts (as they should have)
15 Rules for Negotiating a Large Book Sale
How to Make an Author Website in 8 Steps
Rules for Capitalizing Titles and Chapters.
Amazon Metadata Mistakes Every Indie Author Must Avoid
Self-Publishing Your Book: Quick Guide (Updated 2025)
Why Selling Direct Beats KDP for Long-Term Author Profits
17 Exciting Fantasy Novel Ideas for Authors
From Betty
How to Avoid Melodrama in Your Writing
Avoiding the Planet of Hats
Five Common Ways Fights Get Contrived
How to Write Scenes With Lots of New People
The Value of Writing Shock and Avoiding Valueless Trauma
Is Your Novel Ready for a Film Adaption? How to Begin the Process of Adapting My Story for Film
The Complete Guide to Self-editing for Writers Part 2: Practical Tools and Techniques to Strengthen Your Manuscript Before Outside Feedback
Poem: "Incompressible"
Dec. 28th, 2025 10:13 pmysabetwordsmithThis poem came out of the January 2, 2024 Poetry Fishbowl. It was inspired by a prompt from dialecticdreamer. It also fills the "When You're Smiling" square in my 1-1-24 card for the Public Domain Day Bingo fest. This poem has been sponsored by a pool with fuzzyred. It belongs to the Foster Fiasco thread in the Polychrome Heroics series.
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dialecticdreamer. It also fills the "When You're Smiling" square in my 1-1-24 card for the Public Domain Day Bingo fest. This poem has been sponsored by a pool with fuzzyred. It belongs to the Foster Fiasco thread in the Polychrome Heroics series.( Read more... )
Pass It On 6
Dec. 28th, 2025 07:52 pmchocolatefrogs posting in iconthat
https://res.cloudinary.com/dc2cefbey/image/upload/v1766980410/ahhth_ksut7i.jpg
Next picture: James T. Kirk (Star Trek: Strange New Worlds)
Pajama day
Dec. 28th, 2025 10:21 pmsilver_chipmunkGot up around 10:00ish, and had breakfast and coffee. Stayed in my pajamas all day.
At 1:30 I went to the Starsky and Hutch Creative work session. I actually wrote a little but mostly just chatted. There were five of us which was very nice.
We chatted until somewhat after 6:00, around 6:30ish, and then we ended.
At 7:00 I Teamed the FWiB, and we talked til almost 8:30. At 8:30 I called Middle Brother, he is enjoying his Christmas presents and looking forward to New Year's Eve, when I will call him at Midnight as I have done the last few years.
Then I ate a good helping of the ham leftovers that the Kid gave me on Christmas. Then I went into the bedroom and played solitaire on my phone.mashfanficchick called me about plans for the coming days. The 30th is when zer mother died last year and ze doesn't want to be alone, reasonably enough. So I am going to go over on Tuesday and bring my computer, and do my Al-anon Zoom meeting there, and then spend the night.
Then I will sleep late on the 31st while ze has work, and then we shall go to Liz G's place to have New Years Eve with her, Robyn, and maybe RK. So I'm looking forward to that.
Anyway, after ze called it was almost pet feeding time so I fed the pets and started here.
Gratitude List:
1. The FWiB.
2. The Starsky and Hutch fandom.
3. Plans for New Year.
4. Never got out of my pajamas.
5. Middle Brother is well.
6. Leftovers.
At 1:30 I went to the Starsky and Hutch Creative work session. I actually wrote a little but mostly just chatted. There were five of us which was very nice.
We chatted until somewhat after 6:00, around 6:30ish, and then we ended.
At 7:00 I Teamed the FWiB, and we talked til almost 8:30. At 8:30 I called Middle Brother, he is enjoying his Christmas presents and looking forward to New Year's Eve, when I will call him at Midnight as I have done the last few years.
Then I ate a good helping of the ham leftovers that the Kid gave me on Christmas. Then I went into the bedroom and played solitaire on my phone.
mashfanficchick called me about plans for the coming days. The 30th is when zer mother died last year and ze doesn't want to be alone, reasonably enough. So I am going to go over on Tuesday and bring my computer, and do my Al-anon Zoom meeting there, and then spend the night.Then I will sleep late on the 31st while ze has work, and then we shall go to Liz G's place to have New Years Eve with her, Robyn, and maybe RK. So I'm looking forward to that.
Anyway, after ze called it was almost pet feeding time so I fed the pets and started here.
Gratitude List:
1. The FWiB.
2. The Starsky and Hutch fandom.
3. Plans for New Year.
4. Never got out of my pajamas.
5. Middle Brother is well.
6. Leftovers.
Signup Post: Full Content on Dreamwidth in 2026
Dec. 28th, 2025 06:57 pmysabetwordsmith posting in goals_on_dwDreamwidth offers a place to post pretty much whatever people want to share. However, a lot of creators put their stories, webcomics, etc. on some other platform and only share links on Dreamwidth. The same holds true for the recommendation communities for fiction and other topics: most rely on links that lead offsite. The problem with this is that more and more platforms are closing to nonmembers, becoming unavailable in some parts of the world, incompatible with some software or hardware, suffering service outages -- or shutting down entirely like Cohost did. That makes offsite links less useful than in the past, because there's no telling who can see the content or not. When creators post the full content on Dreamwidth in an open blog, however, anyone already using Dreamwidth can access that content. (Creators still have the option of using access lists and filters if they want to serve a more specific audience.) Furthermore, copying the material to multiple platforms increases the chance of more people seeing it and of it surviving if one platform collapses. We've lost enough fanwork archives already.
This post provides a place to list communities and individual blogs where people post full content. It will help readers find new sources to enjoy, and creators find new audience members. It supports goals related to blogging, reading, writing, networking, Dreamwidth, and so on. It's a bit like Three Weeks for Dreamwidth, except not limited in time and you can echo your work on other platforms in addition to this one. MOAR GOODEEZ for everyone! \o/
You can pick whichever challenge(s) you want to set as a goal in 2026 and reply with a comment. Below the list of sample full-content journals is a short form for listing what you have chosen. You can make a post in your blog like "I signed up for the Full Content on Dreamwidth challenge ingoals_on_dw" or similar. Then make a tag for it like "Full Content" and put that on the post; it should stick that way. Check your Interests page to see if you have Writing, Fiction, Science Fiction, Fanfic, Webcomics, etc. listed there, which helps people find you. You don't have to sign up to participate, it just helps spread the word and attract more readers.
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This post provides a place to list communities and individual blogs where people post full content. It will help readers find new sources to enjoy, and creators find new audience members. It supports goals related to blogging, reading, writing, networking, Dreamwidth, and so on. It's a bit like Three Weeks for Dreamwidth, except not limited in time and you can echo your work on other platforms in addition to this one. MOAR GOODEEZ for everyone! \o/
You can pick whichever challenge(s) you want to set as a goal in 2026 and reply with a comment. Below the list of sample full-content journals is a short form for listing what you have chosen. You can make a post in your blog like "I signed up for the Full Content on Dreamwidth challenge in
goals_on_dw" or similar. Then make a tag for it like "Full Content" and put that on the post; it should stick that way. Check your Interests page to see if you have Writing, Fiction, Science Fiction, Fanfic, Webcomics, etc. listed there, which helps people find you. You don't have to sign up to participate, it just helps spread the word and attract more readers.( Read more... )
Random Thoughts
Dec. 28th, 2025 09:12 pmfauxkloreA few random things:
1) My sleep cycle has gotten really screwed up. What I need to do is just go back to bed when I wake up at 2 or 3 in the morning, instead of doing puzzles or reading.
2) I saw Song Sung Blue this morning, with my friend, Cindy. I ran into a couple of people from my chavurah, who were sitting in the row in front of us. We got lunch afterwords at the Chinese restaurant in the same shopping center. As did they.
3) I managed to call into tonight’s zoom meeting for Community Storytellers. I told my story about things I learned from my father.
4) If you are writing a book and want to irritate me, have an otherwise intelligent male character tell someone that he had an identical twin sister.
5) Ridiculous thought of the day: I want a tutti-frutti hat, a la Carmen Miranda.
1) My sleep cycle has gotten really screwed up. What I need to do is just go back to bed when I wake up at 2 or 3 in the morning, instead of doing puzzles or reading.
2) I saw Song Sung Blue this morning, with my friend, Cindy. I ran into a couple of people from my chavurah, who were sitting in the row in front of us. We got lunch afterwords at the Chinese restaurant in the same shopping center. As did they.
3) I managed to call into tonight’s zoom meeting for Community Storytellers. I told my story about things I learned from my father.
4) If you are writing a book and want to irritate me, have an otherwise intelligent male character tell someone that he had an identical twin sister.
5) Ridiculous thought of the day: I want a tutti-frutti hat, a la Carmen Miranda.
Pass It On 6
Dec. 28th, 2025 05:56 pmchocolatefrogs posting in iconthat
https://res.cloudinary.com/dc2cefbey/image/upload/v1766974968/dvasv_xpemz2.jpg
Next picture: Spock (Star Trek: Strange New Worlds
Now-ish Sunday
Dec. 29th, 2025 01:55 amgrrlpup
It’s the liminal days. I’m catching up on holiday correspondence and visits, restarting non-holiday things that got dropped (e.g. going to the gym), and eating a lot of delicious leftovers and improvised meals.
Sang and I watched Carol, and keep meaning to rewatch The Lion in Winter but also keep diverting or downgrading, twice to sample the gay Hallmark Christmas movies (The Holiday Sitter and Friends and Family Christmas so far), which are better than anticipated.
I’m working on a fic and a risograph print (they are not related to each other). There are many other things– piano, getting more flexible, drawing– that I’d like to practice steadily, but haven’t yet found where to work them in. I also browse rescue dogs on the internet.
I’m reading Philip Pullman’s The Rose Field and deeply happy that it’s 650 pages long so I get to read it for a long time. Conversely, all my favorite books of 2025 are picture books.
2025 has been a lot. My father died in February and was buried in a military cemetery; we also held a public memorial service for him in June. I retired from the university in September. Sang and I traveled to Japan for several weeks after that. My youngest aunt, energetic and vivacious as always in June, was taken down by pancreatic cancer and died on Thanksgiving. A less eventful 2026 would be just fine. I could find a lot of joys in homebody life with outdoor walks.
This post originates at everyday though not every day. Comments welcome here or there.
At the Table
Dec. 28th, 2025 08:17 pmmichaelboyEverything before us, returned again
by letting it go, to know it is the same
where you found me in a memory of you
spreading a worn cloth of linsey-woolsey
and lunch wrapped in checkered dish towels
The spruce still grows there and its roots
clutch the smooth stepping stones unevenly
in their own recall of the blush in trembling
This small house was little more than a cabin
and was made from where it will forever spring
by letting it go, to know it is the same
where you found me in a memory of you
spreading a worn cloth of linsey-woolsey
and lunch wrapped in checkered dish towels
The spruce still grows there and its roots
clutch the smooth stepping stones unevenly
in their own recall of the blush in trembling
This small house was little more than a cabin
and was made from where it will forever spring
My fandomtree
Dec. 28th, 2025 08:14 pmkingstokenI realized I never got around to promoting my own fandomtrees, so here it is. I'm asking for anything other than icons (fic, art, podfic, etc), and the fandoms I'm asking for are: The Great Mouse Detective, Sherlock Holmes (both Granada and the Rathbone films), Our Flag Means Death, Dead Boy Detectives, Doctor Who, and podfic for any fandom I've written for.
fandomtrees, so here it is. I'm asking for anything other than icons (fic, art, podfic, etc), and the fandoms I'm asking for are: The Great Mouse Detective, Sherlock Holmes (both Granada and the Rathbone films), Our Flag Means Death, Dead Boy Detectives, Doctor Who, and podfic for any fandom I've written for.Daily Check-In
Dec. 28th, 2025 08:16 pmmecurtin posting in fandom_checkinThis is your check-in post for today. The poll will be open from midnight Universal or Zulu Time (8pm Eastern Time) on Sunday, December 28, to midnight on Monday, December 29 (8pm Eastern Time).
Please, talk about how things are going for you in the comments, ask for advice or help if you need it, or just discuss whatever you feel like.
Poll #34015 Daily check-in poll
This poll is closed.
Open to: Access List, detailed results viewable to: Access List, participants: 26
Open to: Access List, detailed results viewable to: Access List, participants: 26
How are you doing?
I am OK
17 (65.4%)
I am not OK, but don't need help right now
9 (34.6%)
I could use some help
0 (0.0%)
How many other humans live with you?
I am living single
9 (34.6%)
One other person
12 (46.2%)
More than one other person
5 (19.2%)
Please, talk about how things are going for you in the comments, ask for advice or help if you need it, or just discuss whatever you feel like.