justafrogandherumbrella

[justafrogandherumbrella]

So, there's a dirty little secret in indie publishing a lot of people won't tell you, and if you aren't aware of it, self-publishing feels even scarier than it actually is.

There's a subset of self-published indie authors who write a ludicrous number of books a year, we're talking double digit releases of full novels, and these folks make a lot of money telling you how you can do the same thing. A lot of them feature in breathless puff pieces about how "competitive" self-publishing is as an industry now.

A lot of these authors aren't being completely honest with you, though. They'll give you secrets for time management and plotting and outlining and marketing and what have you. But the way they're able to write, edit, and publish 10+ books a year, by and large, is that they're hiring ghostwriters.

They're using upwork or fiverr to find people to outline, draft, edit, and market their books. Most of them, presumably, do write some of their own stuff! But many "prolific" indie writers are absolutely using ghostwriters to speed up their process, get higher Amazon best-seller ratings, and, bluntly, make more money faster.

When you see some godawful puff piece floating around about how some indie writer is thinking about having to start using AI to "stay competitive in self-publishing", the part the journalist isn't telling you is that the 'indie writer' in question is planning to use AI instead of paying some guy on Upwork to do the drafting.

If you are writing your books the old fashioned way and are trying to build a readerbase who cares about your work, you don't need to use AI to 'stay competitive', because you're not competing with these people. You're playing an entirely different game.

[justafrogandherumbrella]

isn't it funny how life is wonderful and messy and hard like one day you are crying your eyes out because you feel lost and the next day you are packing your stuff ready to leave your worries behind and start a new chapter in a different country and then you find all these people who love and support you and you still feel lost and you still have no idea what your life is supposed to look like but you're enjoying pink sunset and book dates at the park and overpriced coffees and maybe you just have to enjoy the breeze without expecting a storm

[justafrogandherumbrella]

things people do after having a nightmare that isn’t crying

struggle to catch their breath

grab onto whatever’s close enough to ground themselves in reality

become nauseous / vomit

shake uncontrollably

sweat buckets

get a headache

things people do to combat having nightmares if they occur commonly

sleep near other people so they can hear the idle sounds of them completing tasks

move to a different sleeping spot than where they had the nightmare

leave tvs / radios / phones on with noise

just not sleep (if you want to go the insomnia route)

sleep during the day in bright rooms

things people with insomnia do

first, obviously, their ability to remember things and their coordination will go out the window

its likely they’ll become irritable or overly emotional

their body will start to ache, shake, and weaken

hallucinate if it’s been long enough

it becomes incredibly easy for them to get sick (and they probably will)

add your own in reblogs/comments!

#for future reference

[justafrogandherumbrella]

Going insane about kicked dog with rabies type characters

[justafrogandherumbrella]

Hi pookie what is your favourite gen z slang ?

Probably "pookie".

[justafrogandherumbrella]

i love characters who lie. i love when a character is established as a capital L Liar and then we as the audience can’t take anything they say at face value. i love liars fakers schemers deceivers. characters whose tongues are outright necrotic with the rot of their lies. characters to whom truth is a stranger. i am kissing them on the lips btw it tastes disgusting

[justafrogandherumbrella]

[justafrogandherumbrella]

Writing is hard, I might start eating books to see if it helps

[justafrogandherumbrella]

About the AO3 "No Guest Comments for a while" warning

If you're not following any of AO3's social media accounts you might be in the dark as to what kind of "spam comments" have engendered this banner at the top of the site:

These spam comments have been posted about a great deal on the AO3 subreddit for the past couple of days. Initially they comprised a bunch of guest (logged out users) bot comments that insulted authors by suggesting they were using AI and not writing their own fics. Some examples, from the subreddit:

But it then escalated to outright graphic porn images and gifs being posted in comments, again by logged out 'Guest' accounts. Obviously, I'm not going to give examples of those, but between these two bot infestations, AO3 has clearly decided to act and has temporarily closed the ability to post comments for users who are not logged in with an AO3 account.

Unfortunately, this means that genuine readers who don't have an AO3 account won't be able to leave comments on fics that they enjoy.

If you are a genuine reader who doesn't yet have an AO3 account, I strongly suggest getting yourself on the waiting list for one. More and more AO3 authors are now locking their fics down to registered users only - either due to these bot comments or concerns about AI scraping their work - which means you're probably missing out on a lot of great stuff.

Hopefully guest commenting will be enabled again at some point soon, but I suggest not waiting until then. Get yourself on that list.

Wait times are going to be longer than usual at the moment, due to the current Wattpad purge [info on Fanlore | Wattpad subreddit thread], but if you're in line, then your invite will come through eventually.

Update: There's now a Megathread about this on the AO3 subreddit.

[justafrogandherumbrella]

@nathanwpyle

I literally love this.

I couldn't stop laughing for 20 minutes.

No joke.

[justafrogandherumbrella]

Caves are weirder and more varied than you think

[justafrogandherumbrella]

me holding a gun to a mushroom: tell me the name of god you fungal piece of shit

mushroom: can you feel your heart burning? can you feel the struggle within? the fear within me is beyond anything your soul can make. you cannot kill me in a way that matters

me cocking the gun, tears streaming down my face: I’M NOT FUCKING SCARED OF YOU

#other people’s art #calligraphy

[justafrogandherumbrella]

#and it’s always right as I’m finally about it fall asleep

[justafrogandherumbrella]

Me: I don't write for validation.

Also me when my story on AO3 gets a kudos:

[justafrogandherumbrella]

Yeah... I want to write everything all the time but I do not have the motivation or energy and am unfortunately a mortal so I don't have the time either :(

#writing memes

[justafrogandherumbrella]

Oh my goodness so many characters! I love them so much! I especially love Aderyn being dramatic and Bianca’s poses :)

Characters

#Welcome to Nowhere #art #other people’s art #fanart #friend’s art

[justafrogandherumbrella]

When you finally get to the scene you’ve been waiting to write