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Author: S.M. Carrière

When S.M. Carrière isn't brutally killing your favourite characters, she spends her time teaching martial arts, live streaming video games, and cuddling her cats. In other words, she spends her time teaching others to kill, streaming her digital kills, and cuddling furry murderers. Her most recent titles include 'Daughters of Britain' and 'Skylark.' https://www.smcarriere.com/
The Double-Edged Blade of Social Media

The Double-Edged Blade of Social Media

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Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

Good afterevenmorn!

It’s me again. Here to wax lyrical about social media and how it is both a boon and a bane for the creatives of the world. As it is for most everyone, I think. Let’s be honest, as a means of connecting people, finding community and disseminating information with incredible ease and speed, social media is absolutely unparalleled. Of course, on the flip-side, it is a vicious tool for deliberate bullying, polarisation, and the disastrous spread of misinformation. It seems that whatever the effect of social media, be it good or ill, there is something on the other edge that serves as to balance it out… more or less.

For a writer, or any creative, really, it is an incredible tool. It is also a terrible burden. Does the good outweigh the bad, or at least is the balance a net null? It seems that if we have any hope of being successful, we cannot escape social media (however much we may detest the need of it). But is that actually true? Is it really worth it for us to be there?

Let’s take a look at the positive and pitfalls of using social media as a creative.

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Git Gud, Scrub

Git Gud, Scrub

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Image by Van3ssa 🩺🎵 Desiré 🙏 Dazzy 🎹 from Pixabay

Good afterevenmorn!

This post is for the baby writers out there, those of you who have finished your first book, or will be finishing soon and are deciding what to do with it. If you’ve done your research on the publishing process, this post will not come as a surprise to you. There are however, still a large number of writers entering the publishing space clinging to much-disproven ideas about what it’s going to look like.

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Sometimes It’s Exhausting Being a Gamer

Sometimes It’s Exhausting Being a Gamer

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Good Afterevenmorn!

I know that greeting is nonsensical, but I do love it, so it’s staying. it’s a whimsical kind of thing… and I need that whimsy right about now. You see, I’m exhausted. It’s not just that I’m working several jobs while trying to get a creative career off the ground. But it’s also having to deal with some kinds of people that have flooded one of my favourite pastimes. Every so often, like when a new game trailer drops, for example, they rear their terrible little heads and with their full admittedly pigeon chests bellow at the top of their lungs that they were once again not centred and they’re boycotting said game because it’s gone “woke.” Whatever that means.

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Courage Does Not Always Roar

Courage Does Not Always Roar

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This is one of mine

Good afterevenmorn!

As I’m prepping for the release of the first part of my free serial story on my person blog (11 days!), I’m thinking a great deal about the characters I tend to find most interesting and therefore tend to write the most about — those poor traumatized souls. It’s not just that they’re imperfect (perfection is horrendously dull, I find), or even just that they’re deeply flawed. They’re hurting and more often than not, they’re acting from that place of hurt. These are the characters I find more fascinating than others both to read and write about. You see, there are two ways they could go. They could either be a hero or a villain, and the smallest slip would begin the plunge into villainy, while achieving heroic heights is always an intense struggle. Reading characters that are teetering on that knife edge is always a good time for me.

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Don’t Quit

Don’t Quit

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Image by PDPics from Pixabay

Goodafterevenmorn!

You may recall that I once said that all writing advice is bunk (sort of). I hold that to be mostly true. Knowing this, I’m still going to offer some advice to anyone out there who happens to be a struggling writer (hello, I’m your resident frustrated author who thinks of giving up three times a day. Welcome to my little support group. Do take a seat), because it’s something I desperately need to remind myself. Repeatedly. If there’s one piece of writing advice you should follow to the letter, it’s this:

Don’t quit.

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The Content Warning Debate

The Content Warning Debate

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This is a trigger fish, apparently: Image by Brigitte Werner from Pixabay

Good afterevenmorn!

In an effort to try and get myself “out there,” so to speak, and figure out what marketing tricks I can use that don’t feel horrendously icky to me in order to try and inch towards making a living from my writing, I spend a lot of time on TikTok. I sometimes attempt to get my books out there, but those videos never get any views. When I’m just fooling around with the various filters they have, I often get far more views; in the hundreds or thousands. I don’t understand it. I don’t understand the algorithm, or how to take advantage of it. I am terrible at marketing. Still, I try. And I’ll keep trying. Maybe I’ll have it work out randomly. Mostly, I just waste hours of my life scrolling through my feed, which currently consists of international news, Hozier (I watched two videos and TikTok has decided I’m obsessed), and a lot of book content. As is usually the case in BookTok, there is a debate raging right now regarding content/trigger warning appearing at the front of the book.

It’s quite an interesting debate.

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The “AI Revolution” Problem

The “AI Revolution” Problem

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Image by Thomas Meier from Pixabay. Pixabay has a policy of disclosing AI images. This did not have the indicator that it was AI.

Good afterevenmorn (whenever you’re reading this!)

I’d like to talk about AI. I can hear your collective groans. I’m quite annoyed by the subject, too, but perhaps for different reasons. Still, let’s talk AI from the perspective of an actual writer (struggling, but still a writer).

The news has been filled with nothing but discussions of AI in creative spaces… or, at least, that’s what my news feed has been full of. It’s as if all of the various algorithms are doing their darnedest to keep me as depressed as possible… stupid AI, but I digress. I’m sure you’re all quite familiar with the chime of the bells of doom that creatives have been ringing since AI reared its head in our spaces. There is considerable debate raging all over the internet about where AI fits, where it doesn’t and why or why not. Many authors are feeling threatened, and not without reason. There are a myriad of reasons why. Let’s explore just a couple.

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Avatar: The Last Airbender; A Worthy Adaptation?

Avatar: The Last Airbender; A Worthy Adaptation?

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Why hello!

Well, Netflix has dropped the first season of its live-action adaptation of the much beloved animated show Avatar: The Last Airbender. It just so happened that it dropped just as I was falling very ill and had no energy to do anything but binge television. So, naturally, I’m going to talk about it. A few caveats before the hard-core fans come after me for what seems like a controversial opinion on the show (based on what I’ve read).

First, I came to the animated show quite late. I was already a full adult, with a fully formed pre-frontal cortex and everything. AtLAB was not, by any stretch, a formative part of my childhood in the way The Transformers or The X-Men cartoons were for me (aging myself here). I do adore the animated show, but I’m also not connected to it in the way that those who grew up watching it are.

Second, I’m much more lenient for adaptations than a lot of folks, I’ve come to realise. Certainly, there are just some that are horrendous (looking at you, M. Night), but most of the time, I’m okay with the changes made, so long as the spirit of the thing remains intact.

With these things in mind, let’s crack on, shall we?

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Maybe We Should Give Up on GoodReads

Maybe We Should Give Up on GoodReads

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Hello, Readers!

As I blaze through my reading goal for this year (two books ahead, baby!), I’ve been thinking about the app/site I now use in order to keep track of my reading, and the functionality of how I’m able to interact with other readers. You see, though I still have an account, and I check in very occasionally, I all but abandoned GoodReads shortly after it was purchased by Amazon.

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The Creative Friends Problem

The Creative Friends Problem

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Image by Elisa from Pixabay

Good afterevenmorn!

In a rather dangerous pastime, I’ve been thinking. I’m a writer, you see (like I don’t mention that as much as possible. How insufferable. Anyway…), and as a writer, I’ve made a good many friends who are also writers. We attend conventions together, we join writing groups, or go out for coffee and chat. In fact, I’m quite certain that the majority of my friends are creatives of one sort or another, and the vast majority of those are fellow writers.

Which, frankly, is fantastic.

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