A to Z Challenge 2024: Day 5: Editing

 

Image by Chen from Pixabay

I won't bother counting the words in this post until I paste them into my rebellious catch-all Camp NaNoWriMo document. I already know this one will surpass the hundred-word limit.

So, what does editing have to do with anxiety, you may be asking. Does editing make you anxious?

Quite the opposite. My feelings on editing range from neutral to positive. However, I very recently made the decision to let editing do the heavy lifting when it comes to earning income from literary pursuits so my writing can become therapeutic again. In attempting to generate social currency through submitting stories to anthologies on a monthly basis, I was starting to feel like a content mill. 

I wasn't enjoying writing anymore. Since writing is an addiction that won't kill me as quickly as booze and drugs, falling out of love with it is catastrophic. I no longer had any place to channel my anxiety, and the fragile peace I'd formed with myself was falling apart fast. 

Editing is a skill I've become adept at rather than a craft that holds profound personal importance for me. The fact that editing does not have the same significance has allowed writing to return to being a healing force rather than a source of misery. 

And now for something completely different!

No, not a man with three buttocks. 

It's an act of shameless self-promotion.

If you're looking for a line and copy editor plus a very nitpicky (but never harsh) proofreader, check out the details here. 

https://ornerybookemporium.blogspot.com/p/ornery-literary-services.html

Mention that you saw the link here and take advantage of a fifty percent discount. 

I never thought that editing would be helpful in combating anxiety, but it is, at least for me.

Some people might find the reverse to be true.

~Ornery Owl Has Speaken Spoken~

Image by Çiğdem Onur from Pixabay

"Sorry to hear that He Who Must Not Be Named stole your broom, Harry, but I can keep you company on the way to the Mystical Library. Say, did I ever tell you about the time I reviewed this book that contained almost nothing but really bad dialogue? I joke you not! There were barely any setting or action descriptions. Just bad dialogue, terrible dialogue, and worse dialogue. Did I mention the dialogue was bad? It was really awful. The absolute worst!"

"Sort of like this conversation, then?"

"Yes, exactly! My brain hurt so much when I finally finished with that mess!"

https://odysee.com/@RetroSynthMusic:d/synthwave-retrosynth-kswv-radio-20:2?r=GTwnGJ4fFBQfzuJgpHVpfKBKaC9b8B16

If He Who Must Not Be Named hadn't also stolen Harry's earbuds and super wizardy phone, he'd surely be listening to the Wacky Submission Wednesday Synthwave mix!

A to Z Challenge 2024: Day 4: Drugs

 

Image by Clker-Free-Vector-Images from Pixabay

I wanna be sedated, but for me, the cure is worse than the problem. The kinds of drugs that most people take for anxiety and depression fuck me up even worse than I already am.

Benzodiazepines have a severe rebound effect. Valium works a little differently than the others. Most of them take the edge off, and then about 20 minutes later, I get blasted with a panic attack from hell.

Valium makes me thick as a brick, except if I’m going to the dentist when adrenaline overrides it, so it doesn’t work at all. I’m already prone to nightmares, and while Valium helps me fall asleep nicely, it also intensifies my nightmares.

SSRIs make me manic and psychotic.

So, yeah. For me, the magic pills are bad magic.

Don’t get defensive if you take these medications and they work for you. I’m not passing judgment on you. I’m not you. You’re not me. That’s something you can be thanking whatever deity you worship or fate or the Universe or whatever for.

This post went over 100 words. So what? It’s my party, and I’ll go over 100 words if I want to.

Yeah, I agree; it’s a lame party.

~Ornery Owl Has Spoken~

Image by Greg Waskovich from Pixabay

Ornery Owl's coming in fast with a hot take.

A to Z Challenge: Cyberstalking Plus Insecure Writers Support Group 3 April 2024

 

Image by Rosy / Bad Homburg / Germany from Pixabay

April 3 question - How long have you been blogging? (Or on Facebook/Twitter/Instagram?) What do you like about it and how has it changed?

I created my first blog in 2005. I was run off by a cyberstalker. This creep knew I had a history of abuse including being sexually assaulted and he would make crude comments like “you’re sexy” because he knew it made my uncomfortable. It got a lot worse than that. He’s the main reason I won’t turn off comment moderation.

I have a Facebook page, but I hardly ever use it.

http://www.facebook.com/OrneryOwlsRoost

I also have Twatter—er—Twitter. No, I will not call it X.

https://twitter.com/ReadersRoost

I hate Twitter but it’s kind of a necessary evil.

I don’t do Instagram and I’d sooner shave my butt with a dull butter knife than do Tik Tok.

I’ve never been very successful with blogging. I’m not nearly as active with it as I used to be.

~Ornery Owl Has Spoken~

Image by Liam Ortiz from Pixabay

Hanging with Sly Fawkes

A To Z Challenge 2024 Day 2: Bad Brains

Image by Mohamed Hassan from Pixabay

They say it’s best to believe in yourself, and I suppose that’s true.

But what if you haven’t had experiences that make believing easy to do?

Everyone has let me down, and I’ve let me down the most.

I wish I could still drink and smoke weed so I could turn my circuits to toast.

Was I born with a bad brain?

Rotten synapses, just insane?

Or was I driven mad by the pain

Of living in a world

Where people think an oddball like me

Makes a real nice punching bag, both verbally and physically?

Does it matter anyway?

Not the best poem I ever wrote, but I didn't intend it to be a poem in the first place. It just came out that way.

In fairness, nothing I write is the best.

A to Z Challenge 2024: Anxiety

It's my goal to let the world 🌎 see 👀 what anxiety means to me. 

Maybe also to you, or maybe to someone you know. 

In segments of one hundred words each, I'll try to educate about a problem that I haven't been able to adequately describe using tens of thousands of words. 

You don't think I can do it. 

I doubt I can either, but you never know because sometimes less is more. 

I haven't handwritten anything in a long time, and it shows. 

To be fair, my handwriting has always been crap, but it's gotten worse. 

So goes my first disgusting drabble. 

Ornery Owl 🦉 has spoken. 

Not to put too fine a point on it, but the Blogger app for Android super sucks.

Here's a concert from an Argentinian band called Soda Stereo.

https://odysee.com/@Filip:f/Soda-Stereo---El-%C3%9Altimo-Concierto--DVD-Completo-:0?r=GTwnGJ4fFBQfzuJgpHVpfKBKaC9b8B16

A to Z Challenge Theme Reveal: Hiiiigh Anxiiiiietyyyyyy!

I'm tardy to the party, but I wasn't even sure I was going to attempt the challenge this year. I dropped out early on last year. I'm going to try again. This time my theme is something I'm all too familiar with. Get ready for The Aspects of

Free use image by The Digital Artist on Pixabay

As for interactions, I'm not looking for advice, although if something has worked for you, feel free to share it. I don't get along with psych meds, so I definitely don't want recommendations for those. If you can't relate to the topics I discuss, that's fine, but don't be a dick. This is the Crazy Creatives Cheerleading Camp, not the Awful Asshats Argument Area. 

As Mike, the delightful host of the That Chapter channel on YouTube says, let's give it a go. 

I can't promise I'll get through to the end, or even much past the beginning, but what the hell. I'm in.

Free use image from Open Clipart Vectors

Owl. The ornery kind. 

I'm actually pretty much a teetotaler, but I feel like doing this most days.

Insecure Writers Support Group 6 March 2024

 

Have you "played" with AI to write those nasty synopses, or do you refuse to go that route? How do you feel about AI's impact on creative writing?

I actually don't like conflict very much or at all. I've already been involved in a few contentious discussions about this topic during the past month and I don't want to play anymore. While searching for new places to potentially publish my work, I encountered several publishers stating that anyone submitting work suspected of being written by AI would be blacklisted.

I'm not a great fan of blacklisting or cancel culture or McCarthyism in any of its forms, so I did an experiment where I ran a blurb I wrote through an AI checker. It was flagged as potentially being written in cahoots with two AI programs, neither of which I had even heard of. I then had the QuickWrite program write a blurb using the same information. The version written by QuickWrite (an AI program) was only flagged as potentially using one AI program, ZeroGPT. Hence, QuickWrite is apparently more human than me. 

My point was I don't like it when people are accused of things they didn't do. I think there will be a lot more erroneous accusations caused by flawed AI-checking programs than there will be actual cheaters caught. Some people took exception to this, saying some people will do whatever it takes to gain recognition. However, there have always been those kinds of people.

I don't have any problem with people using a program like QuickWrite to compose such odious items as blurbs and synopses. I do have problems with people having Chat GPT write an entire book and claim it as their own. However, as I understand it, the joke's on them because they can't copyright material composed by an AI program. 

I primarily use QuickWrite to create writing prompts for me, which short-circuits the amount of time my glitchy ADHD brain has to think of increasingly wackier ideas when coming up with story ideas. While writing the story, I will sometimes have QuickWrite create a filler scene that I later go back and rewrite myself because said ADHD brain really doesn't like it when I don't compose everything in chronological order. 

AI is a tool, no more and no less. Tools can be used for good or ill. 

That's what I think about the subject. Others are welcome to think what they wish. I have neither the time nor the desire to police everyone's thoughts.

~Ornery Owl Has Spoken~

Free use image from Pixabay

https://www.insecurewriterssupportgroup.com/p/iwsg-sign-up.html