1. Am I trying to get my writing groove back or figure out structures to channel my energy when I'm not in a groove?
2. ...that's a groove, that's what a groove does. "The groove" isn't the feeling of effortless movement but the thing that allows it.
Conclusion: Instead of bouncing back and forth between a false dichotomy of "find any groove you can and enjoy it while it lasts" and "figure out how to write without a groove", my approach should be: learn how to make grooves.
I realize that in terms of workable solutions, this falls short of belling the cat in that we're still at the stage of wondering if there's something that could be attached to the cat that would be helpful.
But defining problems clearly helps me focus on solutions.
These thoughts were part of a loose but rapidly coalescing plan for something I will be announcing next month as a project for 2022 about ditching hang ups and carving out grooves for writing, as an open participatory endeavor for writers of any or no experience level (like NaNo)
Yeah, at the risk of mixing metaphors, the difference between "settled into a groove" and "stuck in a rut" does seem like a potentially fragile distinction.
Pursuant to my ongoing ADHD med journey, I believe... and I could still be struck down for my hubris in saying so... but I believe I have unlocked two of the most important skills a writer can have:
1. Sitting down and writing a really bad story any time I want. 2. Editing.
The first one is mostly what I have been doing with myself this week: writing bad stories. I'm not setting out to make them bad. Just not making "not bad" a requirement of the process. Using random prompts and following random rules so that I always have an idea what comes next.
Yesterday my main random story project for the day worked like this:
1. Random first line from internet. 2. Make a list of 2d6 things that happen in the story while the stakes are rising towards a climax 3. Add 2d4 more things from the climax to the conclusion. 4. Write that.
Tangential to any specific cis author's comments about trans people in fantasy stuff, there is something that strikes me sometimes when I'm thinking about just how *weird* and incoherent the ciscentric view of what trans people are is, around this topic.
Because while there's the viewpoint of "There couldn't be trans people in this [historical period/alternate world] because there's no HRT or The Surgery," which implies that A Trans is *created* when A Regular undergoes particular physical changes...
...there's also the viewpoint that goes "There couldn't be trans people in this [high magic fantasy] because they have permanent shapeshifting spells and so anybody who was trans would just change their body and not be trans anymore.", which is the exact opposite.
Every time someone on here accuses me of saying something they disagree with just to generate engagement, I reflect on how the most fulfilling thing on here is when I make a joke that perhaps three people in the world will enjoy, and one of them finds it.
Bill Gates was right in one respect: checking credibility on the net *is* more sophisticated.
When we only had old media, it was Hobson's choice: take their word or leave it. On the internet, you have perfect freedom to shop around until someone confirms your priors. Options!
One thing that jumps out from the full context here is that Gates's rosy view is based on the idea that the internet would be navigated using indexed directories of sites, which might be themselves navigable by search engines but would be vetted, curated.
But both the internet and the ability to automate the indexing of sites grew too fast for that to ever firmly solidify as the post-www status quo, and to the extent that the big search engines are curated indices, it's not in the service of a neutral pursuit of truth or utility.
So, for anyone who knows my passion for trying out wearable personal viewscreen devices in hopes of finding the perfect virtual office space... the HTC Vive Flow is *very* close, albeit with the deadly flaw for this specific purpose of currently lacking keyboard support.
Any time I post about a gadget that puts HDMI screens in front of your face, I get people asking "Does it do VR?" and usually my answer is either "no" or "no, but it can technically do 3D" or "not well".
The Vive Flow is an actual VR device, one looking for a new market.
Most of the use cases for VR have been gaming, in spite of big business trying to make office work sound like the cool and edgy futuristic part of cyberpunk. The Vive Flow is not aimed at hardcore gaming; the games it's compatible with are more Cookie Gem Farm than 4 Left Guns.
Honestly if I had to try to "save" the D&D alignment system, using only the existing values and axes, I would make it a two part choice, no incompatibilities, where it's [Praxis] [Ethos] or [Method] [End Goal].
So Lawful Evil would be someone who uses lawful means for evil ends, where somebody who is Evil Lawful would be someone who uses evil means for lawful ends.