Hello everyone!

Absolutely shit month for me writing-wise, as I’ve only put down a single flash fiction, but at least I sorted out the issues I’ve had with Kanteletar’s Section C. It’s all about getting to edit it, which is what I’m going to try to do now that I’m back in Italy for a couple weeks!

Researching for stories is very based and I commend you for all your effort!

Late as always, but not missing! I see there’s a bunch of newcomers with a wild variety of projects, and that’s great to see! 😁

I’ve just completed the first draft of Kanteletar’s Section C, and what a struggle it has been 🥵 For the newcomers: I’m writing a solarpunk novel that follows five hundred years of history, from 2067 to 26th Century. Five Sections with five different stories across time. Now I’ll let it rest for a couple weeks and then jump into revision and translation. Three down, two more to go.

Also! I had not meant to participate, but I inadvertently ended up writing a story that sort of fit the Protopian Prize (which I found out from Karl Schroeder), so I sent it! No high hopes, since it might not quite fit the theme, but I’m proud of that story and I’ll definitely try to send it somewhere else.

I see everyone sweltering in Saharan temperatures and… here in Finland it’s been raining every day, with maybe only five days above 25°C. I want some summer, damn it! 😭

Writing-wise, it’s going great! Halfway through Kanteletar’s Section C, and it’s turning out great. Challenging (first time I’m writing an unreliable character, even though they’re not the narrator), but very rewarding. I’m only afraid that it might feel a bit too cyberpunk, rather than solarpunk, but that’s for my betareaders to decide.

I’ve also received some extensive feedback on SecA & SecB, which means before moving on to SecD I’ll have to take a break and address those “flaws”. It feels a bit daunting, so I’ve been postponing it a bit 😅

I’ll have a small writing workshop for teenagers at the Summer Camp I’m organizing! Hopefully the kids will enjoy it 😄

edited roughly 1.5 novels in a month

That’s some astonishing volume! And also never feel ashamed about posting your progress, it’s not a flexing competition but a way to encourage each other! Personally, seeing others doing good strides motivates me to get on with my projects!

Hell yeah! Sometimes writing is unpredictable, so I’m glad it eventually got back to you! Don’t bother too much about what you’re writing if you just want to get the rust off. My advice, if you want to skip all the worldbuilding part, is to start with a setting you already know, i.e. fanfiction of something you found cool or a spinoff of something you wrote long ago

God I’m late this time! Kind of a dry month because of the last wave of essays, but at least I’m done with that shit for possibly ever!

I managed to make a thorough revision on a story from 2024 I prepared for a collection, and I sketched Kanteletar’s Section C (6 chapters) which I want to write in its entirety before the end of July. I really want to get back to my usual rhythm of writing every weekend, let’s see if I can manage this summer.

Indeed, that was one of my inspirations for the template of separate stories, although the setting is wildly different and it mostly becomes straight up feudal in the middle section. I would like to avoid scenarios of regression or dystopia, so let’s see if I manage!

Yes! It consists of five stories across four centuries, following the twists and turns of a library in Tampere as the world around it changes.

The first story was set in 2067, the second in 2148 and the one I’m about to write is in 2232. I always try to keep it realistic, so there’s no standard scifi tropes like aliens or androids or teleportation.

It’s a craft that requires failure, and everyone has their own learning times. As long as you’re enjoying it, you should keep writing it!

Would you mind sending the story once you feel confident with its final version? I’d love to give it a read!

Finally getting the chance to post without several days of delay! 😂

April has been quite fruitful! I’ve finally completed the revision of Kanteletar’s Section B, so I’ve already started to outline Section C (which is to be written across May and June, if I manage). School practice was intense so I didn’t get to write anything else, and next month will also be quite busy with… more useless essays 😩 Hopefully the last ones for the foreseeable times.

Plenty of summer projects:

• Kanteletar Section D (4/5)
• A short story (maybe 6k words? Not too long) about a tribe of Kobolds displaced by a faceless Empire and the social consequences of their migration
• Maybe something to send for Karl Schroeder’s “solarpunk” contest?

It isn’t when you have complete tactical superiority and you want to intimidate your opppnents

Did you really have to use AI for the picture?

Have you ever watched Shrek?

Before reading the article: party politics is a 20th Century form of organization that worked in the context of 20th Century conditions; expecting it would work for the 21st Century and the digital era is, in my opinion, not going to work. From what I read on history of economics, a new paradigm is adopted when the current one fails repeatedly and the ruling class has no option but to pick some different framework that can still benefit their interests. I think this is the most likely (although not the most desirable) path to degrowth in the next ~20y.

We weren’t meant to do anything, no one exists and nothing happens for any particular reason, we are a chaotic yet structured event on the way from a big bang in a race towards the thermodynamic equilibrium and ultimately the heat death of the universe. This is a good thing, actually, because it means that you have the freedom to find your own purpose

Is this Cosmology Sartre? Astroexistentialism? I love the combination 🤩

I’m sorry but whoever made this completely missed the point of solarpunk.

It also shows how much easier it is to repackage cyberpunk and make it look new, compared to actually imagining a positive future.

I haven’t read the whole global corpus yet, but two of my favourite authors are Renan Bernardo from Brazil and Wole Talabi from Nigeria (the latter writes more scifi, but has some interesting solarpunk-adjacent stories).

In general, it’s much, much harder to find authors from the Global South because USians have such an easier time not only promoting themselves to editors & publishers, but also reaching their audiences.

Curiously, all white American authors. I wonder why this keeps happening.