https://antipodes.substack.com/p/farisas-crossing-chapters-12-now

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5417028&forum_id=2#46875159)

Then again, I'm not a foot guy. What do I know?

The foot modesty of her culture has to be there for a number of artistic reasons that'll make sense later in the book but, yes, I am worried about people imputing things about me from the fact that it's there. I needed something that was "more naked than naked" but also not sexual or gratuitous, so I picked a body part that almost no one cares about.

Also, Lorani women are only sensitive about the bottoms of their feet. The top is not a big deal. They'll wear sandals, although Farisa wouldn't. The inspiration is Thai culture, where you simply do not let anyone see the bottoms of your feet... although in Thailand, it isn't gendered.

Yes, I researched the fucking shit out of every detail in this book, even though it's a world I made up.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5417028&forum_id=2#46871053)

Honestly, while that element makes artistic sense, I am a bit worried about people reading a foot fetish when I really don't have one.

The thing is that nakedness is overdone and no longer "feels naked", so I need something for the character that is ordinary and boring for most people (hardly anyone cares about feet) but that feels really exposed for the character. The fact that she's barefoot in 1-A, 2-A is distinctly unpleasant for her.

It's like Altered Carbon. "Real death" (stack smashing) is somehow made _more horrible than_ regular murder, even though all death in real life _is real death_. Every time she is barefoot, it's _more_ vulnerable than regular nakedness (which is so overdone.)

But, because there _are_ foot people out there, I don't even put that in the childhood scenes at all. I'm not a foot guy but I know they exist.

I try to avoid the "naked just because" of GoT because I found the aggressive sexuality—I don't mind nudity at all, but the TV show was just gratuitous, not so much with the nudity but the exploitation—to be useless and bland.

Honestly, though, the foot thing (I'm not a foot fetishist) is probably only #9 or #10 when it comes to the Y Combinator (PG himself doesn't give a shit about me) attack vectors that I'm worried about.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5417028&forum_id=2#46871032)

1) Farisa was born on October 1 ‘72 - happy birbrday!

2) Farisa means “virtue” in Lyrian

3) Farisa is aspie as fuck

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5417028&forum_id=2#46870967)

I was a little worried it would be hard to read since it seems like it’s supposed to be “literary” but while the first chapter had some intense passages it was pretty readable in general. And I learned that “clement weather” is a thing 😂

Anyway, having blogged about this novel for years here I guess I feel oddly invested - obviously a yuge effort to write this and throw it out to the world.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5417028&forum_id=2#46873422)

I'm probably two or three years past the point where the aesthetic tweaks will have any influence on sales (which literally nobody can predict, and has very little to do with literary quality anyway) if we're being honest... so now it's just about finding an editor who can do the last mile, which doesn't seem like it would be that hard, but often is. If you hire a freelancer, you'll probably get shoddy work, and you can't go on reputation because the problem isn't unskilled editors but skilled, reputable ones who outsource (happened to me once.)

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5417028&forum_id=2#46875609)

And yeah, all mages are mentally ill. Otherwise, they would rule the world. Unlike in WoT, though, mental illness comes even for those who never use it.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5417028&forum_id=2#46871034)

That's not how you're supposed to read that. It's perfectly normal that a sheltered/inexperienced 15-year-old girl would want to know what it's like to do normal teenage stuff.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5417028&forum_id=2#46871147)

Writing is very reputation-based and a bad book can kill you. In the olden days (before 1980) a bad book simply was forgotten, and a lot of bad first books were.

Iterative development used to the way it was done. "Debut" books were usually quite bad—someone like me would have been first published 7 years earlier, because they started you when you barely knew how to write—and almost invariably forgotten twelve weeks after they were published.

The reason it can't be done that way anymore is that, for all the hate publishing houses get, the world was actually a lot better when they had the power and not chain bookstores (or Amazon) because they could actually support writers as they got better. Whereas, a chain like B&N or Borders is going to pull an author's numbers and, if they aren't perfect, nope out. That's why the iterative development culture died.

You see a lot of the opposite problem, too, in publishing. You see a lot of authors whose first books do really well because of extensive editing and publisher support, but whose second books flop, especially because of the pressure to get them out fast (and thus avoid trace decay of the first one's success.) These days, it tends to be second books that are the worst.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5417028&forum_id=2#46875334)

Einstein had his math reviewed by his wife

Welles was picked up after by Toland

I'll avoid the obvious question of why you think you're more of a genius than the above and instead ask why you think writing is any different?

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5417028&forum_id=2#46875414)

The thing is, though, it's ultimately on you to make the story work. Not anyone else. Not your first 10 readers, not other authors. It's also on you to figure out who to listen to and whose tastes are so irrelevant to what you're doing that you can ignore them. Simply gathering good feedback and filtering out the bad is more of an art than a science.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5417028&forum_id=2#46875462)

Of course, some number of bad reviews is just inevitable. They happen to the best, and the worst, and all the people in between. You can't be afraid of them, and you can't really react. Some people will think your pacing is too slow, and others will think it is too fast. You are at a local minimum when the stochastic gradients average out to zero, not when they individually become zero, because they never will.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5417028&forum_id=2#46875372)

https://autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5399171&mc=36&forum_id=2

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5417028&forum_id=2#46875564)

What was it? If it's a negative review, no I didn't delete it. Trust me, I'm going to get plenty of those... unless I fail completely. Franzen's latest has 46 one-star reviews. They happen. Large numbers, the such.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5417028&forum_id=2#46875632)