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Fractals. Pictures, mathematics, descriptions. The Sierpinski triangle and how you can make it a bit random to make it look very like a stony cliff. The infinite border to a finite area. Dimensions. And more.
Fractals. Pictures, mathematics, descriptions. The Sierpinski triangle and how you can make it a bit random to make it look very like a stony cliff. The infinite border to a finite area. Dimensions. And more.
Let's set that new goal today.
Join us for the Year-End Marathon. And this is a special party, because we are inviting everyone!
Everyone—whether you're a current or previous GYWO member or have never even heard of this thing (is it a writing community? how do you pronounce "GYWO" anyway?)—EVERYONE is invited to join the 2026 GYWO writers in this marathon to the end of the year.
What Is the Year-End Marathon?
The Year-End Marathon begins Nov 1 and runs through Dec 31.
Make a pledge to write 15 Days each month (a total of 30 days) or 15,000 words each month (a total of 30,000 words).
Join other writers with the same goals on the GYWO Discord server in a set of channels exclusive to the YEM challenge. The moderators will be hosting special discussion topics and challenges for our YEM writers. YEM writers will also have access to GYWO writing sprints hosted on our Discord.
This year, we’re incorporating public, unlocked Dreamwidth discussion posts for you to participate in, as well as extra challenges and discussion posts on Bluesky, and a 30K leaderboard on Trackbear.
If you're new to GYWO, this can be a way to see if this community is right for you before our pledge drive for 2027 begins. And if you're a GYWO 2026 writer, this can be a chance to seize your goals and put in some concentrated effort at the end of the year so you can start 2027 on the right foot.
What Are the Requirements?
🤝 Like writers who sign up for the year-long GYWO challenge, you must have an account on Dreamwidth or through OpenID. GYWO usernames are based on Dreamwidth or OpenID usernames. New writers signing up for the Year-End Marathon will not have full access to the GYWO Dreamwidth community at this time, but there will be two unlocked discussion posts per month that YEM members may participate in. We hope you understand keeping our naming system consistent means the mod team doesn't have to sort duplicate usernames.
✍️ Write your words! The whole purpose of this challenge is to develop and maintain your writing life, so write something! All words and time counted toward your pledge progress must be your own work. Use of generative AI or passing off the work of a collaborator as your own is against the spirit of Get Your Words Out. See our website for an overview of what words count for the word count pledge and what activities count for a habit pledge.
🌈 Be a rainbow, not a pain-bow. We would love for you to participate in our Discord community and basically ask that you not be a jerk when doing so. Disrespect of the community and its members, along with hate speech, harassment, abuse, and endangerment may result in your removal from the community. We're pretty chill and ask that you be chill, too. (Also, if you have a problem with a member or find a conversation veering into uncomfortable territory, alert a moderator and we'll be on it as quick as we can.)
A monthly check-in specific to the Year-End Marathon will be posted for your own accountability, but attendance will not be taken and it is not a required part of your membership.
(Current GYWO writers—you're still responsible to check-in as part of your GYWO 2026 membership. Attendance is taken there, not on the Year-End Marathon check-in, so make sure to check in as usual.)
How Do I Participate?
To participate in the Year-End Marathon, complete the Year-End Marathon Pledge Form.
If you choose to join our Discord server, once your pledge has been processed, a moderator will assign you a pledge role to give you access to the YEM-exclusive area and writing sprints channel. Join other YEM writers to chat about the challenge, writing in general, and your writing life in particular.
On Discord: each week, moderators will post either a discussion topic or a writing activity for YEM writers. You can respond directly to the moderator as a reply or join in the wider discussion with other writers, depending on your comfort level.
On Bluesky: each week, moderators will post either a discussion question or writing challenge. Feel free to reply, quote post, tag us
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getyourwordsout.bsky.social, or use the #gywo hashtag. On Dreamwidth: moderators will post monthly discussion posts where you can talk about your progress and chat with fellow YEM participants.
All moderator-led engagement is crafted to support a wide range of writers, so whether you're writing fiction, nonfiction, or poetry or you engage in horror, romance, absurdism, or fanfic we do our best to find something to support your writing life.
✅To participate in the monthly check-in specific to the Year-End Marathon, you'll need to have access to the GYWO Discord server. The link to check in for the YEM challenge will only be posted on Discord. Check-in is optional but recommended.
Have you picked your pledge for the Year-End Marathon?
Remember, your choices are 15 Days per month (30 days total) or 15,000 Words per month (30,000 words total).
Pledging for the GYWO Year-End Marathon Ends Nov 7, 2026.
If you have any questions, we're happy to answer them!
For more information about Get Your Words Out, please visit our website. Pledging for 2027 will open around December 11.
I think this book’s greatest enemy is its length. Adapting one of the world’s longest epics in under 350 pages is not really doable. In this case, the first 100-plus pages read like a YA novel in which Panchaali is trying to find her place in the world. The rest mostly reads like a summary of the Mahabharata from Panchaali’s point of view. The novel loses a great deal of force in skimming over almost the whole story. But it also covers a lot of ground clearly, including some story beats I had never known before, so I’m grateful for that. Overall, for Mahabharata fans or newbies, it’s worth a read. It’s not mindblowing, but it stimulates thought about a venerable and massive philosophical work, and that’s very worthwhile.
Spoilers for the Mahabharata and the novel ( Read more... )
Halloween vampire classic! Today I finished Carmilla by J. Sheridan le Fanu. This novella is posited as the “first vampire book.” I can’t actually confirm if that’s true or not. But there is a vampire.
Your exposure to Carmilla may be like mine, in that it’s the “old lesbian vampire novel.” While there is truth to this—Carmilla is undoubtedly attracted to the protagonist, Laura—if you go into expecting a torrid lesbian love story, you will be disappointed. On the whole, it’s a lot more “lesbian passionately into disinterested but lonely straight girl” than a romance. At various times, Laura is repulsed and “embarrassed” by Carmilla’s fawning, and although taken by Carmilla’s beauty, never desires more than friendship from her. This is a story of a predator preying on vulnerable and ignorant young women for her own ends. However, if we can romanticize Dracula, which I’m happy to do, we can of course romanticize Carmilla—I just want to be upfront about the actual text.
The story is told through Laura’s written recollection after the events take place. It does a solid job setting the scene of Laura and her father’s isolation and some of the strange goings-on in the area around them before the mysterious Carmilla makes her entry. The abandoned village three miles west, around the ruins of the defunct Karnstein castle, make for a delicious bit of foreshadowing.
It plays up Carmilla’s strangeness and the push/pull of her relationship with Laura as an unknown illness claims the lives of young women nearby. I enjoyed the slowly increasing fear and horror Laura experiences as these inexplicable events in her home and her mind start piling up.
The novel is paced well until the end, which felt jarringly abrupt. I think the book would have benefitted from being longer. I was disappointed not to learn more about Carmilla and the Karnsteins’ history, and that there’s not much room for Laura to consider her feelings about discovering the truth of Carmilla (How would it feel to find out your only friend had been slowly killing you, and had been planning to do so from the start?), or really a denouement at all.
Overall, there’s a lot of tasty gothic mystery and troubling, strange physical + psychological maladies here, and I can definitely see how Carmilla influenced later vampire novels. However, I did find the sudden wrap-up disappointing. I still liked the book though, and it was a very fun October read.
Yesterday I concluded Forbidden Notebook by Alba de Cespedes, translated from Italian by Ann Goldstein. This story was originally serialized in a paper, first published in the 1950s. It is structured as the covert diary entries of a dissatisfied housewife in Rome.
The book deals with various themes of generational conflict, the impact of both World Wars, and Italy’s economic downturn, but the heart of the book is the diarist, Valeria’s, fight to create and maintain a sense of self. Her struggle is contained so neatly in the fact that no one even calls her by her name—to her aging, aloof parents she is always and forever “bebe,” and to her grown children and even her husband she is “Mama.” She has no real friends to speak of.
Valeria keeps her diary hidden from everyone in their too-small apartment, terrified that her husband or adult children might find it. Frequently, she threatens to swear off writing in it and destroy it, emphatic that she’s only become more unhappy since she started it. This is because the more Valeria keeps track of her life, the less satisfying she finds it.
( Read more... )Concentrated on the ones about his works, though with a few personal ones, such as his horrified reaction to the atom bomb. Some philosophical discussions about life and religion. A lot to ponder about Middle Earth.
Concentrated on the ones about his works, though with a few personal ones, such as his horrified reaction to the atom bomb. Some philosophical discussions about life and religion. A lot to ponder about Middle Earth.
https://bachtrack.com/22/296/view/31574
