To whoever stole my dictionary... I have no words.

How many of you have repurchased cherished books you read as a child, because you've moved house more than once and got rid of them along the way? And now, you're regretting it? Or is it just me? 😥

Nice ... I'm seeing them in May

The Cocteau Twins is perfect Sunday night wind-down music

Photo of a printed manuscript “The Replacement “, Mark Perry

Finished draft, hot off the printer. Warm Novelette 🤣 Definitely the weirdest story I’ve written to date — a slice of Australian Gothic. Now it’s editing time. #amwriting #booksky

"You're an author? Would I know anything you've written?"

"Have you heard of the book Eat Pray Love?"

"Oh wow. I have, actually!"

"Well, one of my books was printed in a typeface not totally dissimilar to the one in that."

Cheers!

Thanks. The phrase is “around her, the magnificent glasshouses hold specimens…”.

My editor (my lovely wife) put a circle around the word "magnificent" in my ms today with the note "remove, or explain why it was magnificent." Apparently that word is a no-no, in her opinion. What do other writers (& readers) think? Can "magnificent" stand alone as an adjective? #amwriting #booksky

Only thing worse: getting up at 3:45am to present at 4 and checking your email to find out they cancelled the meeting while you were sleeping.

Nearly completed my latest work, "The Replacement", folk horror with a devastating twist. 12,800 words atm, which TIL is a "novelette". One more writing session, then I'll do an edit. Then to find a beta reader or two. Written entirely at writers' groups over the last 3 months #amwriting #booksky

A screenshot of the Microsoft Word Spelling and Grammar Check window, showing a suggestion to improve the conciseness of the piece: More concise language would be clearer for your reader: instead of "I really fucking need it, consider: "I fucking need it".

Final proofread in Word before submitting. Appreciating the help from the Microsoft algorithm.

‘But I will eat any other cake. Any cake that is not the fire cake that tries to kill the boy.’

Today I edited a 2000+ word short story down to 995 words for a flash fiction competition. Tough work.

Ssshhh. It’s on the script the producer wrote for them earlier this week.

It would be great if it could prioritise the places closest to where the user is while using it.

"...a very subtle JPS vibe..." Jean-Paul Sartre?

Nobody knows who they were, or what they were doing

I think that’s true. It’s working that way for me although I’m not an experienced developer. Getting a microsite up for my book was 15 minutes work and it looks great.

Did you build a phased plan first? I find it’s really good with the build if it works to a plan that I’ve reviewed and approved.

It will be interesting. This year, CC was able to debug ChatGPT’s 2 year old code from my first experiments with AI coding.

I’m having good results with Claude Code. Every now and again you need to prompt it to do a simply/remove bad practices/check for duplicate code run. And of course, regular security evaluations.

My landlord lives rent free in my head.

It’s actually FEWER Misérables

Crudely photoshopped picture of a crudely photoshopped Patter over top of a photo of people writing.

Submissions for Patter vol. 2 are now open.

Info about who can submit, how to submit, what to submit, and all the nitty gritty info in the link 👇

SUBMIT NOW

notypewriters.com/patter/

Post from Julia Fine that says, "Write the book you want to read because you will have to read it 75 times."

#writerslife

Fighting the Urge to Keep Editing And the trials of editing to a page limit, instead of a word limit

I wrote about editing to a different type of target, and my new software project open.substack.com/pub/markperr...

Olive the tabby cat sits on the arm of a couch, front paws crossed, looking at the camera with her big, green eyes

Beautiful Olive ❤️

Right now, I’m into stories where the main character is hiding, or unaware of, their true self.

How Different Media Can Inspire How I write

New post up about an unlikely (for me) source of inspiration #amwriting #writesky

markperryau.substack.com/p/how-differ...