• Café Life is the Colony's main hangout, watering hole and meeting point.

    This is a place where you'll meet and make writing friends, and indulge in stratospherically-elevated wit or barometrically low humour.

    Some Colonists pop in religiously every day before or after work. Others we see here less regularly, but all are equally welcome. Two important grounds rules…

    • Don't give offence
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    We now allow political discussion, but strongly suggest it takes place in the Steam Room, which is a private sub-forum within Café Life. It’s only accessible to Full Members.

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Thought for the Day As for....

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Paul Whybrow

Full Member
Joined
Jun 20, 2015
Location
Cornwall, UK
LitBits
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"As for ‘Write what you know,' I was regularly told this as a beginner. I think it's a very good rule and have always obeyed it. I write about imaginary countries, alien societies on other planets, dragons, wizards, the Napa Valley in 22002. I know these things. I know them better than anybody else possibly could, so it's my duty to testify about them."

Ursula K. Le Guin

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True.

I could name a 'thriller' trilogy, allegedly best-selling, set in France and Italy, where I, from local knowledge, can say it's clear the author hadn't been in at least some of the locations in person.

For example, she moors a huge gin palace in an admittedly beautiful setting where it is far from deep enough! From photographs, she would have seen other boats there – but she should have noted none of them was larger than a small sailing yacht. The deep-water harbour is round the promontory, in a different village.

It made me dubious about the rest of her descriptions. And it was a 'How Not To' lesson.
 

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