The Overlook Hotel

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12:15 AM

Q: What are the advantages of incorporation for a writer?

I have heard of some (rather successful) writers incorporating - that is, creating a corporation of which they are the sole member. What are the potential advantages (or disadvantages) of doing this? As this probably varies a bit by location, I am specifically interested in how this applies in ...

Does anyone have any opinion on this? Too "legal", or on-topic?

sigh

I'm on Writers.SE, which is starting to look like it will be the third

Mana

oh man really

Tim Stone

Oh, why's that?

Mana

no way I'm letting that happen

sjohnston

well, there's a month left, but traffic is abysmal. ~100 pageviews a day

<2 questions per day

Mana

oh man, only a month left?

I just found out about this site.

sjohnston

12:26 AM

At this point, I'm starting to ask one or two per day and tweet links, but obviously I can't singlehandedly make things work

Mana

Come on gaming members, let's rally.

sjohnston

anyone have any brilliant ideas for getting the word out?

Tim Stone

Hm, I'll mention it to some people.

sjohnston

cool

badp

@sjohnston That 10k words/month competition thing?

...in November?

well, there'll be more like them I guess

Mana

12:28 AM

50k words/month competition thing

NaNoWriMo

I wanted to partake in it last year but never got around to it because of SCHOOOOOL shakes fist

Tim Stone

Writers isn't doing quite as badly as AI was though, so don't get too discouraged, heh.

It's probably more likely to end up like UI and sit in beta for a lengthy period of time.

But more users would definitely help, so let's see what can be done about that.

sjohnston

The numbers don't worry me, per se, but they're not really improving much, and that does worry me.

Yeah, I suppose I could announce on the NaNo forums, but I think they get pretty quiet at the end of November

badp

← 25 messages from worried Gamers from The Bridge

Mana

The hell is this?!

Stop being such a jerk badp :/

Tim Stone

Sketchy!

badp

12:32 AM

@Mana Hey, maybe we can find some actual user from the site.

You know, via chat ads.

Mana

True, true

although "The Overlook Hotel" isn't very descriptive

it's just another vague chatroom name

oh wait this isn't on Gaming

Okay guys, here's the plan: ask two questions.

@sjohnston So like what sort of questions does this site want is what kind of puzzles me

How subjective can we get? Could I ask how to write a "good" self-insertion character for some definition of good?

badp

certainly it looks weird

Writers could cater to bloggers, too.

sjohnston

12:48 AM

@mana What is a self-insertion character? Like putting yourself as a character in your novel?

badp

Although they're not the target they should still find good information here

sjohnston

bloggers would be fine, as long as the question is about the writing aspect, not something like SEO, advertising, etc.

badp

@sjohnston «When parodying a song, how important is it to replace words with homophones thereof?»

how about this one?

I could use "I'VE GOT A HOUSE" as a real life example :P

(I don't like making up fake questions, but written song parodies are something I "regularly" do.)

sjohnston

@badp Subjective is fine, as long as it does well on the standard test

Stack Overflow Blog: Good Subjective, Bad Subjective

Posted by Robert Cartaino on September 29th, 2010

Stack Exchange is about questions with objective, factual answers. We’ve been crystal clear about this for as long as I can remember, even back to the earliest, pre-beta days of Stack Overflow. It’s right there in the standard Stack Exchange FAQ:

What kind of questions should I not ask here?

Avoid asking questions that are subjective, argumentative, or require extended discussion. This is not a discussion board, this is a place for questions that can be answered!

Thus, questions that are not answerable — discussions, debates, opinions — should be closed as subjective. It seems simple enough: Fact good; opinion and discussion bad. But why? …

@badp And I wouldn't try to make up "fake questions". If you can think of something you're legitimately interested in, and it works with the site, great. If not, oh well.

Mana

@sjohns Yeah, putting yourself as a character in a novel.

sjohnston

12:54 AM

@Mana That seems like a perfectly valid topic, although I think you'd need an adjective more specific than "good"

Mana

Right.

badp

1:15 AM

users with less than 150 reputation can't create new tags. The tags 'parody lyrics' are new. Try using existing tags instead

Q: When parodying a song, how important is it to replace words with homophones thereof?

I often decide to parody songs to adapt them to different contexts -- mainly for fun, for improving my English and causing an healthy amount of groans into people who read my creations. However, I also care about putting some quality in my work. Sometimes, the subject matter of the original piec...