Shelli Spotts
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spottedpen.bsky.social
Shelli Spotts
@spottedpen.bsky.social
280 followers 1K following 66 posts
Writer, Teacher, Dreamer, Developmental Editor, Poet—intensely interested in small moments of beauty. Writer of fiction, essay, and short fiction. Delighted by humor and absurdity. Striving for radical curiosity! https://shelliraespotts.weebly.com/my-work
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Reposted by Shelli Spotts
ebonyteach.blacksky.app
Forever pissed that I have to be Aware and Informed instead of reading science fiction and fantasy and writing stories.

I'm a children's literature critic, not an expert on government!

(Not a fan of this timeline. At all.)
February 3, 2025 at 6:31 PM
Reposted by Shelli Spotts
boringstorybook.com
Easy overview of the #kidlit community on Bluesky for #booktok friends who have wandered over and feel overwhelmed: briankirbystudio.com/kidlit-commu...
Kidlit Community on Bluesky - Brian Kirby Studio
*Post originally published July 6, 2024 on boringstorybook.com Bluesky has been emerging as the easiest and most user-friendly Twitter alternative, but it is still in its early stages, and not exactly...
briankirbystudio.com
January 19, 2025 at 5:39 PM
Reposted by Shelli Spotts
alansmitheedga.bsky.social
January 19, 2025 at 3:05 PM
Reposted by Shelli Spotts
heatherantos.bsky.social
January 19, 2025 at 5:45 PM
spottedpen.bsky.social
My husband grew up in California. I lived there for 10 years growing up. We are both architecture junkies. We just got back from a trip to LA to celebrate his birthday. I’m just heartbroken for that beautiful, vibrant city. #losangeles #california
January 10, 2025 at 10:19 PM
Reposted by Shelli Spotts
Stuck?

It might be because you unconsciously think that script choices you make now are locked. Switch to index cards, which relax you with their inherent plasticity.

#writingcommunity #playwriting
January 10, 2025 at 4:32 PM
spottedpen.bsky.social
Art by artists is important. And so is humor.
December 16, 2024 at 5:04 PM
spottedpen.bsky.social
Soup of the day. Clean out the fridge soup with ham, orzo, potato, carrots and onions, white beans, and some artichoke dip leftovers. Stirred in some fresh kale. #soupseason #norecipes
December 13, 2024 at 12:15 AM
spottedpen.bsky.social
Sunset off the winter solstice line at @griffithobserv.bsky.social
Almost there. (The birds were paid actors) #solstice #sunsets #celestialgeography
The bronze solstice line at the Griffith Observatory looking out over a setting sun. Birds in the sky.
December 11, 2024 at 8:30 PM
spottedpen.bsky.social
Dear diary. It’s been 347 days since my last meal. Or at least 3 hours. The human refuses to relinquish the peanut butter. #dogsareweird #hungry #begging
December 11, 2024 at 7:18 PM
spottedpen.bsky.social
Live theater is truly one of the most humanizing experiences. Beauty and the Beast at Hale Theater in SLC was amazing. #theatre #performance #art
December 10, 2024 at 6:16 PM
Reposted by Shelli Spotts
louisathelast.bsky.social
Please tell your kids, every damn day if necessary, that chatGPT is not a goddamn search engine and you shouldn’t believe a word it says. Tell the adults too, but it’s especially imperative to inoculate kids against this
spavel.bsky.social Pavel @spavel.bsky.social · Jul 6
Well this is grim
weird interaction with a student this week. they kept coming up with weird "facts" ("greek is actually a combination of four other languages") that left me baffled. i said let's look this stuff up together, and they said ok, i'll open a search bar, and they opened... ch*tgpt and i was like "this is not a search bar" and they were like "yes it is, you can search for anything in here" the thing that made me feel crazy is like. every kid that's using this as a browser is getting new BESPOKE false "facts." this isn't "a widespread misconception about X that stems from how it's taught in schools." each individual kid is now hooked into a Nonsense Machine with the "widespread misconception about X" you can start at a baseline. like, ok, in tenth grade we all talk about X thing from history, and that leaves us with some misguided concepts about X, but we can correct that as students get broader understandings of the world but with this, each child is getting UNIQUE wrong facts they are SURE are correct... because they did what we told them to do! they "looked it up"! they got it from somewhere! it's not a kid making up a belief on hearsay and assumption... it's something they think they LEARNED this kid was extremely combative with me, and i understood why. i was sitting in front of him and telling him that the internet, a computer, technology, all these supposedly authoritative things... were wrong. and that i, one person, was right. he basically *couldn't* believe me. 8 135 3.8K 97K ... stillorangecrushed @stilloranged. 7h he decided that i was simply a teacher who'd made a mistake. he could check it, after all! he could look it up! he could find the REAL facts. i obviously hadn't done that, i was just an adult who'd decided i was smarter than him. hence the defensiveness. like i said: i understood 5 760 3.2K 82K stillorangecrushed @stilloranged. 7h ... it was so fucking rough. i did my best, but i am one person trying to work against a campaign of misinformation so vast that it fucking terrifies me. this kid is being set up for a life lived entirely inside the hall of mirrors
December 10, 2024 at 2:38 PM
spottedpen.bsky.social
Realizing I might have gone overboard while playing with my new gimbal. The whole page is different angles of sunflowers. 😂#photography #flowers #amateur
December 8, 2024 at 10:27 PM
spottedpen.bsky.social
Trying to figure out how to teach media literacy for my college classes in the current media climate. #truth #medialiteracy #teaching
December 4, 2024 at 9:11 PM
Reposted by Shelli Spotts
alexlopezwrites.bsky.social
“All that you touch
You Change.

All that you Change
Changes you.

The only lasting truth
is Change.

God
is Change.”

— Octavia E. Butler
A photo of author Octavia E Butler :)
December 3, 2024 at 7:33 PM
spottedpen.bsky.social
When the college son decides to sew for a final project. He has a …less traditional process. 😂
December 3, 2024 at 9:01 PM
spottedpen.bsky.social
What we need is a showing for people who cry easily. That way we can sob together.
November 28, 2024 at 4:57 PM
Reposted by Shelli Spotts
clarabelle.xyz
THREE new #booksky feeds for the nerds. 🫡

1️⃣ - SciFi/Fantasy/SpecFic - use 🪐📚 to post to feed

2️⃣ - Smut/Erotica/🌶️ - use 🌶️📚 to post to feed

Add a 💙 at the end of either of those emoji combos to post to the main 📚💙 feed as well.

3️⃣ - Booksky Trending 🔥 - same feed, sorted by popularity

Enjoy! 🫶🏻
November 20, 2024 at 11:04 PM
spottedpen.bsky.social
Trying to recover from dental surgery and wondering what my writing would sound like under the influence of anesthetic. Worth it? 😂🤦🏻‍♀️ #failedrootcanal #ouch #restday
November 26, 2024 at 5:09 PM
Reposted by Shelli Spotts
katemessner.com
I loved what Ada Limon had to say about writer's block in her talk at #NCTE24 today: "It is not so much that you don't have anything to say; it's that you have so much to say."

We have to take time to sort through the overwhelmingness of it all, time to let one good idea at a time shine through.
November 24, 2024 at 9:05 PM
Reposted by Shelli Spotts
kitdewaal.com
The Discoveries writing development programme and prize for unpublished women writers in the UK accepts novels in any genre of adult fiction, with entrants invited to submit the first 10,000 words of their novel and a synopsis
Discoveries 2025
Calling all unpublished women writers! The Women’s Prize Trust, Audible, the Curtis Brown literary agency and Curtis Brown Creative have partnered to run the Discoveries novel-writing development prog...
www.curtisbrowncreative.co.uk
November 23, 2024 at 8:53 AM
spottedpen.bsky.social
Did not get as many words written today as I wanted, so I’m distracting myself with snapshots of sunsets. #beautyinnature #sunsets #writing #inspiration
The sun sets behind a tree at the Griffith observatory.
November 23, 2024 at 6:18 AM
spottedpen.bsky.social
Just a Rocky
Mountain girl wishing she could grow bougainvillea and knowing it’s hopeless. #photo #frustratedgardener #natureisbeautiful #photography #zone4gardening
A close up of a cluster of red bougainvillea blossoms growing against a cream colored stucco wall
November 22, 2024 at 4:30 AM
spottedpen.bsky.social
There is something about this shade of red against a bright blue sky that inspires me to write. #photography #fall #writerlife #writer #poetryinnature
November 21, 2024 at 4:41 PM