You know it just occurred to me – and yes I should be writing and I’m procrastinating, why did you ask? 🙂 – that I could answer a couple of questions off that fic meme, whether anyone asks me or not.
I just think a couple of couple of them are really good questions and I feel like it. So why not?
Feel free to ask my any others if you are curious 🙂
1) Describe your comfort zone—a typical you-fic.
Canon divergence. Where there was a pivotal moment and canon goes one way but I can say “what if?” and then take the story down a different road. This is basically all I have ever written.
I find writing canon-compliant “missing moment” type deal, very difficult and I would never choose to do so if I had a choice. I think it’s the desire to “fix it” in me, because obviously if I can’t change anything, just write what happened, it’s quite frustrating. I might have written one canon-compliant thing about 10 years ago but I struggled to end it because I couldn’t give it a happy ending. I like my happy endings.
I have never written a complete AU before but I have a couple in the pipeline and I’m looking forward to that. It should be really fun. I’ll get to do what I love in other AU fics and bring in some show stuff but in a different way. I always enjoy that. I just hope I can pull it off.
11) Is writing your passion or just a fun hobby?
This is what I wrote on my Camp NaNo profile this year:
“I love writing, I just literally do. I write for a job (sort of) and I write for fun. I write all day, everyday if possible and then more on weekends. I love stories, I love characters. I wish I wrote faster than I do because I have so many ideas and there’s just never enough time.Can we invent something so I can plug my brain into the PC and make stories appear? That would be very cool.”
So in answer, it is most definitely my passion.
13) What’s the best writing advice you’ve ever come across?
NaNoWriMo – in a nutshell. Basically stop being a “one day” novelist, saying that “one day” I will write a story because then that will never happen. There will always be other priorities, it will always get pushed to “when I have more time” and so if you want to do it, do it now.
A story will never come out on the page exactly how you hoped. In your mind it’s amazing and incredible because it’s so full of limitless potential. The real world, the harsh reality of the page, it sucks but that’s the magic of writing. Everything is fixable. If you have the first draft, then you have a place to start. You can take something and make it incredible, you can’t take nothing and do anything with it because nothing is nothing.
Everyone starts somewhere. If you have a story to tell, then tell it – the world needs your novel.
14) What’s the worst writing advice you’ve ever come across?
“Write what you know” because how does that even work? Last time I checked we weren’t living in magical worlds, or fighting aliens. I write what I want to read, I write what I love and then I share it because I hope other people will love it too. If I just wrote “what I knew” then I wouldn’t feel anywhere near that level of passion because my life is normal and unremarkable.
18) Do you use any tools, like worksheets or outlines?
I write up a full scene by scene outline for any long story. My oneshots I tend to just start writing and just write what comes into my head. However, for anything longer, it’s usually more complex, and I need to plan it out. If I don’t outline then I wind up writing myself into a corner. Plus outlines are helpful because when I open the document I always know what I’m doing next, I don’t ever stare at a blank page because I don’t know what I’m writing.
24) Have you ever deleted one of your published fics?
Yes. I quit fanfic about five years ago and I had one outstanding WIP and I felt really guilty about it. However, I was never going back, and to be honest nobody was reading it anyway, so I just deleted it and tried to pretend like I hadn’t done that.
As a reader I usually tick the ‘completed’ box and only read fics that are done. There is nothing worse than liking a fic and then it never being finished. As a writer, I felt like such a hypocrite for doing that. Thankfully, like I said it wasn’t like it was popular. If I had been then I would have made myself finish it.
30) Do you accept prompts?
Yes.
35) Would you ever kill off a canon character?
Never say never, but I find it quite unlikely. I don’t like reading character death fics, so I can’t imagine why I would ever write one. I suppose if it was just a minor character, or one everyone hated, then I might. I guess for my upcoming WIP ‘there has been a murder in Storybrooke’ I am going to have to kill somebody. It won’t be anyone I like though.
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Like I said feel free to ask me any others 🙂