winterswanderlust  asked:

For the fanfiction ask meme: 9, 34, 47

9. What are the best things about your current fandom?
That I understand it? Seriously fandoms are kinda an elusive beast to me. I don’t know how to find fellow fans – what tags do they use? what event blogs are there? I want to join in dammit and I don’t know how! But I don’t know entirely how I worked it out but I’m here in Rumbelle land and it’s comfortable. I still don’t know everyone that I should and 99% of the time drama passes me by (my nickname is Captain Oblivious), so obviously I’m still kinda on the periphery somehow.

All I want from fandom is to be able to flail and chat to people who love it as much as I do. So what is best about the Rumbelle fandom is that I have made friends whom I can talk to about my passions 🙂

34. What’s the word count on your longest fic?
Longest individual fic is The War Within at 71,905. Longest verse (multiple fics, same universe) is also War Within standing at 115,721.

47. Archive Of Our Own, Fanfiction.net or Tumblr – where do you prefer to post and why?
I’m old. I remember the days of posting in private archives/forums. Does anyone else remember proboards forums? I still technically have an account at ff.net but I haven’t posted there in years, not since before I quit fandom the first time over a decade ago. You know that tumblr post that goes around which says what internet generation are you? I’m the “I was there Gandalf!” hehe 🙂

I got to say AO3. It’s neater because it’s designed for fic posting, whereas tumblr’s more all about the reblogs and the conversation. It’s also much easier to upload than ff.net, unless ff.net has had an overhaul in the last 10 years? Anyway I find it easier to post and I just like the general look. So yeah AO3!

mariequitecontrarie  asked:

28, 35, and 38 for the writing meme

*hugs you* thank you my friend!

28) Share three of your favorite fic writers and why you like them so much.
Oh my word, I’m going to deliberately misconstrue this. I know it says fic writers but I feel like ‘oh the drama’ if I pick people I know, does that make sense? We all write fic for fun and so you are all wonderful.

So I’m going to go authors.

#1 – Lee Goldberg – He wrote the Diagnosis Murder series and hands-down I don’t think I’ve ever enjoyed a set of books more. He captured the characters on-screen and brought them to life in book-form which is incredibly difficult. I mean we all have our own impressions of characters right? I tried reading the Once novelisation of the pilot and I couldn’t get past the first chapter as the characters were just all wrong. Well he took the characters I knew and loved and made a book series and it was all spot-on. Not just the characters either but the off-beat comedy of the show – he captured it all.

#2 – Anthony Horowitz – That man’s career inspires me. He has written books, he’s worked on TV shows, and he’s really down-to-earth. I had the opportunity to hear him speak and I actually asked a question! I said “how much of your first draft makes it to final form” and he said “about 10%” and I don’t know, hearing that a published, successful author struggles like we do gave me heart and he was so nice about it. Plus I’ve enjoyed a good chunk of his work.

#3 – John Rogers – He’s a scriptwriter, he’s written for Leverage and The Librarians and he is a treasure. He treats fans with such respect. I remember a couple of twitter posts. In one a fan asked what the characters apartments were like and he made a joke and said “they sleep in bunkbeds” and then followed it up with “just kidding- unless you need it for your fic, and then they do :)” and then when the show was cancelled he said “it’s your universe now – go play!” Plus those shows bring me such comfort and joy and while it’s not just the writing that brings them to life, obviously that is a big part of it.

35) Would you ever kill off a canon character?
Yup and I have done but only minor ones. I would never write character-death fic for any character I like/feel attached to, put it that way.

38) Talk about a review that made your day.
The most recent one was this:

This is so wonderful! I hadn’t read it for ages, but felt I had to again! 

It was on Full Circle and I cried, and I still haven’t responded because I don’t want to frighten them. It’s just that – they loved it BUT they loved it so much they read it more than once! More. Than. Once. Somebody thought my work was worth their time – more than once! I mean it’s a wonderful feeling that somebody thinks my work is worth their time at all – but more than once! That is like the ultimate compliment.

maplesyrupao3  asked:

40 Questions! 1, 16, 27 😊

Hello my friend *attack hugs* thank you so much for the ask! 🙂

1) Describe your comfort zone—a typical you-fic.
Plotty, I like my plot. I mean all fics have to have some kind of plot to move the characters across the page, I guess what I’m saying is plot with stakes? No that’s still not clear. There are fics which are more about a characters personal journey like Painting Layers of Love, and then there are fics where stuff happens to the characters, and yeah they grow and develop because of it but the stuff is more external than internal. I do love PLL obviously but it’s a stretch for me as a writer, and so my comfort zone is with more plotty things.

I’ll play in all sandboxes but my favourite is sci-fi, though Once introduced me to the wonderful world of magic, but still you know – aliens! 🙂 I like my tech as well which magic doesn’t have. Although yeah this is my answer. My favourite thing to do when writing is to smush genres together. I have a particular fondness for mixing sci-fi and magic.

I started my writing career so to speak with detective stories and espionage and I still love, I just like to mix them with exciting sci-fi and magic these days as they feel a touch boring without you know spaceships and stuff.

Oh man my brain is fizzing. All the possibilities!

16) If you only could write one pairing for the rest of your life, which pairing would it be?
Oh don’t do that to me *falls face down on the floor*

I’m not a one pairing writer. I go through like infatuation periods. I never, ever stop loving a pairing but they do stop being the centre of my writing universe as something else takes its place. I’ve always thought of this as a good thing because it increases the amount of inspiration I have, and opens up my writing to new possibilities. Even if it does I suppose ultimately mean I produce less content for each pairing as time goes on.

Please don’t make me choose /headdesk

I think I probably will go with Rumbelle ultimately because I have the most ideas for them, and I’ve already written far more for them than any other pairing (by a few hundred thousand words). There are so many possibilities for them, I mean they had several AU’s within canon! They are the obvious choice. I’m just a little sad now at the concept of never writing anything else. I like exploring all sorts of pairings 🙁

27) How do you feel about collaborations?
Oh dearie me how long have you got?

I think under the right circumstances a collaboration can be an awesome thing BUT those circumstances can be as elusive as a magical unicorn. You see I’m actually having to do a collaboration project for one of my university classes right now – the thing is a trainwreck! I’ve cried, I’ve had multiple panic attacks and it’s week one. The entire thing is making me want to chuck my whole degree in just so I don’t have to do it anymore.

So collaborations can be bad BUT they can also be good.

I’m one of the mods for the inaugural Rumbelle Big Bang. I wouldn’t have worked so hard with my co-mod (jackabelle73) if I didn’t believe that collaboration as a concept was a good thing. I think it can produce fantastic work, and I think if the circumstances are right (to circle back to the beginning) then it can be a very enjoyable and worthwhile process.

Ultimately it depends on the team that is collaborating, whether they are on the same wavelength, whether they want the same things out of the project etc. Also communication, the team has to communicate fully and and in a timely fashion. The team has to gel, they have to work well together and that is not something that can be scripted – it either happens or it doesn’t. I very much hope that for as many participants as possible, the magic has happened and that the Big Bang has been a good experience for them.

Oh and I haven’t even got into how I think collaborations should work. I did ask you how long you had right? :p I think I’ll shut up here because it is a bit of a sore spot right now.

winterswanderlust  asked:

5, 12, 26, 30

Hey! Thanks for the ask 🙂

5) Share one of your strengths.
Oh man you ask the hard questions! And I’m even going to spare you all the typing I did to try and figure out the answer hehe.

I’m an ideas machine and I can see it in my head. Not sure I can translate it to the page but the movie theatre for one plays very nicely in my brain. You can give me any prompt, any prompt, and I can come up with something. So that’s two strengths ooops. Oh well I was struggling to think of one and now there’s two for the price of one – cool! 🙂

12) Is there an episode above all others that inspires you just a little bit more?
Ok I’m going to go with Once as that’s the fandom we share 🙂 and I’m going to break with tradition here and I’m not going to name a Rumbelle episode. I love Rumbelle to pieces obviously but it’s more a gestalt, the feeling of the whole than any individual episode. I’m someone for which things are symbiotic, I find it very hard to see things as parts, I only see them as parts of a whole – connected and interdependent.

So my answer has to be The Bear King – as that was the only episode my beloved ship BraveWarrior got, it stands on it’s own and by merlin I vow I will go down with that ship. One episode is the only inspiration that ship got but it’s enough and I’m taking it.

26) Do you beta yourself? If so, what kind of beta are you?
Answered here 🙂

30) Do you accept prompts?
I shouldn’t as they are distraction *cough* buuuuut as Ripper can attest yeah I do, I just can’t help myself.

mariequitecontrarie  asked:

2, 14, & 15 also 26

2) Is there a trope you’ve yet to try your hand at, but really want to?
*screams a little* I NEED TO TELL YOU ABOUT A THING!!

A person in my NaNo region did something incredibly dangerous and they sent me a link to two things, which I had never heard of but for all I know are widely known (I am Captain Oblivious) – Trope Bingo and Trope Bingo Generator and ohhhhhh boy.

I have always struggled with really knowing the trope names. I mean I know the obvious ones like bedsharing, fake dating etc. but I was sure that there were others and I felt like I was in the dark, like everyone somehow had access to a secret list and … wait a minute! Did you all know about this list before hmm? *eyes you suspiciously* :p

But But But anyway that thing is Dangerous – look with a capital D – because I want to write ALL THE THINGS. So I think the answer to “is there a trope I haven’t done yet but want to” is ALL OF THEM!

14) What’s the worst writing advice you’ve ever come across?
Ok there was this writing advice book and I read it and had stars in my eyes. I felt like the writer who had penned it was a real person, and a lot of what they said resonated and then they went on to say “if I did it – so can you!” which is the typical spiel of the self-help book but that was incredibly dangerous.

They said a lot of things, but I think the most toxic (for me at least) was the “you either want it or you don’t. If you do want it then you’ll make it happen.” – so basically if you failed, you didn’t try hard enough because you didn’t really want it. The technique he espoused was to get up an hour earlier because if writing was the #1 priority it should be the first thing you do.

I tried, I really did but I get easily tired and I got really vicious on myself for failing. It hurt so much because it felt like I didn’t really want it – but I really did! You see the thing is that advice might be fine for those who are healthy but I have certain issues and my mind and body couldn’t take the strain.

That advice wasn’t for me.

I know this question is supposed to be about some specific technique or something but this experience I had with this writing self-help book scarred me and I wanted to talk about it to say to people, yes the advice might sound perfectly reasonable but everybody is different and don’t beat yourself up if something doesn’t work for you. Don’t destroy yourself because you bought into a line that someone sold you.

15) If you could choose one of your fics to be filmed, which would you choose?
Between Two Fires absolutely no question about it. I think the visuals of some fics would be great, I mean The Beauty and the Tragedy is the most ‘artistic’ fic I have ever written, but no it has to be my sci-fi/espionage favourite fic because I did so much world building and I can see the movie in my head already – to share with the world would be something else.

26) Do you beta yourself? If so, what kind of beta are you?
I beta for a few people and what kind of beta I am depends on what kind they want. I always ask first what kind of feedback they are after, and I will do multiple beta passes if they want that. So I’ll do story feedback (characterisation, plot etc.), I’ll do a soft edit (my punctuation is not good enough to do a proper edit) but I can check for typos, tense errors, grammatical mistakes, that kind of thing. I’ll do a mix of that and I can go deeper, or more superficial depending on what people want.

My goal as a beta is to support the author – it is NOT to tear them down. So I don’t sweat the small stuff, I’ll let certain things slide sometimes because it’s not important. What is important is that the author feels good about the story they are putting out AND also feels like it’s their story. My job is not to destroy their voice, or to inject my vision – it’s to help them achieve their vision.

bookwormchocaholic  asked:

::waves:: Friday, August, Ancient! ::hugs::

Oooooh thanks 🙂

friday: most self-indulgent fic you have ever posted?
Quite a few to be honest but I think Brighter Days just about wins. I basically exercised a lot of frustration with Stargate Universe and played with the potential that got abandoned when the show was cancelled. I mean it’s an anyelle fic right? So the Stargate detail isn’t important to the audience – but oh boy did I go to town. I just couldn’t help myself, pure indulgence 🙂

(side note: I really, really, really love Stargate. So if anyone does need Stargate knowledge for their fic I am like a living encyclopedia. I didn’t even try to memorise it, I just love it so much it got stuck in there).

august: are any of your fics associated with certain genres/artists/songs/etc?
A lot of my titles comes from songs, haha case in point above actually ^^ as Brighter Days is a Goo Goo Dolls song. However, it’s just a title, I wouldn’t say the song informed the fic or anything. Now I’m sure if I thought about it I could come up with more but by far the most obvious song association belongs to the fic I Love the Way. I actually posted a link to a random YouTube video of the song I love the way you love me by Boyzone because that provided the title for the second fic in The Right Wrong Number verse and it also fit that Belle and Gold so perfectly. The song came on shuffle when I was doing something else, ironing I think? And I was dumbstruck by the lyrics because it felt like it could have been written for them.

ancient: the first fic you ever posted online?
Oh dearie me erm, I never delete anything so I tried to look back however the date stamps are inaccurate because we’re talking several computers ago. It would have been way back late 2001 or early 2002. I don’t know precisely what story it was as I can’t remember but it would have been for The Royal. That was a British TV show, set in a 1960’s hospital.

How it happened was I was at high school, I spent all my breaks in the library, and a student several years ahead of me really liked the show and wanted to set up a fanzine for it but didn’t have the tech skills. She also was trying to write fic for the show and she was dyslexic. Despite being much younger I had the tech skills so I set it up for her. Anyway, I started off beta reading basically and then because she was bouncing ideas off me – and I’m a writer – I got my own ideas and so that’s how I wound up writing a ton for a show I had been meh about previously. Very, very bad fic, utterly atrocious but I was 11 so chalk it up to experience 🙂

That wasn’t obviously the first fic I wrote, but it was the first stuff that went online. Also that means I am old enough to remember the days of posting fic on private forums. Fanfic.net was around but case in point, not everyone used it. Awww nostalgia time, I had a Waking the Dead fic on a private archive as well.

mariequitecontrarie  asked:

november: do you have any rituals or requirements for getting in the mood for writing?

Hmm. Interesting.

Starting is the very hardest part. I can open everything up and then just sit and click around tumblr/email/phone games etc. for hours without doing anything. I super suck like that.

I guess to go with success I need to decide the night before what I’m doing. I suffer terribly from project paralysis – I have so many things I want to do that I find it hard to settle on one, I feel like I should be working on everything! So if I decide the night before then it’s kinda ‘switched on’ in my brain that yes, this is what I’m doing, so I do tend to actually knuckle down a little more then.

It doesn’t always work because I’m constantly panicking about something, I feel like I’m running out of time and torn in different directions, and the voice in the back of my head that says everything I write super sucks makes it hard to get those words down.

My brain is like a petulant child and will make all kinds of excuses to get out of working. So it’s easier if I’m at home, if I’m warm, not hungry, not thirsty, in a minimal amount of pain etc. Then I can put music on, open up my files and there are no external barriers to provide excuses.

So basically I don’t have a ritual so much as I just try and minimise excuses my brain makes. Maybe if I did have a ritual that would help? It would be like a signal to my brain to settle down now, it’s time to work. I will think on it!

mariequitecontrarie  asked:

Saturday: What gets you excited while writing?

I have to be honest (which is sad because I’m trying to be all peppy here for some unknown reason) – ok yeah long sentence sorry. Erm right yes answer! I haven’t felt excitement when writing for a long time.

Buuuuuuuuut

Back in the day when words happened I think the answer would be – because it hit my buttons.

Or to put in a more sensible phrase – when I write what I love. I mean that’s why genres and stuff exist right? So people can easily find stuff like what they already love, so they can immerse themselves in it. You know what I’m talking about – repeated things that just you like.

Like Between Two Fires – that seriously hit so many of my buttons, it was like a pure me fic and I loved every second of it.

So TLDR indulgence fic? I get excited when I write what I love.

To this day I remember how this four-way crossover fic just poured out of me. Absolute rubbish? Probably. But it merged together the 4 shows I was watching at the time and I laughed my way through writing it, my fingers could not type fast enough, I was literally cackling with glee.

More to the point it wasn’t just what I loved – it was that I was free when writing. I wasn’t worried about quality because that ridiculous nonsense probably wouldn’t appeal to anyone else (though I did post it on ff.net). I wasn’t writing for a deadline, or for other people, I was just gleefully rolling around in what I loved and having a damn good time.

I think a lot of excitement is lost due to pressure and fear – alotalot of fear, like I am freaking terrified most of the time. I want everything to be awesome and nothing ever lives up to my expectations so I feel like I suck and I’m a useless failure and that makes it damn hard to be excited, to want to do creative stuff because what’s the point if it’s just going to suck anyway?

Oh boy that got deep. I’m going to shut up. TLDR the second because I write too much – zero pressure and what I love = excitement.