50. Weirdest story idea you’ve ever had.
Hmm oh boy. A lot of competition here but I’m going to go for “Movie Night in Storybrooke”

The show is cover for the real deal. Make something fictional and even if people hear rumors about it, they will just laugh. They’ll say “that’s a TV show, not real life” and they won’t believe whatever the crazy story is. The network changed some things, basically pick whatever storyline went in a direction you didn’t like, because they knew better what viewers would want.

Movie night in Storybrooke, where the new season is about to start. They crowd around the TV and fight over the popcorn. They are all bickering over what has happened in the past, and their pet theories about what happens next. Teasing one another about how their alter egos do stuff (either because it’s accurate, or because it’s not). Basically just pure lighthearted family banter and bonding time.

54. Any writing advice you want to share?
I don’t want to be a hypocrite so I need to think about this 🙂 Ultimately I guess I like the quote:

“Measure your worth by the dedication to your path, not by your success or failures.” – Elizabeth Gilbert, Big Magic

I beat myself up a lot over not writing, or my writing being awful, just me generally sucking etc. but when I express this kind of frustration my mum often says “well you haven’t missed your chance” and I think that’s really important.

We all have writing goals (I certainly do!) and I find it demoralising when I don’t meet them but this piece of advice says that it’s ok – that what matters isn’t whether you win/lose, but simply that you played the game and didn’t give up. It’s about continuing to try, continuing to beat your head against that brick wall, continuing to try climbing that mountain and sliding down and then dusting yourself off and going again.

I do really honestly find this hard to accept because I want to accomplish my goals. However I haven’t ‘missed my chance’ because the stories are still in my head, they can still be told. I keep circling round and trying again.

TLDR – never give up! Just the fact that you try is enough.

4. Do you have writing habits or rituals?
Probably? I ritualize pretty much everything I do as I fall into habits easier than breathing. I suppose the biggest one that comes to mind is that I usually always start with a blank document. So if I started writing a new story today the file would be #1 Day Twenty (as it’s the 20th), then if I missed tomorrow the next file would be #2 Day Twenty-Two. I then obviously have a combined story file that I update at the end of every writing day.

Why do I do this? A couple of reasons. 1) I like to see my stats of how many words I wrote on certain days. 2) It keeps me from rewriting what I wrote the day before. 3) I do most of my writing on gdocs these days and that does not like hundreds of pages, if I have to check my combined novel file (so 75k words) it lags horrendously.

7. Favorite author.
Lee Goldberg. I’ve said this before I know but the Diagnosis Murder series he did, which branched off the TV season at the best point, and then basically continued from there like alternate future seasons – superb! I have never read a set of books I have enjoyed more AND I go back to them time and time again to analyse why I enjoyed them so much.

I don’t want to write like him because I want to write like me but I do want to learn how to evoke the same joy, the same need to read the entire book in one sitting, the same craving for more books, the same disappointment when I read the final one etc. To me wanting to learn, wanting to dig in and analyse is the highest praise. I want to spend a lot of time with his words.

I also really like Anthony Horowitz. I don’t go out much (and I definitely don’t do crowds) but I made the effort to go to the local writing convention and attended his panel. He was very interesting to listen to, so down-to-earth and it was reassuring in a way to hear that he still hates everything he writes and thinks he’s a complete fraud. The guy has the most enviable career imo but he still struggles like the rest of us.

8. Favorite trope to write.
Hmm crossing the line, how far is too far, shades of grey, villain does good things (kinda anti-hero I guess), secret identity “I’m not who you thought but I never lied about …” that kind of stuff 🙂

13. How do you deal with writers block?
*snorts* erm… not well? honestly I’ve barely written anything in years. I guess I deal with it with a lot of self-loathing and frustration which is incredibly counter-productive. I beat myself up over it and that really doesn’t help.

I guess on a more positive note I never give up. I keep circling back to it. I open the documents. I make lists. Sometimes I chip away a little bit at it. I never forget the stories I want to tell.

22. How many drafts do you need until you’re satisfied and a project is ultimately done for you?
Oh boy. Well technically speaking I think it should be 4 but being satisfied can be somewhat elusive, especially as I’m my own worst critic. It should go first draft, first revision, second revision, final check. Lately (with lately being a relative term as I’ve not really done this in a while) it’s gone more like that, and then another revision, and then another, and then I think I’m done but oh not really because I hate my words and let’s go again etc.

45. Worst piece of feedback you’ve ever gotten.
“write realist fiction” aka “write something else”

That was from one of my tutors at uni. After the sting wore off I understood their point. They felt I would be able to focus more on improving my writing technique, the core fundamentals and components of writing, if I wasn’t distracted by big plots which come hand-in-hand with epic sci-fi/fantasy. However it was pretty much the only feedback I got on that assignment. If the comment had been accompanied with a thorough critique pointing out the errors in my writing technique then I would have known what I was doing wrong. Because it wasn’t I confess for months I was kinda offended.

When I got the feedback from my next assignment the contrast is what made me understand the point, as that feedback was incredibly thorough. It gave me so many suggestions on improvement, which I made a checklist from so I can refer to it during revision. Anyway even though I get the point now I still don’t like it because genre fiction is my thing. It doesn’t have to be sci-fi fantasy, I like espionage, thrillers, mysteries etc. but basically I like stories where something happens. Which I confess is hard to make happen when the word limit is 1500. Still I don’t want to write a story in which nothing happens, or which reads like a summary of a much longer story. I feel like while the comment was probably well-intended, I do find it unhelpful because I want to write what I write, and I want to get good/improve at writing that.

Ok got about a third of one of my essays first drafted so going to answer this 🙂 thanks for the ask! I love questions 🙂

journal: do you ever write just so you can enjoy something to read?
Erm … always? I don’t usually reread my own writing unless I’m revisiting the verse. Personally I feel egotistical reading my own work, I don’t know why, especially after some time has passed because sometimes I read it and I’m like – “I wrote this???” because it feels so foreign. Anyway, I’m rambling but I guess what I’m saying is I don’t tend to write anything I dislike. I write because I want to tell that story. I want that story to exist, it’s in my head and I need to make it corporeal. I need it to.. well like I said – exist! So yeah I write because I want to read that story.

backstory: how did you come to love writing?
I have stories in my head and I want to tell them. Writing is, for me at least, the easiest path to making those stories exist – to getting those stories out of my head and into the world. I mean it probably goes back to what I was encouraged in when I was little. My mum isn’t an artist, and she would have struggled to help me with that means of expression. Instead I read voraciously, I had a reading age of an adult by the time I was 8. So I had all those words in my head and that’s the means I used to tell my stories. It’s still the primary means I use because I’ve had over 20 years of practice now, it’s still what comes most naturally to me.

parchment: how often do you or your personal life influence your writing?
Probably far more than I think. It’s funny this is asked today because for my essay I’m doing an argument about perspective (post-structuralism, experience shaping people’s interpretation of stuff etc. ) when it comes to realism in fiction. It’s one of those topics that makes you think and my conclusion if you like, is it’s me that does the writing, therefore everything in the story springs from me and so even when I’m consciously trying to write something different from me, or my experiences, it is still based on my understanding of whatever this different environment/perspective etc. is. I’m shaped by my experiences and so my writing is shaped by me. I have no idea if that makes sense. Hopefully my essay is more coherent :p

critic: what’s the best piece of advice you’ve ever received about writing?
There’s the old standby “I can fix a bad page, I can’t fix a blank page.” (Nora Roberts) – I need to tattoo this on my brain to be honest. However while that is undoubtedly good advice I think the best piece of advice I’ve read is “Measure your worth by the dedication to your path, not by your successes or failures”(Elizabeth Gilbert). The reason why I like this quote so much is I beat myself up all the time. I feel like I’ve failed because I set goals and don’t meet them, I’m constantly frustrated because I want to do more and just can’t manage it. However, this quote is a balm because it’s basically like ‘so long as you keep trying and don’t give up then you are ok’ and that is advice I need. No matter how much I want it to be different I’m never going to be as fast, or as good, as I’d like, but the tortoise beats the hare – so long as I stay dedicated then I can have hope that I’ll get there. I need that hope in my life.