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.