After a delay for the holidays, I’m excited to share the lovely Carole @padfootagain is this week’s writer of the week! So excited to share her story with you all. Check out her blog and read some of her wonderful writings. Send some love this week as January is @faficowrimo as well!
An admin note as well: wotw will be posted Sundays each week from now on.
Tell us a little about yourself.
Well, hello! Thank you for doing this, this is so much fun!
So, my name is Carole, aka padfootagain. I am 23, I’m French and I am doing a PhD in nanomaterials (basically, chemistry). I have a Master’s degree in Physics and Chemistry, with a specialty in Nanosciences and I am doing a PhD because I want to be a researcher :) I love cinema in general, books, music and drawing. And obviously, I love writing :) I have fallen a few years ago in the pit of fandoms, and I don’t think I’ll get out of it, not that I want to, to be honest. Which explains why I write fanfictions!
What do you currently write?
Oh dear… I write for quite a lot of fandoms. It started with the Marauders (so HP) and it got completely out of hand and now I also write for Narnia, the MCU, Star Wars, Doctor Who, Sherlock, Stranger Things, Poldark, LOTR and a handful of characters played by Ben Barnes (yes, I’m a fan of this actor). I also write for a few actors. I write original stories that are not fanfics as well. And I write both one-shots and series, long and short. I have a tendency to write more than I intended to at first :) I write with reader-insert and OCs alike.
When did you start writing? Do you remember your first piece of fan fiction? What was it about?
I don’t remember a time when I wasn’t writing, really. I think that as soon as I was able to use a pen, I started writing. I’ve always loved stories and had a wild imagination, so it was a good way to control my crazy brain (it still is).
The first real piece of fanfiction that I posted is a Jily, Sirius Black x OC fic that I posted on fanfiction.net (I wasn’t on tumblr yet at the time), and it is a very long one… 70 chapters. I liked it very much tbh and I took around a year and a half to write it. It was basically about their 6th and 7th year at Hogwarts.
But if you want the real funny story, then the first piece of fanfiction I wrote was when I was seven. And I had no idea what a fanfiction was, at the time, obviously, but without knowing it I actually wrote one! We had to present a book for school, and I wanted to present Peter Pan, because it was my favourite book. But one of my classmates stole my idea and presented this book first, and I was very upset about it. I tried to negotiate with my teacher, but he didn’t want me to present that book, saying that I couldn’t present the same story as one of my classmates.
Huge mistake from my teacher here. He said I couldn’t talk about the same story, not the same characters! So I wrote a story with Peter Pan and I presented it to the class! It was about a treasure hunt and I did drawings for it and everything. I still have it. It was ridiculous but I reckon the story is funny. And that was my first fanfic!
I find reader inserts very interesting. When I started on tumblr, and learnt about that way of writing, I had spent around two years writing for OCs, and I was looking for a challenge, honestly. So I started to write one-shots, when before I had only written very long series. And I also tried reader inserts as another challenge. It requires to change your style of writing quite a lot and to be careful not to reveal details so readers can identify with what you’re writing. And I love doing it! I’ve never liked very much describing my OCs in terms of appearance, so it was quite liberating, as with reader insert I had to avoid that. Also, I write series with that style, because even if you have to try to not describe how this Y/N looks like, I’ve never considered that I shouldn’t develop her/his personality any less than for an OC. So I still have fun creating characters, I just change my style of writing, really. And even if now there’s not really any challenge in that anymore for me, I still use it all the time. Also, on a purely practical way… I don’t like choosing names for my OCs and this is the best solution! Especially for one-shots. I have more than 200 stories on tumblr, I would have never been able to choose so many names!! So… there is also this lazy part of me :)
If someone wanted to get into your writing, what piece would you have them start with and why?
Ooooh… that is a good question… I write quite a lot of fluff. I don’t write any smut at all. I do write some things with angst too (I’m a writer, I like torturing my readers from time to time, like any writer), but I also love writing fluff. I think that lots of people are snobbing the sweet stories nowadays, but I love a good happy ending, and some cute moments, and a love story that is sweet and ends with a ‘and they lived happily ever after’. Call me cheesy, if you’d like, I’m proud to be so!
So… I guess that a good one to start would be a series that I wrote for Caspian (Narnia), called A Recipe For Love. It’s pretty popular, amongst my readers, I think. It’s very cute, and has a bit of angst too. It’s about Caspian falling in love with a cook working in his Castle. I think it’s a good start for my stories.
You are currently working on a winter event filled with delightful seasonal themed prompts. Tell us more about that!
I very often organize events on my blog, because I love talking with my readers and I want to make them happy! So, to celebrate the winter season and the fluff that goes with it, I wrote a list of prompts, and my readers can pick up a few of those prompts, and a character from my masterlist, and I write a little one-shot for them :) They can’t send requests anymore, it was for a limited time, but I’m writing the stories now! I’m going to keep doing this for a few weeks. I just love writing cute stories, really… ;)
What are your goals for your writing moving forward?
I’d like to finish the series I’ve started… Is that a goal? I don’t have goals when it comes to writing tbh. I just write what inspires me and makes me happy! I don’t pretend to be talented enough to be published, and I only write because I love it. So, I don’t have goals. I just want to enjoy myself, and I hope that the love I pour into my stories transpires enough to make a few people happy too :)
What are you currently reading?
I am reading a very cute book called Let It Snow, which is composed of three love stories taking place during a blizzard. It was written by John Green, Maureen Johnson and Lauren Myracle. It’s very sweet and very funny, I like it! It goes with the season :)
Do you have any advice for new writers?
Several people asked me for advice before, and I even made a few posts about that, but tbh… the best advice that I could give is to know when you should not care about advice.
When I started to really write a lot and to create long stories (not as fanfictions, but other stories) I was on my own. And I loved writing them, but as I could feel that it was a serious thing to me, I looked for advice on the internet. I thought that it couldn’t hurt, and that having advice from professionals could help me getting better. But actually, I realized that my way of writing was completely different from the advice I read! Especially, I’ve always hated to plan my stories. And everyone will advise you to plan your story. So, I tried to follow this advice, and a few others, thinking that I was doing it all wrong before. But it completely killed the joy I had for writing. I was asking myself tons of questions, and trying to apply rules that clearly didn’t fit me, and I ended up stopping to write for more than a year. Until one day, I started to write something else, deciding not to take into account the advice that I had seen before. And here I am. Not planning my stories, and having no clue of where I’m going, and having too many ideas for my own good, but I’m writing. And I’m enjoying what I write and I love writing these stories.
Now, I’m not saying that all advice are bad. But I think that when you just start writing, you look up to other writers and try to use the same techniques as they do, which is normal. And it’s important at the beginning to try tons of styles and ways to write to find your own way to write. But you shouldn’t forget that you and this writer you admire are different people, and your brains don’t work the same! There’s no shame in writing your story your own way, even if your favourite writer doesn’t write like that at all! On the contrary. I think it’s important to stop torturing yourself trying to get something perfect, and just actually write something you want to write and, more importantly, the way that makes you the happiest. And if you have to write your story without any plan and make a mess to do it, then I think that you should do it. Writing is such a liberating thing, it’s a shame to lose this freedom and joy because you’re trying to fit in categories and techniques. Just write what you like, the way you like, and you’ll be a happier writer :)
