💖 What made you start writing?
My oldest fic was posted online in May 2007, though I know I wrote it at least a year earlier than that, so we have to get back in my head as a 12 or 13 year old kid. Middle school was especially rough for me, and as I withdrew from real life, school, my classmates, etc. I got really invested in my first fandom—Danny Phantom. I joined a message board online, made friends, ate, slept, and breathed this series and the characters, so of course writing was simply the next step. I'd been reading fics online even longer than that, since I was maybe 9 or 10, but I had this idea as a kid that I hated writing so I never felt compelled to try it. As it turns out, I didn't hate writing, I just hated writing the stupid personal essay assignments they gave us at school. I've taken breaks from fic writing over the years, but never long enough or intentional enough that I'd consider myself to have fully stopped at all in the last twenty-ish years.
I think the original "why" was just because I wanted to. It took over a year to even post that first fic, so I don't think I was looking for internet attention. Then again, I did print out my first fic and bring it to school with me, I was that proud of it orz
🦅 Do you outline fics or fly by the seat of your pants?
My habits fall somewhere in the middle. For many, many years, I didn't outline my fics at all. More recently, I've started outlining multi-chapter fics, giving myself a list of plot points to hit in every chapter to keep things moving and interesting. For oneshots, though, I do generally still fly by the seat of my pants. I'd say most of the time I have a strong idea about where a fic starts, a vague idea of where it'll end, and almost no clue how to get between the two, and I just let the characters figure it out.
⌛ How long does it take you to write a fic, or a chapter?
The way I see it, I write in two modes: "flow" mode or "pulling teeth" mode. If I'm able to get into a flow, it honestly kinda feels like the fic is writing itself, like the characters are actors in my brain and I'm just writing down what they're saying. In that case, it rarely takes more than a few days to get out a long oneshot. But when I'm not in the flow state, as is often the case, I can't turn off my inner editor and every sentence becomes a debate about how exactly to word what I want to say. And then writing takes forever, especially because I start avoiding it 💀
