#c writes things.

[calamitoustales]

The subject was "A Confession of Cruelty". Most people wrote about killing pets.

-I have to tell you something.

-Okay.

-Something serious.

-Okay.

-Something that might make you hate me.

-Just shut up and tell me already.

-Forgive me, Father for I have sinned. It has been eight years since my last confession.

-Very funny, jackass. I’m not a priest. Besides, they don’t even do that anymore.

-They don’t?

-No. They just sit in a room with you and ask you what you did. Then they tell you to say some prayers and that God forgives you and loves you and try not to do it again. They don’t even have the booths with the screens anymore.

-Oh. That’s kinda lame.

-I know, right? So anyway, what’d you do?

-I ran over my neighbour’s cat last night.

-You what?

-With my car.

-No shit, with your car. Is it dead?

-I hope so. That little bugger keeps pissing on my flowerbed.

-You—Wait. Did you run it over on purpose?

-Of course not! It was an accident. What do you take me for?

-A cat murderer, obviously. Did you tell them yet?

-No.

-Are you going to tell them?

-I reported it to the ASPCA.

-That’s not an answer.

-Look, it was an accident, okay? I told them where it was and I didn’t know if it had a collar because I was driving to the hospital and couldn’t stop.

-You lied to the ASPCA? You’re a terrible person, you lying cat-killer!

-I didn’t lie. I actually did go to the hospital. I just wanted a lead-in so the fact that I got into a fight and needed stitches wouldn’t piss you off as much.

[calamitoustales]

Day 30: Best source of inspiration?

Being out of the house. Honestly, that's probably why I haven't been writing as much as I used to; I'm just not as busy doing things as I should be.

Well! That was a much more tolerable month-long meme than the other one I did. Subject matter was better, definitely. Dunno what I'm going to do now. I liked rambling about my projects.

[calamitoustales]

Day 29: How often do you think about writ­ing?

Honest? Almost constantly. It's difficult to stop thinking about it, actually. Everything reminds me or gives me ideas for stories, plotlines, or details. It can get annoying because when I sit down to actually write something, I only get to about half the time.

And now my friend has given me an idea for a vamp-lit story. (Does this term already exist? Is it used? It should be.) Can't stop formulating that either.

[calamitoustales]

Day 28: Have you ever writ­ten a char­ac­ter with phys­i­cal or men­tal dis­abil­i­ties?

I have a tendency to write characters—big important characters—with varying degrees of crazy. One has OCD, one was schizophrenic, a couple are depressed, most of them are paranoid. It was quite unintentional the first couple times before I started noticing it, but abnormally psychology is something in which I've always been interested. In terms of physical disabilities, the only one I can think of is that one person is blind, and I thought all day yesterday about it. So I guess it's just him.

[calamitoustales]

Day 27: Do appear­ances play a big role in your sto­ries? How you go about design­ing your char­ac­ters?

If the character does have something weird or interesting about how they look, I'll usually mention it and keep mentioning it until even I'm sick of talking about it. Mostly it's eyes, and it strikes me as somewhat hypocritical that I put such emphasis on eyes when I hate Steinbeck for doing the same thing with eyes and hands. Although, I don't make them into metaphors for the character's personality; Ira just has grey eyes, Kylie's just albino, and Lazarus and Daedalus just have complete heterochromia.

I usually have a pretty good idea what each character looks like when I start writing them; it's hard not to have a face to go along with whoever is talking. I also end up figuring out their genetic makeup for some reason (who's mixed in what way.) It's pretty cliche, but the characters pretty much design themselves. I can't think of any time I've struggled with what someone looked like; clearly it's not that big of an issue to me.

[calamitoustales]

Day 26: Do you draw your char­ac­ters? Do oth­ers draw them?

Nope. Occasionally I'll wander the internets in search of photos that look like characters. Most of the time I don't find any, because nobody looks like the image in my head.

[calamitoustales]

Day 14: How do you map out loca­tions, if needed?

Google Maps for the real world, my head for created ones.

[calamitoustales]

Day 13: What’s your favorite cul­ture to write, fic­tional or not?

British, with a high emphasis on England. Not going to lie. I can't help myself.

I will say though, since that's a very short answer, that I like having a character who's conglomerated a bunch of cultures into her perspective and personality. It makes me have to work a bit harder of research, but I generally like the result. Some of the people in one of my classes—I'm working on fun things for school, imagine that—say that she's rather Victorian, actually, which is completely unintentional on my part.