11, 14, 20, 23, 34 (only the first question if the 2nd makes you in anyway uncomfortable), 39. I'm super curious about 11 and 14 :D
oh fishy, I’m never uncomfortable talking about myself, especially after ¾ths of a bottle of pinot noir and a big-ass radler. 😂
11. How do you come up with your fic titles?
They come to me. And if they don’t come, I keep working at it, gently and patiently, because that’s how I roll.
I prefer to start writing a draft after I have a title (or at least a decent working title). I like my titles to be the center around which the theme of the story orbits, so it’s helpful for me to start with the title and proceed from there.
Titles tend to come to me either spontaneously, or after a loooong time thinking about what I want to say with the story until a title emerges from the muck. There is no middle ground.
Story time! When I first thought of the concept for The Sellout, I thought: Man, wouldn’t it be funny if I — who never met a trope I didn’t want to subvert — wrote a coffee shop AU, and it ended up being the most popular thing I’ve ever written? I should call it “The Sellout” — because I AM.
14. Do you have a personal word minimum that you hold yourself too? Why or why not?
I think stories should be as long as they need to be, and no longer.
That said, I pay attention to form. Elegiad is a bunch of one-shots, so I’d prefer to keep those around 3k to 5k. (Of course, the last few stories have been ~10k behemoths and I’m still cringing a little about it.)
The Sellout is a chapter fic that’s accidentally turned into a novel, and I’m trying hard to keep each chapter between 2k and 4k words.
My goal as a writer has always been to say a lot in a few words.
20. What’s your favorite part about the fanfiction writing process?
(Now we’re gettin’ frisky after the jump)
Crawling so far inside my characters’ heads that I’m wearing their skin and borrowing their brains. I see what they see, feel what they feel, think what they think. (In my imagination! Jeeze.)
I've been thinking lately about why I don’t like writing original fiction, and I realized that if I came up with an OC, there’s no mystery for me there, because I made them up whole-cloth. I know everything about them. In fanfic, I’m trying to figure out a character someone else invented, puzzling out explanations for why they are they way they are. I guess I just like figuring out what makes people tick.
23. What’s your absolute favorite trope to write?
I dunno, coffee shop’s working out pretty well for me. 😉 I can’t say I have a favorite — until Sellout, I was actively trying to subvert tropes instead of parroting them.
I have dreamed about writing a proper redemption story for 25 years now. Perhaps today’s the day.
34. How much of yourself and your life experiences do you put into your writing? What do you think your readers’ image of you is?
More than I’d like to admit. There’s a part of me in every POV character I write. sellout!Kyra says what I’d say without a filter of Pacific Northwest Nice. Certain cynical aspects of elegiad!Kassandra’s worldview come from me.
I’ve done enough ridiculous shit in my life that I can fake my way through most scenes. Fight scene? Dabbled in Judo for a while. Injuries? Dirtbiking and Judo again (thanks for those cracked ribs and concussions, boys!) Heavy emotions? Boy howdy, do I have a bank of experience for those...
I’m pretty sure people think I’m some super-intense crazy person.
39. What’s something about your writing that you pride yourself on?
I was going to say an economical use of words, but after posting three 10k Elegiads in a row I feel like that’s not true anymore.
Nowadays, I’m pretty proud of my character work, and I think my stories hold up to being read multiple times.
I don’t know, this one’s hard to answer because I’ve been having a really difficult time reading my own work lately. I haven’t been able to read Sellout from chapter 1 to 5 without cringing so hard that I bail out partway though. And I still haven’t re-read Elegiad 17 (Mosaic) since I posted it because the urge to delete it is still so strong that if I actually read it I just might. 😳
At the start of I Will Camp At The Banks Of The Styx For You, we pretty much just landed right in the middle of a relatively established relationship, Kassandra, Kyra and Phoibe all getting along like a house on fire most of the time.
At the start of I Will Camp At The Banks Of The Styx For You, we pretty much just landed right in the middle of a relatively established relationship, Kassandra, Kyra and Phoibe all getting along like a house on fire most of the time.
At the start of I Will Camp At The Banks Of The Styx For You, we pretty much just landed right in the middle of a relatively established relationship, Kassandra, Kyra and Phoibe all getting along like a house on fire most of the time.
But how did they get there?
We decided to investigate.
We’ve all had at least one dinner like this, right?
At the start of I Will Camp At The Banks Of The Styx For You, we pretty much just landed right in the middle of a relatively established relationship, Kassandra, Kyra and Phoibe all getting along like a house on fire most of the time.
But how did they get there?
We decided to investigate.
Hey hey! Did we skip a chapter? No! But I sure forgot to mention it here. So if you skip over to AO3 from here, guess what? Two chapters for you!
I know...I have one job...one job...
Anyway, welcome to sunny Mykonos, all plain sailing now, eh?
Funny thing about that fluffy li'l drabble I posted last night... There's a version of it with the same premise and discussion about planetary motion, but it's all sorts of angsty.
I didn't finish it because I realized these crazy kids are smiling in that drawing. It's interesting having both open side-by-side though, like seeing both sides of a parallel universe at the same time.
(I also have an incomplete drabble that shows Kass and Kyra meeting immediately after Kass washes ashore on Mykonos. Didn't finish that one because, well, as cute as 7 year olds are, our gals are 17 in the drawing.)
Anyway, if you want more, someone would have to draw something...
