11 Questions Tag: Writer Edition!
Tagged by @mangaluva (aaaa my fave writer noticed me)
1) How many works in progress do you currently have?
1. My Otherworld setting, which I am currently working on the first book of. Modern fantasy with fairies! And super involved metaphysics because I enjoy that sort of thing
2. A web video series I’m doing with a good friend based on Dungeons and Dragons, which is currently in the first draft phase.
3. A running journal for my character in a friend’s medieval stasis campaign, which I really need to take some time to work on. Maybe I should just put a few lines for each session? But that would be reductive...
4. Nihularian, a D&D setting of my own, which I plan to run at the end of this month/start of next month. I made like 12 new races, and the world is the inside surface of a sphere, because I am Just That Extra.
5. Nibelung, a D&D setting that I pumped out intending to run for my sister and her friends. It’s a lot more conventional than Nihularian, but I enjoyed putting in politics and magic.
btw I plan to run Fate Core, not d20. d20 would be too complicated to build a totally original setting in.
Counting fanfiction that I’ve at least started:
6. My Pokemon self-insert series, AKA my first fanfic, which is so dead I can’t even describe how dead it is. I had planned all the regions, and then crammed The Legend of Zelda and Kingdom Hearts onto the end with the same characters, because I was small but ambitious.
7. The Multiple Personalities of Artemis Fowl, AKA my second fanfic, which is dead because I was so disappointed in The Last Guardian I couldn’t write in that universe anymore.
8. Pokestar Studio Productions, which I swear I’ll work on again someday. I thought it would be fun to write fanfic chapters based on the Pokestar Studios movies from Pokemon Black 2 and White 2. Mostly it turned out to be tedious, but rewarding.
9. Satisfaction and Skating, which is the only fic I’ve completed an arc for. Hi, Check Please fanfic! We start you now! A Hamilton/Check Please crossover fic that I wrote for the Check Please Big Bang last year. Planning to write more of it this summer.
10. A Kingdom Hearts self-insert series I was working on with a friend, but never posted. It was a fun experiment in writing with a full co-author, and I’m still slowly plugging away at it for writing practice.
And now, counting fanfiction that I have at least partially planned, 90% because @a-canker-in-a-hedge is an enabler:
11. A Check Please/Pokemon crossover I toyed with before the release of Sun and Moon last year.
12. A Natasha, Pierre, and the Great Comet of 1812/Jupiter Ascending crossover, 30% because it would bring a better plot and 70% so I can do lavish descriptions of SPACE BAROQUE.
2) Do you/would you write fanfiction?
See above. I mostly write fanfic, because I think it’s fun. I do try to do something original with it, though, because I wasn’t raised on the fanfic conventions by which character interactions constitute a plot. I need to have some sort of external driver to what’s happening to enjoy what I’m writing.
3) Do you prefer real books or e-books?
In theory, e-books. In practice, real books.
I like the idea of e-books because then I could get rid of so much clutter in my house, and they make so much more sense than using dead tree to store all our words. But in practice, I can’t survive without the feeling of an actual book under my hands. But I won’t write in either; that’s blasphemous.
4) When did you start writing?
My first piece I remember was in Grade 1, but that was a class assignment and it’s only notable for being the first time a teacher said that I’d been really exceptional at something. I believe that I can call that a catalyst?
I posted my first fanfiction when I was 14/15, but started working on it when I was 11/12. I started doing original work in earnest about a year ago, when I was 18, once I started seriously thinking about doing a university creative writing program.
5) Do you have someone you trust to share your work with?
That would be @a-canker-in-a-hedge for my fanfic. I’m remarkably cagey about original WIPs, but once the draft is done to my satisfaction I will throw it at literally anyone I think can give me feedback. The more perspectives I can get, the better.
6) Where is your favourite place to write?
I plan on the bus or in other public places when I don’t have other entertainments. I have great ideas in the shower (and then desperately hope I won’t forget them). When I write by hand, it’s mostly in bed or on the couch, and when I write on the computer, it’s in my university’s library that I get the most done. I try to write from my desk a lot, but it never works. Tumblr calls to me...
7) Favourite childhood book?
The Redwall series by Brian Jacques. I reread it continually from when I was in Grade 3 to Grade 6, without ceasing for almost anything else. There were just enough surprises mixed in with Jacques’ formulas that I could be interested but never shocked, which was perfect for a kid who loved everything to be just so.
You could probably qualify the border between my childhood and adolescence by the point at which I put Redwall aside for good and dove into my high school’s fiction section to finally read Percy Jackson and Septimus Heap.
8) Writing for fun or writing for publication?
I’d like to add a third option: I write online for validation. What other skill do I have that people will adulate like my writing? None, that’s the answer.
For real, though, I write because it’s my favourite thing to do, and because I hope to someday get published/self-publish. As one of the TAs in my Creative Writing class this term said, if I had to stop writing I’d probably lose my mind, so I may as well use it to its best advantage.
9) Pen and paper or computer?
I write so much better by hand, especially when I have a plan. It forces me to think through what I’m about to write before I get there, and it distills my thoughts to make them more easily transferable to other people. You better believe I do all my planning by hand: I think in flowcharts and diagrams, and putting those into a digital universe is too time-consuming and involved to be practical.
However, my writing is more spontaneous on the computer, and it ends up... passable, I suppose. Because University, I rarely have the time to do a draft by hand followed immediately by drafting on the computer, so I write directly onto the computer based on the planning I did in my notebooks. If I had the time to do it all by hand, though, I would.
10) Have you ever taken any writing classes?
I decided to become an author in a grade 6 class called Reading Writing Workshop, because I was the best at it. I do a lot of things because I like being exceptional with minimal effort.
In the term I just finished at uni, I took a class on writing for children (there was a bit of good info) and last summer I took an introductory class on fiction writing at the university level (it was useless, and the classroom smelled of cleaning products).
The purpose of taking a writing class, I think, should be to force the students to produce a large volume of good work for deadlines, because that’s what I need to improve. The craft of writing is something that I, personally, learned primarily from reading voraciously, and from large amounts of practice and getting things wrong.
11) What inspires you to write?
Screaming with @a-canker-in-a-hedge.
Seriously, though, it’s reading, and playing games, and going ‘huh. that’s not how I would do that’. And then the idea takes root and suddenly there’s a new writing project. Often, I won’t actually write it until there’s a deadline, and then it will get done and it will be wonderful but I won’t be pleased because I couldn’t do it until the last minute and AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA-
I tag @a-canker-in-a-hedge, @sakura-deserved-better, @ohthewhomanity, and any other writers who happen to see this! Do the thing! Then write something!
