17, 18, 22 for the writing ask game !
Hello!! Thanks so much for sending these 🥰
17. What do you do when writing becomes difficult? (maybe a lack of inspiration or writers block)
I would say I try and do something different from what I have been doing! Which…sounds kind of silly and obvious said like that LOL, but essentially what I mean is that I approach my block differently based on the form it’s taking. Like—if I have been avoidant about sitting down to write and intimidating myself out of following through, then I will try to set really tiny goals like “I have to write today but only for 15 minutes and then I can stop if I’m not enjoying it” and then ask my partner to hold me accountable.
If, on the other hand, I have had a bunch of days where I am sitting there for hours trying to write and banging my head against a wall because I just can’t make any words come out no matter how much time I put into it, then I’ll do enforced time off where I am NOT allowed to write for a certain (usually small) number of days no matter what. Something about making it forbidden sometimes resets my brain and makes it remember this is something I love and look forward to and gets me excited about it again. In the meantime, on those enforced days off, I go out of my way to do some reading so I can refill my inspiration pool and get ideas percolating for when I return to it.
Other solutions I will use include listening to music I associate with the story or characters, re-reading favorite scenes of other stories for inspiration, re-reading nice comments from readers, and talking about the pairing / things I love about them with friends who are also fans. If I’m stuck on a plot development, I’ll try drawing a mind map / breaking it down into its smallest component parts or talking it through my beta reader as well. Implementing some combination of all of these things has worked well for me up to this point!
18. Do you title your fics before, during, or after the writing process? How do you come up with titles?
One shots I title after they are written and it’s usually a frantic scramble of digging through song lyrics for something vaguely applicable (shout out to Bustle for providing the suggestions for many of them). Long fics I title during the late planning or early writing stages—though Half Orange is sort of an odd case in that I originally published the first couple chapters as stand alone’s for Chrobin week and only incorporated them into a long fic later. As for how I came up with those titles, for both Half Orange and PtLY the fic title sort of just…appeared in my mind when I decided I needed one? LOL idk maybe I had been subconsciously mulling on it for a while and so as soon as I reached for it, it was just kind of already there. Very convenient, honestly!
Kings’ Gambit I was not so lucky, though. For that one, it was a lot of brain-dumping words related to the premise of the story, digging through lists of related words and then, ultimately, reading through a giant Wikipedia article on chess terminology until I found something that felt symbolically aligned with the story and had a nice ring to it!
22. Are there certain types of writing you won’t do? (style, pov, genre, tropes, etc)
Honestly I feel like the list of things I *will* do is pretty short 😂 When I used to write original stories growing up, I wrote in 1st person, but for fic, I exclusively write 3rd person limited. I will never write Chrom or Robin in a different romantic pairing, as they are my OTP in the very literal sense of the acronym. I tend to steer clear of anything with really heavy, dark themes / prolonged angst as well. While I like hurting Chrom and Robin’s feelings in the short term, it’s only so the other can kiss is better again, and that happy resolution is really essential to my enjoyment of it <3 I have a hard time envisioning myself ever opting to write something super fast-paced and action oriented either (though I do enjoy reading those sorts of stories when done well). Basically I will be over here hanging out in my “mostly fluffy but pining intensive, romance-focused” wheelhouse (with minor suspense and mystery elements) probably until the end times 🫡
