Another writing survey

[resonant]

From practical_magic. More on writing and thinking, since I've done precious little of either today.



1) When you have a new idea for a story, do you begin to write it immediately or do you let it sit and mellow a while before you start on it?

Most of my story inspirations go through a sticky phase -- when they're alive and interesting but not yet complete enough for me to start writing. I carry them around in my head for a while (sometimes doing actual research, sometimes talking with other people about them, sometimes just doing ordinary things) and wait for things to stick to them.

2) Word processed or handwritten?

First draft handwritten. After that, word processed.

3) Do you write fic in a fandom because you're wanting to write fic in that fandom? Or do you start with a general theme or idea you want to explore, and then select the characters and fandom that best suits to explore the concept?

I don't write in a wide variety of fandoms; I'm pretty focused. And usually the only ideas that are active are the ones that are specific to my current fandom.

Sometimes I'll have an idea that doesn't fit what I'm currently writing, and I'll carry it around for a while until I phase into something that fits it. For instance, I carried around Dennis Lee's poem for about two years, waiting for it to match up to a specific set of characters, before finally hitting upon Harry/Snape and writing Down, You Lie Down too.

And I've got two songs in an obscure corner of my mind right now waiting for an appropriate pairing or story idea. (One is John Hiatt's "Drive South," which wants to be femslash when it grows up. The other is Leonard Cohen's "The Sisters of Mercy," which wants to be a Fraser story but won't cohere at the moment.)

4) Do you talk about the story as it unfolds, or do you keep it tightly held to your chest until it's finished?

I talk about stories all the time, throughout the process, picking brains left and right.

When I check chat logs during the period when I was writing The Teeth of the Hydra, I discover that only a week or so after I got the vague idea that the lyrics of "Bang a Gong" struck some interesting echoes off of Ray Kowalski, I was up in chat asking Cesca, "Hey, what can you tell me about the intersections between 'punk' and 'queer'?"

If a story is long, or is taking a while to write, I'll upload it and ask friends to look at the draft and help me out with it.

5) Do you write out large chunks of the story and then go back to edit it, or do you write small sections and polish them one by one?

One of the reasons I write longhand is because it minimizes the polishing I can do. Otherwise I'll spend all my time fussing with commas, even when the basic structure isn't sound. OK, especially when the basic structure isn't sound.

I know some people know pretty much what a story is going to be when it begins (and I hate people like that. No, really.), but I don't. I usually think I'm beginning at the beginning, but often I find that I'm beginning in the middle, or ten pages before the beginning, or two weeks after the ending. Or in another story altogether.

I thought Loving North was going to be a chapter in a long story in which ultimately Ray and Fraser would end up sharing an apartment over a bookstore in Whitehorse. Seriously, you wouldn't believe the mess some of my stories go through before they become what they eventually become. This is why I will never, ever publish a work in progress.

6) Do you have to have a title before you can begin to write? Or do you chose your title afterwards?

The title is usually part of my original inspiration. If I don't have a title, I feel very shaky about the story.

7) How much research, if any, are you likely to indulge in before beginning a story?

Research is part of the sticky inspiration phase. It wanders wildly astray, and usually doesn't ever make it into the story. It's just for finding things that strike sparks off of other things.

8) What is your writing strength, and what is your weakness? How does knowing your greatest strength and weakness affect how you plan your story/ the direction the story takes?

Do other writers actually know what their greatest strengths are? Hm.

Things that are easy for me:

- Making things pretty (or at least clean and easy to read) on a word-by-word, sentence-by-sentence level.
- Writing sex.
- Capturing character voices.

The one gigantic thing that's difficult for me:

- Making things work on a macro level. Plots. What ought to happen next.

The only way this affects story planning is that I know that I'm going to need lots of outside help with any story has a plot (i.e. involves more than two characters, requires said characters to actually get out of bed, takes place in more than one location, covers more than about an hour), and especially if it has a case.

9) Do you write to music? If so, how much does the music you are listening to affect the mood of your story?

I can't listen to music while I write -- too distracting. But music is one of my most important inspirations.

10) Do you try to incorporate quotes, snippets of song lyrics, poems, etc. at the beginning of your story? If so, why? How do you choose them?

I don't try to use quotes, but I very often do anyway. It feels like they choose me. (How else do you explain writing a slash story based on "The Frog"?)

11) If you are about to write a story about a character or pairing that you have never done before, and are not particularly familiar with other stories written in the same vein, would you avoid stories written about this pairing until your story was complete, or read everything you could find to see how other handled the idea?

Right now I'm trying hard to avoid Harry/Draco stories until "Transfigurations" is finished.

I've actually never been in this position before. Up until now, I've never gotten interested in writing a pairing until I was already obsessively reading it.

12) Do you have a muse? Is it an evil muse? Or are you museless?

It certainly feels like my inspirations come from somewhere other than my own fairly familiar brain. Really I experience that source of inspiration as a place, though, not as a person. (Though I'll sometimes refer to my initial inspiration as "the FedEx from the Muse.")

13) Who is the first person you are likely to show your story to? Is there someone whose opinion means more to you than anyone else?

Cesca and julad. If there's something shaky about it, they'll spot it and help me fix it.

14) If there is a character that you particularly dislike, do you try to write a story about that character? If so, how does your dislike affect characterization? Do your feelings about the character change after you have written about them?

I'd have difficulty writing a character I actively disliked -- but I don't think there are any.

I mean, there are characters I would dislike if they were real people and I knew them, and there are characters that I think are big huge missed opportunities on the part of the canon writers, but I can't think of any that I dislike as characters.

Stella acts like a jerk most of the time when we see her onscreen, but I was able to locate a certain affection for her so I could write The Teeth of the Hydra and Sixteenth of June.

In HP, I have problems with Ron. I don't dislike him, per se, but I can't find him. There's nothing I can hear him say that couldn't just as easily come from Harry. I need him in "Transfig," and I'm really struggling with what a cipher he is in my head.

15) What are you doing answering this not-survey when you should be writing fic!? Shoo!

Pretty sad when I'm procrastinating about my hobby, isn't it.