#ask a thon

[ask-a-thon]

Hey everyone!

Tumblr limits 10 asks an hour. So in order to not have this blog flagged as a bot (So 240 a day), I'm asking here who would still like to receive asks and on which day they'd like to receive them so everyone who wants to can get a chance to answer. Please make sure to message or reply here for which day you'd like to receive an ask and, if you remember, please let me know when you'd like a break or to quit receiving altogether! Closed simply means the limit for that day is currently reached. Please check back later!

Monday- CLOSED

Monday is closed so that the owner of this blog, @asterhaze, can work on my other projects and take that time to reblog any replies here I may have missed. I really appreciate your patience until November!

Tuesday- OPEN

Wednesday - OPEN

Thursday- OPEN

Friday - OPEN

Saturday - OPEN

Sunday - OPEN

If you're asking, "What the heck is this??", please click this handy link to find out what ask-athon is!

[buggywiththefolkmagic]

Do you have any good book recommendations for someone wanting to learn more about Appalachian practices, & specifically to the WV/KY area? I wish I’d paid more attention to what my mom was trying to teach me when I was little.

I do actually! It depends on your family/location's history but Kentucky and parts of WV had a massive German immigrant population, so books like: Signs, Cures, & Witchery: German Appalachian Folklore by Gerald C Milnes. Granny Buck's Dips and Dabs: Appalachian Traditions and Magical Ways by Catherine S. Buck. Appalachian Folklore: Omens, Signs, and Superstitions by Nancy Richmond. (Despite it's odd organization and basic listing style of writing.) And then a lot of Welsh influence is involved in mining communities, so a book like: The Moon-Eyed People: Folk Tales from Welsh America by Peter Stevenson. Might be a major help in learning some of the folk tales that shaped some of what occurred in mining town in superstitions. Of course I will always sing the praises of the Foxfire Book Series, even if it was collected a little further south than the area you mention, it holds a lot of familiar ways both of living and spiritual for a lot of Appalachia. And one last thing! Don't beat yourself up for not paying attention as child, I did the same thing and while I do remember a lot...there's some things my Granny did I struggle to remember. Asking any elders you may find such as volunteering to sit in a nursing home, has helped me significantly put pieces together I didn't realize went together! It's common for a lot of the younger generations to disregard the superstitions and older ways because what place did they have in modern times with electricity and the internet? We were all encouraged to not believe in the "hogwash" and grow to get out instead of stay in the assumed poverty area we grew up in.

[sm-writes-chaos]

Happy Sunday Ask-A-Thon, week 4 for @ask-a-thon . What inspires you the most to write, what makes you want to write and what do you treasure most about your writing?

Inspiration comes to me from everyday life really, the more I read and watch shows I love and just write the more ideas I get! Interact with things you love and inspiration usually follows afterward.

My already existing stories continue to motivate me to keep writing. Falling in love with my characters more everyday makes me want to write. Makes me want to share their story and share my love. I treasure my ability to somehow come up with cool sentences. Like even in not creative writing I’m able to incorporate cool ways to say something. It’s kinda like blacking out and then you wake up and see you baked perfect bread. Thanks for the ask!

*** Data report: this ask motivated me to write 415 words!

Word count: 783

[owlsandwich]

Happy Thursday Ask-A-Thon from the @ask-a-thon team! Here's your question for today:

Do you follow a certain structure when plotting out your stor? Or just go with the flow? Why do you do things this way?

Starting to feel better after surgery so trying to catch up on my asks and tag games :) Thank's so much for sending them!

I like to break my plots down into Act structures, but I often do this after the general plot is outlined. This way, it works kinda like an overlay that allows me to see where certain beats need to be strengthened or where I need to add or re-arrange bits. Mechanics seems to me to be more a five act structure, whereas Darkness is a typical three act.

I don't usually know the second and third acts in detail when I begin writing. I begin everything by writing down chapter titles and a brief description of what happens in each one, in order to build an outline of the story. There's often a couple of scenes that feel like they need to be in the later half, but I haven't quite worked out how we get there yet, so I just throw these in somewhere. This is how my sequel to Mechanics currently looks (I'm still in the plotting stage):

The outline is very subject to change. I have this smudgy vision of the path, that gets sharpened the closer I get to it. Usually I am plotting in my head a good few chapters ahead of where I am writing, so by the time I get there, I know what is going to happen in detail. I am quite visual, so I can shift scenes around in my mind and 'edit' them, before even writing anything down.

Once most of the book is written, I like to use a lot of spreadsheets to check continuity. Here's one for Mechanics:

Darkness has thrown all this out the water, as I write it on my phone and am sharing it as I go. When I come to make a more polished version, I'll do some spreadsheets for it, but at the moment I've had to hold the whole story and structure in my head. Thankfully it's a much simpler story.

[caxycreations]

Hi there, its Athena for Sunday Ask-A-Thon week 2 at @ask-a-thon: Is there any advice you would give to a new writeblr or a friend/ an oc who wanted to get into writing?

A few things, actually! There's some pretty simple and basic steps you can take to really sink your teeth into writing.

Don't be afraid to write small! It doesn't matter if your work is 500k words, 250k, 10k, 2k, or just 500 words long. It's your work, and that's worth being proud of! So if you want to write but don't feel like you can put together the full story in your head, just pick your favorite part of it, find a starting point for that and put a little of it into words. Even if it's only ten words, it's experience and it's progress!

If your project is big, set a reasonable daily goal. If you can usually knock out a couple thousand words a day, then set a goal of about 1.5k. It's easy enough to be within reach, but not so low that you feel unproductive calling it quits there. If you have a slower pace and average around 200-300 words a day, that's fine too! Terry Pratchett only wrote 400 a day and look where it got him! Set reasonable goals, and you'll make progress at a solid, steady pace, I promise.

Take breaks from the serious work. It's important, believe me. Nobody can sit there and write seriously for hours a day, multiple days a week, for any length of weeks, without getting burnt out or sick of their own effort. Whether "taking a break" means stopping writing entirely for a day or two, or if it means writing a silly, goofy little non-canon ficlet, do something to relax your writing muscles. You'll be glad you did.

Writing for you is the most self-sustaining method, but if you're like me and you just CAN'T write for yourself with any degree of satisfaction, write for one person. Can be your mom, a friend, a role model, or a hypothetical person you don't know exists for sure. But pick someone, someone important to you, and write for them. You don't need to write for thousands, or millions, or even just hundreds. You just need to write for one, single person. And if you can't be that person for yourself, remember you always have at least one other person who will read your work and love every word.

This is the big one...BE YOU! Write like YOU. Nobody picks up a Terry Pratchett book and expects to find Stephen King's writing, nor does anyone pick up one of Tolkien's works expecting to find Rick Riordan's writing. If people are reading your work, it's because they want to read it the way YOU wrote it. So don't ever let anyone else tell you what style to write in, or what perspective, or even what format. Write YOUR way. The right crowd WILL find you, and they will ADORE you.

That's all I can really say on it. Hopefully it helps someone, somewhere. Thank you for the ask <3

[cheshire-castle-library]

Happy Sunday Ask-A-Thon, week 4 for @ask-a-thon . How are things going, what are you working on right now and how has it improved from when you first started?

AAA Hi! Thanks so much for asking!

Things are alright all things considered! My WIP is a gay Space Opera enemies to found family kind of mess and honestly getting it started has been kind of rough, but with a recent change in plan of attack I think I'm recovering from a 3 week write-rewrite loop and I'm back to the meat and potatoes of the story!

[eli-writes-sometimes]

Happy Sunday Ask-A-Thon! Thank you for following us (@ask-a-thon) from the previous blog. On to your Sunday questions! [What inspired you to write your very first piece of writing? What about your most current WIP(s)? How has your writing changed from the beginning to now?

Hey! Thanks for the ask! This is from last week, and I'm sorry for not getting to it then, but I was with family and didn't get the chance to answer.

I can't remember exactly what my first piece of writing was, but the reasoning behind the earliest one that I can remember was that I just thought it would be cool if someone could turn off the sun and decided to scrawl something about it in an old notebook that I found in a WH Smiths

My justification for why I want to write things hasn't changed much, to be honest - I just thought that it would be cool if there was a queer story woth pirates and princesses, and the idea snowballs from there into what it is now.

When it comes to my writing, I think the thing that has changed the most has been my commitment - I would often write three sentences of a story and get bored, never going back to it, but now I've actually managed to get somewhere with my ideas, and while I've never finished a novel, it feels good to know that I'm more committed to my characters now in the seven intervening years.

Thanks for the ask, and sorry again about the delay!

[doublegoblin]

Happy Sunday from us at @ask-a-thon! Glad to see you posting again and we hope you're feeling better. Here's our questions for you today!

What inspires you to write? What is something that keeps you writing even when that inspiration falls short?

I'm doing well @ask-a-thon still healing but each day is better! I'm just glad to get back to work and doing the hobbies I enjoy.

What inspires me? A lot of things actually but I'll compress that all down to one word: Vibes. Regardless of what inspires me if there isn't a vibe or feeling I want to reach for then nothing gets written. And when I say vibes I mean it in the nebulous sense. It's not a genre, not a trope, not a theme, it's a vibe.

To give an example Homesick is a little one off where in the vibe changed a couple times. It was at first meant to be a spooky kind of story about going back to your childhood home and ooo scary things actually happened. But, while I was writing it I was filled with ideas of: A worn down barn in winter, liminal spaces (empty houses specifically), old photos with the edges tattered and taped together, the overcast sky just before a storm, those hours after the party has finished and you need to clean up, a home left to the world on a hill where the screen door slaps in the breeze, and those moments where you wake up in fright and to comfort you your brain puts you right back in your childhood bed.

See there are all these things for sure yeah, but it is a feeling I want to capture in my words. So i guess it's kind of like a mental moodboard but without the pictures. I've tried to start a story with a concrete thing like "Tornado green skies" but I don't tend to get very far lol.

As for what keeps me writing even when the inspiration falls short? That I can write absolute hot garbage and that is okay! Not everything I do is posted, and that is how it should be for people. Sometimes you just need to write the most sloppy slop slop you can think of to get it out of your head so you can move on. And I love it! Which kind of leads me into the other things that keeps me going. That I can always walk away from this and come back when the feeling is right. I don't have to force myself to meet a deadline or quota.

I can feel myself getting rambly so I'll stop here.

Thanks as always for the ask and have a great day!

[levanayre]

Happy Sunday Ask-A-Thon, week 4 for @ask-a-thon . How are things going, what are you working on right now and how has it improved from when you first started?

Hello! Thank you for sending this ask! :)

Things are going really good! I plotted more of my horror WIP, Where The Flowers Rot. My main character Vicky has gotten into a bit of trouble after sneaking out at night, and her family is not happy about it.

As for the improvement question, I think the story has improved quite a lot from how it was at the beginning. I didn't have a clear theme at the beginning — it was just a horror story about flowers and nothing more. Now, I've included themes of longing for what isn't there, trying to move on from something that you can't, and wishing for things to be the way they were. I've also fleshed out my characters more.

[bluberimufim]

Happy Tuesday Ask-A-Thon from the @ask-a-thon team! Sorry for the delay in sending out questions while we adjust to the recent moderation changes.

How long have you been writing your main WIP? How has your writing grown/developed over that time?

Hi, thank you for the ask!!

(I just realized I had this in my drafts for DAYS omg)

This is kind of a complicated question because I recycle anything I like from WIPs that didn't work, and I've been writing for, like, half my life.

I mentioned before that the oldest element of my writing still standing is Seth, who is currently the protagonist of "Devourer of Souls", but that's basically just his name. He used to be the villain of a nameless WIP I had in 6th grade, then became the villain of a dead WIP I had in 8th grade called "Monsters of Glass". This is where he became associated with all the stuff in "Devourer of Souls". At this point, he was already "older magical doctor hated by the government", but he only became a nice cottagecore man recently.

After that, you technically have the genesis of the Dystopia WIP but, just like Seth, the only surviving elements are Cristover and Nester Kalenev, which I later recycled. The Dystopia WIP is my least recycled WIP, since all the characters and places are new except those two.

And the "youngest" WIP, which has changed the least over time, is "Black and White". All the characters are the same, except for a few minor ones like Hugo, as well as the setting and general idea of the plot. It originally was just a straight murder mystery with no magic involved, but then I studied "The Picture of Dorian Grey" in school and it altered my brain chemistry. Fun fact: instead of a lovecraftian entity, the Man in Black and White used to be Reyna in disguise, going around and killing people for undefined reasons.

B&W has a part 2 based on none of the recycled stuff bc it just felt half-baked, but otherwise I've been with this WIP since 9th grade.

Wow this ask made me feel... not old exactly, but also like I've been writing for a ling-ass time. Got me ✨reminiscing✨.

[ask-a-thon]

Day 1

What inspired you to start writing?

Have you ever co-written something? Why or why not?

What are some reoccurring themes or tropes in your writing?

[buggywiththefolkmagic]

how do you feel about people who aren't from the appalachian mountains trying to practice appalachian folk magic?

A tricky question to start off with, I like it! This answer may be a bit ramble-y, and I apologize! Some aspects of AFM are perfectly okay to be practiced anywhere! The concepts, the bible verses, the odd methods of protection and healing...some of the spirits. The only thing I can think of to stop some people is that some ingredients, some items, some spirits or haints to protect from are hard to find outside of Appalachia! Otherwise, as long as you have your heart in the right place, you study up on the region and the history? I say go for it, we need more practioners. Because the old folk? They won't be around forever. But in saying this: I know my opinion isn't everyone's. I know some people who would rage at me, hell, I've been banned from certain groups for saying that I am okay with people learning. If someone refuses to teach you? Honor that, anger-inducing it may feel. The reason some people fight so hard to keep AFM within the mountains is because well...look at us historically. Historically speaking...when outsiders came in? Hell followed. Years of near slave-labor to mining companies, the drug epidemic, crushing our old ways of life and making a good chunk of them illegal? Destroying our land for profit, kicking people off of their land to "preserve" it? Purposefully making us a butt of a joke into some...stupid, inbred, ruthless, drunkard of a people just because we paid less tax on whiskey when we made it ourselves? I could go on and on.

[sm-writes-chaos]

Happy Sunday Ask-A-Thon from over at @ask-a-thon. Thank you for following over to the new blog. Now, on to your Sunday questions!

What started your writing journey? What about your writing has changed between your first pieces of writing vs your most current WIP?

Hmm well I remember first writing stories from about right before and all throughout middle school. I was still set on being a doctor, being a writer didn't even occur to me. But still I wrote a lot.

The earliest story I can remember is about a witch who curses a school to float in the air because they kicked her out. But they just use stairs to get to the school so her plan didn't work very well.

My writing definitely changed a lot. I had soooo many self inserts. I wrote about orphans a lot for some reason.

Me and a group of friends decided to write a book one day, and I was the designated writer. They came up with everything and I wrote it all out. We were very passionate about it, and even when I left that school and wasn't friends with them anymore I wanted to continue it.

I guess for a long time I've been very passionate about writing good stories, even before I knew I wanted to be an author.

It hasn't even been that long since I decided to be a serious author, but I've always been this way so it feels like I've been on this journey since forever.

Thanks for the ask I love talking about myself!

[m-r-levine]

Happy Sunday Ask-A-Thon, week 4 for @ask-a-thon . How are things going? What gave you the idea to work on your current wips, where did you get the ideas from?

Thank you so much for the ask and happy belated* Sunday!

As far as how the work is going:

Slowly. 😭

Life is still a bit too chaotic for regular creative time, and when i carve out a quarter hour to write, i am struggling with the blank page and restlessness of needing to make words go and also needing to do and make ten million other things, all at the same time.

Mi hijo maldito remains with me, and i jot down notes whenever I can, usually in moments stolen while computers load or microwaves hum. But… I have this feeling that everything with the changes is soon to settle. That when the house is unpacked the calm will finally return, and all the pent up pressure of so many stories clawing to get out will finally stitch the fragments together into functional prose for Malados - and maybe everything else in the wip basket too.

As for the original ideas driving these many wips… that part will get long, so I will tuck this behind a little cut. ☺️

Firstly, the easy answer:

Malados came about in the simplest and most dangerous fashion, enabled by my dear friends @ensrensage @saphoblin @onwardnary and @drsteggy .

I took a bottle of 1825 and put it on the table, mentally sat Teca down and asked him what happened next. He stared back at me like a cat, but I have rather a fair amount of experience with such contests. I held him in that moment and I said what happened when you refused to let the hero ride into the sunset alone mi hijo and he squinted away over the garden and said Vishan was not happy to see me.

And so we began, writer and narrator returning to courtyard of the sprawling stone house in my mind, to that little table of battered black pine where he told me the story that became La Mala Suerte, sheltering from the heat of many afternoons with that bottle between us.

The most recent work I’ve touched in the Dark Tapestry world is one I really ought not to be writing at all right now. It’s a Keris story… sortof. She’s only half the equation of the arc @saphoblin named Unspoken. The other half is Davrush mej Nakun, oggish warrior and smith, Legatus Artifax on the high council of the Trinae Amicae, trusted advisor to the Fire Praetor… and desperately in love with her. None of that means anything or carries any weight without the essential context and history behind and around both of them. As of last time I outlined it, we need at least four solid Keris stories (and that few only if we take great liberties with time-jumps) after Darkly Woven before we can even think of sharing Unspoken… but those are the images and fragments coming to me when i try to cast my mind in Keris’ direction. Davri’s longing rises with such visceral power it’s downright frustrating.

Why and when did Unspoken begin to nag me? Oh some years ago now when my old CP and I were talking frequently. We sometimes spoke about the (interesting) problem of the power dynamics within Trinae and how that necessarily crosses threads with Keris’ nature and her personal arc… including her difficulties with close relationships in the contexts of her profession and the surrounding culture.

A prompt crossed our radar at that time for short fiction dealing with the theme of home as a visceral state and what evokes it (rather than the physical or literal placeness or even the abstract concept) and I sat down to write a snippet about Keris and what makes Trinae home for her in contrast with things from Udea evoking home in a way she has neither words nor context to explain. That little writing exercise involved a snapshot of a council meeting… wherein Keris confessed: Ironic that she relied on the voice and personal loyalty of the shortest-lived of all the peoples the Trinae embraced.

Naturally, I tried first to prod Keris about it. She said nothing.

So I asked Davri.

He confessed his heretical pining in such vivid terms I couldn’t help but transcribe it. I shared it with my CP who seemed to think well of some parts but agreed it was an impossible premise: their ranks divide them forever. His crush can only mature into love in silence and perfect discretion, and she must never openly return his affections - the tension between them vibrates in every scene, but the moment she yields, she loses all credibility and honor - because at the end of the day, she ranks him, and it’s her duty to maintain that division or else step down. And if I handwave it anyway, then I the writer lose all credibility for putting forward this inherently abusive unrealistic pairing as romantic.

Clearly, I cannot resist such a steep challenge, as I have continued for years to noodle on Unspoken against my better judgment.

I really ought to be working on the Spun Shadows rewrite - Keris’ second arc. Recasting it as a dual POV with Rokoval gets us a much more interesting frame, popping between the gothic faction politics of Libertalia and the risks and rewards of the wilds with Keris and the Trinae, but I got myself thoroughly stuck in what was supposed to be the fun little solstice scene with convenient play-within-a-play recap - it worked so well in outline but I cannot for the life of me turn that into prose and I don’t know why. The entire idea still makes me laugh, so it should follow that words come easily.

I don’t know that I can tell you where that arc came from anymore, it’s just a tangle of answering the question of how she goes from point A at the end of Darkly Woven to point B (no longer even as far in her personal arc as originally planned, but merely holding Significant Rank™️ within Trinae) by way of Z(chaos but in the good way, building her connections to significant people and plotlines for the Long Red Thread), and Keris herself came largely from the eternal desire to read More And Better Strong Female Characters In More Flavors In Rich Fantasy Settings and the all-important epiphany that I have the power to make the content I want to read.

Which is also a primary motivator for the fic side too - I write it because I want to read it, I just also happen to enjoy sharing it.

When, you know, I can successfully whack more words out of the recalcitrant brain to get it.

*(Yesterday was unexpectedly full with more errands than scheduled and crafting session with a local friend that ran late, so I didn’t have time to finish my reply. But work is stupid so I stole some downtime to work on it through the day. 😅)

[owlsandwich]

Ask-A-Thon time for @ask-a-thon: How are you, how are things going and what have you been particurlarly focusing on in a current wip of yours?

Hi! I'm doing okay - I was feeling pretty unwell last week, and we've also had a lot of building work going on, which has combined to put me well behind schedule on my WIPs.

I am trying to write chapter 21 of Darkness at the Heart of my Love. This is the first chapter of the final act of the story - basically we are entering the finale which will run over the next 5 or 6 chapters, so I need to make sure I get the scene set up right.

There will be a final battle, so it's important to naturally establish the layout of the rooms etc. where these chapters are taking place, so that all of the battle movement feels grounded when we get to it.

I also had to spend some time thinking about the kind of clothes my characters are wearing. I don't typically worry too much about describing clothing in my works, but in this case, it fills in some off-screen plot details and also is a great opportunity for some thematic symbolism.

[cheshire-castle-library]

hey! this is chance & here’s week 2’s prompt. pick one of your ocs. are they open to other people’s perspectives? do they go out of their way to learn new things?

We'll use my current MC, Bel!

He wants to be. He knows he should be, and that he needs help. But he's also been doing things solo/basically unsupported for so long he doesn't really know how to accept help unless he's beaten over the head with it.

A major part of his character growth is rectifying the discrepancy between what he says and what he actually internalized!