#<- sorry being slightly salty but also. gah.

[martyrbat]

harley's little black book #1

[harry-leroy]

writing meme: 3, 5, 9, 12

Thank you so much for this (yet again), Lisa! You’ve come to save me from my responsibilities so I thank you :) These were so fun to answer! 

3- Give an overview/description of some of your past stories. (Only if you are willing, of course!) 

So I’ve got quite a few short stories that I wrote my senior year of high school that are absolute disasters, but I’ll probably go back and rewrite them one day. Three monster tales: One about an explorer employed by Set to bring back his dead consort, one about the four knights who killed Thomas Becket - except they’re werewolves (I’ve posted this one to tumblr- it’s somewhere in there), and one about an underground theatre haunted by vampires. (The monsters reflect the units we had in that class, one on mummies, one on werewolves, and one on vampires). I also wrote a short story called “For Us Alone Was Death Invented”, intended to be part of something larger. The title is taken from a line said by Satan in Book 9 of Milton’s Paradise Lost, and it’s about a young boy who gets bitten by a snake. It’s a rather literal interpretation of a child’s vision of Satan, but the vision gets more and more deluded until it just disappears. My awesome, wonderful best friend @punk-isnt-dead wrote a song to go with it for my birthday, titled “Just For Us Was Death Invented” (title change to make scansion), but the song is doing WONDERFULLY and it’s kind of my favorite thing ever. My friend has taken it to several open-mic nights and it’s gotten a great reception. My story? Long dead. The facts? My friend is an absolute genius. 

5- Do you have an idea for a story you don’t feel you can write at this current time? (Whether it be because life is busy right now, you need to do more research, etc.) 

The 1712 Project and Atlas are two projects that I’m putting on hold for now because of research. I am building my research library for the 1712 Project, but it’s kind of a lot, and with all of the other things I’m trying to get through this summer, it’s just not the best time to crack into all of that. I’m hoping that next summer, I’m going to have the time to do all of that research. With 1712, it’s a lot of reading on Louis XIV, Louis XV, The War of Spanish Succession, Philip V, Versailles, Voltaire, French Baroque music, etc. With Atlas, I feel like I need to read some more detective novels before I can really get into developing the characters and the stories the way I want to develop them. I am thoroughly excited about both projects though, and I hope that other people will be too. 

9- Favorite cliche or trope? 

Again, I’m an absolute sucker for idealists (as I have said before). Part of my struggle with writing is that I hate most common tropes. Love triangles? Don’t like ‘em. Haters to lovers? Predictable (at least to me). I’m not sure if I have a favorite cliche because most of them tend to bother me. I know that there like 9,000 tropes, but I’m not sure if I have a favorite. I like experimenting with new ones all the time as it gives me new things to work with. 

12- What is the worst writing advice in your opinion? 

I don’t think I can remember any off of the top of my head, mostly because if I don’t agree with said advice, I try to forget it as soon as humanly possible. Sometimes things I hear through the writeblr circle are kinda silly, which is one of the reasons why I’m not a ‘writeblr’. My general idea is that advice probably comes from somewhere good, so none of it is inherently bad, but not all advice is good. Does that make any sense? One thing about writing which I have run into a lot lately is when people describe their character’s eye color/hair color and then use it to refer to them, and it just (le sigh) bothers me like nothing else. (Calling someone ‘the brunette’ or ‘the green eyed boy’ - gah I try to tolerate things but it gets on my nerves slightly). Okay that’s my salt for the day, and I apologize for being salty. That’s not even bad writing advice, that’s just something that I don’t like. I don’t know anyone personally who does that, but I’ve seen it enough. 

Thank you so much for these, Lisa! I very much appreciate it (and thank you for letting me go on a tiny rant there at the end. I am so sorry). Have a wonderful rest of your day! Best wishes :)