#I'm still not the GREATEST writer and the characterizations might be a little off...

[transtuvok]

I wrote two fanfics and posted them today in honor of Ignis's birthday 😌

[princessfbi]

💌, 💘, ☯️

💘Is there any posted fic you want to rework/re-edit/re-write?

Mhmmmmmm I'd Wait Here Forever just because I know how I would do it differently now. I was overworked and stressed out with real world stuff when I was writing that fic so I think I was just really wanting to get it out and it didn't quite come together as I envisioned.

I'm torn about saying Hardest Hit from Feather's Kiss because I know people love it and I do too! But I also don't remember writing much of it and like the characterization is off in my opinion. But also I'm proud of it and finishing it and learning about hockey so I let it be.

☯️how do you think engaging with each other through tumblr, twitter, comments, kudos, creates healthy fandom experiences? How do you deal with that if you're not a social person/experience social anxiety?

I am SUCH an introvert. I get it. I am zapped on socializing most of the time so it's hard. But I've also found some of the greatest friends that I can talk to that are effortless to be around. I know it's difficult but eventually you find your people and those are the people who show up.

That being said, I think for this to community to grow and stay healthy, I think it's a two way street. I think there has to be some effort on everyone's part. It's very easy to get caught up in the brain rot and just consume consume consume without stopping to consider what you are contributing to the community. "Oh, I'm not a writer and I can't draw. I just am here for a good time." Great! Do you comment? Do you reblog? Do you leave a kudos?

This should first and foremost be a place of fun and enjoyment. You should be able to come here and escape for a little while and if you read one of my fics and get to just be with your own self and have fun for an hour then that's incredible! If you sit and listen to a podfic while at your job that you hate and it gets you through the day then that's amazing. I love writing! People love drawing! People love podficcing and giffing and reccing fics! But that doesn't mean it doesn't requite some effort.

So I think it helps to revaluate your perspective on things. You're not a social person or you have social anxiety and that's a hundred percent fine. But think of a community as a garden. You've got all these amazing fruits and vegetables that are available for grabs. But what happens when people take and don't water the soil? What happens when people take and then don't donate to the supplies box? What happens when you don't pull out the weeds and spend some time and effort and care to the garden? Eventually it dries up and the garden disappear.

I think it's important for all of us to say to ourselves "how can I contribute to this experience? Am I taking without giving anything back?" It's an easy fix! Comment, reblog, kudos. I am my most awkward self when I am commenting on a fic but I know what it's like to spend countless hours working on something just to hear nothing in return.

We cultivate the experiences we create and that takes effort. And sometimes you don't have it in you. I get that. I have a tab section on my phone of fics I still owe a comment on. I have fics that have been open in my tabs forever because I just don't have the attention span for 70k that day. But I am intentional with my effort. I choose to spread kindness and encouragement even if it makes me uncomfortable sometimes because I think I sound so weird but I know someone worked hard on this thing I got to enjoy.

It can mean the world. Someone just a few weeks ago reached out because they heard I was having a bad day and now we talk almost daily.

So I guess I think I would just say try. You might be surprised!

💌share something with us about an up-and-coming work (WIP) that has you excited!

Mhmmmm let me see if I can find something in my 100th fic:

“Eddie!” Chimney all but hissed his name. His eyes darted to the curtain and the closed door just beyond it that Eddie fully intended to walk through on his own. “You can’t!”  “You would if it was Maddie!” Eddie shot back and Chimney flinched with the blow.

Send Me a Fic Writing Ask

[brella]

hello. we haven't met but you're one of the writers that I read every time I seek inspiration. I think your writing is really refreshing and full of motion and life and I'm a bit amazed by how you have wonderfully captured the voices of so many characters and let them play in different settings without stripping them of their distinct personalities

(...) it's just really interesting to me that you, in my opinion, embrace these characters and delight in them and portray them so accurately and respectfully. It's masterful. So I wanted to ask -- how did you become so good at capturing the voices of different characters and works? or was it something you were always good at that just comes to you naturally?

(...) and another question, sorry to just bombard you like this -- but I was wondering if you have any published original works that you don't mind sharing? I just wondered how your own characters might sound like so I wanted to ask. I'd like to be a lifelong fan to be honest, you're fantastic. hope friday is treating you well.

hello, friend! first of all, I am so, so floored by these messages—this is such generous praise, and to be perfectly honest as I find myself teetering on the edge of a year in which my relationship with writing was rocky at best it’s taking a lot of work to convince myself I deserve it, haha. but I am so happy that this is the experience you’ve had with my stories, and I want to honor it as best I can, no matter what my insecurities might say (and they say a lot). so, thank you, so very much. I work at all of the things you mentioned very, very, very hard, and hearing that you See them means more to me than I can describe. I am deeply honored to be a writer you turn to for inspiration. that’s so surreal to me—but wonderful. 

second, to answer your questions... I don’t know that character voice is something that “comes to me naturally”—I find that term can be misleading—I would say that character voice is something that has always naturally interested me, and consequently that I have always naturally paid a lot of attention to it. when I was a child I loved to impersonate the voices of my family members, my friends, and even (and especially) animated characters—finding ways to emulate their pitch and cadence, their vocabulary, little turns of phrase they invoked, etc. I’m still told I have a gift for vocal imitations. I think maybe that’s where it started? I just find speech to be the most effective mode of characterization, and always have. 

when you say that I “embrace the characters and delight in them,” that’s almost entirely what it is, haha. if I am writing fic about characters then it means that I really, really, really love them, and thus have spent a lot of time observing them in their source story; paying attention to what they say, what they don’t say, how they say it—and how all of that might change depending on who they’re talking to. 

this same principle applies to writing emulations of written styles—it’s not so much about choosing the exact right words, but knowing how and when to say them. observing how an author chooses to say things, and how their own forms of expression translate into their characters. because any given character, after all, isn’t an entity unto themselves—they’re the product of someone else’s imagination, their feelings and their experiences, and how they codify those into their own systems of expression. written language is boundless in this way. everyone’s systems of expression are different, and are comprised of entirely unique combinations of things they’ve read and heard and witnessed. the same can be said for the characters that are born of those experiences; like us, the ways they speak and think are entirely individual, always changing, always evolving; there are, as a writing professor i had once said, “layers of existence and layers of access.” situationally, interpersonally, a character’s voice can completely change. there is so much to discover in that, and I’ve always been intrigued by that more than maybe any other aspect of writing—especially in fic. that’s the greatest joy of it for me, actually, is using it as a laboratory for character voice. 

mostly, though, I look at the ways that the writers I admire do it and analyze them VORACIOUSLY. which I think is the root of being a writer. we teach each other. 

I don’t know if any of that made any sense—but I would be happy to talk about it with you more and hear about your own thoughts on that process. it’s something I love discussing with other writers. because it’s totally different for everyone. 

I have never had any original work published... but I hope to, someday. this year I was accepted into a writing workshop that will ideally help me with that, but of course it was postponed and of course I am weirdly ambivalent about getting my stories published. I’m more interested in the building of the bridge, as it were; what I want is to have a finished story that I can feel good about, and after that point I just kind of let it be. (which my fellow workshop attendees, all of whom are significantly more accomplished in that regard, gently poke at me for, haha.) if I ever am published anywhere, I will probably sneak a link on here. I just try to keep this long-running fandom blog separate from my actual life. :)

I’m still weaning myself off of fic in a lot of ways, but I’m getting there. in the meantime, I will work hard to keep making good stories that are worth your while and are worth your admiration, which I am, again, very flattered to have. 

friday is treating me very well, because these messages were in my inbox when I woke up  :’) so thank you for that. I hope that life as a whole has been as kind to you as it can be, times being what they are. thank you so much again.