#and they play a game every year where some of his faves pretend to murder their classmates as part of a research assignment | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

hydrospanners · 5 years

Note

A-Z on the writing meme because I need to know absolutely everything immediately.

WELP okay but just remember you asked for what’s about to happen. meme is here. most of this is under a cut cause i’m longwinded as hell.

A. If you could rec a piece of music to accompany one of your fics, what would you pick? Why?

Um I absolutely was vibing to Lips by The xx when I wrote a wish your heart makes and you should too.

B. Who’s your favorite side-character from something you wrote?

I feel like the answer here is supposed to be Doc because he is not The Main Character in the game but also I have written about him and from his POV so much it feels unfair to call him a side character at this point. So instead I’m going to say this random woman named Cherita who was just trying to make a midnight snack for her pregnant wife from a little eggstra. I thought she had a lot of character for someone I pulled out of my ass for the sake of an outside perspective.

C. Get any good comments on your stuff this year?

I am thirsty for praise and I feel every single comment is a good comment but I think the one that sticks out to me is when I wrote a wish your heart makes someone said something like “if you like doc at all you have to read this” and I don’t remember who it was or where they said it but it really stuck with me!!! If that was you, thank you!!!!

D. Any drawings or pictures that had a big influence on your writing?

No!!! I feel guilty about this answer somehow but it’s true. I think it would be a fun challenge to try to write a piece of fic inspired by someone’s art so I may play with that idea next year (Editor’s Note: it was still 2k18 when I wrote the answer for this one) but for 2k18 the answer is no. :(

E. Who’s your favorite main character you’ve written?

I feel like this answer is obvious but it’s my girl Rea. I’ve reincarnated her as an Inquisitor and a Pathfinder but the OG Jedi Knight is still my fave.

F. What stories are you planning for the future?

I won’t pretend that a lot of planning goes in to my fic. I normally only write short bits so it kind of goes like this: I have a concept, I write the bit I fixate on, and then it sits in my WIPs for five years until I get motivated during some Fictober or something to finally finish it.

I will say I do have serious designs to finally finish the second chapter of the things you do for love are gonna come back to you one by one as that one is a little more complex than stuff I usually write. I have plans to do some kinda flashback-y thing that finally lays out The Velaran Backstory in clear and obvious terms after years of hints and tidbits I’ve been peppering through my fic. I also have a thing planned and kinda partly written about the first instance of horrific violence in the lives of all the Knight’s companions. Also I have a long series of AU vignettes that glimpses into universes where Rea is a Sith or Kira never made it off Korriban or Rusk remained a pacifist or where Rea never joined the Jedi after losing her family the second time. Stuff like that.

G. Where do you think you grew the most this year?

Structure? I’ve been really working on trusting my reader to bridge some gaps and not letting myself get caught up in details that are important for me to know to write the next part but that don’t necessarily need to be in the story. I think I’ve really tightened up my game where trimming the fat and staying focused are concerned.

H. How do you write? Paper, pen, computer? Music, no music?

My fic writing process is very different from when I am trying to write original stuff and is even kind of different depending on the mood I’m going for? I always write fic in Google Drive cause I write fic from a lot of different machines and need the easy cloud saving.

My ideal condition for fic writing is listening to instrumental music or ambient sounds playing through headphones either in a coffeehouse or the library or when I am at home completely alone. Angst and smut are best written at night with the lights low and warm. Comedy and fluff are best written in the late afternoon/early evening after one single alcoholic beverage (any more than and one I am drunk and no longer capable of writing).

Realistically though, I usually write in whatever time I have. Mostly at work. My job requires me to sit at a desk and wait for things to happen. Since I start work at 5am, things usually aren’t happening. Even with me going out of my way to create new work for myself and excel at what work I do have, I have a lot of downtime. I spend it writing fic. I get interrupted too much to have the focus I need for original writing, but fic writing is much easier so mostly I write my fic at this bland little desk under the terrible fluorescent lights with lots of noise and interruptions, occasionally playing a thematic playlist very quietly in the background.

I. What’s your favorite work you did this year? Why?

This is a very tough question. Surprisingly, I published a lot of things that I really liked? ([not pictured: me high fiving me for finally allowing myself to state that I like my own writing]) I think I’ll go with when the wicked play if I have to pick just one. Relative to my other work I think it’s very structurally sound and thematically focused and pretty efficient with its characterization and imagery without ever getting too sparse. Also I’m a slut for examining the commonplace nature of violence and brutality in the Star Wars universe.

J. What are the best jokes you told this year? Any jokes you thought were funny that people didn’t catch? Vice-versa?

I’m gonna say the pun I used as the title for bars and stripes. Honestly the whole fic is a joke and I like it and I don’t care if anyone catches it or not because I know that I am hilarious and no one will ever convince me otherwise.

K. Who have you killed this year? Why did they have to die?

No one, I think? I don’t think I even mentioned any specific off-screen deaths except for shit from the decades old Tragic Backstories. Not even Valkoriate. I’m not an especially murderful writer, maybe because I haven’t had to deal with a lot of that kind of loss in my own life. Mostly I write about things that are somehow adjacent to my own emotional state/journey. That’s why I fixate a lot on the weight of duty and moral philosophy and the nuances and complications of relationships, of how you can hurt someone and be hurt by them and still love them and how messy yet fulfilling the whole thing is. Thankfully--for me--not a lot of grieving the dead in there yet.

L. Which character did you most write about this year, and why do you like ‘em?

Pretty sure it’s Rea. Maybe Doc because of the Docember thing I squeezed in at the last second but I’m still pretty sure it’s Rea. Pretty sure it always is.

There’s a particular kind of release I get from writing her because her whole sloppy person is a part of me that doesn’t often see the light of day. I won’t say she’s aspirational because I like who I am and I don’t have any special destiny or Force powers or anything to save me when the consequences of living like she does catch up. But there are pieces of her that I admire, pieces that are still part of me that I have a hard time expressing, and spending time with her gives me a little more strength to unlock those dark musty corners of who I am, I guess? Writing Rea makes me a little more bold, a little less apologetic, a little less prone to overthinking and anxious fretting and a little more prone to doing. She makes me feel strong enough to ask for the things I want and confident enough to feel like I deserve them.

Also she is a damn good time, even when she’s falling apart.

M. Meta! Have any meta about a story you’re dying to throw out there?

Of course I do. I could ramble for hours about the story behind any single one of my stories. Aren’t all of us creative types like that??? Don’t we all love to talk about what we were going for and why we made the choices we did??? What we liked and what we think needs improvement??? Why we wanted to make the thing we made in the first place???

I could ramble about this for hours and honestly the possibilities are overwhelming so I am not going to go into any detail and just say yes. Obviously I am willing to ramble about the story behind every single story I’ve published but there’s 63 of them so if there’s something specific you want to hear about you’ll have to ask about the specific one!!!

N. Anything you were planning to write that never got written?

Nothing will ever be “never got written” until I am dead and unable to write. I am still going back to WIPs from 2014. I am rewriting garbage exercises I wrote in 2013. I like to think everything in my WIP folder will eventually be moved to my Published folder and I am going to keep thinking that until I am physically incapable of writing.

O. Do you believe in outlines? Show us one!

I believe in them very much and yet I do not practice them usually. I rely on them more with my original work which is longer and more involved and doesn’t already have a convenient structure to follow in the form of 300000 hours of video game. Most of my fic is really short, just a single scene or so. I usually start out by writing the moment that inspired me to write the fic and fill in the before and after. I do have an outline for the second half of the things you do for love are gonna come back to you one by one but I don’t really want to share it for something that isn’t written yet!

P. What are your pet peeves in other people’s work?

This question makes me kinda uncomfortable so here we go with some disclaimers: I write the stories that I want to read or that I really need to tell to satisfy something inside of me and I assume other authors do the same. I don’t want to say anything here that might have a chilling effect on someone exploring some idea they really need to explore, even if it’s tired or cliche or offends my own tastes. Writing is very personal and I think everyone should tell the stories they want to, whether anyone else likes them or not.

That being said, I am always desperately wishing for more media about close, intimate friendships and familial bonds. As someone who isn’t interested in sexual or romantic relationships, it makes me weep basically every time I read a story about characters who are friends or family that give that kind of relationship all of the value and weight and nuance that you see romantic relationships getting. It is a very special kind of feeling to see that it is possible for people to value what I have to offer them as much they might value someone who will romance them and sleep with them. It is very validating to see the possibility of emotional intimacy with people outside of romantic/sexual partners.

But I would never want anyone to feel bad about or stop writing their romances and their smut. That stuff speaks to people and that’s what fic is about. Telling the story that speaks to you. I want everyone to write what they want to write and if that leaves gaps, well that’s why I started writing fic in the first place. There was a story I needed to read and no one had written it yet, so I did it myself.

TL;DR Genfic & friendfic & familyfic is the greatest gift anyone could ever give me, but no one should write to satisfy other people. Always write for yourself first and foremost.

Q. Quote three bits of writing you read his year. Can be your writing, or not.

I keep little quotes everywhere--index cards and sticky notes scattered among all my belongings, snippets on my phone, untitled documents on every cloud service there is, random word docs hidden amongst my many hard drives--but the only ones I can find right now are from @meonlyred‘s Dark Horse so please enjoy three bits from that fic that I loved:

They remained sitting on the floor, Rossa leaned against him, eyes staring into the distance. Her silence might as well have been weeping.

I just love how I can feel the vacant, numb quality of her despair in this line. How it feels more poignant for its lack of drama.

“You're an idiot and I hate your hair,” Jonas said over the rim of his glass.

I mean.... Do I need to explain this?

He had never believed in happily ever afters. Not for him, at least. But the cruelest thing about being with Rossa was that he had begun to believe that maybe, just maybe, it was possible.

Closing his eyes, Theron didn’t expect to open them again.

This little snippet still punches me in the gut no matter how many times I read it. It’s so relateable and so Theron and so painful.

R. If you had to rewrite one of your stories from scratch, which one would it be? What would you do to it?

I don’t think I’d rewrite any of them? At least half of my fic has been completely rewritten once or twice before it ever gets published so I mostly have it out of my system before anyone else sees it.

S. What’s the sexiest thing you wrote this year?

a wish your heart makes. It may also be the saddest thing I wrote this year which I consider an achievement. (I was asked for smut but I literally do not know how to write just smut without anything else going on in the story.)

T. Themes, motherfucker, do you have them? What are they?

The importance and nature of family (it is what you make it and not what you were born with! but sometimes you get lucky and get to choose the one you were born with!)! The cost/impact of violence and war! Failure and coming back from failure! The nature of what is right and what is wrong and how much responsibility any one individual bears for the moral direction of their society!!!!

I don’t think I’ve ever written anything that didn’t include at least one of these concepts and most of my stuff deals heavily in at least two of them.

U. Any stories that took a abrupt u-turn from where you thought they were going?

Yep! I was trying to make a stupid joke about a haircut when I started making take back what the kingdom stole but in working my way backward from the joke I ended up with a heartfelt exploration of my character’s past emotional trauma, her character growth, and the nature of friendship and forgiveness.

V. Which story was the most viscerally pleasing to write? Tell us your narrative kinks.

I don’t know that I would necessarily call the sensation pleasing but, once again, the things you do for love are gonna come back to you one by one was probably the story that made me feel the most, that I was the most connected to. It hit on every single one of the themes I find compelling and I really got to play with telling the story in the white spaces, which is something I really love. I’ve been working a lot on trusting my readers and not over-explaining and I think this story really saw the impact of that work, stylistically. It’s peak self-indulgence honestly.

W. Who are your favorite writers?

Does this mean like authors of original published works or fic writers????? How am I supposed to choose???!!!! Either way my reading habits this year have been abominable. I have really been going through some shit, lifewise, (not bad shit but emotionally consuming and time consuming nonetheless) and I had to let the reading go a little bit.

I have been really into NK Jemisin though. Her stories are complex and challenging and there is so much poetry and power in the straightforward way she tells them. I also was obsessed with the Temeraire series by Naomi Novik. The characters were so textured and real with such clear voices and the relationships and ideas were so complex and compelling, yet the story never got weighed down by the heft of the subjects. She has a very light touch as a storyteller that makes her work so easily digestible without making her tale any less impactful or profound.

As for fic…. I’ve got about forty million fics bookmarked, waiting for me to get around to reading them and I am the worst kind of person because I have not yet read any of them. I’m behind on reading one of my very favorite fics right now. I think I’ve read a total of like ten fics this year and straight up probably only read that many because I was doing a bit of beta’ing.

I’m gonna do better in 2019 and I’ll get back to you on all the good shit I’ve read then.

X. What’s your least favorite work of this year?

crapshoot. It was a really old concept that probably would have been better as visual art than a fic but my artistic talents were too limited so I wrote it instead. It could probably stand a little more meat and a lot more polish, but I don’t have the time to try and turn every goofy image in my head into a fictional masterpiece.

Y. Why did you write? For fun, for a friend, for acclaim?

For fame and fortune obviously. It’s why most of my fic is about a super popular ship in an enormous fandom.

Or, y’know… not. I write for fun and because I have to. Because there are stories inside of me I want to tell, ideas I feel compelled to explore, things I need to say. It doesn’t matter if anyone else hears them or likes them; I need to get them out of me. Also it’s a really great way to work through my own emotional turmoil at a safe distance, so I can engage with what vexes me without being consumed by it.

Z. If you could choose one work and immediately finish it, what would it be? How would you end it?

the things you do for love are gonna come back to you one by one. It’s the most self-indulgent thing I’ve written probably but it means a lot to me and if I knew how it ended I would have finished it months ago. D:

#memery #writing tag #long post #Anonymous

4 notes · View notes

vermiculated · 6 years

Text

books 2017 finale

this is almost brief.

december: The Lying Game - Ruth Ware Every Heart A Doorway - Seanan McGuire Saving Morgan - MB Panichi Call Me By Your Name - Andre Aciman City of Fallen Angels - Cassandra Clare City of Lost Souls - Cassandra Clare (see below) Barry Lyndon - William Thackeray Into Thin Air - John Krakauer

that was the brief part, this is the ‘almost’ part. 279 for the year, up from 188 last year.

Why Did I Ever - Mary Robison fiction, re-read, it is a delight always.

Binti - Nnedi Okorafor fiction, I read a couple of other interesting explorations of "what does it mean when I am more like the monster than the hero?" which is pretty astoundingly generative as a genre, this was my fave. Binti herself explores two alien cultures, and reacts in practical ways to the unexpected, which is always a delight in a heroine. Space is strange; let us not dwell on realism, it's a different real. This willingness to abandon what does not work is characteristic of young women. Young women are great sff protagonists, and young women of historically-disadvantaged backgrounds who are incontestably heroic are the greatest sff protagonists of all.

The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage - Sydney Padua art, complex and excitingly rich alternative history, which not only explains computing history but also, at the last page, yanks at the heart of anyone who has ever yearned. The art is propulsive and antic, and the visual puns are very good. (not to be missed: the encounter with Queen Victoria!) Even I, a person who is bad at reading graphic novels, loitered over the drawings to understand them rather than reading the words and flipping the page.

IQ - Joe Ide fiction, what Sherlock Holmes would actually be like in a modern novel. A loner in a big important city who feels that he has much to make up for, check the convincing depiction of depression, and the real nightmares who actually do fall short in the world's estimation, except that the world is too busy to notice them at all. The main thread is a fun romp, and the minor characters are so exquisite that it is almost a picaresque. I was talking about this loudly on a train, and when I and it stopped, a man came up to me and asked if I could give him the title again as he wanted to buy it. TRUE.

Hild - Nicola Griffith fiction, on the recommendation of @inclineto This is what historical fiction should be like: it's not that this was somehow better than everything else, it was merely relevatory. Historical fiction can be about religion, power, families, war and how to card wool. (You don't have to pick if you are an inside or outside person! Girls, you can be both Thayet and Buri!) The protagonist can be cheerfully bisexual, too. It's as though all of the novels we have determinedly pretended were about gals being in love with other gals came true, and also the heroine gutted bad guys and was eventually canonized.

Everything is Teeth - Evie Wyld and Joe Sumner art, teeth were a big theme this year (as ever) and this is the one where a) no one talks about the shameful inequalities in provision of dental care to children in the United States and b) no one fucks a fish. just letting the distinguished reader know that I have a selection process for what I read, I can see how that might not be clear. I would be delighted to talk about a) and b) mentioned here, or anything else I read this year.

Water Dogs - Lewis Robinson fiction, re-read, always always. the person who loves novels about well-off and unusual families falling apart in opulent squalor either literal or metaphoric and maybe murder? that person is tuv. Inexplicably, no part of this was ever published in The New Yorker.

Margaret the First - Danielle Dutton fiction, on the recommendation of @elanormcinerney The subgenre of “garrulous historical person in his or her own words" is becoming something of a crowded field (Ruth Scurr's book on/with John Aubrey is the other best entrant, there are others) and the artistry involved in this example is particularly fulfilling. This is smart and I remembered all the stuff about science and poetry that Arts & Letters Daily is always trying to teach me. That's why to read women, among other reasons. The smarts.

Blood in the Water - Heather Ann Thompson non-fiction, persistent mismanagement, gross racism, and inadequate communication turn out not to be the way to run an organization. This is really a masterpiece of microhistory, about the Attica Prison Uprising, and the ways in which people in power blind themselves to consequences of their actions, while the people who suffer the consequences of those actions suffer and continue to suffer.

See Under: Love - David Grossman trans Betsy Rosenberg fiction, goes well with the Quay Brothers' "Street of Crocodiles," while we are talking about Bruno Schulz. I read parts of it in my head to the neighbors' dog. the dog understood. my voice would have shredded with sadness if I had spoken. thanks, Astro, for being there.

Sarong Party Girls - Cheryl Lu-Lien Tan fiction, this is the novel that Kevin Kwan isn't tough enough to have written. It's about how grown-ups deal with the consequences of their actions, and also about drinking with pals. A person can be both of those things, and Jazzy is that, and more.

Emotionally Weird - Kate Atkinson fiction, a strong taste for the picaresque, and a crystalline capture of youthful aimlessness and disorder even as it is being shaped by larger forces. Effie wanders through words and life, and I had a wonderful time with this one summer afternoon. No one else appears to have much liked this book, other people are wrong, it's funny. It is profoundly show-offy and unrelateable to play parlor games in the car, say book reviewers with terrible personalities -- sounds like someone lost a game of fives recently. (I’m very good at the game of fives, and I did not quite feel personally criticized when this book was unpopular, if only because I have my expertise at ‘name five mountaineers who did not climb Mount Everest’ to console me.)

A Line Made By Walking - Sara Baume fiction, I just really love books about depressed women acting as they see fit.

Chemistry - Weike Wang fiction, I just really love books about depressed women acting as they see fit.

The Gentleman’s Guide to Vice and Virtue - Mackenzi Lee fiction, recommended by @mysharkwillgoon see "Hild" above, books are just better when the main character solves problems and kisses everyone. This is how historical romances should be, this is what we have all received for those years of crossing our fingers under the cover of a Heyer and hoping 'maybe he'll love his best friend! maybe she'll tell her cousin what she really thinks!" and they DO. and then they escape from pirates, “The Monk,” and robbers.

Raven Rock - Garrett Graff non-fiction, read this first and then think about how we all got from there to a study of underground bunkers and the places where some of us were going to go when the rest of us died. Offutt AFB is along the way, which only served to remind me that I have family in Nebraska and I live in fear of the day when one of them does some casual genealogy and we have to talk; "so. your state. big in the planning for our forthcoming and yet reucrring nuclear crisis, howdoes that feel? feels powerful and also sickening, yeah? anyway, your great-aunt's ashes aren't scattered in the Lincoln Tunnel, but we thought about it."

The Art of Charlie Chan Hock Chye - Sonny Liew art, here is what we are up against. The theme this year appears to have been "weeping at what could have been." This is a first rate textbook, and a cunning subversion of the whole notion of textbooks. I learned a great deal from this; had I learned nothing, my eye would still have wandered along, marvelling at the layout. There are several overlapping stories about narrative, success, and Singaporean history, yet the metatextuality (horrible word, apologies) is never confrontational. Which is truly a pleasure.

The Story of a Brief Marriage - Anuk Arudpragasam fiction, this is the book I've been telling everyone about as my fave book on the year. Only the most literary of adjectives will suffice: brutal, lyrical, lambent, noctilucent, I'm just typing words.

The Unwomanly Face of War - Sveltana Alexievich trans Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky non-fiction, more incisive than more recent collections, and in a shimmering translation. Pevear and Volokhonsky have tossed words out like diamonds on black velvet. The rare wartime history that is more appealing without a map.

City of Lost Souls - Cassandra Clare oh give me a fucking break, Jonathan nee Sebastian brainwashed Jace nee whatever while they were in the magical flying Gormenghast pied a terre, they absolutely schtupped.

#books 2017

8 notes · View notes