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tocryaboutChapter 3 is done and I'm letting it steep a bit. I had several different directions I wanted to go in, and was also a little antsy about the fact that I intended to have more Jean and Scott but they haven't been around much.
Right now, "letting it sit" means giving it 24 hours or so; sometimes it means putting things aside for months at a time. I write poetry the fastest, and I've had the most success with it. Original novels are hardest (although I did my draft this summer in three months), but I just love the novel as a form. I like my worlds to be big, my plots expansive. I don't like the way short fiction demands an ending after a moment of revelation, because to me epiphanies don't work like that. I need a lot of epiphanies to stack up before I'll change, and my characters are the same.
I do wish I could write original fic this fast, but when most of the characters are already written for you it's just easier. And as much as I dislike the "it's only fanfic" excuse, knowing that it doesn't have to be OMG GREAT ART makes it easier to avoid the crippling perfectionism to which I'm prone. I have about sixteen different variations on the opening for my novel, some of which would require massive rewrites for POV and tense. And if I thought any of them would work, I'd do those rewrites. At the moment I'm just not sure how the thing would work for anyone else, but I'm not satisfied with it enough to show it to someone.
But hey, you might see an excerpt here one day. Just hold your nose and pretend it's fanfic.
1. You're a handsome devil. What’s your name?
Alex. The female kind.
2. Ever write under any other name?
I have a couple of poems published under my full name in school publications (the last one was OutWRITE! or however they want us to spell it, the GLBT writing publication).
3. Look around you. How did you end up here?
This journal is![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
waterstrider's Mini Me.
4. Favourite line from the song you're listening to right now, or last listened to?
Best boy triple-sport killer is calm, carving the bird.
He loads the plates.
Outside in the street, a vigil of girls sing songs
and hold candles.
He loves his mom and he loves his own bed,
loves the things that Jesus said,
if she can't be pure she might as well be dead.
He hears a voice through a hole in his head.
More than a line, but it's one of Dave Bidini's best lyrics. Rheostatics, "Feed Yourself", The Blue Hysteria. The song makes me sick and afraid, but it's just such a perfect piece of work.
5. What's the last movie you saw that inspired something ficcish in you?
Well, X-Men.
6. Is there a character you'd like to write, but can't-- and why the hell can't you?
No particular examples come to mind, but only because I write relatively little fanfic. I do know the feeling, though.
7. We all hate favourite questions, I know, but-- who's your favourite character (a) to read? (b) to write?
X-Men: (a) Scott, Ororo (b) Charles, Hank
Enterprise: Reed, for both
DS9: Bashir, Garak, and the Bajoran characters like Winn and Bareil (when well done)
Highlander: Methos and Joe. Not 'shipping, but individually and together they're great.
8. Who's your least favourite character (a) to read? (b) to write?
Logan is often written badly, as sort of a male canon Mary Sue. Completely badass, never does anything wrong or stupid, acts like a prick without serious consequences, other characters shown as "weak" next to him.
I also don't like to write villains, just because I don't tend to write stories that have external villains. Someone else could write a scene with Magneto being dastardly and it would be great; I would try to do the same thing and it would sound horrible and melodramatic. (I do think I'm good with political villains, though, because I've been on both sides of the political spectrum and am pretty familiar with what fanaticism feels like.)
9. Is there a story you'd like to write, but can't-- and why can't you?
On one of the communities, someone brought up the idea of Bashir having to join with the Dax symbiont for some reason (the conceit being that Bashir's genetically engineered body would be able to accept it). I badly want to play with this, but I would worry about being derivative. I'm also having trouble with imagining what it would be like to become someone you've had a ruinous crush on for years, although that's just the part that's interesting to me.
10. What's a title you've always wanted to use, but haven't had the opportunity yet?
I had "Not Deprived of the Sea", a Robert Graves line, written down for awhile. I really don't like to "save up" titles like that, or write based on titles either.
11. What was the first story you ever completed, and what do you think of it now?
My first one? The first story I ever wrote was a cautionary tale about My Little Ponies burning the house down, when I was three (I dictated it to my mother). It was a bit derivative off the back of the My Little Pony box, but the climactic rescue scene by the older pony showed potential.
My first fanfic was "Kinetic Pulse", a mildly slashy Enterprise fic. I did some research on ballistics for it, and it involved Reed's father blowing his brains out at an opportune moment. Google denies all knowledge that such a story ever existed.
12. What was the last story you completed, and what do you think of it now?
I'm so bad about completing stuff. "Full Moon over Russia" is really just about done, but I don't like it very much.
13. Where do you do most of your writing?
In Microsoft Word. Sittin' here at my desk in my dorm room. Sasquatch was completed half at Tim Horton's, half in the spare bedroom
of my aunt's house in Ottawa.
14. Do you have any fic taboos?
I don't write sex, more because I'm not good at it than because of personal morality. I also feel that rape fantasies and hurt/comfort fics are emotionally manipulative and morally distasteful, but hey, that's me.
15. What made you start writing fic? Were you filled with creative juices, or was it a random act of plot correction?
I wrote the Enterprise story because at the time (early on in the first season), Reed had not been given much backstory. I wanted to do a little exploring around his ideals of self-sacrifice, his father-figure issues, his fascination with weaponry, and his emotional withdrawal. Yes, all that in one short story. I have a tendency to do too much that way.
16. Who has influenced your style the most?
In fanfic, Minisinoo. My writing in general is influenced by Robertson Davies, Dave Duncan, Charles De Lint, L.M. Montgomery, and Margaret Atwood. (Holy CanLit, Batman! I restricted myself to reading mainly Canadian authors when I was a young adolescent, in a frenzy of perhaps misplaced patriotism.)
17. What is the sexiest word?
I don't know from sexy. Nonetheless, I would say that the prize should go to silicon. Just rolls off the tongue.
18. What is the least sexy word?
Expedient, maybe, or any Latinate MBA type word.
19. What's the word you use too much/often?
Perhaps, maybe, certainly, possibly, etc. I got a bad case of the adverbs.
20. You're a writer. By definition you are plagued and pursued by images. So what image is burned into your brain right now?
Not a new image, but lately I've been thinking about this story: a girl throwing up over the side of a ferry, her brother at the kitchen table surrounded by theology books, two girls in a grocery store late at night buying a cartful of food to binge on, deliberately, to see what it would be like to be bulimic.
21. If you were going to write professionally under an assumed name, what would that name be?
I am going to write professionally, but wouldn't use a pen-name. If I did, though...I think I would want to play a man, or be androgynous. J.M. Winter or Martin D. MacNeil.
22. If you'd made out this survey, what question would you have asked that I didn't?
How harshly should we judge fan fiction? According to a professional standard? Somewhere below that? Not at all?
Right now, "letting it sit" means giving it 24 hours or so; sometimes it means putting things aside for months at a time. I write poetry the fastest, and I've had the most success with it. Original novels are hardest (although I did my draft this summer in three months), but I just love the novel as a form. I like my worlds to be big, my plots expansive. I don't like the way short fiction demands an ending after a moment of revelation, because to me epiphanies don't work like that. I need a lot of epiphanies to stack up before I'll change, and my characters are the same.
I do wish I could write original fic this fast, but when most of the characters are already written for you it's just easier. And as much as I dislike the "it's only fanfic" excuse, knowing that it doesn't have to be OMG GREAT ART makes it easier to avoid the crippling perfectionism to which I'm prone. I have about sixteen different variations on the opening for my novel, some of which would require massive rewrites for POV and tense. And if I thought any of them would work, I'd do those rewrites. At the moment I'm just not sure how the thing would work for anyone else, but I'm not satisfied with it enough to show it to someone.
But hey, you might see an excerpt here one day. Just hold your nose and pretend it's fanfic.
1. You're a handsome devil. What’s your name?
Alex. The female kind.
2. Ever write under any other name?
I have a couple of poems published under my full name in school publications (the last one was OutWRITE! or however they want us to spell it, the GLBT writing publication).
3. Look around you. How did you end up here?
This journal is
waterstrider's Mini Me.4. Favourite line from the song you're listening to right now, or last listened to?
Best boy triple-sport killer is calm, carving the bird.
He loads the plates.
Outside in the street, a vigil of girls sing songs
and hold candles.
He loves his mom and he loves his own bed,
loves the things that Jesus said,
if she can't be pure she might as well be dead.
He hears a voice through a hole in his head.
More than a line, but it's one of Dave Bidini's best lyrics. Rheostatics, "Feed Yourself", The Blue Hysteria. The song makes me sick and afraid, but it's just such a perfect piece of work.
5. What's the last movie you saw that inspired something ficcish in you?
Well, X-Men.
6. Is there a character you'd like to write, but can't-- and why the hell can't you?
No particular examples come to mind, but only because I write relatively little fanfic. I do know the feeling, though.
7. We all hate favourite questions, I know, but-- who's your favourite character (a) to read? (b) to write?
X-Men: (a) Scott, Ororo (b) Charles, Hank
Enterprise: Reed, for both
DS9: Bashir, Garak, and the Bajoran characters like Winn and Bareil (when well done)
Highlander: Methos and Joe. Not 'shipping, but individually and together they're great.
8. Who's your least favourite character (a) to read? (b) to write?
Logan is often written badly, as sort of a male canon Mary Sue. Completely badass, never does anything wrong or stupid, acts like a prick without serious consequences, other characters shown as "weak" next to him.
I also don't like to write villains, just because I don't tend to write stories that have external villains. Someone else could write a scene with Magneto being dastardly and it would be great; I would try to do the same thing and it would sound horrible and melodramatic. (I do think I'm good with political villains, though, because I've been on both sides of the political spectrum and am pretty familiar with what fanaticism feels like.)
9. Is there a story you'd like to write, but can't-- and why can't you?
On one of the communities, someone brought up the idea of Bashir having to join with the Dax symbiont for some reason (the conceit being that Bashir's genetically engineered body would be able to accept it). I badly want to play with this, but I would worry about being derivative. I'm also having trouble with imagining what it would be like to become someone you've had a ruinous crush on for years, although that's just the part that's interesting to me.
10. What's a title you've always wanted to use, but haven't had the opportunity yet?
I had "Not Deprived of the Sea", a Robert Graves line, written down for awhile. I really don't like to "save up" titles like that, or write based on titles either.
11. What was the first story you ever completed, and what do you think of it now?
My first one? The first story I ever wrote was a cautionary tale about My Little Ponies burning the house down, when I was three (I dictated it to my mother). It was a bit derivative off the back of the My Little Pony box, but the climactic rescue scene by the older pony showed potential.
My first fanfic was "Kinetic Pulse", a mildly slashy Enterprise fic. I did some research on ballistics for it, and it involved Reed's father blowing his brains out at an opportune moment. Google denies all knowledge that such a story ever existed.
12. What was the last story you completed, and what do you think of it now?
I'm so bad about completing stuff. "Full Moon over Russia" is really just about done, but I don't like it very much.
13. Where do you do most of your writing?
In Microsoft Word. Sittin' here at my desk in my dorm room. Sasquatch was completed half at Tim Horton's, half in the spare bedroom
of my aunt's house in Ottawa.
14. Do you have any fic taboos?
I don't write sex, more because I'm not good at it than because of personal morality. I also feel that rape fantasies and hurt/comfort fics are emotionally manipulative and morally distasteful, but hey, that's me.
15. What made you start writing fic? Were you filled with creative juices, or was it a random act of plot correction?
I wrote the Enterprise story because at the time (early on in the first season), Reed had not been given much backstory. I wanted to do a little exploring around his ideals of self-sacrifice, his father-figure issues, his fascination with weaponry, and his emotional withdrawal. Yes, all that in one short story. I have a tendency to do too much that way.
16. Who has influenced your style the most?
In fanfic, Minisinoo. My writing in general is influenced by Robertson Davies, Dave Duncan, Charles De Lint, L.M. Montgomery, and Margaret Atwood. (Holy CanLit, Batman! I restricted myself to reading mainly Canadian authors when I was a young adolescent, in a frenzy of perhaps misplaced patriotism.)
17. What is the sexiest word?
I don't know from sexy. Nonetheless, I would say that the prize should go to silicon. Just rolls off the tongue.
18. What is the least sexy word?
Expedient, maybe, or any Latinate MBA type word.
19. What's the word you use too much/often?
Perhaps, maybe, certainly, possibly, etc. I got a bad case of the adverbs.
20. You're a writer. By definition you are plagued and pursued by images. So what image is burned into your brain right now?
Not a new image, but lately I've been thinking about this story: a girl throwing up over the side of a ferry, her brother at the kitchen table surrounded by theology books, two girls in a grocery store late at night buying a cartful of food to binge on, deliberately, to see what it would be like to be bulimic.
21. If you were going to write professionally under an assumed name, what would that name be?
I am going to write professionally, but wouldn't use a pen-name. If I did, though...I think I would want to play a man, or be androgynous. J.M. Winter or Martin D. MacNeil.
22. If you'd made out this survey, what question would you have asked that I didn't?
How harshly should we judge fan fiction? According to a professional standard? Somewhere below that? Not at all?
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2005-02-21 11:04 pm (UTC)Have you written them? Who writes them well, in your opinion? I'm always desperate for good Winn fic. Right now I'm writing Winn/Dukat, but I've promised to write Winn/Bareil eventually.
no subject
Date: 2005-03-16 07:11 am (UTC)I will write some DS9 stuff eventually; I love the show too much to stay away.
no subject
Date: 2005-03-19 01:40 am (UTC)Please write! The fandom needs more Winn-friendly writers.