write like you need it to survive

processfest Day 6: Skills

What is something you are really good at? What's one part of your process that you just strike out of the park, every time? Now is absolutely the time to brag. Give yourself credit. Tell us about your special skills.

I am a fucking wizard at writing long.



Day 7: Luxury Desert Island

Damn, you just got news that you're stuck in this luxury one-person resort on a desert island with no interruptions, a complete buffet of your favorite food and beverages, an iPod full of your favorite music, and anything else you need to create. What would you work on?

No interruptions means no unwanted interruptions, right? I mean, my own brain is kind of a machine for manufacturing interruptions, and as I think we've established in past posts, my process kind of requires me to talk to other people about what I'm writing, so I'm gonna need a solid high-speed internet connection if I want to create anything.

But stipulating all that plus plenty of creature comfort and a comfortably warm environment and some lovely scenery, what would I write?

Uh... basically the same stuff I write now, although hopefully a bit faster?

I would probably make more of an effort to divide my time and work on both original and fic writing, but my basic priorities would remain the same: write my hc_bingo and fandomaid stories, and then all the other next things in the order they're placed on the priority list.

There is probably some kind of irony in the fact that, if I didn't have to worry about money and therefore didn't have to spend eight hours a day at work, the thing that I would be most likely to start writing more of is... the kind of writing that might eventually generate money. There's some kind of catch-22 there.


Day 8: Pep Talk Story

Uhhh, hm. The Charlie-Eppes-hitting-himself-in-the-head-with-a-rock story is honestly my favorite one to tell about my own writing.

Jigsaw is, I suppose, my best story about a story in terms of encouraging people to stick with an idea they love. I came up with the idea in about 2004--back when OT4 was still slightly outré--and I loved it to pieces, but I was in no kind of emotional place right then to actually attempt writing Stargate SG-1 OT4 fic. The idea just lurked in my brain for the next five years, until I had a little SG-1 renaissance in 2009 and decided to start writing it, because why the hell not. I promptly hit a wall at what would have been the first sex scene, if the story had sex scenes, and wandered off for another year or so, during which iulia asked for it as a birthday present and I entirely failed to deliver it.

And then some set of circumstances collided and I started working on it again; I even decided to sign up for the SG-1 bigbang with it, and I wrote and wrote and wrote and got betaed and tore my hair and interpolated whole new scenes to make things work better and wrote some more and, voila! Seven years after I wanted to write it, there the story was.

So don't give up on your story, even if you think the moment for it has passed, even if you think you've lost all momentum and can never find it again. If you love the story, it will wait for you, and sooner or later you'll find your way to the end.

processfest Day 3:

Do you work on multiple projects at once? If you do, how do you juggle them? Do they fight for your attention? Or are you singularly focused? Do you set aside specific time for one project or many projects, or do you let yourself be guided by what you want to work on the most?

Ahahahaaha oh God. Yes. Yes, multiple projects. ( Very yes. )


Day 4:

What do you consider a challenge for you? What is something that's hard for you? What part of your process trips you up? What do you wrestle with? What's always in your notes from your beta? What's the part of your process that makes you throw your hands up and go "This? Again? ARGH!"

1. I offset "too" and "now" with commas in a totally unnecessary way.
2. I have this penchant for writing things as reveals that don't need to be reveals, and I will contort the story to conceal some random piece of information so that it can be DRAMATICALLY REVEALED later in a way that does not actually serve the story at all, and then Iulia sighs and says, "This doesn't make sense, you need to just set this up linearly, that doesn't need to be a reveal," and I tell her she doesn't understand my ART, and then 24 hours later I say, "Um, I think I fixed it."
3. Writing basically anything that is not an emotionally charged conversation is usually cause for me whining and dragging my feet and complaining about what a stupid hobby writing is and why do I have to write ACTION SEQUENCES again or PORN, WHO CARES ABOUT PORN or WHY DO I HAVE TO DESCRIBE WHAT ANYTHING OR ANYONE LOOKS LIKE. But I'm getting pretty good at sucking it up and getting it done.

...Because obviously the key to me posting lots is a) memes where I talk about myself and b) really, really not wanting to work on my yagkyas fic. SO!

processfest Day 1 Prompt: Where do you create? What does your work space look like?



This is where the magic happens. I sit in my recliner at the right-hand end of the sectional with my feet up and misuse my lapdesk as a horizontal surface to hold my Diet Coke, and in between refreshing Tumblr and whining to people over IM and IRC about how much I hate writing, I write.

You can't see it from screen glare, but I also put 750words.com in the picture, because that is also where I do a lot of my writing. When all other motivation fails, sometimes the satisfaction of keeping a streak alive or earning another animal badge gets me moving. I didn't even know there WAS a badge for racking up a total of 500,000 words on the site (which took me three or four years) until I hit that milestone and the badge appeared. WHO KNOWS WHAT I COULD STUMBLE INTO NEXT? Maybe there's a special badge for writing a really epic number of NC-17 rated 750s. MAYBE I WILL FIND OUT. FOR SCIENCE.