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pensnestI'd always meant to do these...
Day 10: Create a fanwork. Leave a comment in this post saying you did it. Include a link to your post if you feel comfortable doing so.
Taking Turns is the fanwork I managed to create this year. So, that's done.
Day 11: In your own space, talk about your creative process(es) — anything from the initial inspiration to how you feel after something’s done. Do you struggle with motivation or is it a smooth process? Do you have any tricks up your sleeve to pull out when a fanwork isn’t cooperating? What is your level of planning to pantsing/winging it? Leave a comment in this post saying you did it. Include a link to your post if you feel comfortable doing so.
It varies, a bit, but most of the time it starts with other fans.
I could go through each and every one of the many (many!) stories on my website (or, okay, on AO3 under pensnest) and tell you what the inspiration was for most of them. It might have been a fic_requests prompt/request for a story about 'these two with snark, coffee and underwear', for instance. I think more than forty fics started like that. There were the sky_pie stories, all of which were things I wouldn't have done without that little challenge community. Popslash SeSas, and a bunch of other challenges of one kind or another. One of the things I most enjoyed about being in an active fandom is the way we encouraged each other to write. A huge number—probably the majority—of my stories have been written for challenges and exchanges.
A story may have been inspired less directly by other fans: a comment section to one ofnopseud's Pornutopia stories inspired my very first popslash effort; someone wistfully expressed the desire for more of a particular pairing; a discussion of people who don't notice they're writing rape; a bunch of stories about genderswap, or bodyswap, or masturbation, or… whatever. One way or another, I wrote a lot of stories as a response to other fans, to the 'fannish conversation'. With popslash, it was interesting how much more often I was inspired by other fans than by actual canon—with ST:TNG it was probably otherwise.
How does it work once I have the germ of a story? Hard to say. I dreamt one—admittedly it was a variation on somebody else's lava lamp story, but it was Very Touching. No, really. I used to make regular three-hour car journeys to visit my father, and quite a lot of stories wrote themselves in my head on the trip home (and then had to be remembered and refigured into actual words on a screen). Sometimes it's the first line, or the title.
The actual writing… some stories just flow merrily out from my fingers. Usually short ones! The most fun to write are the ones where I have a reasonable idea of what happens but I don't know *how*, because writing them is what enables me to discover them. I wrote The White Room in two or three days, producing a burst of words then suddenly stopping—what's next?—and having to make a cup of coffee or lunch or tidy the kitchen and then, back to the computer, re-read a couple of paragraphs and start typing again. It was exciting!
I don't, in general, plan. Sometimes the whole thing starts from a first line that I love—like A Night At The Palace and if you want to fly—or a title that arrives in my head before the story that goes with it, like The Christmas Tree Conspiracy, or in porco, veritas.
More likely, though, I have an essential idea in my head, frequently because there is a scene that came to me and sparked off the whole thing and I have to figure out how the characters get to that scene, and then what happens after it. True of Dragon Country, where The Scene was the rape scene (which was derived from a discussion in a pro author's LJ, most specifically, 'how do you rape a telepath?'); also true of The White Room, except that The Scene didn't actually get to be in the story at all, because (a) wrong POV, and (b) when I got to that point, the readers had all the information they needed and the scene wasn't necessary. (It would have been entirely fanfic-reasonable to write it anyway, but the story worked—and was, I think, better—without it.) I often find that once I've figured out the POV, the story suddenly fits into place. In that story, I had to write from the POV of the person who understood the least about what was happening, including his own reactions, because everyone else was at some point willing to talk about it, and he wasn't.
What I do find, sometimes, is that I have planted the seeds of the ending into the story anyway. It's weird, particularly when I'm not quite sure how the story is going to go! Once in a while I do have to go back and put things in so that the ending, which I have discovered as I write, has the reasonable quota of hints beforehand. The Pussycat and the Porcupine needed a few tweaks to the language to make the porcupine reference work. But I'm not one of those writers who works things out beforehand. I am one of those writers who can be surprised by the characters—I love this being surprised by what a character says or does, because it means they've come alive, and it often really helps me to figure out the story. The White Room, again—someone mentions Kelly, and it becomes entirely inevitable that she's part of the resolution, but I hadn't expected her to turn up and hadn't known how the story would end before she did.
It's been fun to have challenges which require me to write pairings I haven't written before, because a new pairing requires a new dynamic. Sometimes, of course, I've written a new pairing without an actual challenge (or at least, for a challenge that didn't require it of me): Bouquet I think was produced for a Big Bang challenge, and I learned to love Adam/Lance (very much!) as I wrote. It was an interesting balance, matching Lance, whom I'd been writing about for years at that point, with Adam, who was new to me—and I was careful not to read existing Glambert stories as I wanted to derive my own characterisation from what source material I had. I tried to be fair to both characters.
Thinking of Bouquet reminds me of another thing that I very often use while writing, which is form. I've done quite a few stories where the form is very much a foundation for me—Thirteen Years and Counting was interspersed with a Larry King interview (and the final speaker in each interview segment became the POV character for the next story segment). A Tale of Dreams and Asses used section titles taken from other places in the story. Bouquet had 'flower' headings for different sections. Shade was written to be told backwards. And of course there were the blank verse offerings… I don't think I've done this kind of form-based storytelling in recent years, but early in my popslash writing career it was definitely something I enjoyed and found helpful for the process.
There are times, of course, when writing is like slogging through tar. I don't usually self-generate stories which are hard to write (except The Wallow, which is a special case), but as a high proportion of my fic has been written for challenges, there have been stories I have *had* to write, however much of a slog. I've often found myself staring at what exists, adding a sentence, editing a word here or there, and giving up for the day. I guess that results from an external impetus, and until I find my own love for the story I'm telling, it is hard to tell. It usually happens, though - somewhere in the process I learn to love the story, at which point I can tell it. Though there have been many times when the very last lines made me sweat for days… I knew what to say, but couldn't find how!
Sadly for me, I don't seem to be very self-motivated. The thing about not having an active fandom is that those inspirations, those nudges to write, don't come any more, and if I'm going to write something I have to do it without the community and without the certainty of a readership. It's hard.
Day 10: Create a fanwork. Leave a comment in this post saying you did it. Include a link to your post if you feel comfortable doing so.
Taking Turns is the fanwork I managed to create this year. So, that's done.
Day 11: In your own space, talk about your creative process(es) — anything from the initial inspiration to how you feel after something’s done. Do you struggle with motivation or is it a smooth process? Do you have any tricks up your sleeve to pull out when a fanwork isn’t cooperating? What is your level of planning to pantsing/winging it? Leave a comment in this post saying you did it. Include a link to your post if you feel comfortable doing so.
It varies, a bit, but most of the time it starts with other fans.
I could go through each and every one of the many (many!) stories on my website (or, okay, on AO3 under pensnest) and tell you what the inspiration was for most of them. It might have been a fic_requests prompt/request for a story about 'these two with snark, coffee and underwear', for instance. I think more than forty fics started like that. There were the sky_pie stories, all of which were things I wouldn't have done without that little challenge community. Popslash SeSas, and a bunch of other challenges of one kind or another. One of the things I most enjoyed about being in an active fandom is the way we encouraged each other to write. A huge number—probably the majority—of my stories have been written for challenges and exchanges.
A story may have been inspired less directly by other fans: a comment section to one of
nopseud's Pornutopia stories inspired my very first popslash effort; someone wistfully expressed the desire for more of a particular pairing; a discussion of people who don't notice they're writing rape; a bunch of stories about genderswap, or bodyswap, or masturbation, or… whatever. One way or another, I wrote a lot of stories as a response to other fans, to the 'fannish conversation'. With popslash, it was interesting how much more often I was inspired by other fans than by actual canon—with ST:TNG it was probably otherwise.How does it work once I have the germ of a story? Hard to say. I dreamt one—admittedly it was a variation on somebody else's lava lamp story, but it was Very Touching. No, really. I used to make regular three-hour car journeys to visit my father, and quite a lot of stories wrote themselves in my head on the trip home (and then had to be remembered and refigured into actual words on a screen). Sometimes it's the first line, or the title.
The actual writing… some stories just flow merrily out from my fingers. Usually short ones! The most fun to write are the ones where I have a reasonable idea of what happens but I don't know *how*, because writing them is what enables me to discover them. I wrote The White Room in two or three days, producing a burst of words then suddenly stopping—what's next?—and having to make a cup of coffee or lunch or tidy the kitchen and then, back to the computer, re-read a couple of paragraphs and start typing again. It was exciting!
I don't, in general, plan. Sometimes the whole thing starts from a first line that I love—like A Night At The Palace and if you want to fly—or a title that arrives in my head before the story that goes with it, like The Christmas Tree Conspiracy, or in porco, veritas.
More likely, though, I have an essential idea in my head, frequently because there is a scene that came to me and sparked off the whole thing and I have to figure out how the characters get to that scene, and then what happens after it. True of Dragon Country, where The Scene was the rape scene (which was derived from a discussion in a pro author's LJ, most specifically, 'how do you rape a telepath?'); also true of The White Room, except that The Scene didn't actually get to be in the story at all, because (a) wrong POV, and (b) when I got to that point, the readers had all the information they needed and the scene wasn't necessary. (It would have been entirely fanfic-reasonable to write it anyway, but the story worked—and was, I think, better—without it.) I often find that once I've figured out the POV, the story suddenly fits into place. In that story, I had to write from the POV of the person who understood the least about what was happening, including his own reactions, because everyone else was at some point willing to talk about it, and he wasn't.
What I do find, sometimes, is that I have planted the seeds of the ending into the story anyway. It's weird, particularly when I'm not quite sure how the story is going to go! Once in a while I do have to go back and put things in so that the ending, which I have discovered as I write, has the reasonable quota of hints beforehand. The Pussycat and the Porcupine needed a few tweaks to the language to make the porcupine reference work. But I'm not one of those writers who works things out beforehand. I am one of those writers who can be surprised by the characters—I love this being surprised by what a character says or does, because it means they've come alive, and it often really helps me to figure out the story. The White Room, again—someone mentions Kelly, and it becomes entirely inevitable that she's part of the resolution, but I hadn't expected her to turn up and hadn't known how the story would end before she did.
It's been fun to have challenges which require me to write pairings I haven't written before, because a new pairing requires a new dynamic. Sometimes, of course, I've written a new pairing without an actual challenge (or at least, for a challenge that didn't require it of me): Bouquet I think was produced for a Big Bang challenge, and I learned to love Adam/Lance (very much!) as I wrote. It was an interesting balance, matching Lance, whom I'd been writing about for years at that point, with Adam, who was new to me—and I was careful not to read existing Glambert stories as I wanted to derive my own characterisation from what source material I had. I tried to be fair to both characters.
Thinking of Bouquet reminds me of another thing that I very often use while writing, which is form. I've done quite a few stories where the form is very much a foundation for me—Thirteen Years and Counting was interspersed with a Larry King interview (and the final speaker in each interview segment became the POV character for the next story segment). A Tale of Dreams and Asses used section titles taken from other places in the story. Bouquet had 'flower' headings for different sections. Shade was written to be told backwards. And of course there were the blank verse offerings… I don't think I've done this kind of form-based storytelling in recent years, but early in my popslash writing career it was definitely something I enjoyed and found helpful for the process.
There are times, of course, when writing is like slogging through tar. I don't usually self-generate stories which are hard to write (except The Wallow, which is a special case), but as a high proportion of my fic has been written for challenges, there have been stories I have *had* to write, however much of a slog. I've often found myself staring at what exists, adding a sentence, editing a word here or there, and giving up for the day. I guess that results from an external impetus, and until I find my own love for the story I'm telling, it is hard to tell. It usually happens, though - somewhere in the process I learn to love the story, at which point I can tell it. Though there have been many times when the very last lines made me sweat for days… I knew what to say, but couldn't find how!
Sadly for me, I don't seem to be very self-motivated. The thing about not having an active fandom is that those inspirations, those nudges to write, don't come any more, and if I'm going to write something I have to do it without the community and without the certainty of a readership. It's hard.