stunt_muppet

What's the last thing you wrote?

Those song-length ficlets I posted recently. What, you mean like actual fic? In that case, it was a whoniverse1000 ficlet whose pairing is A Secret for now.

Was it any good?

*shrug*

What's the first thing you ever wrote that you still have?

I’m quite certain that, somewhere in the boxes upon boxes of paper that clutter up my room, I could still find the printed chapters of the epic-length Digimon fics I wrote when I was twelve. I think they’re gone from my hard drive, though.

Write poetry?

Nope. Not often, anyway.

Angsty poetry?

But prose is so angsty all on its own! :D

Most fun character you ever wrote?

You mean most fun character, or most fun to write? For the latter, I guess I’d have to be predictable and go with Jo Grant. Her voice comes very easily to me, whether she’s being serious or silly. Catherine Willows is easy for me so long as I’m not writing anything serious, since she’s very dry and sarcastic and dry is fun to write.

Most annoying character you ever wrote?

It took me forever to learn how to write about ten lines of the Second Doctor, and that was in a silly, fluffy fic (which always come easier to me than serious fic). Even those ten lines I kept going back and correcting, worried that I was drifting into caricature. I’m not entirely sure I didn’t, come to think of it.

Also, I’ve never yet successfully written Robert Goren, Gil Grissom, or Greg House. They always sound wrong when I write them.

Best plot you ever wrote?

I write plots? News to me. My plotty fic, sadly, tends to not get finished (though I’m really, really hoping to change that – nose to the grindstone and all), so while I have some really good plots thought up few of them are committed to paper.

Coolest plot twist you ever wrote?

Um…I guess those would be the ones in the only plotty fic I almost finished? Which actually isn’t very good and is for a fandom nobody on my flist has heard of?

How often do you get writer's block?

More often than I don’t get writer’s block, ha. Sadly, writer’s block is a periodic thing for me.

How do you fix it?

Whining on LJ and waiting for it to stop. :D Seriously, alternating between writing absolutely anything I can manage and then taking a break once that becomes too frustrating usually works.

Do you type or write by hand?

I normally type, simply because it’s faster. I used to write by hand much more, but I’ve found that I’ve become so used to being able to delete things and move paragraphs around and add things instantaneously that my hand-writing is increasingly a thing of necessity. That said, if I have no computer, I will handwrite copiously.

Do you save everything you write?

Almost.  There are a few things I was so ashamed of I deleted, but even stuff I don’t like gets dumped on the hard drive. I haven’t the heart to delete it, and I keep thinking that maybe one day I could go back and make it better (even though I rarely do).

Do you ever go back to an old idea long after you abandoned it?

Ideas for old fics are perpetually recycled; a defunct fic in one fandom might find itself cannibalized, years later, into a completely different situation. And sometimes, just sometimes, I really do go back and fix those old fics I don’t like very much. So the answer is yes.

What's your favorite thing that you've written?

In the Doctor Who fandom: Call it a tie between The Waiting-Room World and Concerning Multiverse Theory. TWRW was something I’d wanted to do since I saw The Ark in Space, and it’s the kind of secondary-character-focused fic that I love reading in the Whoniverse and was really hoping to write. CMT, by contrast, was %100 pure self-indulgence, every letter of it, and while it caused me much writerly emo once it was finished and I still can’t figure out if it’s actually any good, writing it was an absolute thrill.

Out of all my fic, this is a bit sad, but probably Mind on the Job, a Horatio/Marisol fic that was so, so heavy on the fluff, but which I wrote late at night all in one go and loved every second of.

However, I have to note that That Old Plotty Fic I was talking about holds a dear and special place in my heart, even though I never finished it and it isn’t very good. I almost finished it, I intricately plotted it out, and it was the first time I really, truly dove into fandom. I keep meaning to go back to it.

What's everyone else's favorite thing that you've written?

I honestly don’t know. Call it Staying, because 1) it got recced by someone in the DW fandom whose writing I respect, 2) the feedback I got on it from whoniverse1000 was all good, and 3) it’s got the highest hitcount of any of my Teaspoon fics.

Outside of Doctor Who, probably She Sees Through Shadows, because it’s one of like ten Alexx Woods fics out there. Seriously, fandom, Moar Alexx Love.

Do you ever show people your work?

People outside of LJ? Unless they’re in fandom themselves, no. And even then, I don’t show people my fic unless they’d see it through my LJ anyway. I’m still very much a closet geek.

Exception: I’ve let my Dad beta my Law and Order fic on occasion, and he helped me with the ending of Old Friends and Observers. But he’s Dad, so it’s different. And even then, there’s little I let him see.

I don’t show my original fiction to much of anyone, unless it’s for a school assignment. I should probably change that so I can actually get better. But oh well.

Who's your favorite constructive critic?

Any and all of the people who’ve betaed for me, left me concrit, or done both. You all are amazing and I don’t know what I’d do without you.

Did you ever write a novel?

Nope. Never finished.

Have you ever written fantasy, sci-fi, or horror?

Yes to the first two, especially fantasy (which, up until I got into crime drama fandoms, was pretty much all I wrote). I’ve never written horror; I’m not sure if I can, since I don’t know how to scare people.

Ever written romance or teen angsty drama?

Romance, yes, and I’m afraid it’s probably at least a third of what I’ve written. As for teen angsty drama, I can proudly say no. Not even when I was an angsty, drama-prone teen. I wrote horrid action movie pastiches instead. :D

What's one genre you have never written, and probably never will?

Probably darkfic. I don’t think I have the guts to do something truly troubling to the characters I love, and besides I’m sure I lack the writing skill to pull off something really dark without it becoming angsty or boring.

I’d add smut to the list too, but I retain a bloody-minded determination to write it despite not nearly enjoying it as much as I try to make people think I do.

How many writing projects are you working on right now?

Oh, golly. In all my fandoms, I think it comes to something like twenty, most of which are unofficial and self-assigned (and not written yet) and will probably die without so much as a whimper but a few which are obligatory in nature. I just keep taking on projects, even though I know I can’t finish them. I don’t know why. Maybe my attention span really is that bad.

Do you want to write for a living?

Yes, but not fiction. Actually, let me clarify: I’d love to write fiction for a living, but I also recognize that it’s not necessarily a realistic goal, and I’m really fond of having a roof over my head and food to eat. I do, however, want to go into scientific/technical writing, and if I have time to write fiction on the side (which I probably will), so much the better.

Have you ever won an award for your writing?

Not that I recall at the moment. She Sees Through Shadows won Best Character Study – Alexx at last year’s csifanficawards, but it was also the only entrant, so I don’t think that counts.

Have you ever written something for a magazine or newspaper?

Yep – I’ve done a few op-eds and informative pieces for work, though the ones that went to the papers didn’t have my name on them (they had the name of the company president). Something for the portfolio!

Ever written something in script or play format?

Tidbit: the first fantasy “novel” I ever started began its life as a video game script, except I didn’t know how those scripts were formatted or anything about them, really. It later morphed into proper story form, but there were about sixty pages of it in script format before I made the transition.

Then there was that screenplay I started writing in eleventh grade…I should finish that one too, actually. It wasn’t entirely bad.

What is your favorite word?

Depends on the context, the situation, what I’m using it for, or just what I feel like at the moment. I’ve been hung up on the word “aerogel” recently, though. And yes, there’s a reason.

Do you ever write based on yourself?

I imagine bits and pieces of my personality filter down into everything I write, by virtue of the fact that it’s me writing it and no text is completely shorn of the influence of its author. But my original characters aren’t usually based on me. Sometimes they’re based on who I wish I was (and are thus a handy-dandy way of showing me why being that sort of person would be just as bad, and good, as being who I actually am), but rarely are they me.

Which of your characters most resembles you?

Of the fic characters? Can’t say. Let me find my way to a stamping comm or two and I’ll get back to you.

Of my original characters, there are a few who are very, very me – indeed, more me than I realized at the time. But as I’ve never shown you all the stories they’re in, it’d be pointless to name them here.

Where do you get ideas for your characters?

Um…from the shows they’re in?

Oh, you mean original characters. I really don’t know. They just sort of come to me, usually as a line of dialogue or a participant in a single, disconnected scene.

Let’s take Jean, for example. Jean really came into being because of my trip to Nashville; all the Elvis paraphernalia there made me curious about the culture of Elvis, specifically about impersonators – what’s it like being someone else for a living, only not really because everyone knows you’re not really Elvis?

And so I decided I wanted to write a character who was an Elvis impersonator. Specifically, a female Elvis impersonator. That was all I knew about her at first, but from there on, she’s grown. (She’s one of my favorite OCs to write, too.)

Do you ever write based on your dreams?

I don’t usually remember my dreams, so no. When I do, they don’t make enough sense to be a story.

Do you prefer happy endings, sad endings, or cliff-hangers?

Depends on what kind of mood I’m in. I’m a big softie most of the time and love a happy ending, even if the characters have to run the gauntlet to get it, but bleak fic can be lovely too – indeed, some of the best fic makes me feel like I’ve been punched in the gut. And really, how do you know going into a fic that it’ll be a cliffhanger?

…I realized way too late that this was supposed to be about my own writing. Most of my stories have happy-to-ambivalent endings for the same reasons I don’t write darkfic – I don’t have the guts to do something really depressing and/or twisted to my characters. I can do you a downbeat ending (The Waiting-Room World, than are dreamt in your philosophy, etc), and the occasional cliffhanger, but that’s about it.

Actually, I hadn’t noticed until now, but my Who-fic skews way more downbeat than my other fic. Huh.

Have you ever written anything based on an artwork you've seen?

I think so. I can’t really remember. I’m sure I must have, at some point…I wrote a free-verse poem addressed to Andy Warhol once. Does that count?

Are you concerned with spelling and grammar as you write?

Yep. Much though I try to freewrite, I cannot bite back the urge to self-correct as I type. I can’t leave a misspelling in there if I know where and what it is, and while I can ignore grammar and punctuation if I’m just winging it, once I actually write the fic proper I get a little anal-retentive about that sort of thing. And yet, inevitably, I miss something and end up looking silly. C’est la vie.

[ETA] A HA HA and there was a typo in this very paragraph. Oh the irony.

Does music help you write?

Sometimes; sometimes I need silence, and the music will be too much distraction, but sometimes music I’m familiar with provides just the level of background noise I need to really focus. In that case, it’ll usually be soft, quiet, new-agey music going in the background.

Sometimes a specific song will inspire me, in which case it helps to have it playing. And, for some reason, I can’t work on The Memory Always Lies properly without having listened to Sparks’ “There’s No Such Thing as Aliens” at least five times. No idea why.

Are people surprised and confused when they find out you write well?

A ha ha I see what you did there, meme. I’ve had people compliment me before, but they don’t seem particularly surprised. Although my creative writing teacher did tell me that I pleasantly surprised her by not quitting the class. I’m not sure whether to take that as a compliment or not.