InsaneJournal

There was fic last night:

- Things We Lost (and Found) in the War. [Snape/Minerva, NC-17]

Here, have a meme, wherein I talk about my writing:

(Stolen from either pir8fancier or rexlucus. Possibly both.)

Ideas.
Where the hell do they come from? Can you make those little fuckers show up?

Honestly, there's no rhyme or reason to this. Sometimes, I get bunnied by a sentence/situation/bit of subtext in canon. Sometimes, I find I want to explore the motivations behind a particular character's actions. Sometimes, something really silly or inane sets me off. Meme results, for example. Or a discussion. Or someone stringing together several random words in chat.

Wild horse-bunnies.
When a story just gets pulled right out of you. Do you get them?

Bunnies have attacked in the shower/on the drive home/while trying to sleep/in the middle of dinner with my parents more times than I can count. Occasionally, they go away on their own -- say, if I ignore them long enough, or I'm unable to get to the computer in a timely fashion. Some of the more persistent ones have forced me to do things like write boyslash on the back of a flyer while waiting for an oil change.

Writer's block.
Have you been scourged?

Definitely. In fact, my tendency towards writer's block is one of the reasons I'm terrified of writing professionally -- that and my gripping terror of deadlines. My ability to write disappears for long periods, and reappears in fits and starts. Office Space is ~23,000 words, and I wrote it in four days. In the Shade of Sunlight is under 3,000, and farted around with it for close to four months. I realised I averaged about a fic a week back in 2005, but I was unemployed most of that time. And some of those fics aren't so great -- in some cases you can totally tell I was writing just because I needed something to do, and not because I had a pressing need to write or something incredibly clever to say.

Clean up duty.
Do you like editing?

I loathe editing. Loathe it like burning. Unsurprisingly, this shows -- my early, circa 2004 forays into fandom are SPAG nightmares. I didn't have a beta, and I was too twitchy and lazy to go over my stuff with a fine-toothed comb, so. Spellcheck with only get you so far, when it comes to things like it's/its and to/too. Spellcheck also doesn't tell you the grammar rules for dialogue tags -- I had to learn that one the hard way.

Oddly enough, I edit a lot. Mainly because I'm squeamish about sending something off to beta that's chock full of sloppy errors. Also, when I get stuck, tweaking/reading over what I've already got can sometimes give me the kick in the pants I need to keep going.

The ending.
Is it hard for you to find the ending?

Usually not. Most of the time, I start off with a beginning and ending in mind, and then I try to connect to two with the waffle in the middle. The only time I have trouble wrapping things up is with PWPs, mainly because I feel silly closing with what's essentially 'Remus shot off, then Sirius shot off, the end.'

Sometimes, the waffle in the middle wanders too far off the beaten path. Take Houses of the Holy -- that was supposed to be a treatise on Regulus and Bellatrix's tragic and melodramatic romance, but what I got was a character study on Grimmauld Place in ten parts. You'll have that now and then, and I've learned not to derail that train. I used to, but that resulted in an ending that felt forced, or waffle in the middle that didn't seem to connect to anything.

The title.
Where do you get yours? Do you have yours when you start the story?

I fail at titles, in general. No, really. A few of my fics have fairly neat titles, but those instances involved advice from others, the raping and pillaging of song lyrics, or sheer dumb luck. Only once in the history of ever have I started a fic with the title in mind. It's always the last thing I come up with. In some cases, I've sat on a finished fic for two or three days because I couldn't think of anything.

Plot.
If you plot out your stories first, raise your hand.

This is pretty fifty-fifty. Sometimes, I just start. I work diligently toward that ending I have in mind, and whatever happens along the way happens along the way. When I do plot, it's not a big production with charts and diagrams and character outlines. It's a similar process to the first, in that I start and work diligently toward that ending I have in mind -- the difference being that I try to craft the middle ground around a few touchstones I've already established.

POV.
How do you choose your POV for a scene? For a story?

Honestly, that depends on both the needs of the scene, and who I'm comfortable with. In HP, I tend to default to Sirius, and mostly for selfish reasons -- we're a fair bit alike in some ways, so I'm frighteningly at home inside his head. Beyond him, I fairly good with James, Remus, Regulus, Harry, and Ron. Also (and strangely), Stan Shunpike and Ginny Weasley. Whether I use one POV for the whole piece or switch between scenes, I usually try and spin things so I'm working with one of those people. I'm the same with Good Omens; I love Crowley like burning, so I write from his POV at every available opportunity.

An Introductory Course to Inter-House Relations was a big step for me, in the POV department. It was 8,000 words from the desk of Blaise Zabini, and most of those words concerned Neville Longbottom, both of whom are well outside my comfort zone.

Oddly enough, my POV guidelines for HP and Good Omens to not apply elsewhere. I love Wednesday to bits, but I almost always write American Gods fics from Shadows or Loki's POV. I also love Hawkeye, but I used Trapper's POV for my one and only M*A*S*H fic. This is mainly because I think Wednesday and Hawkeye are far more interesting through observation.

I'm fairly certain I would use the same approach if I ever took the plunge into bandom. I enjoy reading bandslash in just about any POV, but. I would probably write Patrick/Pete from Patrick's POV and Frank/Gerard from Frank's, simply because I find Pete and Gerard fascinating to watch. The same applies for Gabe Saporta, assuming I could trick myself into channelling William Beckett or Travis McCoy.

Challenge.
Do you like them? Do they inspire you?

Yes and no. At the end of the day, it mostly depends on the prompt. If I get something too restrictive, I start freaking out about meeting all the requirements on the laundry list. If I get something to loose and floppy, I spend a good week floundering around without writing a word because I don't know where to start.

I mainly sign up for them because it keeps me writing. I've written enough fics about enough pairings that I've pretty much covered all the available ground, and challenges allow me to work around that -- like, I've already written The One Where James and Sirius Accidentally Frot in a Broom Cupboard, and there's a good chance eleventy-one other people have as well, so as much as I want to, I'm not going to write it again, unless someone asks me to.

Sex.
Do you like writing sex?

It's funny I'm saying this, since most of my earlier fics were shameless PWPs, but not really. Not any more. Of course, this is probably because so many of my earlier fics were shameless PWPs. More and more, I get halfway through a porn scene and have to pause for a quick nervous breakdown because I'm absolutely positive that I've written this blowjob before.