(Crossposting from tumblr as a thing to reread in 6-12 months to gauge my writing progress.)
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phoenixfalls What is your total posted word count on AO3? (Go to your Works, then click Statistics.)
365,064
How often do you write?
Six to seven days a week. This may be surprising to some readers since I tend to post only one story or chapter update every few months, but up until late last year I was pretty inconsistent about writing (characterised by long stretches of procrastination and avoidance, then sudden bursts of manic writing). Nowadays, the bulk of my writing is actually taken up by pre-writing and multiple rounds of editing. I anticipate getting a bit faster as my ability to juggle multiple aspects of writing increases, but I suspect I will always be on the slower side of things.
Do you have a routine for writing?
I have two writing periods per 24 hours, usually lasting about an hour or two each.
#1 - late at night, after the Siblet goes to bed. I start at 8:30 or 9, then write until I go to bed around 10:30 (I’m fairly strict about my sleep time to manage my insomnia).
#2 - early afternoon. I’ll have lunch, then edit or continue writing from last night, depending on what point in my writing process I’m at and how coherent I was in my late night session.
At the end of each session, I leave a note to myself about what happens next (or what I expect to happen next) to save time on rereading.
I usually write a minimum of three drafts for any story: a longhand or dictated first draft (I drive a lot for my job, so a voice recorder has been invaluable), a transcribed second draft where I make some very rough edits and changes, and a cleaner third draft that I do multiple editing passes on. For longer or more complex stories, the number of drafts and editing passes increases.
What’s your favorite kinks/tropes/pairing?
1) I like stories about people in the liminal stages of their relationship. This is why I love friends-to-lovers and enemies-to-lovers (or enemies-to-friends-to-lovers, lol). I also love that funny stage in dating/established relationships where they’re past the initial rush of attraction, but still really getting to know each other. Stories are fundamentally about change, to me. The changes can be big or small, subtle or overt, but in a good story, something always changes. Liminal states are perfect for that.
2) I am very fond of AUs, which is pretty in keeping with my love of character-driven story in general. AUs tend to raise meta-questions of nature vs nurture, which I find endlessly interesting. From the nature side of things, I love how in a good AU, a character is still recognisable as that character, even if the setting is wildly different. But on the nurture side of things, I enjoy seeing how different circumstances can lead to some change in personality.
3) I have a strong love of stories that feature characters behaving badly (it’s like 50% of the reason I can’t quit Inception and TDKR–the amorality and bad behaviour is baked into the canon). Such bad behaviour extends to dub-con, non-con, and general manipulative actions driven by selfishness.
Touchstone, Command, and Pivot (TDKR) and
want, need, steal, keep (Inception) are prime examples of how I like to write dub-con/non-con/manipulation.
4) I really like the bodyswap and bodysharing tropes. Like, to a near-irrational degree. It has so many things I find fascinating: the storytelling potential of literally walking in someone else's shoes; the simultaneous wonder and horror of forced intimacy (like, can you get any physically closer than inhabiting one another's bodies or the
same body?); best of all, I love how such closeness can still fail to produce actual connection.
bauble wrote a superb example of this (for my birthdaaaaay!) with
Comme des Garcons 5) The Arthur/Eames pairing continues to be my longterm love. It is rare for me to find a pairing where I find both halves equally attractive (I’m a shallow bastard, sorry) and with interesting (but differing) personalities, so I don’t think I’ll move on for a while.
Do you have a favorite fic of yours?
Of my recent stories,
Double Take is very close to my heart. It grew from a doofy, cracky concept into something with genuine emotional depth and heart that took me by surprise. I have had many readers tell me they feel the same way–they never expected to like Jon, let alone love him as much as they do.
DT also forced some big leaps in my writing skills. Jon’s canonically distinctive voice, limited vocabulary and stunted emotional intelligence pushed me to be more creative in my descriptions and the way I conveyed emotion. (Seriously, it’s the weirdest thing, writing Jon on the verge of crying and communicating that to the reader while Jon won’t even acknowledge he’s about to cry). This was also the fic where I began to learn how to use setting as an active component of story.
However, the biggest reason DT is a personal favourite is that it led to me seriously examining some issues and quandaries I’ve had about life from a sideways angle. Strange as this may sound, I can honestly say that writing Double Take not only made me a better writer but a better person. As Jon and Arthur and Eames grew, so did I.
Of my early fics, I'm very fond of
Etymology. It contains all the seeds of what I consider to be ‘my’ writing: characters who have an imperfect understanding of one another; characters who are selfish and willing to go to dubious lengths to get what they want; characters exhibiting open attraction and/or desire for one another; and questions and issues of social class (in Etymology’s case, it contains issues of race and colonialism as well). There are a lot of early fics I wrote that don’t have much to them beyond being entertaining, but Etymology was the first Inception story I wrote that meant something to me.
Your fic with the most kudos?
in the family of things, by a huge margin. I’m not surprised. It’s a monster of a story, currently clocking in at 84k, and we’re only at the halfway point (make of that what you will, WIP readers). Like Etymology, it contains a lot of what I am interested in as a writer, and it could also be written so much better now. But it is what it is. I started it five years ago, and I’ve grown significantly as a writer since then.
Anything you don’t like about your writing?
Hmm, I find this question a bit odd. There are some aspects of my writing that I’m dissatisfied with, yes, but I see them as areas that I am continuing to work on rather than areas I dislike. (This is totally seperate from how I feel about
doing the work to improve in those areas, though; ask any of my friends, they'll tell you I'm constantly pissing and moaning about the effort, hahaha). In any case, to say there is anything I don’t like about my writing feels (to me) like saying I am helpless to change it and must resign myself to it, and that’s just not true.
For example, I’ve been aware that descriptive prose, especially setting, is a weakness of mine for a while now; I’ve spent the past year and a half working on it, and can confidently say my skill in writing settings has improved. Novel-length story structure and pacing is another weakness (as the mushy middles of Double Take and ‘in the family of things’ can attest to), but I know that will improve as I gain more experience writing and finishing novels.
Now something you do like?
I have an excellent ear for dialogue and a natural instinct for humour–a few people have managed to pick my stories out of an anonymous lineup on the basis of this combo. However, much like a character’s greatest strengths can become their greatest flaws in a different scenario, my skill with dialogue and humour means I can get lazy and rely on them overmuch. In the past year, I’ve been working on subtext and the things left unsaid in conversations, and reining in my humour from incessant, rapidfire punchlines to letting it loose at specific moments, allowing things like vulnerable emotion, sincerity, and, well… weirdness come in to fill the void. It has been difficult, sometimes excruciating, but it has strengthened my writing, made it more interesting and layered, I think.
