Writing

Well I've whittled down my fandom to-do list. Right now, I have two rough drafts out to beta. I signed up for another prompt at ameliazellove, but I got no inspiration. Well, maybe something, but I don't think I can pull it off by the 8th. I could do art for the prompt instead. I'm putting off doing ag_over_18's Secret Snarkster until I can get to a craft store and assess. I'm not signed up for any art exchanges this round, so nothing like that.

I could also work on my white_lotus prompt, or try my hand at one of the bujoldfic Winterfair prompts -- that one will take a reread, though. Or, you know, I could write something for me.

(I also realized that I've written 3 stories for Yuletide, 1 for areyougame, and the slayers_santa one, plus finished the ameliazellove prompt which I started on the way back from Thanksgiving. And got bunnies for other ideas. And I don't really feel stressed, probably because I'm at home and not working.

And Another Thing...

Obligatory Disclaimer. I write things in a way that works for me. It may work for you. It may not. Writing is funny like that.

yuuo once asked me how I could stay in the Slayers fandom and keep writing. My first Slayers fic on ff.net is from May 2002, meaning I've been writing in the fandom for eight and a half years. Seriously, that's a third of my life, and maybe 75% of my fanfiction-writing career. And it's been roughly constant, or at least happening -- there's nothing in my ff.net account from '05 and '06, but if I head over to invoking_urania, I can find fic I never crossposted (or delayed).

So, I got to thinking, 'how do I come up with ideas'? Just... in general. And I realized it was from reading a boatload of things.

A lot of my fics seem to come as responses to fandom.

Some of them directly. Things like exchanges and answering prompts is easy. But also things like responding to the fandom itself. In the Shadows of the Flames came from a response to OC Dragonslayer fics. For that matter, Monster Slayer came from the resurrect-Dilandau trope. Both of these are kind of taking the piss out of fandom. Or, if you want to be more charitable, me trying to do a fandom cliche in a different way. And, hell, there's a lot of fantasy cliches that make great jumping off points for Slayers fic: Wrath of the Volcano Goddess! was kind of this. [Bad username or site: Earthstar Chan @ livejournal] gave the prompt of islanders worshiping Lina Inverse as a goddess after she blows something up, but then I kind of decided to not play it straight but poke at it a bit.

But part of that is being in the fandom to know what to respond to. Sites like fanficrants and bad_rpers_suck really helps me here, since a lot of times I like to think 'Could anyone do that terrible idea well? Could it be me?'.

And some of it is positive things. Like talking about the nature of a world, or a character will give me an idea that I can explore through fic. Or seeing a prompt might get my brain spiraling into odd corners and suddenly I want to write genderswap of the main character.

(It doesn't have to be fandom. Reading stories about Tibetan Buddhism's interactions with China or the Cherokee writing system has given me plot bunnies for fanfiction.)

It's kind of why I view writing as a social thing. Because I might put the words down on paper alone, but the steps before and after really take some type of interaction.

And, in less happy news...

So, some of you know about the Snowpocalypse that hit the East US coast. My family is in Boston, so there was some of the usual fuss.

But my great-aunt's home caught fire. The family had already evacuated since they live right on the coast, and there was flooding, so no one was hurt, but all the things were lost.

It was on the CBS national news, which was weird. Also funny that every one of my family on FB knew what had happened (because of the news) and my aunt had to call Mom and pass it on to the Nebraska branch.

Not much I can do from out here, and we have a boatload of family in Boston, so they'll be taken care of. The Red Cross and other disaster-relief charities are also on it.