lizvogel

18. Do any of your stories have alternative versions? (plotlines that you abandoned, AUs of your own work, different characterisations?) Tell us about them.

Well, there's the great sprawling unfinished mess affectionately known as the "porn saga", which has both a desert-island alternate and a "character gets a spine infusion and gets himself a life that isn't an angst-ridden train wreck" alternate. (Yeah, there's a reason that thing's not finished.) And a mirror-universe alternate, though that's only half a scene because really, nowhere to go with that.

For things that are finished or ever likely to be, I can't think of anything with an alternate version. I don't really do abandoned plotlines. I suspect partly this ties into my writing process; I know some writers will try on plotlines and toss them away like yesterday's socks, but for me writing is really about uncovering the One True Story that this story was meant to be, and that doesn't lend itself to other reality-branches. The same goes for characters; who the characters are is usually part of the starting-seed of the story, and while I may learn more about them as we go, who they are doesn't change on a fundamental level.

I don't think "rocks fall, everybody dies" because I'm sick of working on a thing counts as an alternate. ;-)

19. Is there something you always find yourself repeating in your writing? (favourite verb, something you describe 'too often', trope you can’t get enough of?)

I think the phrase "sheer force of will" has turned up in at least three of the four novels I've finished. And likely will again.

Seriously, though, I'm not one of those writers who gets bent about frequently-used words; to be honest, I tend to look a bit askance at the whole issue. Certainly there are words I use a lot; "just", for example, gets a fairly big typeface in a wordle. But it's a very useful word, and I'm not going to go hunting it down with extreme prejudice just because (see what I mean?) some people have taken an entirely arbitrary and unjustified dislike to it.

On a more meta level, loyalty, and its mirror image betrayal, are themes that turn up frequently in my work. This is fine by me; there's a lot of mileage to be gotten out of that concept, and you can do all sorts of fun character things with it. You can tell a lot about a character (or a person) by what they won't compromise, who is automatically a priority when there's no way to satisfy everything, what they expect from others and themself when things get tight.

And of course, taking the thing they would give their life and their soul for and having it turn on them is a great way to screw up their world. /*insert evil writer cackle*/

4. Share a sentence or paragraph from your writing that you’re really proud of (explain why, if you like).

Not to sound arrogant, but I frequently squee delightedly over bits of my writing. However, those bits often only work in context; the squeeworthiness is in how they convey an aspect of characterization that's been built up to, or how well they dovetail into something mentioned six chapters ago or going to be mentioned six chapters from now. However, I happened across this recently:

...scrambling along with her fellow crewmen to get the ship moving faster, faster, faster before the bow-wave of the explosion reached them. Shouted orders came down from the control center, and the crew flicked switches that shouldn't be flicked, red lights springing up on the consoles in predator-eye pinpoints under the crimson emergency lighting.

"Predator-eye pinpoints" is one of those phrases I'm sorry I only get to use once. It's just so right for the little dots of warning lights as the ship is pushed toward overload, and it being predator eyes adds a lovely hint of menace.

Oh, this sounds fun. 25 days of writing. Usually when I look at memes like this I don't really relate to a large chunk of the questions, but in this case I think I have something to say on all of them. Of course, this is me, so I'm finding out about the thing when it's halfway through (though apparently it wasn't originally an X-days thing?), and let's be real, I'm not going to do it consistently one per day anyway. But I think I will plink through the whole list, if not necessarily in order.

So, on to 1. Tell us about your current project(s) – what’s it about, how’s progress, what do you love most about it?

The current project is to finish Lightning Strikes Twice, which is the sequel to ...And the Kitchen Sink. It's lighthearted space opera with spies. This one does not have the cyborg platypus of AtKS, but so far it does have flying ferrets, a whole lot of architecture references, and of course endless alliteration. And the occasional ninja, because why not?

Progress has been... it's hard to say, actually. Teeth-pullingly slow, subjectively; the first 50K was my NaNo 2018 project, so of course anything's going to look pokey compared to that, plus booting it back up after that long was hard. But really I've been plugging along pretty steadily. I keep running into hard scenes; the latest is one where a normally-voluble character has to talk about something he really doesn't want to discuss, and it's been... interesting, dragging words out of him against his will.

What I love most is Aubrey DeAugustine being snarky, of course. And Kearsley learning the ropes and becoming more independent is being a lot of fun. Also, I wrote a huge sprawling scene with lots of small talk (my weak spot) and it didn't suck! That was cool.

I'm also working on a short story affectionately known as "the creepy fae thing". It's an idea for a novel that's been kicking around half-formed in my head for a while now, but I recently realized that I could excerpt the beginning as a stand-alone short and it should work just fine, so I'm writing that. It's really dark, possibly the darkest thing I've ever written, so I'm taking it in small doses, but it actually makes a good counterpoint to LST. I'm having fun simultaneously leaning into the horribleness and keeping the description minimalist, so the reader's imagination can take it to far worse places than the text ever could. ;-)



All the days:
1. Tell us about your current project(s) – what’s it about, how’s progress, what do you love most about it?
2. Tell us about what you’re most looking forward to writing – in your current project, or a future project.
3. What is that one scene that you’ve always wanted to write but can’t be arsed to write all of the set-up and context it would need? (consider this permission to write it and/or share it anyway).
4. Share a sentence or paragraph from your writing that you’re really proud of (explain why, if you like).
5. What character that you're writing do you most identify with?
6. What character do you have the most fun writing?
7. What do you think are the characteristics of your personal writing style? Would others agree?
8. Is what you like to write the same as what you like to read?
9. Are you more of a drabble or a longfic kind of writer? Pantser or plotter? Do you wish you were the other? Both, or neither?
10. How would you describe your writing process?
11. What do you envy in other writers?
12. Do you want your writing to be famous?
13. Do you share your writing online? (Drop a link!) Do you have projects you’ve kept just for yourself?
14. At what point in writing do you come up with a title?
15. Which is harder: titles or summaries (or tags)?
16. Tried anything new with your writing lately? (style, POV, genre, fandom?)
17. Do you think readers perceive your work - or you - differently to you? What do you think would surprise your readers about your writing or your motivations?
18. Do any of your stories have alternative versions? (plotlines that you abandoned, AUs of your own work, different characterisations?) Tell us about them.
19. Is there something you always find yourself repeating in your writing? (favourite verb, something you describe 'too often', trope you can’t get enough of?)
20. Tell us the meta about your writing that you really want to ramble to people about (symbolism you’ve included, character or relationship development that you love, hidden references, callbacks or clues for future scenes?)
21. What other medium do you think your story would work well as? (film, webcomic, animated series?)
22. Do you reread your old works? How do you feel about them?
23. What’s the story idea you’ve had in your head for the longest?
24. Would you say your writing has changed over time?
25. What part of writing is the most fun?