writer's meme

[keiliss]

Yes, it is time for a meme again. (and it means I don't necessarily have to do a real post, right?). Please ask things. I like being asked things. Thank you :)

Taken from independence1776 

1. What made you start writing fanfic?
2. Which of your own fanfics have you reread the most?
3. Describe the differences between your first fanfic and your most recent fanfic.
4. Do you think your style has changed over time? How so?
5. You’ve posted a fic anonymously. How would someone be able to guess that you’d written it?
6. Name three stories you found easy to write.
7. Name three stories you found difficult to write.
8. What’s your ratio of hits to kudos?
9. What do your fic bookmarks say about you?
10. What’s a theme that keeps coming up in your writing?
11. What kind of relationships are you most interested in writing?
12. For E-rated fic, what are some things your characters keep doing?
13. Name three favorite characters to write.
14. You’re applying for the fanfic writer of the year award. What five fanfics do you put in your portfolio?
15. Question of your choice!

In other news, I think I might be getting that most dreaded of things, a summer cold, and am fighting it off with everything I can think of. Very inconvenient, especially this week.  

Also I got my script for new glasses, now I just need to decide how ready I am to sell a kidney ---- god, I cannot believe the prices I'm being quoted.

Comments

[gabriel_seven]

Hi Keiliss! Ummm. No 13, 10 and 5, please.


Fingers crossed you don't get the flu. Summer flu's can be the worst.

I know what you mean by the price of glasses. I'm still wearing a $10 pair I bought from a supermarket. All they do is magnify and are obviously not tailored to my specific eye needs, so they are wrecking havoc with my eyesight when I finally take them off.

[keiliss]

Hi there :)

5. You’ve posted a fic anonymously. How would someone be able to guess that you’d written it?
It has Erestor in it. If it has Glorfindel in it, it's in his pov. It's probably second age. Gil-galad showed up. There's a happy ending (unless it's Answers in the Dark, I'm not convinced that will have a happy ending when I get back to it).

10. What’s a theme that keeps coming up in your writing?
Besides 'Glorfindel returns' you mean? (I have overdone and OD'd on that trope). Politics, honour, kindness maybe.... Sirion... second age.... (I've never asked myself this before)

13. Name three favorite characters to write.
Gil-galad, Galadriel, Erestor (believe it or not, I had to think about this). I write Glorfindel a lot as my pov character, but that's not a like/don't like situation, just something that works for me. Those three though, I actively enjoy.

(added) Oh god, Elwing. I love Elwing. Brain is not clear.

I put the new glasses thing off as long as I could but I'm starting to struggle with reading now, so I ran out of time. It's been long enough that I had no clue how prices had gone up. Lord!

[gabriel_seven]

Well, Gil galad was no surprise, but I didn't know you enjoyed writing Erestor. You do write him well, though. Thank you for answering.

Yes. The price of descent glasses is astronomical.

[keiliss]

He wandered into my very first fic, way back when I wasn't that interested in him, and has stuck around ever since. Probably my most-written character by now, on account of all the E/G I've written. Love him dearly.

[independence1776]

11, please.

The cost is one of the reasons I have been to an optometrist in years. That, and I invariably have to return two or three times because something is wrong.

[keiliss]

11. What kind of relationships are you most interested in writing?
I love friendship, just the ways people who genuinely like each other interact. And family, found or blood. I write Galadriel and a rather young Celebrian and have really enjoyed exploring that mother-daughter interaction. And for romance, I like established love, a couple who know each other pretty well, not so much the 'god you're hot, I can't live without you' variety. Not much good at the 'love at first sight' kind of fic.

I've been researching optometrists in the area and the amount of online rage I've read has put me off totally -- I might end up going to the small business up the road to have the script filled because they seemed like nice people even if they charge a bit more. It's a lot of money to make a mistake on. And yeah, I hear you on the return visits.

[spiced_wine]

3, 6 and 7 please!

[keiliss]

Thanks, nice questions:)

3. Describe the differences between your first fanfic and your most recent fanfic.
In 14+ years I've learned to tighten up a lot (I remember Eni once left a beta note pointing out that an entire paragraph was all one sentence. Not that it was a bad sentence, she explained, but --- a whole paragraph). My first fic was about Elrond dealing with Arwen's choice and the twins trying to make up their minds. It was Elrond/Glorfindel, a pairing I would not write now. The most recent fic I wrote (for Tolkien Secret Santa) is Erestor/Glorfindel, who I would absolutely not write back then. The first one took itself so. utterly. painfully. seriously. I've developed a lighter touch and stronger taste for Plot since then. Also to be found in the first fic, quite bit of cringeworthy 2004-style smut. I cannot read it, I had to skip forward over those parts. I could only have improved since then (I hope).

6. Name three stories you found easy to write.
Oh lord, I had to make a list for both these questions and cull it:
Windborne - because I love writing Elwing. I can see her and hear her voice. I started this with the idea it would end up with her looking into the master-stone, and then just let her tell the story
Sanctuary - the favourite child that hardly anyone loves. Elves in modern times wasn't totally new for me but it had been a long time. Writing a road trip through countryside I know personally was fun, I got an online tourist map, went looking for pictures -- I had a ball writing this, I was sorry when it was over!
Hidden Within - I had this image of Glorfindel sharpening a sword and Erestor watching and it sat around for months until one day this story was just there. I barely took a break while writing it, it just flowed out. I made it absolutely clear in the summary that it was NOT an E/G romance because that would have destroyed the point of it. To this day I have to think twice to find its actual title, to me it will always be 'Sword'.
Star's End - honourable mention. No idea where it came from, especially as I don't often write Maglor and I've only ever written Arwen as a young girl, but it also just flowed out. And the ending startled me as much as it did anyone reading it.

7. Name three stories you found difficult to write.
Depends how you define 'difficult'. The Boys of Summer and Another Future were incredibly intimidating until they were well underway, after which Boys sort of dragged me along while it wrote itself and Another Future found its voice about half way. Also Love Over Gold - I'd never done anything based round a fairy tale, don't like Disney animations, and generally didn't have a clue till Red suggested I give it more of an edge. There was a lot in it that I'd not tried before (plus more sex than I'd normally write in a year) and at the end I felt like I'd really learned a few things. I'm bundling all three together as they were the same kind of 'difficult as hell till I found my way in'.
First Time Ever I Saw Your Face - don't really want to elaborate on this beyond saying it was for the Reverse Bang and the artist had a vastly different vision of Erestor to my own, which he only communicated to me much later into the project, necessitating a full re-write.
Answers in the Dark: I will finish this one day. I have around 80k rough material, much of it from NaNo. I had to step away from it because if I'd kept on I would have ended up hating all writing, stopped and never started again. I'm - almost ready to go back but it'll need some retconning first.

(why give two line answers when you can write whole paragraphs about fic? :D)

[spiced_wine]

LOL I don’t mind, I enjoyed reading it :)

[alexcat]

Numbers 1 and 2.

[keiliss]

Thanks, Alex :)

1. What made you start writing fanfic?
I don't know for sure, I think I kind of fell into it. I've always written, and I've always 'made up' stories about book and tv characters in my head. Then I found the LotR fandom and made a few friends and beta'd for Red, after which I started thinking okay, maybe I could try this.... First fic went out in four parts and sunk like a stone, and I might have slunk away if Elfscribe hadn't found it and been really encouraging. And it was almost time for Slashy Santa so I signed up and the fic I wrote for that later got reworked into a 26 chapter novel, Even Quicker than Doubt. It wasn't wildly popular at the time - wrong pairing, setting, age - but I had some regular readers and writing it made me so happy. And I'm still here.

2. Which of your own fanfics have you reread the most?
Actual rereads would be Doubt, because it was really long and the best advice Uli ever gave me about writing chaptered fic was to read back often. Towards the end I had to force myself! The one I read because I like it and it makes me smile would be Sanctuary. Every so often I go look to see if the hit count has improved (it never got much attention and it is the only low-hit fic that I get upset about - it deserves better!) and I always end up reading it. I had so much fun writing it. I'd never even thought of doing an elves in modern times road trip, that was Binky's suggestion, and I can hear all their voices so clearly. If I had to do a frantic road trip through 'small towns of the Western Cape' these are the guys I'd want to go with.