Yeah, it's the writing meme

[vilakins]

From just about everyone:

Ask me one question - any one - about my writing, then post this in your LJ so I can satisfy my curiosity about yours.

Sorry, but I can't think of many intelligent questions to ask because my brain is all limp from work and a long commute home. I'll try to answer any questions anyone else has though.

Comments

[hafren.livejournal.com]

You strike me as a bit unusual in that, though you write only gen, you don't seem to have any objection to reading het and slash, which many purely gen fans won't. Have you ever written or been tempted to write more explicitly?

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

I don't like explicit het or slash, but I enjoy an exploration of characters and relationships. As soon as it gets into mechanics and body parts, I just skip to the more interesting (to me) stuff. Therefore I avoid PWP like the plague.

I wrote a rather naughty story that's in one of the latest Tales: Bored Games. Almost everything was implied and 'off-screen' except for some games with rubber blow-up dolls. Greg and I thought the thing up in a cafe, laughing like maniacs, so I couldn't resist using it in a story. I read the thing recently when I sent it to a friend, and managed to shock myself with how far I went in some places. It was all comedy though.

[mistraltoes.livejournal.com]

Have you written in another fandom besides B7, and if not, what fandom do you think you might like to try, and why?

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

I've written one and a half Farscape<./i> stories in response to challenges (the half was a B7 crossover) but it's B7 I'm driven to write for, because I love the characters so and wasn't happy with what they did to them in S4. I have to make it up to them in my universe.

I haven't seen all of Farscape<./i> yet so I don't know how I'll feel about that; I gather I'll be happy with the resolution. I was left wanting more of Babylon 5 until I read the Peter David novels which rounded off Londo and Vir's story very satisfyingly. So I think it depends on whether I'm happy with what I got and how intense my involvement with the characters is.

[kerravonsen]

What kind of environment do you find most conducive to writing?

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

A nice quiet room. I can't write with music (esp with lyrics) or talking in the background because it interferes with the part of my brain that uses words. I can't think straight. Very quiet orchestral music might work, but I prefer silence. If Greg's watching TV or listening to music, I have to close all the intervening doors. OTOH I love music if I'm driving or doing something physical.

Claudia usually curls up on the couch near me when I'm on the computer and purrs softly; I call her my muse. Tessa sometimes gets on my lap which makes it somewhat difficult to type, so I'd prefer cats nearby but not on me, though that's lovely and very relaxing when I'm reading.

[astrogirl2.livejournal.com]

I'll ask you a variant of a question I asked redstarrobot, because this is something I'm curious about. How much re-writing and revising do you usually do on a story, and how much of what you first typed makes it all the way to the published/posted version?

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

I write a story from beginning to end, so if I'm stuck on a scene, I stay there till I've nailed it instead of skipping forward. Very occasionally I might write down a good scene well before I start a story just so that I don't forget it, but that's quite rare. So I'm a linear writer, and I usually work on only one story at a time, though I might have several in my head.

Every time I go into the story, I first read what I've done already and revise it. Some bits may seem stiff, or the dialogue not quite right (I 'listen' to it in my head), so I tweak the existing text then add new. I suppose this means the earlier bits are more polished. At the end, I print the thing out, read it on paper (for some reason this shows up more typos or things I'm not happy with) then send it to a beta reader or two. Depending on what they say and whether I agree with it, I may make some more changes.

I'm never entirely happy. Sometimes I read old stories and want to change a word here and there.

[astrogirl2.livejournal.com]

Wow, that's pretty much exactly how I work, right down to the feeling that the beginnings of my stories end up being much more polished than the endings. (I do sometimes write out of sequence a little, but very rarely.) That's actually kind of reassuring to me... I know a lot of writers do multiple drafts with major changes between drafts, and that can really allow for a lot more flexibility than the way I write. I think it allows a lot more opportunity to fix things that don't quite work, but I just can't and don't write that way. I do a lot of minor tweaking, just like you, but very little in the way of major revision.

(Oh, and I'm exactly like you as far as the thing about having music or TV in the background goes, too, but you know that already.)