lilyisnothere-deactivated201807 asked: S-T-O-R-Y ?

S: Would you let a stranger off the streets read your first drafts?

Oh dear god no. First drafts are shit. No one reads my first draft except for me. Once I’ve edited it, then I let other people read my second draft (though sadly I have no beta at the moment). Then I post the third and “final” draft. All of my fics are just edited by me, so sometimes typos get through. And I pull my hair and want to gouge my eyes out. 

T: What’s your favorite part of the writing process?  Why?

Envisioning the broad story arc, characters and then world building. There’s something exciting about getting that flash of inspiration and seeing the entire story in your head and where its going to go.

Also, I’m more of a “write and see where the characters take you” type so sometimes I’ll have the characters do something I totally didn’t see happening, but is 10,000 times better than what I had originally dreamed up. Those moments are the best. 

O: What motivates you to write?

I wouldn’t say things motivate me to write. I’d much rather sit on the couch with a tub of ice cream and potato chips. But I literally get antsy when I don’t take the time to write. It’s more of a compulsion than anything else and I get really bitchy if I don’t let it out in some form. 

R: What genre do you write in?

All kinds. My original works are primarily in the vein of magical realism/urban fantasy, ie some weird dark demon baby of Marquez and Gaiman. At least, that’s how I’d describe it. My fics run the gamut, though my Enjonine stuff is mostly Modern AUs or AUs of a sort. I should write more canon era stuff. 

Y: How would you describe the perfect prose?  How would you describe your own prose?

The perfect prose is illuminating but not stuffy. When you read it, you are transported. The author describes a marketplace and you are there–you can smell the food, hear the sounds, feel the people and taste the air. Every so often, an idea or phrase is expressed so exquisitely it takes your breath away and you’re left raging at the world because you didn’t think of it first. But the author never resorts to word gymnastics to prove they have a wide vocabulary. 

In essence, I prefer:

Amelia looked down the platform and shuddered. Trash littered the rails, which had once, probably hundreds of years before, gleamed pristine and new but were now rusted and covered in a thick, black sludge. Every so often, a rat popped out to grab a discarded morsel of someone’s forgotten lunch, its fur thick with grease and bits of its tail missing. Glancing at her watch, Amelia crinkled her nose. Summers were humid in the city, so the subways were always blanketed in the stench of the homeless. That was the thing about cities—they always buried their dirty secrets.

to this:

The city’s subways were a swirling, labyrinthian mess of dark tunnels and causeways, putrid refuse–both human and otherwise–leaking up from the rusted pipes. Amelia gagged as she breathed in the air, her olfactory senses protesting wildly against the offense. In the oppressive summer heat, they subway catacombs billowed with the warm stench of rotting garbage and as Amelia glanced at her watch, she pondered whether this was a metaphor for the state of the city. Peering down the tunnel, she sighed. It was like staring into the abyss and seeing its obsidian ennui reflected back at her.

Neither is better than the other. It’s just what I prefer.

I would describe my own prose as “in the works.” I try to do the former, but occasionally slip into the latter.