renfys

Day 11

In your own space, talk about your creative process(es) — anything from the initial inspiration to how you feel after something’s done. Do you struggle with motivation or is it a smooth process? Do you have any tricks up your sleeve to pull out when a fanwork isn’t cooperating? What is your level of planning to pantsing/winging it? Leave a comment in this post saying you did it. Include a link to your post if you feel comfortable doing so.

I am so sleepy today but I will try and explain my writing process for various things. Preferably without sounding pretentious. 

Poems - are just streams of words. During NaPoWriMo or OctPoWriMo do I tend to write to prompts more, but I do write to prompts for poems from time to time. More often than not, a few lines will appear in my head and I'll go from there. 

Fanfiction - a variation of prompts, thoughts, and inspiration from the actual source material. I am happy to take anything from single word to full on ideas and write fic. Sometimes the entire prompt is just cause I want to write a particular pairing. Sometimes it's headcannon (mine or someone else's). Sometimes I just wanna write the smut. I'll usually write one-shots, leave it a day, read it over for errors and run it through the spell checker and Grammarly before posting it to my patreon, then a week later to A03 etc. For the Dragon Age fandom I usually hit up the Black Emporium Exchange discord if I have research or questions and the lore. If I need to use in-game dialogue I'll get it off a youtube video and then edit it depending on my needs.

Original Fiction - I get ideas, I always get ideas, and sometimes I actually write them. Last year I started trying to write original fiction as if it were fanfiction - as if the world and lore and even the characters were already known by the reader in a bid to try and get me writing stuff again which actually worked. I am generally a panster. I don't plan. But in that I have several unfinished novel, including the one I won NaNoWriMo with that's been sitting at ~51,000 words since then. And I think I was still living in Leicester when I did it. 

So this time around, for the novel I want to write this year, I'm planning. I haven't actually written a word ot it because I am at least trying to plan the plot out - including the end. I don't know if it will make a difference, and perhaps all I need to finish the damn thing is to actually just bloody write and write until it's done but we'll see. For shorter stuff I'll just keep winging it I think. 

As for the actual writing - I write in my armchair on my laptop. I do write some stuff by hand, but I find typing it up takes as much time so mostly only poems are written by hand unless I've gone away (I tend not to take my laptop with me on breaks and stuff). I don't write at a desk. I don't have one anymore and I don't really have room for one. I could write at my wife's diy desk but I don't know, I've gotten into writing in my chair now.  

I'm quite prolific at the moment, but when the depression hits I know the word count will take a hit too. I have always said I don't suffer from writer's block, but writer's apathy. I know what I want to write, I have the words, I just don't always have the energy or the mental ability to write.

Feel free to ask me questions if I haven't covered anything.