A meme

[thisbluespirit]

Found in various places:

Ask me a question about one of my fics. It can be absolutely anything in any project and I will answer it the best I can -- even on current progress/plans.

If you'd prefer, you can also ask about my writing for a particular fandom, my writing as a whole, etc.


(I can't imagine what anybody would want to ask me, but I suppose if I post it, I might find out? Or not, understandably.)

***


And also, two more runaway_tales fics (which is where all my writing energies have been going lately, sorry):

Nothing Is Secret These Days (PG, 2467 words. 1959, Thomas Hallam, Edward Iveson, Amyas Harding, Julia Iveson.) “What sort of skeleton do you have in your closet, Edward, that you’d do this?”

Locked Down (PG, 1755 words. 1985, Michael Seaton, Louise Seaton.) Arran and Liesa, hiding out together.

Comments

[persiflage-1.livejournal.com]

Maybe I should know the answer to this, but I am too tired to think straight, so gonna ask anyway and risk looking like the idiot I am. Have you written anything for 'Pirate Queen', the i-surrendered prompt I gave you? If so, where is it? If not, will you (please)?

[thisbluespirit]

*hugs you gently*

I haven't written anything beyond the initial post, no. I haven't forgotten it, though, and I'd think I'm bound to do something with it at some point. I just seem to have stuck on some missing key point in what's going on - and sometimes you can brainstorm or write those things out, and sometimes you just have to wait for the information to come, and this is one of the latter. Definitely, if I get stuck in runaway_tales, I might write something for that, see if it gets something moving, because I really like what I have so far. I'm sort of saving it up, because, unlike gloomy AU fake 1970s TV shows, I could seriously see that one even being my next attempt at a novel or something - which, of course, I couldn't do until I feel better than I do currently.

So, in short, no, I haven't, but I've thought about it quite a lot, on and off, and, yes, I think something will defnitely come of it sometime - but I don't know when. Soon, if inspiration falls, or maybe I'll be sitting on it for a good while yet, I don't know.

(It's not a stupid question, anyway!! ♥)

[persiflage-1.livejournal.com]

*hugs back*

Thanks for the comprehensive answer. I wasn't sure if I'd simply failed to pay sufficient attention.

[a-phoenixdragon.livejournal.com]

What is the 'easiest' character you have ever written and what made them easier to write than other characters/what drew you to them?

*HUGS*

[thisbluespirit]

Oh, I'm not entirely sure who the easiest character to write is - I think every character takes a little getting into. However, one I definitely found both easy and fun to write quite swiftly was Silver from Sapphire & Steel - if he's around, then improbability, horrors from outside of time, and flirting will inevitably follow, and what can't you do with that? Sapphire and Steel are pretty great themselves too. All cryptic pronouncements and being afraid of everything.

:-D

[ladymercury-10.livejournal.com]

For the meme, what are your favorite/least favorite things about writing Doctor Who fic?

[thisbluespirit]

Hmm. Favourite is probably... it crosses over with everything so easily! And relatedly, you can go anywhere with it, do any genre, any setting, anything you like. 50 years' worth of characters and all of time and space to play with - who can complain about that?

Least favourite is hard. I'm not sure I can think of anything - only hard things in any kind of writing (getting stuck, not quite getting it right, adventures that go flat, WIPs you can't finish, characters who aren't quite right). Particularly DW-related frustrations? I mean, I don't know, because it really is so flexible, isn't it? You don't have some of the limitations you have in other fandoms.

[ladymercury-10.livejournal.com]

Yeah! It's such a versatile fandom. :)

[flowsoffire.livejournal.com]

Mmm… which Doctors/eras of Who have you written, and which were your favourites and less favourites?

[thisbluespirit]

I was going to say that I'm pretty sure I've written all the TV eras and many of the spin-off eras, too, but I haven't yet written for the Twelfth Doctor - it takes a while to get to a new Doctor!

As for which are my favourites, that's hard. I have a particular love of writing the voices for some of the 1960s teams - the original line up (or more with Vicki, maybe), Ben & Polly, and Two, Zoe and Jamie, though I haven't written those three as much. The Brigadier is always wonderful to write, but he's not limited to any one era, happily, but S7 is always great. Eleven is a lot of fun, and I adore doing Eight and Charley. Six is so much fun to write, and I also enjoy doing Tegan and Five. I really do love all of Classic Who such a lot. That's part of the fun with it - you can just hop about and write anyone you like when you feel like a change.

I do like all of DW a lot, so least favourite is relative, but in terms of eras, probably the Ninth Doctor, and not unrelatedly, I'm unlikely to ever write any real Doctor/Rose! (I did once write Six/Rose, but I wasn't all that serious about it.)

[flowsoffire.livejournal.com]

Indeed! There's all the getting to know him… ;)

60's!Who ftw! :D ♥

[elviaprose.livejournal.com]

Did anything surprise you, as you were writing, when you wrote Little Grey Cells?

[thisbluespirit]

Oh, now, I wrote that one a long time ago! Let me think! Um, I think to be honest, it was one of those things that just came to me almost exactly as it was, and if anything surprised me, it was just how perfectly the B7 characters fell into the format without me doing anything, really.

I felt bad about making Jenna be the murderer, because obviously I don't think she would be normally. Well, unless she had a good reason. She probably had a good reason? There was a lot of money involved and also keeping herself out of jail, no doubt. :-)

Also ♥ for all the nice comments that went with your question! ♥)

[john_amend_all]

Are there elements of writing (turns of phrase, similes, plot elements) that you think you overuse?

[thisbluespirit]

Oh, yes.


:-)


(For instance, I have to go back through everything I write just to move all the extra "justs" in it.

Also psychic villains/aliens. Bonus points if they're at all goblinesque, or something that is relatively small and makes scrabbling noises, anyway. While being psychic in some way.

Silver.)

[liadt]

Do you have any 'Unconventional Courtship' plans (n.b I count merely scribbling down a pairing in a notebook as a plan!)?

[thisbluespirit]

I do! I found a summary that I thought would be funny for Adam and Georgie and have the ending scribbled down in a notebook. Obviously, Unconventional Courtship needs to turn up at some point and I need to write the rest, but it should happen. :-)

[liadt]

\o/\o/

Although if there are any weddings I think for Adam/Georgie to happen it will have to be a real one. Or the realisation that women are just as bad as men leads Adam to run off with Georgie and Simms to a hippy commune in '67;p

[thisbluespirit]

*refuses to say more*

:-)

[jjpor.livejournal.com]

Probably a hard question to answer definitively, but what's your favourite fic, out of all of the ones you've written, the one that you're most proud of?

[thisbluespirit]

That is a very hard question, yes. *goes off to think a bit*

[jjpor.livejournal.com]

I sort of realised it was a bit unfair after I posted it. Well, I'm sure you'll come up with something. :)

[thisbluespirit]

This is so hard. I mean, some days I feel pretty pleased with a lot of them, and other days I wonder what possessed me to think I could write even halfway decently.

It is difficult, because there's a distance from things I wrote a while ago, and things in them I wouldn't necessarily do now. But the stuff I do now, I tend to not be so proud of because I can see the bits where my illness shows so often, even if no one else can. In fact, it's worrying that no one else can.

So, in the category of fic/fics I am most proud of today (but probably not yesterday or tomorrow), then "A Gallifreyan at Blandings" (the Tenth Doctor/PG Wodehouse crossover) because I'm not sure myself how I managed to pull that one off. "Ten Times the Doctor (Almost) Got Hitched" was one of the most fun things I ever did, and I still like some of the sections very much. "Vigil" (one of my Yuletide treats from a couple of years back) for reasons that are harder to explain, but it's a very simple, brief fic, but it was very scary to do and I had a lot of feelings about it, and it does seem that some of what I intended came through in the reviews. Also, I still haven't seen another fic for that particular pairing taken seriously anywhere. I don't think I'm still especially proud of it in the same way, but I do have a lot of fondness for "Strange Weapons" because the whole Tilly and Nat and 1980s UNIT was rather fun to do.

I've had fun writing fanfic. Some of my fics will always frustrate me, even if other people like them, but there are a bunch that, yes, most days I'm pleased with. Random things that happened to come from nearer the heart than others, comedy that still holds up, unexpected crossovers that worked, and probably most of the stuff I've written for Yuletide. Except, of course, those days when I despair of myself, but that's just being a writer, isn't it?

[jjpor.livejournal.com]

I think it's a big part of the writing experience, certainly for myself and a lot of other people who I see talking about writing.

I think it's absolutely right that most people who write are extremely self-critical, and often for things that other people don't necessarily pick up on. I have this sort of love-hate thing going on with a lot of my fics, especially some of the ones that seemed to go over well with a lot of people, because there's always the flaw that stands out, the niggling feeling, the wish that you'd done something differently. And I agree that this changes over time - the fic you were really pleased with when you wrote it a few years ago seem terrible in all sorts of ways if you look back on them now. Obviously, I don't have your experience of illness, but I can recognise those feelings, and I think it's part of how you learn and develop as a writer and also how you know you are learning and developing to some extent.

But as you say, most of all it's fun and I think the fun still outweighs the other stuff, most of the time, for me. And I agree with your choices there, fwiw - you know all to well the admiration I have for the UNIT stuff. I don't think I've read "Vigil", however - something I'm going to have to remedy sooner rather than later.