In fact, your work has given me a sense of what was previously missing in my writing.
For years, I blamed it on a lack of inspiration to start writing.
No, I just needed an author like you to begin delving into the characters psychologically.
Understanding how a person's mind works, with all its traumas, uncertainties, and fears, is something that slips through my fingers, and few people write as well as you.
If it's not a secret, how do you do it? I never thought someone else's work could stick in my head like that, making me reflect on actions and consequences, fears and shame, denial and understanding. I have so many questions for myself that I'm still searching for answers and finding them.
I distract myself from my anxious thoughts by writing, testing how this or that course of events would work. For me, this is a huge, painstaking task.
I'm curious, what inspires you and helps you write?
Iâm flattered that my writing has helped you with yours. I never thought it could have an impact on someone aha.
I donât have some big, grandiose answer to what inspires me, unfortunately. For the past few months I havenât really had much motivation to write and have had some bad writers block, which is why Iâve fallen off the weekly updates I was managing to do before. I was able to do those mainly because I had written so far ahead of what was published, so even though my writing fell off, I still had chapters to post. But now what I have already written and the posted chapters have caught up to one another.
I canât say I was inspired by anything in particular. For EtS, it was the response of the fandom that had me write and write and write. I was like a machine during the course of that fic and well into WATN. So I guess the fandom inspired me to keep writing.
In terms of how I came up with the ideas, there was no inspiration. For EtS I was just doing some chores at home and the thought of âwhat if Rumi was mute?â came to me. I then sat down and wrote out a rough plan. Then I kept writing.
For WATN, two scenes came to me late at night. So again I sat down and I wrote out the two scenes, then I planned the fic around them. Both of these scenes are the next two chapters of the fic waiting to be finished writing and posted. However, because of how much the fic has changed since I wrote these two scenes, Iâm having to rework them to fit the new narrative.
For example: The fic was originally planned to be 15 chapters. I quickly realised while writing that it wasnât possible to tell the story effectively in that many chapters. (We are now on chapter 20 and (SPOILER ALERT) Rumi has only just kissed Zoey)
Zoey also wasnât supposed to be as much as a character in it as she now is. She was literally just meant to be the catalyst that starts the whole plot off, be Miraâs girlfriend and cause havoc.
She is still Miraâs menace of a girlfriend ofc, but she now has a backstory and a plot line that is entirely separate from Rumira. That wasnât in the original plan. It flowed out of me when I started writing Zoeyâs first POV chapter.
I donât know what possessed me to decide Rumi was engaged to Jinu and that she and Mira had an unspoken love. It just came to me and I thought it would be interesting to explore how they got to this point (the point of the two scenes that came to me)
In terms of what helps me: As mentioned before, EtS was very much helped by the fandom response. I was so excited for the readers to see what happens next and what their responses would be. I still am! Which is what is making this writers block so frustrating. I know what needs to happen but the words just arenât coming.
Music helped me a lot with WATN. I would be listening to a song and be like âthis is so Mira/Rumi/Zoey in WATN codedâ so often that I ended up making an entire playlist filled with songs that fit them as characters and the vibe of the fic. So when Iâm writing a chapter, I usually have that playlist on to help me get into the headspace.
In terms of the psychology of the characters, I literally just think about how I would react if I were them. Rumi in EtS was easiest because I based a lot of her off of myself, especially when it came to the chapters that show her depression, or her anxiety around her body etc.
WATN was trickier in a sense because Ive never been in this specific situation before, but I like to think Iâm an empathetic person so I was able to tap into their emotions etc. Oddly, Mira has been the easiest to write because I have been in the situation where thereâs this odd unspoken thing between me and a âstraight friendâ (the difference here being that Rumi actually does love Mira back) so I could draw from how I felt during that time in my life to write Miraâs POV.
so yeah, thereâs no big, oh I was inspired by this book, or this author etc. The ideas literally just came to me as I was going about my day. Like, even the half cooked idea I have for my next fic I may or may not write came to me at like 4am when I couldnât sleep.
And what helps me write? Currently nothing lmao because I have writers block. But previously it was fandom response, music and the fact I just had to get these words down on to a page.
