#hello...it's me

ink: what do you do to “set the mood” when writing?

I find a comfortable position and space to work in, where I can be alone and not have to toss Sylvie Rue off my lap every time I start typing (which is what I’m doing right now; my little attention-starved kitten). Sometimes, depending on my mood, I’ll put on some music to get creativity and inspiration flowing. 

novella: do you prefer to write short stories, one-shots, or entire novels?

Probably one-shots! Especially ones that lead to short stories or series, as I’m sure my history shows, haha. I know some people aren’t keen on one-shots because they are shorter pieces of writing, but I always like to make mine feel like a complete work of fiction, whether there will be pieces to follow or not. I like my one-shots to feel like standalone stories, and I’ve found it easy to fit a complete story within a smaller amount of words. 

trope: what’s a pet peeve you have about writing?

I love/hate when this question comes up, because I know I have pet peeves, but when I’m actually asked to list them, it’s like ???? what were they? So let me think a sec…

I feel like I need that “why would you say something so controversial, yet so brave” meme, but I’m honestly not the biggest fan of reader insert fics and the sudden rise in popularity of them breaks my heart a little bit. Pieces that are reader insert are written in second person POV, which is easily the MOST difficult point of view to write well, and more often than not, it doesn’t seem to be pulled off well in a lot of the pieces I’ve seen. 

The desire to find oneself in fiction has led to a huge amount of these fics circulating, and I feel like quality of writing can suffer sometimes when writing those pieces because it’s more about wish fulfillment than creating a story full of well-developed characters. I think the storytelling tends to suffer, in terms of quality. And I know this is me generalizing, because I have definitely read a few pieces that are written in second person and are fantastic! But it’s a tough perspective to take on, and the lack of detail, the frequency of “Y/N” appearing in sentences (which, for me, pulls me COMPLETELY out of the writing) and absence of characterization that I commonly see in fics like these make me long for the kind of fics that got me started writing in the first place - the ones you walk away from carrying the characters and their stories in your heart. I don’t know. I guess, more often than not, it’s just missing so many of the elements that made me fall in love with writing.

I also have some concerns with the rise in smut that carries heavy dom/sub or borderline abusive/incredibly pornographic themes, but that’s probably a post for another time.

Thank you for these, Leesh! I saw them last night but I was babysitting and I got home late, so I wanted to wait until I had a chance to sit down today. ☺️

Oh, and a visual of what I deal with when I’m trying to type on my computer: