A/N: I'm starting to feel like this partnership is starting to blossom into a pen pal esque friendship with my editor and myself. He sent me this prompt, and I was inspired to do it as soon as I saw it. So here goes.
1) Is there a story you're holding off on writing for some reason?
I have a plethora of stories I'm holding off on, both legit ones and MoIs. Pokemon, SamSho, Tekken, DOA, Fallout. A couple of things that prevent me from doing them, me being lazy/procrastinating, the stories themselves not getting buzz when I publish them to FF or AO3. Most of all I don't want to make new works because I already have too many stories as is. I don't want to add to the list of stories I'm putting on hiatus because of the stories I actually pay attention to.
2) What work of yours, if any, are you the most embarrassed about existing?
Out of the stories that were actually published, the original take on To Love A Druid, is a personal stain during my time on FF. Unpublished, I wrote a prompt for an Overwatch Harem when I was still in High School. Threw that shit in my Trash and never looked at it since.
3) What order do you write in? Front of book to back? Chronological? Favorite scenes? Something else?
I make a mental Storyboard of how I want the story to begin, how characters will be introduced. I then make a conversation with the characters in question, to see if it sticks. If it doesn't leave my thoughts for a day or two I put it or the character in a doc somewhere. This process has yet to fail me and I've been doing it for half a decade.
4) Favorite character you've written? (Can be an OC or actual game character)
Ooh, that's hard. Koga and Tatl are among my favorite characters to write for recently. Tatl is the perfect foil for Koga's stoic, smooth demeanor. Over the course of my time as a writer, Xan is a must mention, I like him so much that he crossed over from SC to MK. And I made him.
5) Character you were most surprised to end up writing?
Dakini. I had planned on making a child who grew up at some point, hell you saw the woman who would've been the first in Boogie. But since SC is not a popular FF section she went to the back burner until her debut in her MoI.
6) Something you would go back and change in your writing that it's too late/complicated to change now?
Nothing. I can happily say that I'm such a much better writer now than when I started that I don't see the point in doing so.
7) When asked, are you embarrassed or enthusiastic to tell people that you write?
Neither. A lot of people I know, know I write. My siblings, my academic advisor, my circle back home, a couple of the women I'm talking to. They all know I write, and they all think it's cool. In fact, I inspired one of those women to write because I write.
8) Favorite genre to write?
I grew up reading The Percy Jackson series. So, I use those as inspiration. So, I guess my answer is Fantasy.
9) What, if anything, do you do for inspiration?
Dream. A lot of the concepts for these stories come from my subconscious. Hence why most of my stories can be extremely vivid. I get an idea and it just snowballs. I do research about nearly everything I write because I don't want to be inaccurate.
10) Do you write in silence or with background noise? With people or alone?
I think you know the answer to that question, most of the time at the beginning and end of a chapter I post whatever I listen to. In fact I can do it right now. Currently listening to: RYD/ DARK RED by Steve Lacy. As for when I write, it can go both ways. Most of the time I write at night when everyone I'm living with is asleep so I don't get distracted but there are times when I write around people.
11) What aspect of your writing do you think has most improved since you started writing?
Plot. I think this was always a strong point, as well as my character creating and character building. But coming up with an original plot was always difficult for me. Arc III of GbNF is something I'm extremely proud of since it's my first finished original product since I joined FF.
12) Your weaknesses as an author.
A personal lack of consistency. I tend to write things that people will praise (Like Ultimate Adventure, Eyes of a Merc, Eyes of a Musician to name a few.) but because I'm not satisfied with them I stop writing for them. If you (alwaysdoubted.) didn't become my editor, I think GbNF would've suffered the same fate.
13) Your strengths as an author.
If struck by inspiration, I can write ANYTHING. For any verse, any genre, and I guarantee it'll be qualitative. Out of all the verses I've written for I know little about SF, not nearly enough to write a story but YGJ exists and I really like where it's headed atm.
14) Do you make playlists for your current wips (Work in progress or process)?
No. If I want to write something bad, I make a prompt at the least before I forget or lose interest. I will always finish at least a chapter before deciding to continue or not.
15) Why did you start writing? (Be completely honest. No judging from my part)
I was inspired by the stories I read. The very first story I ever favorited on FF was a Fire Emblem story where Robin and Cordelia were the main pairings (The name of the story is Potentia Amoris but it's been DC'ed for years). I liked it so much that I told my close friends in my circle about the plot. I think he left FF altogether but it was that story that gave me the courage to write my first prompt. And here I am.
16) Are there any characters who haunt you?
Wesley used to haunt me. To Love a Druid's original run as I mentioned is a taint that I have to live with even though I removed it. Making the reboot got the weight off of my shoulders. But there's a reason why I'm hesitant to use Wes in my stories nowadays.
17) If you could give your fledgling author self any advice, what would it be?
Don't make your stories all about the lemons. I understand we're unnaturally good at it, but it will taint your view on writings, and the people who consistently read your work will start actively looking for it.
18) Were there any works you read that affected you so much that it influenced your writing style? What were they? (Name as many as you want)
Besides the previous story that was removed, A Change of Tactics to me is the Lemon Bible. JL Davenport (the Author.) is a tenth-degree black belt on lemon writing. So in terms of lemons, I take inspiration from that story, generally his writing style. Otherwise, my older work inspires me since it shows how far I've come. Even though they're not on FF anymore I go back and read my old works to reminisce.
19) When it comes to more complicated narratives, how do you keep track of outlines, characters, development, timeline, etc.?
Preview, preview, preview. When I'm writing for a new chapter I have a tab open of the chapter before as a live preview. I don't go to the actual story, cause I don't like giving myself reads.
20) Do you write in long sit-down sessions or in little spurts?
All my stories I do in long sessions. The problem is I don't do it in a schedule like manner. I'll start a chapter of a story tomorrow, but I won't touch it for two weeks at the least. Hell, it took me half a year to start the Lissa Supports. But I spend at least an hour on the prompts before I send them to my editor.
21) What do you think when you read over your older work?
Growth. I see a lot of flaws, grammatical, plot, characters that I don't make now. I actually fix those mistakes when I look over my older stories. Not all of them I don't have enough time to do that.
22) Are there any subjects that make you uncomfortable to write?
Lemons. Spending two years of my time on FF writing stories that revolved around them, tainted Lemons for me. I'm slowly starting to get the taint off but those steps are small. As hell.
23) Any obscure life experiences that you feel have helped in your writing?
I used to be depressed in 2019. It didn't get bad until 2019, but if I think about it, I think it really began my Sophomore year of High School. And it snuck up like a project deadline. But it was through this depression that inspired me to finish and refine The Lost Project and turn it into GbNF. But besides that, it was a dark time. Hell, I had a mental breakdown that summer. I'm just glad I got my shit together before it got worse. Otherwise, I might not even be here.
24) Have you ever become an expert on something you previously knew nothing about, in order to better a scene or story?
Yes. Every verse I write for I do deep dives for the sake of accuracy. Sometimes I forget that I'm supposed to be writing something and just look at concept art for a character or I read a character's history. Sometimes these deep dives cause me to come up with a new OC. It happens a lot.
25) Copy/paste a few sentences or a short paragraph that you're particularly proud of. (Have fun with this one. Nothing's off limits)
The following is an excerpt from an Essay I wrote my Junior Year of College. The essay was to take a film I watched in class, and compare it to a film I watched outside of it. The films were Soylent Green and Akira. Here you go:
A problem that is clear as the night time sky, but much like in reality, nothing is done for it. And in some countries on Earth, Soylent Green in that sense IS reality. Akira as a result leads towards the Science side of Sci-Fi. A fictional city, WWIII, Planetary Devastation minimized to a single city and an entire country if you want to infer. Some of the other elements Akira presents also shows it's further leaning into the science side of Sci-Fi. Tetsuo and the Espers being telekinetic, stopping tank shells, making the earth quake, and break on command, Human flight. I can go on. Granted, both movies are still Sci-Fi so as of this point in time neither of these scenarios are real. But realistically (which is ironic, considering that I'm talking about Sci-Fi films.) a post-apocalyptic future where the Earth being overpopulated being a major contributing factor, if not the biggest contributing factor to why it happened, is a lot more realistic and possible than a post-apocalyptic future that was caused by a child telekinetic losing his powers, which leads to the destruction of Tokyo, which in turn leads to the Third World War.