It's That Time Again
Mar. 12th, 2007 11:39 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
revenaIf you’ve been reading me for longer than a month or so, you probably already know that I’m a little obsessed with the interview meme. Here’s the latest incarnation, via ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
deconcentrate:
Want an interview?
1. Leave me a comment saying, "I too am an egomaniac."
2. I'll then respond by asking you up to five questions. You will answer them, because you like talking about yourself.
3. You will update your LJ with the answers to the questions.
4. You will include this explanation and an offer to interview someone else in the post.
5. When others comment asking to be interviewed, you will ask them five questions.
I can’t promise that my questions will be as awesome as they have been in the past, especially if I’ve already interviewed you once before, but I’ll see what kinds of interesting things I can come up with! It’s fun! Yay!
And in the meantime, here are my answers to questions fromdeconcentrate and old questions from homagenz from the last time around that I never answered!
deconcentrate’s questions:
1. Of the books you have written, which was the hardest to write, and why?
They all had their own unique challenges, y’know? The Valmai Hammerhand book was hard because it was my first novel-length thing (arguably my first thing, flat-out), Seen and Spoken was hard because it was my first co-written thing (though, it was easy in different ways because it was co-written. Writing withkphoebe is the best evar), and even Son of Lettery (which will have a real name some day, and soon) had its hard moments, usually because of trying to write from the perspective of an eleven-year-old boy.
I think I’d say that Valmai’s story was/is the hardest, overall, though (people who are used to me saying Valmai I and Valmai II may be confused at this point – I’m currently thinking that there might actually be just the one actual novel, there. This is part of why it needs some work done, yeah?). I love the characters, and I love most of the story, but the first draft was difficult to force myself through, because I was learning how to do it, and I’m not sure when I’m going to get to re-writes. I mean to do it someday, but there’s just a ton that needs to be overhauled, and it’s kind’ve daunting – I’ve learned enough now that I think I can write a good new novel from scratch in about half the time it’d take to replot, rewrite and edit poor Valmai into a good novel, so she’s always getting shoved to the back burner.
Firsts are challenging, in short. But definitely very rewarding, too.
2. Where does your LJ username come from?
The short version is that it was a name I started using back when the internets were young, and just never got out of the habit of. The long version is something I actually put into post form one time!
3. What gave you the idea to start writing novels?
I’ve got a long version of this one in post form, too, actually. The short and snappy answer is that I created some cool NPCs for a D&D game I was running, and then wanted to know more about them, and started writing a series of stories that turned into a novel. And that was really fun, so I did it some more.
4. Who's your favorite fictional character, and if you can't answer that, what's your favorite story?
Ooh, gosh. That’s hard! I’ve got lots and lots of favorites… I mean, I’d have a hard time picking favorite characters or stories if I got to choose one per genre, or even one per author.
I am exceedingly fond of Hermione Granger, but that’s kind of a cheat answer, because when I say that I’m not talking so much about J.K. Rowling’s Hermione Granger as I am about the multiplicity of Hermione Grangers I’ve read in fanfiction, many of whom are really wonderful.
5. What got you into reading comics, and what comics, if any, do you try to read on a regular basis?
kphoebe did, pretty much. I used to read X-Men in an off-and-on way as a kid, but Karen got me interested in comics as an adult reader, because she’s so enthusiastic. My favorites right now are Power Pack and Birds of Prey. I also really really really liked 1602, and I want to read more of Y: The Last Man and Age of Bronze. I also want to get my hands on Runaways, which looks super-awesome. I’m not a hardcore reader, but that’s a pretty decent cross-section, I think.
homagenz’s questions:
What would you say would be the three greatest influences on your writing?
1. My academic training in literary analysis. I often find myself stuck at an awkward point in the plot, and think “if I were writing a paper on this book, what would I be discussing as the major themes and tropes?” – and that nearly always unsticks me. It’s kind of horrifically meta-textual, but that’s how I’ve learned to think about stories.
2. My background as a sci-fantasy reader. I read all kinds of stuff now – “serious” literature, mysteries, romance – but when I was growing up, it was all speculative fiction all the time (and nearly always Forgotten Realms or Dragonlance, even). The stuff I write, as a result, is always sort of in conversation with the works that have become part of my history as a reader. When I start thinking about a new character who has a story to tell me, she pretty much always lives in a world with spell-casting, or giant sentient lizard aliens or something. This is, clearly, a big influence.
4. Being me. Like many writers, I tend to write characters who have at least a little bit in common with me. I don’t think Valmai would be the way she is if I wasn’t, myself, a physically aggressive woman with some self-confidence issues. Tamar’s photographic memory is an expansion of my own weird recall abilities (I don’t have a photographic memory, for those of you who are now wondering – but I do have very good recall of certain, rather useless sorts of things. This helps a lot for Trivial Pursuit, and looking up quotations in books that I’ve read before, but that’s about it). My experiences and thoughts and feelings inevitably shape the kind of writing that I do.
Fantasy: Escapism, or deep exploration of reality through metaphor? Discuss.
It can definitely be either, and sometimes both. Actually, I’d say it’s pretty often both.
If you one day woke up with some crippling and philosophically-convenient mental disorder that meant you could function in every way you now do, but could never perform another act of creative writing, what would you do instead?
I’d probably devote more energy to one or more of my other creative outlets. I do a lot of crafting, and if I had the time and space for it, I’d be very keen on getting back into photography, or working with clay, or both. I always had a need to be making stuff, even back when I wasn’t doing it by writing.
If you could work on any single project in the world, be it writing or otherwise, what would it be?
Hmmmmmm. Right now, I’m really interested in the idea of trying to adapt Valmai’s story into a graphic novel. I’m held back mostly by the very minor problem of not being much of an artist, but in hypothetical question land, perhaps I could hire myself a team to handle the visual aspects!
So those are all my answers! Leave me a comment, and I will ask you questions of your very own! And you can always feel free to ask me more questions, too, even if you don’t want to do it in multiples of five.
deconcentrate:Want an interview?
1. Leave me a comment saying, "I too am an egomaniac."
2. I'll then respond by asking you up to five questions. You will answer them, because you like talking about yourself.
3. You will update your LJ with the answers to the questions.
4. You will include this explanation and an offer to interview someone else in the post.
5. When others comment asking to be interviewed, you will ask them five questions.
I can’t promise that my questions will be as awesome as they have been in the past, especially if I’ve already interviewed you once before, but I’ll see what kinds of interesting things I can come up with! It’s fun! Yay!
And in the meantime, here are my answers to questions from
deconcentrate and old questions from homagenz from the last time around that I never answered!deconcentrate’s questions:1. Of the books you have written, which was the hardest to write, and why?
They all had their own unique challenges, y’know? The Valmai Hammerhand book was hard because it was my first novel-length thing (arguably my first thing, flat-out), Seen and Spoken was hard because it was my first co-written thing (though, it was easy in different ways because it was co-written. Writing with
kphoebe is the best evar), and even Son of Lettery (which will have a real name some day, and soon) had its hard moments, usually because of trying to write from the perspective of an eleven-year-old boy.I think I’d say that Valmai’s story was/is the hardest, overall, though (people who are used to me saying Valmai I and Valmai II may be confused at this point – I’m currently thinking that there might actually be just the one actual novel, there. This is part of why it needs some work done, yeah?). I love the characters, and I love most of the story, but the first draft was difficult to force myself through, because I was learning how to do it, and I’m not sure when I’m going to get to re-writes. I mean to do it someday, but there’s just a ton that needs to be overhauled, and it’s kind’ve daunting – I’ve learned enough now that I think I can write a good new novel from scratch in about half the time it’d take to replot, rewrite and edit poor Valmai into a good novel, so she’s always getting shoved to the back burner.
Firsts are challenging, in short. But definitely very rewarding, too.
2. Where does your LJ username come from?
The short version is that it was a name I started using back when the internets were young, and just never got out of the habit of. The long version is something I actually put into post form one time!
3. What gave you the idea to start writing novels?
I’ve got a long version of this one in post form, too, actually. The short and snappy answer is that I created some cool NPCs for a D&D game I was running, and then wanted to know more about them, and started writing a series of stories that turned into a novel. And that was really fun, so I did it some more.
4. Who's your favorite fictional character, and if you can't answer that, what's your favorite story?
Ooh, gosh. That’s hard! I’ve got lots and lots of favorites… I mean, I’d have a hard time picking favorite characters or stories if I got to choose one per genre, or even one per author.
I am exceedingly fond of Hermione Granger, but that’s kind of a cheat answer, because when I say that I’m not talking so much about J.K. Rowling’s Hermione Granger as I am about the multiplicity of Hermione Grangers I’ve read in fanfiction, many of whom are really wonderful.
5. What got you into reading comics, and what comics, if any, do you try to read on a regular basis?
kphoebe did, pretty much. I used to read X-Men in an off-and-on way as a kid, but Karen got me interested in comics as an adult reader, because she’s so enthusiastic. My favorites right now are Power Pack and Birds of Prey. I also really really really liked 1602, and I want to read more of Y: The Last Man and Age of Bronze. I also want to get my hands on Runaways, which looks super-awesome. I’m not a hardcore reader, but that’s a pretty decent cross-section, I think.homagenz’s questions:What would you say would be the three greatest influences on your writing?
1. My academic training in literary analysis. I often find myself stuck at an awkward point in the plot, and think “if I were writing a paper on this book, what would I be discussing as the major themes and tropes?” – and that nearly always unsticks me. It’s kind of horrifically meta-textual, but that’s how I’ve learned to think about stories.
2. My background as a sci-fantasy reader. I read all kinds of stuff now – “serious” literature, mysteries, romance – but when I was growing up, it was all speculative fiction all the time (and nearly always Forgotten Realms or Dragonlance, even). The stuff I write, as a result, is always sort of in conversation with the works that have become part of my history as a reader. When I start thinking about a new character who has a story to tell me, she pretty much always lives in a world with spell-casting, or giant sentient lizard aliens or something. This is, clearly, a big influence.
4. Being me. Like many writers, I tend to write characters who have at least a little bit in common with me. I don’t think Valmai would be the way she is if I wasn’t, myself, a physically aggressive woman with some self-confidence issues. Tamar’s photographic memory is an expansion of my own weird recall abilities (I don’t have a photographic memory, for those of you who are now wondering – but I do have very good recall of certain, rather useless sorts of things. This helps a lot for Trivial Pursuit, and looking up quotations in books that I’ve read before, but that’s about it). My experiences and thoughts and feelings inevitably shape the kind of writing that I do.
Fantasy: Escapism, or deep exploration of reality through metaphor? Discuss.
It can definitely be either, and sometimes both. Actually, I’d say it’s pretty often both.
If you one day woke up with some crippling and philosophically-convenient mental disorder that meant you could function in every way you now do, but could never perform another act of creative writing, what would you do instead?
I’d probably devote more energy to one or more of my other creative outlets. I do a lot of crafting, and if I had the time and space for it, I’d be very keen on getting back into photography, or working with clay, or both. I always had a need to be making stuff, even back when I wasn’t doing it by writing.
If you could work on any single project in the world, be it writing or otherwise, what would it be?
Hmmmmmm. Right now, I’m really interested in the idea of trying to adapt Valmai’s story into a graphic novel. I’m held back mostly by the very minor problem of not being much of an artist, but in hypothetical question land, perhaps I could hire myself a team to handle the visual aspects!
So those are all my answers! Leave me a comment, and I will ask you questions of your very own! And you can always feel free to ask me more questions, too, even if you don’t want to do it in multiples of five.
