After a few knocks this week, I'm really having a crisis of confidence regarding my work and a big ol' bout of imposter syndrome. I am trying my best to be kind to myself and ease through it ✨️
@Amynearlyknowledgeable I'm a digital marketer (content, social, all that nonsense) and seeing how you're promoting this stuff successfully is impressive. Especially on the Fediverse! It's also genuine and heartfelt and interesting.
It may not feel like that today but you're doing an amazing job.
#PennedPossibilities 319 — MC POV: Where did you grow up? What was your childhood like there?
On a farm and in the Fell Woods. I don't remember much about the former, but the latter was both exciting and difficult every day. I chose to live with wolves, which because of my gift better understood me every day. They were still wolves, and they lived and ate like wolves, not humans. I survived despite the dirt, raw meet, living without shelter, and an incredible amount of walking. The wolves cherished the cunning and technology I brought to the pack and helped me find a way. They taught me to hunt. People, I learned much later, like to be touched; contact was natural to wolves, but sadly despite people liking to be touched they don't routinely do so. The whole leaving the wild to attend school has left me with what one of Her Highness' psychologist call species-disphoria. I'm more comfortable living amongst beasts than people because they are so much more friendly and, if not, so much more predictable. I'm sure I'll go back when school's over—despite having a new boyfriend.
#PennedPossibilities 318 — What do you need in your writing space to help you stay focused?
Less is more in this case. That doesn't mean that in a perfect situation I won't suddenly find myself sweeping the floor instead of writing. They don't call it displacement activity for nothing!
#WordWeavers 2405.19 — How did you settle on your MC’s appearance?
Historically, I wrote my characters such that I found them attractive. I don't do that anymore.
Sometimes I don't have control, except for hair styles and clothes, or the lack thereof. The story or character may have certain in-the-moment requirement, like when the MC needed to train in an almost all-male fight gym as a prizefighter (she'd later win a championship). Of course she had tailored pink and black gym wear made of technical fabric that outlined every curve—which proved interesting.
These days I do the best not to assign an appearance at all, instead keeping things vague and sticking to describing only what's absolutely necessary. My experiences with publishers is that'll they'll ignore your descriptions for cover art and promotion anyway. In any case, doing this allows the reader to imagine someone they would find attractive(†). The MC in the current WiP is described physically only as tall, shy, so beautiful that both sexes fall for her, and that she has "winter eyes," whatever that is. In the other story, the only thing I'm settled on is described by the devil-girl something like this:
"Take two finger length pieces of rusty rebar, sharpen one end, bend it ninety degree, and stick one above each temple, pointing backwards. Makes wearing hats problematic. Yeah. Gets messy when they try to grab you by the head in a fight, especially if it sticks in..."
She's also describes her very olive complexion; she's mentioned green eyes in a mirror and red hair everywhere. It could easily change in revision.
(†) A recent writer's prompt asked about my target audience. Can I say "imaginative?"
#WordWeavers 2405.18 — What kind of dragon (behavior or looks) would your MC be?
In one WiP, this question makes as much sense as asking a typical Irish person what kind of Tahitian they would be (body type). In the other, dragons also exist but seem to be (it's not totally defined) the result of some kind of contagious magic. We've already seen a wyvern, wbo is a monstrous fire breathing bat, and will soon realize there is a monitor lizard version (a wyrm?), but by this token there could also be a cat dragon. Thus, this question makes no sense in the other WiP, either.
#WritersCoffeeClub Ch 9 Nbr 18 — Have you written sections where the action occurs against the clock? How did you do it?
My current story segment in serialization takes place over a very short time period, after the last third of the previous story taking place between dusk and dawn. The other story I am working on is a three act story, each act taking place over very few hours.
Writing stories in compressed time isn't much different than writing stories that take place more episodically over longer periods of time. In both cases, I write about what is important for the character and how they deal with events. An example may help.
In the serialization (obviously spoilers if you know which story I'm referring to), the MC realizes that though the leader has left on a military adventure to handle a "guerrilla insurgency," she sees evidence that same foe may attack the capital city. In theory, she's politically second in command. In practice, she has no real power. How she spends that day scheming and conniving with only a title to get a single frigate on patrol drives the story and the clock. It starts with a PTSD episode where she realizes she may be responsible again for innumerable deaths without the power to prevent them, then her working every contact she knows, butting heads with the generals who discount her experience running a crime syndicate (briefly), convincing a discriminated against officer who wants to accept discharge to instead command a museum-piece frigate, getting into a bloody fight with the XO, avoiding what the reader will see as assassination attempts, and it just gets worse with her love interests (plural!) pulling at her heart.
All in 12 hours. Tick-tock! That's one day of three days of escalating existential threats. The fourth day's events take place over one hour, which is about the time it would take to read.
"Were my trust misplaced, I'd learn something about myself. But, then again, that seemed to be my method of operation: win—or get hurt, pick myself up, make different mistakes." HRH CPE S. G. Regina A. M.
Any set of readers who appreciate all the characters working (whatever that means) to the best of their ability. The above quote is how my MC views getting things done. Plot advancement by stupidity is verboten. They should probably like fantasy or soft / social SF, too.
We can numb it with
ice. It might take time.
But o’clock we’ve got.
And at absolute zero,
frozen stares and
charges flow in pairs,
with even the halting
halted on stairs, and
hate might as well
be a popsicle stand
and it’s loving
standing still,
by the way.
#WordWeavers 2405.17 — Have you ever written for other age groups? (MG, YA, A)
My publisher pegged me as a YA writer. Lately, I've been pushing the envelope to adult in general, and in particular writing an erotic fantasy as one of the WiPs. It can all change in revision, of course...
#PennedPossibilities 317 — What clothing materials or outfits feel the most comfortable to your villain?
She was arguably a villain, and she got a thuggish prizefighter to try to kill the MC. She also tried to help a coup d'etat in the mob, which failed. The MC meet her in an alley when the MC dissed her gang boyfriend and she tried to slit her throat. The MC took away her ivory handled jackknife, which becomes a character by itself in later stories. She goes by the moniker of Mustang, maybe because like the car she's unsteerable?
She's described as
"The women looked overly girly in garish reds or pinks, with matching makeup and bracelets, except for a buzzed-cut blonde tanned woman [Mustang] who wore brass stud piercings. (Didn't brass have lead in it...? Poisonous... Oh, never mind.) It worked; she looked tough, more so maybe than her gold chain-wearing boyfriend in a white tee shirt."
We're talking cotton here. Cheap. She's wearing something tight and black around her hips.