#I also have a fraught and invigorating relationship with 'kill your darlings'

[emilianadarling]

For the ask meme: 13, 29, and 35, please!

Continuing to work through the submissions I got for the writer ask meme. :3

Weird Questions for Writers (because writers are weird)

13. What is a subject matter that is incredibly difficult for you write about? What is easy?

Oof. I suppose on the 'difficult' front, there's a spectrum between:

'difficult to write about but I still DO write about it', and

'so difficult to write about that I choose not to write about it, period'.

In the former category, we have *wince* things like trauma to hands and fingers, which is very deeply unpleasant to write about but I absolutely WILL and HAVE done it. It's aksjdhajksdhkjsahdj to write about for me personally, but I CAN soldier through.

For those of you who've read Until My Dying Breath from way back in 2011-2012, I quite literally had to write the 'Vampire!Kurt snaps a guy's wrists backward like twigs' scene with my eyes averted as I typed, my little 21-22 year old self going 'ahh' 'AHHH' out loud at the laptop screen as I did so, then went back and edited out all the typos another day once I'd had a chance to steel myself. I don't LIKE writing it, but I have and will again.

Then there is the 'so difficult to write about that I choose not to write about it, period' end of the spectrum, which is for me a more pernicious kind of difficulty. For me, that's things like partner betrayal, infidelity, certain fundamental betrayals between close family. I can feel out of my skin for days after encountering those elements in stories unexpectedly, and so it's just not a topic I have much desire to feature as central elements of my writing.

Obligatory 'writing battle scenes is also hard' note here lmao, but while it's true and they ARE, I think working through my battle scene anxieties by way of repeated exposure and beta reader/collaborator support.

29. Where do you draw your inspiration? What do you do when the inspiration well runs dry?

The first thing that came to mind are these passages from On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft by Stephen King:

"... good story ideas seem to come quite literally from nowhere, sailing at you right out of the empty sky: two previously unrelated ideas come together and make something new under the sun. Your job isn’t to find these ideas but to recognize them when they show up."[...]

"We are writers, and we never ask one another where we get our ideas; we know we don’t know."

This may not be everyone's experience, but there are elements that certainly echo my own. Sometimes it strikes all at once, a convergence of concepts into a story you want to read so badly you feel compelled to craft it into existence.

The next closest answer I can give is "other people's stories", because everything is a story and the world is a story and we all creatively stand on the shoulders of giants. We build upon the stories that fed us!!!

35. What’s your favorite writing rule to smash into smithereens?

Perhaps not into smithereens, but I do have a counterpoint to Orwell’s Rule: "never use a long word when a short word will do".

While the underlying sentiment is, for me, often supportable... in practice, my gut preference is to go with the word that describes the thing as precisely, evocatively, and accurately as possible. Often times, that's a shorter one; sometimes, it's a longer one.

There are some words out there that are apt as fuck. 'Load-bearing words', if you will. Describing Din's armor as "a metallurgical second skin" gave me bone-deep satisfaction during revisions. It just felt right, and I knew Caro would LOVE it once they did their beta reading pass... and they DID.

So -- short words are OFTEN better, in my eyes. But not always. Sometimes, a longer word will do.