#a garden of wishes

[bookshelf-in-progress]

10, 11, 13

10. which character(s) turned out differently from what you had planned? how so?

Royston in "From the Other Side of the End of the World" was supposed to be dismayed at his war-torn world and in need of the hope that Rachel's future perspective provides. He was also supposed to have more of a sense of humor, maybe some cynical wit. In practice, I couldn't fit in his road trip or his arc. The story became more about Rachel's grief, so he had to be the voice of reason and comfort.

11. which scene was harder/easier to write than anticipated? why?

Harder to Write: The ending of "A Garden of Wishes" was so hard to write that a flash fiction I should have finished last year became a long short story that I posted this year. Part of the problem was that the characters and story became much more detailed than anticipated, so part of me wanted to revamp it so it wasn't in second-person and became a more fleshed-out retelling.

I finally decided to just commit to second-person and finish it, but the scene with Sonatina telling her sisters tripped me up for a long while--I wasn't sure exactly how I wanted Sonatina, her sisters, and Michael to react to different parts of the situation.

I finally figured out a path, so "A Garden of Wishes" became one of the only stories that I abandoned for a significant time, yet still managed to finish.

Easier to Write: Once I had the concept of "Heartsong", I found it was surprisingly easy to weave it into a story.

13. how did you change as a writer? did you learn anything new? started to plan instead of pants? share your wisdom!

I became more willing to see fragments and short scenes as short stories in their own right, rather than thinking of them as the beginnings of longer stories. This was a great way to prevent my pile of WIPs from reaching overwhelming levels--I can just have an idea, do something with it, and satisfy the storytelling urge without spending a lot of time on it--but it did lead to a bunch of stories that feel more like fanfic of an unwritten series rather than full stories.

I also learned that I'm much more of a discovery writer than I ever realized. While I need to plan a basic shape to the story, I also need to keep things loose. I often have a lot of possible things that could be included in the story, and I won't know which ones work until after I start writing it down. Writing concrete story details and putting things in chronological order can help me understand what does and doesn't make sense, and can give me more ideas. Letting the brainstorming happen while writing is a good way to keep me from being upset that my beautiful layered idea doesn't translate into words-on-page.

[gnawe]

[sorryiliketoscreenshot]

Zen Garden - Four Seasons

[mossy-paws]

nooooo little German boy don’t go into that drag show….. (LIMBUS COMP.)

Yeah I have no regrets making this even if it took like 20+ fucking hours of my life away from me

(og meme + closeups)

[flightrisssk05]

Three mimir

[pricklenettle]

More line art, I really like how in the comics Wirt’s always going around trading labor for a place to stay, Greg of course, does what he likes (usually fall into trouble)

[satans-knitwear]

Don't let the neighbours see 🤫

Treat me ~ Tip Me ~ More of me

[kaycartoons]

I wanna share some of my favorite art styles from cartoons and animated movies. (This doesn't depict ALL the animation styles I like and please feel free to share your favorites as well)

[dailyg3]

Daily G3 My Little Pony is: Garden Wishes! ♡

[iamblue15]

It's Their Night.

[orbitsuns]

[bookshelf-in-progress]

For the writer asks: 2, 4, 7, 8, 10, 19, 20. And 21 for Arateph.

2. Tell us about what you’re most looking forward to writing – in your current project, or a future project

Right now, I'm just hoping I can figure out how to write a longer work. There are several options fighting for attention, but I'm getting more excited about Arateph than I have in a long while (though this does tend to happen around early summer, so we're right on schedule), so I'm hoping that can translate into finishing one of my ideas. The top contenders right now are my Cinderella retelling (set after "Out of the Tomb") and my Princess and the Pea retelling (set before the revolution), which both have strong heroines whose painful lives have driven them to make some bad choices that they're going to have to overcome, and I'd be excited to write their perspectives and see their journeys play out.

4. Share a sentence or paragraph from your writing that you’re really proud of (explain why, if you like)

I really like this paragraph in "A Garden of Wishes". To my mind, it's the center of the romance and the themes that I'm trying to draw out of the fairy tale.

In that moment, the sun shines full upon you, setting the gold and brown streaks of your hair alight. Suddenly, you are not an ethereal being, too high and fine for me to reach. You are here, with me, laboring in the Earth—and you glow with joy. It is not the blazing joy of your dances in the midnight palace—burning bright and fast and destructive. This joy is gentler, life-giving—like a hearth fire or a candle flame. It warms and nourishes, comforts and caresses. For the first time, I can picture you as a gardener’s wife, laboring with me in a cottage, caring for our children, giving life to sons and daughters and helping me to make good things grow.

7. What do you think are the characteristics of your personal writing style? Would others agree?

Branching out from sentence-level style and into themes/motifs, I write a lot of:

Quiet heroines who doubt themselves

Outspoken, practical heroines

Heroines with various intellectual interests

Basically decent human beings just trying to get along in life

Married couples who are madly in love with each other

Mentor characters who get to explain the themes to the POV character/outspoken best friend characters who cut through the POV's self-doubt

Overt messages

Fantasy worlds with Victorian fashion/imagery

Surreal second-person fairy tales

Original fiction that riffs off of concepts from one specific work/genre

Retellings that can include romance but also focus on the wider world of the fairy tale (and sometimes turn romantic tales platonic and vice versa)

Anything I missed?

8. Is what you like to write the same as what you like to read?

Kind of? I don't read as much fantasy as my writing would suggest--I do read quite a bit, but I do tend to read a lot more vintage/classic fiction from roughly 1800-1960 and historical fiction set in that time frame, and I don't have the courage to write realistic fiction yet. I do like to read fairy tales and fairy tale retellings, but it's getting harder and harder to find retellings that are written in the styles I like to read.

I do sometimes lean heavily on works that I've read to inspire my work. "The True Story" was "84, Charing Cross Road" done as magical realism. "The Return of Queen Emma" and "Honors from the King" involved me riffing on Narnia concepts. "A Feast in the Lanternwood" started as "What if Laura Ingalls Wilder wrote fantasy?" And sometimes I'm just drawing from tropes and settings in things that I've read and mashing them together into something original.

10. How would you describe your writing process?

Chaotic but focused. I'm constantly spinning ideas, tropes, images, etc. into stories. Lately, my writing process has involved writing a list with a whole bunch of ideas (it helps if I have a theme and a deadline, like "I want to write a flash fiction retelling" or "I want to write an intrusive fantasy for Inklings"), and then choosing one and writing it in the document underneath. Once I've finished a draft, I do some polishing passes, and if I have a bit more leeway/I'm not feeling impatient, I'll wait at least overnight, if not a couple of days, to come back and do the final edits.

For longer works, I try to keep my outline focused--I'll write down the initial ideas, then pare it down to the important stuff as I develop.

19. Is there something you always find yourself repeating in your writing? (favourite verb, something you describe ‘too often’, trope you can’t get enough of?)

I use the words "glory" and "joy" way too much. I also have a bad habit of repeating words multiple times in the same paragraph or work--in my head, it seems like the only fitting word or like poetic repetition, but on the page, it looks like I have no vocabulary. I'm sure there are other specific reused words that I can't think of at the moment.

20. Tell us the meta about your writing that you really want to ramble to people about (symbolism you’ve included, character or relationship development that you love, hidden references, callbacks or clues for future scenes?)

@lady-merian's comment recently reminded me of a bit of meta for "Honors From the King". In the opening scene, the elf has a line about "If he offers you half of his kingdom, don't take it. It's just a polite phrase." That was a bit of a personal joke, because I've always wondered what a king would do if someone took them up on the offer and asked for half the kingdom, so I thought I'd have her warn against the possibility. It wasn't until a long time after I'd written the story that I realized I'd thrown in some unwitting foreshadowing, because the king winds up offering Mia his entire kingdom, and she's going to wind up accepting it.

21. What other medium do you think your story would work well as? (film, webcomic, animated series?)

I've already envisioned "Out of the Tomb" as a musical, and I've pictured at least the first act of a musical about Marastel and Jemrauth's courtship, with several songs that are key to my understanding of the story, so that could be fun. I also think it could be fun to see it as an animated series (you could properly portray the human-but-not-quite-ness of tephans) or as an audio drama (you could have some fun portraying the layered sounds of the tephan naming language)>

[lonelyzarquon]

DOCTOR WHO | The Magician’s Apprentice

[sorryiliketoscreenshot]

[phantom-shell]

Everytime I dare to get comfortable with the idea of my future being in the animation industry, I get hit with a wave of "fuck you" in the form of beautiful animated shows being removed from existence. I know it would absolutely break me if a beloved project of mine was treated like this.

There's no legal way of watching some of these anymore. What the hell. Why is this considered the norm now.

Why are there a bunch of showrunners, animators, writers and other various artists that need to pirate THEIR OWN SHOWS?? Y'know, the things that THEY made???

It breaks my heart that the only thing keeping these works of art from collecting dust in some corporate basement and eventually becoming lost media is pirating websites.

This is so frustrating, fuck

[flightrisssk05]

I spend wayyy too long looking at the couch and the paintings augh