#i should've known i'll blab when it's about writing 🥲

[glorfindel-of-imladris]

6, 10, 11 for the writing asks!

6. What is your darkest fear about writing?

My darkest fear in relation to writing isn't in the writing itself, but in losing the ability to write.

10. Has a piece of writing ever “haunted” you? Has your own writing haunted you? What does that mean to you?

I love that I have been haunted by pieces of writing many times over the years. Sometimes it's a beautiful line, sometimes a good imagery, and sometimes just a general vibe that the entire thing has.

There are things that haunt me in the sense that I read them once in passing, but when I wanted to read them again, I can no longer find them. There is a poem I have been looking for for years now, and it has lines about the delicate way dust settles on furniture in an empty room. I think it was a poem about loneliness. There is also another poem, this time at least I know the author (Szymborska), about how the author watches a world that goes on living, in its beautiful and uncaring way, even after the loss of the author’s beloved.

The most recent piece of writing that haunted me was, would you believe it, a manga. The title is "Old-fashioned Cupcake". Have you ever read or encountered something that makes you get that feeling that nostalgia gives you, but the thing itself isn't really nostalgic? Difficult to explain, but it the closest feeling I can use to describe while I was reading it. Needless to say, I loved it a lot.

As for my own writing, there are fics that sit with me longer than others. Lórien Dreams was one of them for a long time. Recently, A Place Between Time and Sorrow also sat with me for a while. I was obsessed with this image of Erestor with his hair down surrounded by bluebells, a promise of a sweet future, to comfort Glorfindel while he is tired and heartbroken.

11. Do you believe in the old advice to “kill your darlings?” Are you a ruthless darling assassin? What happens to the darlings you murder? Do you have a darling graveyard? Do you grieve?

Absolutely! It's understandable to be attached to a line or a scene or a character, and sometimes I cling to them for a long time, but I am always all the better for it when I eventually get it done. I don't think I'm ruthless about it, but I like to think I know when it's necessary. I don't completely delete them. Usually my darlings are lines or scenes, seldom characters, but that's lucky because I can cut them out and just keep them in another document. I guess that's like a darling graveyard, but I like to think it's more of a nursery. Sometimes they spawn new stories of their own, it's like propagating cuttings 🌱