Thirty Days - Day Twenty-Three

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Thirty Days - Day Twenty-Two

Day 22 – Have you ever participated in a fest or a Big Bang? If so, write about your favorite experience in relation to one. If not, are there any you’ve thought about doing? And if not, why not?

None of those specifically. I have done NaNoWriMo several times, though, and that's bigger than a Big Bang, I think. (Those are fics that are 25k words or more, right?) I enjoy Nano, but it does get stressful, so I'm glad it's only done once a year. The years I've been successful, I had to make writing a high priority at the expense of other things, and by the end of it, I've always felt frazzled and burnt out as well as accomplished. The year I failed Nano, I was distracted by a burning desire to play Sims 3 Late Night, because it had just come out.

I've never signed up for a Big Bang for two reasons. Number one is that I write in small fandoms that don't have a lot of people doing writing challenges. Lack of interest and people to geek out with is a big factor. Also, most of my friends in fandom are just as busy as I am, and would have an equally hard time committing to writing a big story in a short amount of time. Nano is a big organzied event, and not all my friends from fandom manage to finish each year. A lower-pressure one would probably get even less participation, and I just don't find participating in that stuff alone as much fun.

Thirty Days - Day Twenty-One

Day 21 – Sequels – Have you ever written a sequel to a story you wrote, and if so, why, and if not, how do you feel about sequels?

Yeah, I've done the sequel thing many times. Usually it's because I like the storyline and don't want to see it end, so I think about how it might continue. It's also a bonus when people say they want to see a sequel because they liked the original so much. That can make me think about continuing when I might've otherwise left it alone.

Years ago, when I wrote Stone Sickness, it was supposed to be a stand-alone story with a different ending than it wound up with. Some feedback I got along the way made me want to change it to a less depressing ending, and from there, continue. I'm a sucker for fluff, so I did go ahead with that, although I never wrote a story following up on the last one posted in that series. I have a couple of starts to it on my hard drive from back then (2001 or so) but I couldn't decide exactly what I wanted to do with it, and then I started to lose interest in that fandom for a while, so it just died.

Thirty Days - Day Twenty

Day 20 – Do you ever get bunnied inspired from other people’s stories or art in the same fandom?

Bunnied inspired? I'm starting to think that something ate the word "or" in the original copy/paste of this list.

Sometimes I get inspired to by others' stories. Reading a good story about a character or pairing that makes me think more about them can lead me to want to use those characters or that pairing in my own writing. Often that happens with characters I haven't thought much about one way or another before.

With art, where crack pairings are all over the place, I sometimes get to thinking, "interesting idea. I wonder how that could actually work..." and then a story to explain it starts to form in my head.

Thirty Days - Day Nineteen

Day 19 – When you have bunnies ideas, do you sit down and start writing right away, or do you write down the idea for further use?

Bunnies ideas? Heh, I think someone needs to beta-read their questions.

Anyway, it's rare that I can sit down and write an idea right away. Like I said in a previous answer, I'm often not anywhere near a computer when I get an idea like that. If I remember, I try to at least jot the basics down in a notebook for when I do have time and the ability to write them out uninterrupted. I'm one of those people who can't have many distractions around when I write, so finding the right time to write can be a challenge in and of itself.

Thirty Days - Day Eighteen

Day 18 – Where do you get the most inspiration for your stories (aka “bunnies”) from?

Music, driving and/or walking alone, and other shows or movies. Music is probably biggest one, because if I hear a song that makes me think of a character or storyline, it gets the wheels turning. I have playlists for various characters, pairings, and storylines in my iTunes, and whenever I discover a song that fits in it, I update it. Listening to those playlists can really help get the creative juices flowing.

When I go on walks or drives, my mind often wanders to story ideas. Granted, I also tend to listen to music on these, and that gets the inspiration started, but that combined with the solitude has given me many an idea. Also, walks or drives with my husband often involve discussion about story ideas, and we bounce stuff off of each other. Lots of good ideas have come from those sessions. Unfortunately, it's also a time where I can't write anything because I'm driving or not at a computer, so sometimes that inspiration evaporates by the time I get to one.

Last but not least, sometimes watching or reading stuff in a similar genre or setting can inspire fic thoughts. Watching Game of Thrones and reading the A Song of Ice and Fire books with all of its fantasy medieval political intrigue brought me right into the mindset of writing my Voltron stories. (Yeah, I know Voltron is space fantasy, but it also has a medieval flavor to it as far as the royalty and such in it goes.) Shows like Rome and The Tudors also helped with inspiration for my Chronicles of a Dark Planet stories. It helps that all those series have characters that remind me of some of the Doom crew.

In a different vein, I've found recently that watching reruns of World's Dumbest... on TruTV makes me think of the Fearsome Five or the Lunatacs working like the cast of that as a MST crew of sorts. When Coldwin and I watch that, we both sometimes say things like, "I can see Negaduck saying that to rip on that guy," or "Haha that was such a TugMug line!"

Thirty Days - Day Seventeen

Day 17 – Titles – Are they the bane of your existence, or the easiest part of the story? Also, if you do chaptered story, do you give each chapter a title, or not?

Whoops! Somehow I got a week behind on this. It's like the New Year made me take a vacation. (Or was that Sims 3?) Anyway, the good news is that means I'm going to catch up with seven entries today!

Now onto the question. Titles are a pain for me. Often they're the last thing I come up with before posting a story, or at least the first chapter of a story. I was almost done with my Nano story, Crown of Arus, before I decided that would be the title. I had it there as a tentative title, but I was never thrilled with it and hoped something better would inspire me. Path Into the Darkness, my longest (and still unfinished, sigh) fanfic to date, is one of those titles I still feel "meh" about, and it took what felt like forever just to come up with that.

I love it when titles just click in my head and I'm like, "YES! That's what I'm calling it." I find humor fic titles easier, because puns and spoof names come to me naturally. Tension Convention was one of those titles. I think my favorite title ever is still These Boots are Made for Knockin', my Voltron humor lemon where Cossack winds up with lust-inducing odor eaters in his footwear.