I would have talked about the convention here, if I'd gone to it. Given my car is doing things that make me nervous, probably just as well I didn't try it.
21. Could you ever quit writing? Do you ever wish you could? Why or why not?
If I ran out of things to say, probably. Or if I just got tired, or it was too much trouble to find a way to post it online. I guess there are times I would like to quit, but in the hopes I'd written everything I wanted to and figured I was done. I suppose as long as I can write, it's a good sign my mental acuity hasn't gone in the toilet.
22. How organized are you with your writing? Describe your organization, if it exists. What tools do you use?
I wouldn't say I'm terribly organized, which is not a surprise to anyone who has read my ramblings on this blog over the last 15+ years. There have been a few stories where I made a vague outline ahead of time in a basic composition notebook. Character names and a few traits I considered important. Timelines of things I definitely wanted to include. In one case, where I planned to have a bunch of characters split up and each doing their own thing, I made a sort of chart to map out who was doing what at what times, relative to each other. Helped me figure out if there were gaps where I really needed to account for somebody, or if I was putting the same character in two disparate locations too close to the same time. A few times, I've even written out specific scenes when I thought I had something good and didn't want to lose it.
Most of the time, I wing it and try to make the first draft the final draft. That worked pretty well for the Adorable Baby Panda/Calvin/UnCalvin "hijinks of the week" stories. The more complicated stories, not so much. I end up revising more than once, which I find really annoying.
23. Describe your writing environment.
I type at my dining room table, because that's where my laptop is. The table is sorta messy, got some papers off to one side, books and other stuff on the floor behind the chair. I have a good view of my TV from here, or I can open the sliding door and look outside, although the view isn't much.
24. How much prep work do you do? What does it look like? Do you enjoy it?
Is this separate from the organization? If I decide to include some specific subject or whatever in a story, I will do as much googling on it as I deem necessary. The point where I get annoyed is where I draw the line on necessary. So sometimes I decide it's enough to know the correct terms for the tools. Say, if I decide one character likes to knit, but don't intend to spend much time on that beyond noting they do it. I have also spent over an hour trying to calculate the mass of a hypothetical city and what it's velocity would be if it was sent tumbling down a mountain as a single object, and how big a tidal wave that would create. Eventually, I gave up and decided the tidal wave could be as big as I wanted.
25. What is a hyper-specific detail you know about your characters that is irrelevant to the story?
I'm not sure the knitting thing was relevant to the plot, but I felt like it was an important character detail. My approach to those sorts of details is similar to the question last time about lore or backstory. If I go to the trouble of thinking it up, then it's going to be relevant somehow. Who are these people that have the time to map out all sorts of irrelevant crap about their characters?
26. How do you get into your character's head? How do you get out? Do you regret going in?
I write from third-person omniscient a lot, which I think creates a certain detached distance. If I do go more personal, I decide what they would say or do, and type them doing it, and that's that. If I make them do something awful, it doesn't bother me. Neither does making them sad. The person who devised these questions takes a very different approach to writing than I do, I think.
27. Most stressful character you've written and why.
I don't know. Probably either a really smart character, or the sort of character who is very good at reading people and their intentions. The latter is not something I'm good at, or at least I don't think I'm any good at it. Characters who doubt themselves are extremely easy for me to write.
28. Most delightful character you've written and why.
When Pollock is being especially condescending and arrogant, because writing pointed insults indulges the sarcastic, vicious part of myself. At the same time, I know Pollock is probably getting some kind of comeuppance, which is also something I enjoy doing. So I'm setting myself up for a enjoyable payoff at the end. It's the same reason I enjoy writing Vegeta. I can have him talk shit, and know I'm going to write him getting his jaw broken for it soon, and it's entirely in character.
29. Where do you draw inspiration? What do you do when the well runs dry?
We've already discussed dreams. Beyond that, probably Westerns and noirs a lot. Superhero comics for certain things. I steal names for places or background characters from video games. A lot of the time it comes down to what I would like to see, or would have liked to see with a particular character or story. Then I write it, and it makes me happy. The well hasn't run dry yet, so that is not a problem. Choosing between two equally appealing outcomes of a particular scene, that's a problem.
30. Have you ever used material from dreams in writing? Have you ever written in a dream? Did you remember when you woke up?
Things I dream frequently end up in my stories, usually as settings or occasional antagonists. The antagonists are rarely fleshed out, they're more like obstacles or an excuse for a fight scene. I've probably written in a dream once, but I don't recall what I was writing offhand. I definitely can't confirm or deny that bit from Batman: The Animated Series about not being able to read in dreams. I think I may have read in some dreams, but I'm not positive of that.
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