Hobbyist

A reminder: This post courtesy of Julie Jarnagin’s 101 Blog Post Ideas for Writers.

41. How a hobby has made you a better writer

I gave myself a night to think about this one, and when I woke up in the morning I had realized the truth: pretty much all of my hobbies have made me a better writer. No, I’m not joking or exaggerating. Seriously, almost all of my hobbies lend themselves to writing in one way or another.

Hobby #1: Reading
This one should be pretty self-explanatory. I love to read, and what better way to learn about pacing, sentence structure, spelling, grammar, setting, etc.

Hobby #2: Video Games
It sounds unlikely, and parents and teachers would probably baulk at the idea that playing video games can be excellent for improving one of the finer arts, but those parents and teachers would be closed-minded. Video games – even the older, significantly less advanced ones – can have rich worlds filled with action, adventure, romance, horror, mystery…you name it! Video games are excellent inspiration for ideas. They’ve even helped me practice my writing via fanfiction (I’ve written several chapters of a Final Fantasy 3/6 fanfiction and also started a Chrono Trigger one as well).

Hobby #3: Movies
This one is more my husband’s hobby than mine, but I guess it’s mine by proxy since I do, in fact, enjoy the movies. This falls under the same category as video games; movies are excellent for inspiration, and if it was a particularly good movie, the kind that gives you shivers and has you thinking about the plot line for days later, it can even be just plain motivational. In other words, experiencing such an amazing story makes you want to write one of your own.

Hobby #4: Writing
Seriously, you didn’t see this one coming? Writing has been one of my most predominant hobbies since I was in grade school. From little one-page scenes my best friend and I would write back and forth to one another during class, to a very powerful fanfiction obsession in college, to the manuscript I’m still working on editing, I’ve been writing for fun for the past 20 years or so. And isn’t that the most important part of being a writer? Actually putting in the effort to write? Or is this just my clever way of saying that I’ve already run out of hobbies to list? That’s up for you to decide.

Can Someone Please Invent a 36-hour Day?

Because time seems to be slipping away from me at an ever-increasing rate and I’ve been completely unable to find the time for any decent posts over my recent days off, here are a couple of drabbles for you. They’re fanfic drabbles based on the Harry Potter universe:
The Godfather

Sirius couldn’t remember the last time he’d felt so happy. Not that he was unhappy on a regular basis – on the contrary, he was a very cheerful person. Nevertheless, at this particular moment he was what he would have described as ecstatic.

“You….you’re sure?” he asked, nervousness in his voice, “You’re both absolutely positive?”

Lily and James smiled at him, her from her hospital bed, and he from her side. “Yes, you idiot,” James insisted, “Of course we’re sure!”

Sirius couldn’t keep the grin off his face as he looked down at the newborn baby in Lily’s arms.

“Hello, Godson!”

Hired

Sybil shook her head a little. The headache had come on suddenly, a most unwelcome distraction from her interview with Headmaster Dumbledore.

“Excuse me, I just…” she started, but before she could pardon herself she found the pain had intensified tenfold and she clutched her temples.

If you told her afterwards that she’d been speaking in a most disturbing voice, she’d never believe you. To her, mere seconds passed before she looked back up to the Headmaster and apologized for her transgression. However, as she did, Dumbledore was staring at her with a thoughtful and calculating gaze.

“Congratulations. You’re hired.”

Cry of the Wolf

I got an email yesterday. Not an out-of-the-ordinary occurrence, I know. But the content of that email was part of a series of emails I’ve been getting for several years now. This particular one stated that a user of FanFiction.net had added my story, “Cry of the Wolf” to their favorite list.

“Cry of the Wolf” is a Harry Potter fan fiction I wrote and published to FanFiction.net back in July of 2004. I rewrote and republished it on a newer FanFiction.net account in 2008. Over the course of the past 8 years and those two accounts this story has received a total of 286 reviews, 279 favorites, and 82 follows. Every few months, without fail, I’ll get a notification email to let me know that someone has stumbled across the story and either reviewed it, made it a favorite, or followed it in hopes of more chapters be added in the future (although the story is unofficially finished). This never ceases to amaze me because it was just something I threw together back when I first discovered fan fiction and decided to try my hand at it.

Since the string of notifications never seems to end, obviously there must be something to this story, so I thought I’d share the link here to the revised version. Please note that this story contains spoilers if you somehow have yet to read the Harry Potter series, and it is also a Remus/Sirius slash fiction (boy love) if you’d rather stay away from that kind of thing.

But if you’re interested, here you go:

Cry of the Wolf – Version 2

Enjoy!

The Cure for What Ailes Ya

A reminder: This post courtesy of Julie Jarnagin’s 101 Blog Post Ideas for Writers.

13. Overcoming writer’s block

Truly one of the most frustrating parts of writing. Sometimes, no matter what you do, it’s like your brain just turns off and nothing will come out. Or what does come out is complete, unadulterated crap. Either way, it can leave you feeling pretty useless.

My personal cure for writer’s block sounds a little dumb, but I swear it works…write fan fiction. No really! Fan fiction is great for writer’s block because the world, the characters, and all the important information is already created for you. All that’s left is to make something happen with all that information. Even better, take something that exists as other-than-written media (like tv shows, video games, etc) and write it out in novel form. It can be very interesting to use your imagination to flesh out visual media by writing it out in novel form, and it really gets the creative juices flowing. Writing a page or two of my Final Fantasy fan fiction (which is just a novelized telling of Final Fantasy III/VI) always gets me ready and able to move back to something original. 🙂

Screenshot

A reminder: This post courtesy of Julie Jarnagin’s 101 Blog Post Ideas for Writers.

7. Photos of your writing space

A bit of a cop-out, but for all intents and purposes, this is my writing space…Scrivener writing software on my laptop. I don’t have a room or even a desk where I do my writing, I just take my laptop wherever I need it to be. Scrivener is my program of choice because it allows me to separate chapters and scenes while still having everything technically be one file. There’s also a lot of organizational tools for research, notes, media, or whatever else you need to work on your project. This picture is a screen shot of my Final Fantasy fanfic project, in the corkboard screen, which shows little notes on each chapter. I strongly recommend this software to any writer. It’s paid software, but the price isn’t too shabby for good, professional software, at about $40.

I Write Like…

A while ago I stumbled upon this website, I Write Like, and just recently a fellow blogger linked to it and brought it back to my attention again. The idea, basically, is that you copy and paste an excerpt of your writing to the webpage and it analyzes it and tells you which author you write like. It analyzes based on word choices and writing style (which I’m assuming refers to sentence structure or some such); I can’t imagine that it’s terribly accurate, but it’s still interesting to see who you get. 🙂

For my zombie novel, Nowhere to Hide, I got Charles Dickens, even when I had the site analyze super-creepy and/or gory scenes. It has me very interested to actually read some Charles Dickens that isn’t Oliver Twist. o.o

For my Final Fantasy fanfic, I got Edgar Allan Poe, which just fathoms me. I could imagine getting Poe for my horror novel, but for a video game fan fiction? Wuh?

For my supernatural romance, tentatively titled Moonlight, I got David Foster Wallace. I have no idea who this is, so I’m going to have to do my research, but if his writing is anything like mine in this particular piece, I’m very interested already. lol

I analyzed several different scenes from my fantasy epic novel because it’s been written and re-written so many times that nothing fits together properly anymore. I got Jonathan Swift and Ursula K. Le Guin for two of the scenes, neither of whom I’ve heard of so again I must do my research. For another of the scenes I got Stephanie Meyer, which has prompted me to re-analzye my own writing stat.

The bits and pieces of what will someday be a space fantasy gave me Anne Rice. I know Anne Rice, of course, but I’ll have to read some more of her work to actually get an idea of whether this is accurate.

And finally, my Chrono Trigger fanfic gave me…J.R.R. Tolkien. o.O I, uh…totally can’t see it, but thanks for the compliment, I Write Like! lol

The thing that really amused me about this was that – with the exception of the aforementioned fantasy epic – I tried multiple scenes of each work and got the same results regardless, so there must be something there that the site is seeing. Very interesting. Now if only I could glean some of the success of these famous authors! lol

All work and no play…something something.

If there’s one thing I’ve learned in the past few months, it’s that you have to be willing to put in hard work and dedication if you want to accomplish something. I’m not the most hard-working or dedicated person in the world (ha!), but a few months ago I made a promise to myself that I was going to finish that damn zombie story if it killed me, and low and behold, I did it! With that same level of hard work and dedication I hope to, soon enough, edit the hell out of that story and get it published. Diligence!

But there’s one other thing I know for sure, and it’s this: sometimes you have to goof off too. Remember that thing about all work and no play? We all know how that turned out in The Shining, don’t we?

We all have to let loose every now and then, whether it be partying with friends, taking a trip, splurging on a treat for yourself, or whatever strikes your fancy. For me, I want to continue working on my zombie novel, but I also feel that I need (and deserve) to goof off a bit. That’s why I’m taking a couple of weeks to play around with my Final Fantasy fanfic. If there’s one thing that feels like goofing around to a writer, it’s writing your own version of a world that already exists.

Once I catch up to the point I left it off at (there were a few editing issues in the first couple of chapters), I’ll start posting it to FanFiction.net again and link it here. But for now, a question: what do you do to ‘goof off’ when you need a break from ‘hard work and dedication’?