Once upon a time...

I can't believe we're down to the last few days with this meme! Seems like it just started yesterday! XD

27 – Where is your favorite place to write, and do you write by hand or on the computer?

I like writing in my bed. I have a wrought iron daybed with a big magenta and purple puffy sari embroidered comforter with enormous overstuffed pillow, and it's a very comfortable place to write. As I've mentioned before, I am an obsessive notebook keeper. I have notebooks in all shapes and sizes, and generally I write down the outline of my fics along with any research or important plot elements in a notebook to keep my thought process straight. I always use Pilot Precise V5 extra fine tipped pens to write exposition with, and then I use a Japanese multi-tipped (pink, purple, blue, green, and brown) Uni Style*Fit gel pen for corrections and dialogue. I type everything up later.

For my longer fics, I always make sure that each one has an individual notebook for each. Automated Utopia and its upcoming sequel are housed in two very thick, pink leather-bound notebooks. Paper Pusher is kept in a tall, teal hard-bound notebook with a white hummingbird and orange flowers on its cover. Acceptable Losses is in a blue hard-bound book with multi-coloured flowers on its cover. Versailles Undone is in a spiral hard-cover with a watercolour painting of daffodils in a blue vase on its cover. I have several moleskin journals that I use to keep my notes about my canon/fanon for Spike's backstory and history, including his education, family background, and locations throughout the years. For shorter fics, I will use cheap spiral college-ruled one subject notebooks (the five-for-a-dollar variety).

I feel like writing everything out by hand allows me to think longer about what I'm writing, and later typing it helps me refine it, get it perfect.

( Cut for the answer to Days 1-26 and the other 3 questions for the upcoming days... )

25 – Music – Do you listen to music while you write? Do you make playlists to get into a certain "mood" to write your fic? Do you need noise in general? Or do you need it completely quiet?

Yes, indeed I do listen to music while I write; I kinda have to. I have a tendency to make playlists if I'm writing a longer multi-chapter fic. For Automated Utopia, I was listening to a lot of steampunk-related bands like Abney Park and Clockwork Quartet. For Paper Pusher, my playlist was almost entirely made up of Rasputina. For Acceptable Losses, I listen to a lot of Lemon Demon, Modest Mouse, and Blink 182 (their later stuff). For Versailles Undone, my playlist is pretty much the two CD set from Sophia Coppola's Marie Antoinette along with a lot of Mozart and Beethoven.

Here are YouTube links to some of my most-played songs from my iTunes fanfiction playlist:
* Rasputina's "In Old Yellowcake."
* Say Hi to Your Mom's "Angels and Darlas."
* The Smiths' "William, It Was Nothing."
* Lemon Demon's "Ben Bernanke."
* Lemon Demon's "Eighth Wonder."
* Panic! At the Disco's "The Ballad of Mona Lisa."
* Aphex Twins' "Jynweythek Ylow."
* Neko Case's "Margaret vs. Pauline."
* Abney Park's "Sleep Isabella."
* The Gaslight Anthem's "Great Expectations."
* Clockwork Quartet's "The Doctor's Wife."
* Ursula's "Tiffer."


26 – What is the oddest (or funnest) thing you've had to research for a fic?

I always seem to be researching odd things for my fanfictions. I've researched how to perform an autopsy, the differences between impulse turbines and reactionary turbines in steam drills, and how pantelegraph machines work. I think I've got quite the personal costume dictionary for various time periods, and I've probably gotten basic grasp of how the educational system in Victorian London operated as well as what a typical banquet would consist of at the Palace at Versailles during the reign of Louis XVI. Probably the weirdest was when I had to research the history of Personal Digital Assistants for Versailles Undone to make sure that PDAs could receive alphanumeric pager messages in 2000 when Season Four would take place because text messaging was not yet available on them. It was weird because something that sounds so simple turned out to be very difficult to research as I kept getting contradictory information about different brands of devices. It bothers me that I still might have gotten it wrong.

( Cut for the answer to Days 1-24 and the other 4 questions for the upcoming days... )

24 – Betaing – How many betas do you like to use to make sure there aren't any major flaws in your fic? Do you have a Beta horror story or dream story?

I don't think I've ever used a beta for proofreading. I probably should 'cause I tend to get the computer blindness after a while of looking at a monitor (I would be a horrible beta). Sometimes I do like to have some of my pals read my fic or just sections of chapters just to make sure the tone or characterizations are right before I post. With that, I'd like to give hugs to lilithbint, sockmonkeyhere, sistercuervo, kidcyclone, and everyone who's read over my ideas and made me feel less crazy about what I've written. I heart you all! *giant enormous squishy hugs*

( Cut for the answer to Days 1-23 and the other 6 questions for the upcoming days... )

23 – When you post, where do you post to? Just your journal? Just an archive? Your own personal site?

I used to have my own BtVS fanfiction website called Peroxide Lullaby on Geocities before it closed all its free sites. Originally, that's where I posted all my fics (at the time, it was mostly the River That Flows and a few Spike/Fred drabbles). When I didn't get a lot of traffic after a few years, I started using this Livejournal as a place to post my fics. When I was in college, I began a James Marsters fansite called Marstersesque, which I was going to use as an archive, but it got deleted when my sorority (who had given me space on their domain as payment for some work I did) dissolved its membership and cancelled its web subscription.

Some of fanart and fanfics are archived at Cold Dead Seed, the Caritas, and the Crypt. My art is also partially archived at SlayAlive, IDW Forum, and my Deviantart page. There might be other places, but I can't remember... ETA: OMG. I have a Fanfiction.net account. I don't even remember it. I must have signed up at some point years and years ago (2002 to be specific)... I never posted anything to it. Should I? Is it still a pit of voles?

I'd like to start a new website archive, just to design one for fun, but I don't have the money for another domain name. My current domain name is connected to my freelance business, so I don't think it's a good idea. One day, when I have some extra cash for another domain name, I would like to do it.

( Cut for the answer to Days 1-22 and the other 7 questions for the upcoming days... )

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?

Well, I'm not sure it counts, but I am currently signed up for angst_bingo. I've gotta get a move on if I want to meet my deadline for a bingo. XD I've also participated in noel_of_spike for the past three years, and I used to participate in seasonal_sd before it became defunct.

I always have a really good experience participating in those kinds of writing activities. Sometimes a deadline and a theme/key word (even if it's just a season) can really produce some great fanfic results. I think some of my best work has been my Spike/Dru oneshots I wrote for seasonal_sd. It's not just great for writing, but I've always enjoyed coming up with artwork for my posting days as well. The first thing I contributed was a Spike/Drusilla artwork- Skating at Somerset House (worksafe) - and the first fanfiction was a Spike/Drusilla oneshot- Shrive for Frosting (not worksafe for mentions of gore).

( Cut for the answer to Days 1-21 and the other 8 questions for the upcoming days... )

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

This is yet another question that makes me feel bad for not being on a better posting schedule (or, you know, actually have one at all). I have already written sequels to both Automated Utopia and Paper Pusher, but I haven't finished editing them to my satisfaction. Also, I'm in the middle of posting two other long!fics that I have to finish posting before I lose my mind. To get the "why" out of the way, overall I think I never feel like I'm actually finished with a fic. If I've cultivated characters, I want to follow through until the end, and then I start to feel like I'm in the middle of Les Miserables. Haha!

For something that I've actually managed to post, I wrote Knitting Needles and Mother's Milk as sequels to Apron Strings because they are very short ficlets, and they're just something I can post quickly and to take my mind off other things. Apron Strings seemed to strike a good chord with people, and it was an interesting What-If scenario for me to think about, so I just jotted down some other ficlet ideas, and the other two stories came from those. I'd actually like to write some more. I could probably make a long!fic out of it, but God help me, I would go crazy.

I wrote the sequel to Automated Utopia because I felt like I couldn't abandon that AU. I mean, you go through the trouble of creating a 'verse and try to make it rich with details, so I couldn't just leave it. I wanted to explore the whole world further, so I've written Automated Utopia II: the Case of the Nefarious Nuptials, in which Spike and Fred travel to Italy for the wedding of one of her college acquaintances only to get wrapped up in an epic murder mystery with dirigibles and fireworks and Venetian magic. ... What's really sad is that there are two more sequels to Automated Utopia that I'm writing in my notebooks (AU III: Hassle in the Castle, set during the 1893 World's Fair, and AU IV: Fear in the French Quarter, set in New Orleans with lots of ghosts and creepiness).

For Paper Pusher, I wanted to write something from Fred's point of view. Though Paper Pusher was listed as a Spike/Fred fic, it really was more about one side of a ship, specifically Spike's feelings and thoughts, and the other half was really absent for most of the fic. Fred deserved to have a fic from her point of view, so I wrote a sequel set a short time after Paper Pusher. One of these days, I will actually get it posted. Sadly, I've begun writing a sequel to Versailles Undone as well. Non-BtVS-related, I have a sequel to a Man Called Phoenix, my High Plains Invaders fic.

( Cut for the answer to Days 1-20 and the other 9 questions for the upcoming days... )

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

Sometimes I do. It's not necessarily a whole story, but mostly it might be a phrase or a situation leads me to ponder a ponderment about those characters or different characters in the same situation. I love it when people post a whole bunch of plot bunnies out there for people to use too. Probably more than getting bunnied for fanfiction, I probably get bunnied to do fanart more. A lot of the time, I sketch while I read fanfic, so I've got lots of little scenes drawn out from the things I read.

I probably have more plot bunnies in my notebooks than I could ever use. It gets kind of frustrating to want to write and not physically having the time or energy to type that much.


( Cut for the answer to Days 1-19 and the other 10 questions for the upcoming days... )

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

I do tend to start writing right away, especially if I have a specific scene or snippet of dialogue in mind. Most of the time, I sit down and try to script out the whole framework of the plot. If I can't come up with a plot for fic that's as long as I want it or that I can't get quite right, I tuck the idea away in a notebook and save it for a later time. Twelve Christmases in the Life and Unlife of William H. Pratt (Parts I-IV, Parts V-VIII, and Parts IX-XII) was an idea that had been kicking around in my head for literally years because I finally was able to write it just as I wanted it.

I'm a notebook-keeper. I have several notebooks for my various plot bunnies. Most of them will never see the light of day, but there are those that get transferred to their own notebooks for further plotting. I think one problem that I have is that I have several fics that I want to post at once. I still have to finish posting Acceptable Losses and Versailles Undone before I even begin to start posting Automated Utopia II. Sweet Lord... I'm never going to get there if I don't get my act in gear. XD


( Cut for the answer to Days 1-18 and the other 11 questions for the upcoming days... )

I missed a day again! XD

Before I get to the meme, I would like to say that there are times when I wish someone could say something about Buffy's character that I could find positive anymore. Every time I try to think of something, I can counteract it with something else (and no, not all those things came from Season Eight, though that certainly didn't help my outlook of her). I started a list... and the only positive thing I've got is "She likes cheese." ... and that's not really a positive... I'm going to burn my DVDs in a pit of molten hellfire at this rate...

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

For me, it is usually the easiest part of writing. Sometimes, the title is the plot bunny, the leaping off point for a fanfic idea, which was true of the Branching of the Olive Tree. For longer fics, sometimes I do title the individual chapters, and sometimes I don't. For Automated Utopia and Paper Pusher I didn't, but for the River that Flows (unposted) and Acceptable Losses, I did.

Most of the fic titles just come to me, but for the chapter titles, a lot of the time, I have to think about them. The chapter titles usually come from song lyrics of something that I was listening to at the time or that felt right to accompany that particular chapter.



18 – Where do you get the most inspiration for your fics (aka "bunnies") from?

My own messed up brain for the most part. Sometimes people share their muse with me and give me prompts, and I like working that way. Sometimes just having a basic idea of even a snippet of dialogue or a situation can be a great launching point for me. Real life can also be inspirational. I got the idea for Some Deep, Existential Shite from actually opening a roll of paper towels... and the title was based off of something Dennis Hopper says in "the Crow IV: Wicked Prayer." XD



( Cut for the answer to Days 1-16 and the other 13 questions for the upcoming days... )

16 – Summaries – Do you like them or hate them? How do you come up with them, if you use them?

I like writing them. I usually try to think up the major point of the story and then try to write something that will entice a reader to step inside the parlor, so-to-speak. I think of what I would say out loud when describing the fic, like a fifteen second blurb, like a movie trailer or something of that nature. I've tried to get into a habit of updating the summaries for each chapter of a longer fic.

( Cut for the answer to Days 1-15 and the other 14 questions for the upcoming days... )