On Writing…

I am part of a writing group here in town – or at least nominally so.  I’ve only been to a couple of the events.  Regardless, a member of the group posted the following questions on the groups’s Facebook page and I wanted to answer them.  Mostly to find out the answers myself!

1) What am I working on/writing? 

If we’re playing fast and loose with the term “working on” there are two things.  One is ostensibly a work in progress called Abdication of the Fourth. It’s sort of a Buffy meets Death Takes a Holiday kind of deal and the story is still very much in its earliest larva stages.  By the time it’s done (if it gets done – I tend to get distracted by other things) it may look entirely different.

The second work is tentatively titled  Marten and is a fictional take on the life of a boy of aboriginal ancestry who has no connection with his family or culture but it still manages to affect him.  How does the homeless native man on the street get there? Why does not belonging hurt so much? How can you miss what you never had?


The funny thing about this is, I’m not sure which genre I really write.  I mean, clearly it’s fiction.  Sometimes it’s fantasyesque (like Abdication….), other times it’s just “General Fiction”, which sounds kind of boring, and sometimes it’s even poetry.  I often wish I was more Genre specific because then I could pin down my potential audience more easily.

3) Why do I write what I do? 

I have never not been writing.  From the moment I could form letters I was writing in thin elementary school notebooks.  I wanted to write so badly I used to steal the notebooks from my grade one class and bring them home so I had something to write my stories in.  Driven to thievery by my desperation to write, lol.

But it’s always been a simple function of an idea that plants itself in my brain and won’t let go until it’s exorcised.  Which sounds awesome & dramatic but sadly I don’t get good ideas very often.  Most writers lament the fact that they have ‘too many ideas’.  This is not a problem for me, alas.

4) How does my writing process work? 

I have no process, nothing formalized anyway.  It’s as simple as opening up a notebook or my laptop or sitting down at my desk.  Most of the time I’ll have music or TV or something going in the background, and I’ll write until the latest scene I’m obsessing over is on paper.  Or when I’ve reached my word goal.  If I’m really unmotivated I’ll use Dr. Wicked’s Write or Die.  And if I’m seriously unmotivated I just won’t write.  Because I have no self-discipline.  I’m working on that, however.


So, writerly types, how would you answer these questions?

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