jinkyo | FANDOM SNOWFLAKE CHALLENGE 2015

In your own space, talk about your creative process - from what inspires you to what motivates you to how you manage to break through blocks. Does your process change depending on the type of creating you're doing? Leave a comment in this post saying you did it. Include a link to your post if you feel comfortable doing so.

Wow, the challenge gets harder each day. I'll focus on fannish creation, but I have a lot of overlap with creation for money so yeah.

Fic writing is what I do most often, fan and pro. For the most part I start with an idea. The ideas come from everywhere: people on the street, songs, interesting magazine articles, other people's writing, songs, visual media, the world is full of ideas.

From there I like to just live with the idea for a while. Workshop bits of the idea (act the bits out). Pretty much all of the ideas go through some dream writing: firming up what I have so far of the idea, planting it in my mind before sleep, then letting the dreamworld sort it out. In the morning I've fleshed out more, or added to it thanks to dreams.

By this point I have 2-3 solid scenes: dialoge and action. That's when I open Open Writer and Notepad.

OW is for the actual fic, Notepad is for my notes and a resting place for bits that get cut from the word doc. I can knock out 2500 words per day on a good day. On a bad day, sometimes 5.

I tend to write start to finish which means if I get stuck, I'm stuck. In fanfic I'm usually exploring, writing start to finish and allowing myself to be surprised along the way. Profic is a bit different because I usually know the end of the story so I'm comfortable working backward if I get stuck on the front end.

Something new I've added this year is using audio in my editing process. I email myself the story and let my phone read it back. Great for catching typos, weird phrasings, repeated words and clunky language.

Then, sometimes all of that just goes out the window. I'm working on a story now where I had the idea and a few set pieces but no connectors at all. Because I have more ideas that follow after this story, I had to write it. Ugh, the early bits of it are just ugly, tortured. Now I'm moving into the bits that came through the dream/workshoping and am happy here.

Scriptwriting is tortuous for me because I write for a very formulaic medium. I have to come up with 3-4 fresh TV scripts a week and the challenge is not falling into a pattern because I write about 80% of the content for the channel and can't have it all sounding the same. Hates scripting but that's what pays the rent.

Podfic - Placeholder. This is a crazy stupid fun process that requires more time than I have right now.

Video editing - Placeholder.