intro!

[wordstitch]

 Heya!  I'm the idiot who jumped the gun and posted a check-in post even though it wasn't on the schedule LOL.  Sorry guys, hopefully no hard feelings!  

In the same way I get overly-enthusiastic about community participation, I also get overly enthusiastic with plot bunnies, hence the need to join this community XD  Although my list is probably not as long as it could be, most of the projects that I really care about are super long and involved ones, so a long-term motivational community like this one seems like just the right place to remind me that I need to slow down and give them the attention they deserve before moving onto the next shiny, instant!gratification fic.  I did a bunch of those in 2014 and was not overly impressed with any of them.  

I write both fanfic and original fiction.  For fanfic, I'm currently in HP fandom, though I've dabbled a bit in other anime/manga fandoms, especially PoT Rikkai fic.   I'm seriously considering graduate school for a Creative Writing MA (our local uni doesn't offer MFAs) and admission into the program requires a 15-page (double-spaced) writing sample.  Since most of my original fic is in the form of bits and pieces of a fantasy-genre series I've been working on for years, my focus right now is on completing a short story I've outlined to serve as my writing sample.  It's going okay, I guess!  

Writing can be really lonely since it's such a solitary activity, but it doesn't have to be!  I really believe that as writers--especially as writers who also write fanfiction, for the most part--we all have so much more in common with each other than many of the people who cross our paths who aren't writers or artists of some kind.  I'm really happy to have met a whole bunch of kindred spirits such as you guys, and I hope that together we can embark on an ass-kicking, bunny-slaying journey this year.  Bunny #1 (Make a List) has already been amazingly helpful in helping me prioritize things, and I look forward to fun times here =)  

Introduction

[ysabetwordsmith]

I'm ysabetwordsmith and I have the same username over on LiveJournal. I write all kinds of different stuff.  Fiction, poetry, nonfiction.  Speculative fiction, gender studies, alternative spirituality, activism, other topics.  

Currently my most successful project is the Poetry Fishbowl.  I set a theme, ask people for prompts, then write poems based on whatever ideas they give me.  I've been doing this for just over 7 years now; my DW archive currently has 4352 poems.  Many of these belong to series, which you can find on my Serial Poetry page.  

I also do some other stuff like shared worlds.  Some of these have whole webs of plotlines that intersect.  It varies how much the different writers collaborate or diverge.  Once a month, crowdfunding hosts a Creative Jam where folks can leave or claim prompts, and several of the shared worlds are available there for everyone to play with.  Do you have plots but no place to put  them?  Check out the open sandboxes and see if any of them fit.

For the most popular series, I have some notes of things that need to happen.  One thing I'd like to try this year is plot advancement, since one of my readers pointed out how that's not happening as fast as it could be.  So I'm hoping to make one of my bonus mid-month fishbowls about not just a specific series, but about plot points in that series.  Want to help me kill some plotbunnies?  Pick any of my series you like that has a particular storyline (some do, some don't) and think of a next logical step to prompt for, then catch me during any open prompt call and ask for it.  Frex, Path of the Paladins is about fixing their wreck of a world and eventually getting the goddess Gailah back into power.

I do have a general goal list each year, but not much in the way of plot-specific prompts.  (My creativity has manual steering, not auto.)  I'm hoping to use this community for reminders to pay attention to plot progression, check out what other folks are doing, and have a place to say, "Yay!  I finished a thingie."

Intro - taichara

[taichara]

What it says right up there; taichara, and an introduction, which I am generally bad at. *snrk*

Between writing projects of various stripes, worldbuilding projects of various stripes, That Damn Manuscript [tm], piles of trpg material I would like to get back to some time before the end of days, and many many many bits, snips and random phrases, images and inklings -- don't knock those; I've gotten whole novels from them -- I have a lot of disorganized bunnies. They cross the streams, also, which is hilarious fun and sometimes facepalm-worthy.

Trying to herd them is like trying to herd nuclear-powered cats, so I mostly don't bother; I have more of a rotating list of prioritizing and if I can get any of it out of the way I'll consider it a net gain. Some of them are jotted in notebooks or my ancient PDA, but that's as far as physical organization goes ;3

Original messes I play around with run the 'fantasy-science fantasy-scifi-what even is that' spectrum, while my fannish output mostly revolves around anime, manga, video games, and Transformers (which pretty much cross categories as they please, really) with some random weirdness like trpg settings. You can generally expect some combination of space, mechanicals, psionics, sapient critters, and the like.

I've been in a low patch for a few years, so I'm looking to make this year much better.

[Brainstorming]

[kalloway]

Welcome to the first 2015 Brainstorming Post! Feel free to use this space for any brainstorming needs you may have.

A couple of guidelines for this post--

• Everyone has a different opinion on spoilers and how long they stay spoilers before becoming public knowledge (Rosebud was his sled!) - if you are concerned with spoilers in your comments, feel free to use white-text, bumper comments, or whatever method you prefer.

• Nobody is under any obligation to use any suggestions made in this post or to credit any commenter if their suggestions are used (though perhaps if a long, productive exchange occurs, a short author's note might be nice).

• If you have any concerns with any content in the comments, please feel free to PM me.

(Basically, be good to one another. Happy Brainstorming!)

Intro - jennalynn

[misslucyjane]

Hullo, I'm Jenna and I've been a member of this comm for a year. I've been making up stories for as long as I can remember and I decided To Be A Writer when I was nine. It took a while to actually get 'er done: I wrote a lot of first chapters for a long time, and then discovered fanfic back in the late '90s, which not only got me through some tough times but also taught me how to write for an audience. I published my first novel in 2007 and I've got three more novels and about two dozen short stories out now.

Back in 2011 I lost my job of ten years, and while I looked for a new one I decided to treat writing as my full-time job as much as possible. I hoped that the dedication and time I could put into writing would help keep me afloat. Things...did not go as planned.

I've been kind of having a crisis of faith about this whole writing thing, because if the only thing I've wanted to be my whole life doesn't work, then what? So I've been trying to find some other avenues--I mean, the important thing is to make a living as a writer, and if it's not as a novelist then there are other things to try. To that end, I'm trying to finish a pilot to submit to an episodic writing fellowship with the Sundance Institute, and this may be the year I finally finish the biopic screenplay I've been working on, off-and-on, mostly off, for the last eight years.

Of course, that said I should also mention that one of my main goals for the year is to finish the four trunk novels that have been waiting for me to edit them and finally get them submitted somewhere. Definitely with a different publisher, as I've pretty much lost faith in my current one too, and possibly under a different pseudonym. I feel like I need to start fresh every way I can.

And if that doesn't work, well, hell, maybe it is me.