I’d appreciate it if you’d either answer in the box below or by sending it in an ask. I won’t publish it unless you ask. No real reason why I want to know. I’m just curious to see how other people do it. 🙂 I’ve answered them just for shits and giggles too.
How do you come up with stories?
Honestly, I don’t know. Inspiration is sort of like a bolt of lightning or something equally cliche. Most of the time though, I just sit down and start writing and see what comes out. Sometimes I’ll get the guts for a story and sometimes I get nothing at all but weird babbling. I very rarely go in with a solid idea to start with. I guess that’s why it takes me so many drafts and such a long time to finish one story. It takes a while to build upon itself.
Do you more often start with a character or a plot or just a fragmented idea?
Most often just a fragmented idea. I’ve even started from nothing more than a single word or a phrase that gets stuck in my head, kinda like the lyrics of a catchy song.
How do you choose character names?
I really have no rhyme or reason there. Usually they start out with no names at all, but when I start to understand them and know them then their names just come to me.
I once was gifted this beautiful teddy bear as a child, and when I asked the giver what his name was she told me, “You’ll know it when you know it.” I thought that was a weird answer, but a few days later I was outside playing with the bear when, like a psychic boom, I heard the name Thomason inside my head, and I just knew that was the bear’s name. It made a lasting imprint on me that to this day feels as bizarre and fresh as it did that day, and that’s how I feel about character names. I just know them when I know them.
How often would you say you base your characters off real people in your life?
I’d like to say the quintessential writer answer — ALL THE TIME! — but that wouldn’t be true. I think my characters are almost always pieces of myself, as narcissistic as that probably sounds. There are definitely some of them though that are little pieces of real people in my life, but I won’t say which ones. 😉
What time of day do you write?
I’m a night owl, so I do all of my writing between one and six AM. I focus much better at that time of night, and I live with several young men, so there are many distractions during the day.
What do you listen to while you write?
I have a writing playlist on Spotify. It’s mostly Kevin Kern, but it’s all instrumental. I cannot listen to lyrics when I write. It distracts me. I’m a singer when I listen to the radio, and I want to do the same if I’m writing. I do have to have some sort of background noise, so instrumental works well for me.
What do you like to eat/drink while you write?
Almost always tea. Usually either just plain old English breakfast or Earl Grey. Stash’s chai spice if I’m feeling extra spunky. 🙂 And sometimes I drink coffee, but that’s usually a lot earlier in the evening.
Do you have any weird habits when it comes to writing?
I am one of those people that likes to follow a routine in pretty much everything I do in my life, and writing is no different. I don’t set a certain word count for myself every day or anything like that, but I like to start the same time, have things set just right on my desk, already have my tea made, and know that I won’t have someone asking me questions or something for the next few hours. That’s not all that weird, I don’t think.
Thanks for taking the time to answer, if you do. And I think I have to end this with a question so Tumblr will let you answer, right?
Hey, Roxie Reads 