Samsara

29. How often do you think about writing? Ever come across something IRL that reminds you of your story/characters?

Um.

Yes.

Unless my mind is actively engaged in something like a conversation, a movie, a book, a problem to solve... I am constantly thinking about writing. I'd say 90% of the time. The other 10% I am thinking about creativity, and spirituality.

30. Final question! Tag someone! And tell us what you like about that person as a writer and/or about one of his/her characters!

I think this meme has had its time in the sun, so I'm just going to say all of you writers on my friends list, you're wonderful writers! And if you'd like to do the 30 Days of Writing meme, just comment below and I'll send you all the questions.

Thanks for reading! :)

25. Do any of your characters have pets? Tell us about them.

In an early version of a Lotus Children story, a short story version of book I that I wrote for a creative writing class, Malcom has a pet dog named Anubis. I thought I was very clever for that. Malcom's people were supposedly descended from an Egyptian god, and Anubis was the reader's hint that Malcom was the one the main character, Leila, was hunting. It was all sneaky like.

Anubis was some kind of mutt, an enormous fuzzy dog constantly knocking people over when it got excited to see them. Leila falls in love with the dog despite her cold personality, just as she falls in love with Malcom before she realizes she wants to kill him. Haha.

I should put more pets in my stories. I guess I'm afraid some part of the story will suddenly require them to die, and I think I'd cry all over my keyboard if I had to do that :(

19. Favorite minor that decided to shove himself into the spotlight and why!

Sparrow Overbjorn- the supposedly dead younger sister of another minorish character in the Lotus Children series. I actually wrote my first NaNo novel about her :) She was originally just supposed to be dead, or maybe actually alive, but her real story became a novel unto itself. She's one of those poor character that you feel bad for having created because their life is such hell. She is ten when war breaks out on her home planet, and she sees her parents executed (and she thinks her older brother, Phoenix, is killed as well). As a prisoner, she rallies with other children and they escape to the wilderness. Unfortunately, a plague has been unleashed on the planet to kill anyone with DNA that is not of the human genome- and she is something like 1/8 alien DNA. But she has a photographic memory and is clairvoyant, and using her genius and an abandoned laboratory she develops a cure, kind of, that works for most of the infected children she is with (for the humans have been dying too- the virus mutated). She falls in love with the group leader, but in a final assault on the building they are holed up in, he is killed. She ends up joining a circus at some point and learning how to throw knives, perform aerial acts, ride horses. Aft that, she ends up disguising herself as a boy a few years later (she's rail thin and over six feet tall) and joining a militia that is hunting down the last of the men responsible for their quarantined planet's terrible fate. She's promoted quickly because of her skill with a knife, and makes enemies for it- then is is discovered to be a woman, and, well, you can imagine...

Also, when she turns sixteen, she begins to lose sight in both eyes. As it turns out, she's riddled with cancer, a side effect of her DNA having been altered by the plague. She goes blind and has only her clairvoyance into the spirit world to help her get by.

Sad face :(

20. What are your favorite character interactions to write?

Banter. Sometimes you just start having fun with your characters, probably more fun than you should, and you end up writing some hilarious crap that will probably be edited out in the second draft, but still... it's fun to write ;D

21. Do any of your characters have children? How well do you write them?

In my epic sci-fi series the main character from the first books ends up having children that he doesn't even know he has. They kind of become the main characters of the last few books. I think I write them pretty well, but I never write them as babies or anything- so I guess their like most "children" I write: young adults.

17. Favorite protagonist and why!

Oy, again with the favorites.

Well, I really enjoyed writing the patchwork girl from The Poppet and the Lune. She was the one female lead character that I never questioned: "Is she being too whiny? Are her reactions realistic?" Cause neither of those questions were relevant in the end. She was fun to write, probably because she got to be intelligent like an adult but have the wise innocence of a child. Also, she was on a quest- quests are always fun to write.

Another protagonist I really enjoy writing is Kyla, Ana's best friend in The Hierophant. She's just a cool person, the kind I would have liked to have been friends with in high school. She's funny, brave, loyal, and not afraid to believe in her dreams.

15. Midway question! Tell us about a writer you admire, whether professional or not!

It is an odd thing, but I don't have too many professional writers I greatly admire. I admire some of their works, but I can't say that on the whole I admire all of them. I admire Philip Pullman, and Libba Bray, and Frank Herbert, but only to a degree.

The writers I admire most? I admire the writers I know. I've seem so many of them grow from fledgling writers to full blown authors (because I've grown with them). I admire the members of the Buffalo Writers Group- those who still write, and still love it, and write more now than ever before. I admire Hugh, a fantastic writer with his own podcast, The Way of the Buffalo, and a subtle-yet-powerful style of writing that never fails to impress. Pete (who tagged me to do this meme!), who started the BWG, who has his very own web serial (www.bardsworth.com), his own book, his own dreams that cannot be deterred. I admire Sarah (The Smoking Quill ;D), whose exquisite writing and haunting ideas always stick with me.

I admire the writers who keep writing, who write because they love it, and write because they must. I admire the ones who succeed, and the ones who don't. Because we've all been there, haven't we? When we're seriously thinking maybe I wasn't meant to do this...

It takes strength to keep going, in the face of failure, rejection, false starts and lost drafts and mean critics and our own envy of other authors. But we do. Because we must.

Because we have stories to tell.

11. Who is your favorite character to write? Least favorite?

Hard question! I love to write all my characters, otherwise I wouldn't write them- I don't think a character that you don't enjoy writing is one people will enjoy reading. I have the most amazing time when I was writing the first draft of The Poppet and the Lune- the patchwork girl was such an an interesting character to write, and her story flowed out from me as easily as breathing.

I had a blast writing Ana and Kyla in The Heirophant because, even though Ana was sometimes boring, Kyla was the fun one and together they were that kind of ridiculous-best-friend fun that is soothing (and hilarious) to write.

Malcom has always been great fun to write because he's so bad-ass, as in the most important, powerful person in the universe, also a teenager who seems to always know more of what's going on than the rest of us.

My least favorite characters to write? Well, they've generally been the characters I don't know too well, and in correcting that I find they're much more fun to write. I've learned that characters who are boring but necessary don't necessarily have to be boring, so I try to keep them interesting for my potential audience's sake, as well as my own.

I don't really like writing the skeezy bad guys who do awful things. Makes me feel gross for having imagined them. But when a story wants to be told, it gives me the players and I put them down on the page.

(in case you missed it, I'm nixing the other 30 day meme until after i finish this one- so many of my friends are doing it too, I don't want to completely clog up your friends pages!)

9. How do you get ideas for your characters? Describe the process of creating them.

I wish I had a solid answer for this, because I'd be a lot more prolific if I did.

For the most part, I get ideas through every day life- small moments that stick out from the rest, that inspire, that trigger some chain of fantasizing in my head until I've imagined some one that has taken root in my brain, and demands to have their story told. For me, the problem is usually that they're shy about telling me their story even though they demand I tell it.

I find, though, that my characters reveal themselves best by writing them. I've tried to character sketch sheets, to no avail. I've tried putting them in other situations and writing about them, but it doesn't feel right. The best I've ever gotten to know a character is by writing a draft, and by the end I can usually see who they really are. When I go back and do revisions or re-writes, that character is solid and real in my writing and in my mind.

7. Do you listen to music while you write? What kind? Are there any songs you like to relate/apply to your characters?

As a general rule I do not listen to music when I write, and in fact can't really understand how anyone could. (That's not a criticism!!! Sometimes I wish I could!) Appreciation of art and the act of creating art don't mesh in my mind as something I can do at the same time. Especially if the songs have words- how can I listen to someone talking while I'm writing?

There are definitely songs that inspire me, though, and songs that make me think of my characters, but only in a loose way. I think sometimes we love our characters so much that we can turn anything into something relevant to their situation.

5. By age, who is your youngest character? Oldest? How about “youngest” and “oldest” in terms of when you created them?

I've had plenty of characters where their story starts with their birth- as in, their birth is a part of an ongoing story. So I'm not sure who my "youngest" character would be, cause inevitably they do grow up. But if I had to guess, it would be Leona. Leona is also a part of the Lotus Children series- she is Malcom's youngest daughter, and the only one he has with his omg-star-crossed-love Leila Nuit, the Praji warrior princess originally sent to kill him when they were both 14.

Ahem.

Leona's birth is disputed (due to prophecies abounding), and people even attempt to prevent it, ie kill Leila. But born she is, in the safety of another/parallel universe, and yes she does turn out to (almost) be the cause of the end of All That Is. During her birth, so many cosmic forces come together that Leila almost dies, but Malcom, also being The Man when it comes to cosmic power, uses all his "magic" to save them both, and ends up in a kind of coma, that is more like suspended animation. Leona is, of course, crazy powerful. She grows and matures mentally and physically at a terrifying speed, and at 12 months she looks 13 years old, and talks/thinks like a genius. Inevitably, her power and knowledge become so huge, without the emotional stability of an adult, that she becomes rather god-like, or rather demon-like because in drawing on energies from pandimensional sources her body transforms into some scary multi-limbed thing with wings- and almost destroys Existence, because it's so awful. (Hello, Willow...)

But, Malcom come backs and stops her, proving once and for all that he is not a pawn of the prophecies that have ruled his life since birth.

My oldest character is, technically, Gabriel, the enchanted bear in the Weirding Wood, in part VIII of The Poppet and the Lune. Over a thousand years ago, he came as a young man to the Weirding Wood to hunt magical game, and for his punishment he was turned into a bear. He's not such a bad guy after a few hundred years, but when he gets the idea of escape into his head, he forces the patchwork girl to work some magic on him, which ultimately kills him. Oops!

Again, Malcom is the first character I created. I think I was 10 at the time :) The most recent character I've created is Sam Ack, the incredibly ordinary girl who wants more than anything to be touched by the extraordinary. She's a definite work in progress.

3. How do you come up with names, for characters (and for places if you're writing about fictional places)?

Oh names. Names, how I love you. How I hate you. How I rarely know what to do with you.

I've gone through many phases of naming. I used to just put substitutes in until I found the "perfect" name for any character, but often that name would stick. I used to try to craft elegant, original, fantastical names that had auspicious meanings/meanings pertinent to that character, but I realized how annoyingly cliche those kind of names are, and I've tried to back off from that. (However, I find that the names I use without looking often do have a meaning that works for the character)

I do keep a baby names book by my desk, with something like 100,000 names in it. I rarely actually get a name straight from it, but rather I'll find a name and tweak it. In my more modern stories, I've preferred using very simple, timeless names, or simple diminutives for elegant longer names, like Ana (pronounced "Ahna"), short for Anastasia. Her love interest, Trebor, was actually a name I heard in college, which I then found out was not the dude's real name- his name was Robert. (See what he did thar?)

That's probably the best way to get a name, in my opinion- keep your eyes and ears open, and when you catch something unique without being silly, write it down. I have a few names I've gathered over the years. Sometimes an interesting name is enough for me to begin seeing the character I'd use it for, long before the story. Often, words alone can be used as a name, or at least in crafting one.

Really, though, no matter how much I search for the perfect name for a character, it's a matter of intuition.

Now, finding last names for characters... I hate that. I'd rather not have last names at all. In The Poppet and the Lune, there is one last name out of all the characters. In The Hierophant I have never liked Ana's last name, and Kyla's I stole from a high school acquaintance who was of the name ethnicity. In the Lotus Children series, Malcom's family is supposed to be descended from a hero created by an Egyptian god, so I named them Khensu after a lesser known moon god. The rest of the last names in that series are awful.

I have yet to find a good way to give last names to characters, but I'm working on it. I sometimes just peruse articles online and steal last names from random authors :}