#write for yourself is a pithy phrase | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

fizzingwizard · 2 months

Text

I'd guess 90% of issues people have with writing advice is they don't know what advice is. It isn't rules. It's suggestions of techniques that have likely proved useful to the suggester.

Same with creative writing exercises with strict limits. It's an exercise. It doesn't mean this is the way you must write for the rest of your life or you're doing it wrong.

Very often, the point of the exercise is similar to the point of the advice: to get you to try something you might not even realize you're not doing. Writing is like fitness. You've got to stretch your muscles and get them accustomed to doing things they're not used to.

I have multiple writing "sins" and the truth is most of them are things I'm constantly trying to knock out. Like relying on adjectives/adverbs. They are not evil! But I find the advice to use them sparingly useful. Because "he said happily" comes to mind more easily than "he said with a grin like a Christmas tree twinkling with ultra-modern Bluetooth-enabled bulbs." It's more creative, it provokes more emotion, and most importantly to me, it tells you more about the character. (You'll have to imagine what sort of person could be described as "Bluetooth-enabled" yourself tho. xp)

But guess fucking what! Now, instead of overusing adjectives/adverbs, I sometimes use too many wordy, specific phrases. No matter how interesting a book is, you'd get tired of reading it if every time a descriptor was called for you had to read a simile or some other pithy comment. And if everyone started writing like that, the most heard advice would become "Don't overuse similes!" or "Don't underestimate the power of the simple adjective!" And then everyone would start practicing only writing with adjectives and...

So yeah advice is like. Not gospel. It's just advice. Personally, though I've read several books on writing and taken several creative writing classes in high school and college, and got a shit ton of advice from all of them, I never heard "you must do this or you're a bad writer." I'm sure some people have and I happen to be a lucky one that got mostly good teachers (except that one prof who shall remain nameless...). If someone told you "You have to write like this," they were wrong. But is it possible that what they actually said was, "You have to write like this in order to grow as a writer," and you only heard the first half?

#its my blog and i'll rant if i want to rant if i want to rant if i want to #writing

7 notes · View notes

aurorasulphur · 1 year

Text

First off, glad to see the DDDNE poll picking up speed in circles beyond my own.

Second, absolutely fascinated by the sheer variety of the nuanced explanations. (Idk what I expected, on this, the “my opinion is slightly different from everyone else’s” website.)

Third, I’m surprised and a little unsettled by the implied judgment in so many of the replies. Again, idk what I expected. Caveat that I’m both a linguist and a person from the USA, so sometimes my descriptivist training is at war with my stubborn “words mean SPECIFIC THINGS” mentality.

Fourth, all signs so far point to the fact that the broad misunderstanding that the primary purpose of the tag is “to indicate a lack of in-text moral condemnation” comes STRAIGHT from the first paragraph of the Fanlore article as it appeared from mid-2020 to literally this week. (When I bumped the info about the conflicting meanings up into the bit that shows above the infobox on mobile.) I feel Some Kind Of Way about that, as it underlines how seriously we should take our Fanlore edits, as well as how few people actually read the whole dang article.

Fourth and a half, I can only find TWO sources (tweets) from before the mid-2020 Fanlore edit that indicate the speaker believes the most important aspect of the DDDNE tag is that it deals with “problematic” or “morally questionable” topics without condemning them in-text.

Fifth, I completely understand why that Fanlore editor framed it that way (it is a rephrasing of Mostlyvalid’s original statement, after all) but seeing hundreds of tweets quote the statement verbatim without seeming to understand THE REST OF THE ARTICLE is alarming. And, imo, this phrase “morally reprehensible” has unintentionally contributed to the vitriol aimed at people who write fics tagged with DDDNE.

Sixth, the point, to me, is that the fic tagged with DDDNE may or may not explicitly address in-text the fact that its contents are (or could be considered) unpleasant, uncomfortable, disturbing, extreme, inappropriate, illegal, intense, “problematic”, immoral, or taboo. The tag serves as a piece of metadata to send up a flag (outside the context of the story itself) that the reader should carefully consider if they want to read a story where the contents (whatever they may be) might be presented as something other than what they would be in reality. It does not mean the fic DEFINITELY “glorifies violence” or “romanticizes necrophilia” or whatever phrase the kids are using these days. (Which is what the fanlore statement about “morally reprehensible” implies, imo.) All it means is that the fic might not have a flashing sign saying “hey this is bad”, so you-the-reader need to exercise your critical thinking skills and decide for yourself whether to read it at all, and whether the actions in the fic are something you should emulate in your daily life. Which, honestly, you should be using your critical thinking skills to assess this for every fic you read, regardless of the tags.

Finally, DDDNE is just the fic equivalent of the safety pop up on websites and applications saying “hey, did you really mean to do this? Are you fully aware of the consequences of sending this data packet to the server like this? Did you know you misspelled your own name? Are you sure you meant to type Wasingtn and not Washington? Do you understand what you are agreeing to? Did you read the tags so you know what to expect? You have unsaved changes, do you wish to exit without saving?”

By opening a fic tagged DDDNE, you are saying: “I, the reader, understand that this fic tagged X (a thing most people would not want to be jumpscared by) will contain X, and the treatment of X may or may not be subverted, glossed over, or otherwise toned down to a skippable cutscene. I agree that this is a thing I want to read.”

It’s hard to boil that down to a pithy statement that appears in the broad-strokes intro of a wiki article!!!!!!

#an aurora original #aurora is back on her bullshit #this is very rambly because I am currently waiting for my adhd meds to hit my system #how many tags before it no longer appears in the tag listing broadly?#fanlore #idk I also admit being Roman Catholic is influencing this #which sounds silly!!!#but tbh only god can judge so like #kinktomato my dudes #i don’t have a problem with it #if god does then he’ll take it up with you in the afterlife #dead dove #DID YOU KNOW definitions are nuanced?#words and their meanings are context-dependent?#shades of meaning exist?#and yet #a fic tagged CNTW and DDDNE and nothing else screams WRONG to me #i’m not perfect lmao #rory’s dead dove poll

14 notes · View notes

pensivethinker · 1 year

Text

Finding meaning in the course

It’s often said that you should “choose a life that makes you happy”. I think that’s the easy thing to say. I also think it’s the popular thing to say. People throw around phrases like “everything happens for a reason” without understanding what any of it means. This is lazy, but many of these pithy responses are fleeting moments of comfort through self-illusion to resolve an existing conflict or contradiction that would otherwise potentially cause inner-turmoil to the way they conceptualize the world if taken seriously. Many people are not intellectually ready or capable to deal with that. I wish that weren’t the case but it sadly is.

There’s a massive confusion that lies on the underbelly of our culture, and it’s that people often mistake happiness for having a comfortable or unnecessarily simplistic or easy life. What I think people ought to instead look for is meaning in the course.

—I write incessantly about this for good reason—

There are many ways to feel happy, and therefore it follows that there are some “happiness-es” greater than others. It’s one’s responsibility to find that which is highest, and it nearly feels intuitive to say that it’s that which is embroidered with meaningful activity, almost by definition. Why would it be any other way?

An important thing to point out is that happiness is not a state of being, it’s an emotion. Emotions are experienced from seconds to minutes. Using the word “meaning” is more like what people try to mean when they use the word “happiness”—it’s more akin to a state of being, which is a long-term feeling that I would describe as a deep satisfaction with one’s life, that entails being proud of what you’ve accomplished, what you’re currently working on, and what you will accomplish in the future, and to have those three components come together in harmony. Now that we understand that the usage of the word is an unfortunate, popularly uncareful use of language, we can understand that the question “are you happy?” is a nonsensical one. I’m happy because I just had an egg omelet with a coffee, but it doesn’t bring any meaning into my life.

The anatomy of a meaningful [life] goal should take the following characteristics:

1) It should be a sufficiently difficult thing to accomplish, to the point where you’re doubtful that it’s even possible given everything goes perfectly, because if your ability is at level ‘x’ and the goal requires a much higher ability of level ‘y’, then the space in between is where you will grow as a person—the pursuit should stretch you as an individual. And of course, this is understood in light of the fact that life is not the destination but the journey. It’s finding meaning in the course.

2) It should be aimed at helping as many people as possible: if you do things only for yourself, then you’re missing the point of the entire experience. People have a remarkable ability to let themselves down, but feel greatly uncomfortable letting others down. When people depend on you, it changes the psychology of your performance entirely.

3) It should be something that can be expressed within a sentence, and understandable to anyone who hears it—even children. Why? Because the idea of the ultimate goal being easy to understand is for your own clarity. Yet, the steps required to get there will be complicated, so there will be much to keep you busy in orienting yourself through the winding road, and therefore allow spending less time on things that don’t matter at all. Think of it as a personal mission statement, which would serve as a response to the question “why do you wake up in the morning?”.

4) It should be wholly engaging. This goes without saying.

5) It should align (or at least not violently contradict) with the other dimensions of your life. There are limitless ways to orient a life, so usually this is not an issue at all, given the persistent existence of clever solutions to even the most seemingly rigid logistical challenges. However, if you’re 45 and you have a 6 year old running around, it’s probably not the wisest move to invest the 200k you have on that startup you always wanted to run at the risk of destabilizing your financial life, because your kid kind of needs you, man. Risk management is important, so you would have to take a safer, albeit longer road to accomplish the same thing.

What are these “dimensions”? Well, admittedly, there are many ways to group them, but one way you can conceptualize them is like this (in no particular order):

Personal psychology & mental health

Work & professional life

Financial well-being

Family life

Intimate relationships

Friendship circles

The best way to assess the status of these dimensions is to ask yourself a myriad of questions, because questions are one of the most useful mental tools we have at our disposal. Ask questions questions questions. With [good] questions, you get useful information, and you gain a deeper understanding of yourself and your life. The information you get from these questions allow you to regroup, reorient, and take action.

Some simple examples:

Does anyone care if you're alive or dead?

Do you have any friends?

Do you have people that love you?

Do you have an intimate relationship that works?

Do you have a strong networked family?

Do you have an interesting occupation that regularizes your schedule, gives you something productive to do on a long-term basis?

Do you have any room for advancement in the future?

Are you as educated as you are intelligent? (you should be, otherwise it’s just a waste of time, resources, and opportunity)

Do you have a hobby outside of work that is engaging? > One important caveat here: there’s nothing wrong with taking up a hobby like photography or chess or drawing, because if you have the main mission in mind after you’ve taken the time and put in the work to ask yourself the tough questions that allow you to understand the reason why you wake up in the morning, then hobbies serve to widen you as a person and make you a more interesting and learned individual. However, if you don’t understand what your main mission is, if you don’t “keep the main thing mainly the main thing” as Stephen R. Covey says in his book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, then hobbies become a waste of time and actually serve as a distraction. (Life is not a series of hobbies to pass the time until you die). -

Are you compromising your mental or physical health by doing things that are stupid?

One should probably get the above starter baseline questions in order before they can ask themselves the more complicated and nuanced questions about their family, work, finances, etc.

All of this is vitally important.

Even with all this established, it’s still worth the time to point out that it’s a grand privilege beyond belief to think philosophically about things given how much poverty, war, religious oppression, and strife there still is in the modern age, yet for those who find it as an option to do so, you will find that it will not even occur to most people to propose it as an activity for serious consideration. How depressing, though I think it’s always been this way given how populations are stratified within a bell curve. You need a certain mix of creativity, curiosity, and aptitude to find this kind of educational exercise as attractive.

The implication of course is that for some, the blindness may be inescapable. It’s in reference to those who might never in their life understand they even had a decision they could make—they have absolutely no idea whatsoever on what they’ve missed.

There exists another sub-section of the population that are just capable enough to understand the concepts and the gravity of the question, but don’t take it upon themselves to search for answers simply because they were never presented with it as a set of ideas to ponder in the first place—they didn’t know what they didn’t know, and that’s [probably] not their fault. That’s what good authors are for, and we would have to rely on those with influence to spread these ideas to the point where it becomes generally known. In our personal lives, we ought to discuss these ideas when permissible given their level of importance.

And finally, for those who find themselves unconvinced and attached to their linguistically misguided ideas of happiness, despite all evidence to the contrary, understand that although it’s an illusion to justify your place in the world merely by the dumb idea that you’re happy at the present moment (or at the very least not weighed by sadness), if you do look for that which is meaningful, happiness will always manifest itself as a pleasant side effect.

#pensivethinker

7 notes · View notes

garden-ghoul · 2 years

Text

this week on poetry night, something a little different! Laurence has been getting back into JTTW so we did an extract from chapter 5.

In the middle of the uproar the Great Sage finally arrived, and called: "Make way!"

He pulled out his iron rod; with one shake and then another it was as wide as a bowl and twenty feet long, and he went to it. Of the Nine Luminaries, who dared oppose him? In a moment they were beaten back.

The Nine Luminaries stood among their forces on the road: "You act without regard to life or death, stableboy; you are accused of committing the Ten Evils! First you stole peaches, then you stole liquor, you caused chaos at the festival of the Peaches of Immortality, you stole Laozi's elixir, and you stole heavenly wine just to enjoy yourself. You pile crime on more crime, don't you see that?"

The Great Sage laughed: "The things you've said are true, all true. But now, what are you going to do about it?"

Notes and original text under the cut.

正嚷間，大聖到了，叫一聲：「開路！」掣開鐵棒，幌一幌，碗來粗細，丈二長短，丟開架子，打將出來。九曜星那個敢抵，一時打退。那九曜星立住陣勢道：「你這不知死活的弼馬溫，你犯了十惡之罪：先偷桃，後偷酒，攪亂了蟠桃大會，又竊了老君仙丹，又將御酒偷來此處享樂。你罪上加罪，豈不知之？」大聖笑道：「這幾樁事，實有，實有。但如今你怎麼？」

I’ll confess I like translating prose a lot less than I like translating poetry. I have this urge to translate it very literally; the prose I write in English is pretty plain too! Anyway have a couple notes.

one shake and then another - so the original is 幌一幌, apparently meaning curtain one curtain, but for Laurence it recalled another pronunciation of huang, meaning to shake. So, one shake, another shake. I like the rhythm of this! It gives a very certain picture of the motion he’s using. Like he shook it once and it only grew ten feet long and he had to shake it again.

“You act without regard to life or death” - this is a very literal translation of the chengyu 不知死活, generally translated as “being reckless.” But Sun Wukong is constantly disregarding life and death! The literal translation brings to mind like half a dozen incidents immediately and this is only chapter five.

stableboy - okay I’ll admit this one is notable because Anthony Yu bafflingly translated it as BanHorsePlague, which not only is not a cogent English word/phrase but shares nothing except the horse with the original 弼馬溫, which sounds a lot more like a description of putting a blanket on a cold wet horse and feeding it some nice mash. The sneering tone with which the Nine Luminaries talk is so funny! Hey you! Comforter of horses!! Bitch!!

“you pile crime on more crime” - GREAT imagery here. I’ve actually rendered it pretty literally but I can’t stop saying to myself “Stableboy, your pile of crimes does not stop from getting taller!”

“what are you going to do about it?” - agonizingly the original is the extremely pithy “你怎麼?” or “you how?” It has HUGE “what are you going to do about it” energy but Laurence’s translation--”now what?”--is so much snappier. Sometimes Chinese is just a superior language for taunts.

#translation #jttw

7 notes · View notes

amariasolo · 1 year

Text

I have a Notes document called “A Job Done Right.”

It is dedicated to the fanfiction that has not been written, but nevertheless I want to read. So, you know. “If you want a job done right, you have to do it yourself.” In this case, it’s just “if you want a job done at all.” I just wrote a post about how writing multiple sentences in a row is a Herculean undertaking for me, so “A Job Done Right” is full of scraps of dialogue and pithy phrases that become paragraphs only through immense effort.

This is relevant because the sentence that just occurred to me, “Zagreus has never known when to leave well enough alone,” would be a good fic summary. It will probably never become a fic.

0 notes

olderthannetfic · 3 years

Note

Do you know what the origin of the "sold to One Direction" thing is? I know it's a common trope (or was), but, I have no idea where I first heard of it, where I learned it was a thing. How do weird tropes like that get started, anyway? Why do some concepts take off and become huge parts of a particular fandom, but others don't? (And does this particular premise show up in other RPF contexts as much?)

tl;dr - Wattpad circa 2013, probably

I'm only familiar with that from doing Wattpad research. I don't think it's a major RPF thing, at least not under that exact name. Horny f!sub is kind of the Wattpad way, so a lot of the popular tropes there make sense from that perspective. I've definitely seen plenty of badtouch sexy slave/kidnapping victim/stalk-ee stuff with BTS and other music groups. But maybe somebody reading has more specific 1D history knowledge?

As for why one thing takes off and another doesn't, the big answer is:

Historical accident

We can look for patterns, sure, but a lot of it is ultimately survivorship bias. That's the thing where we look at what's remaining (successful companies, popular fic tropes), and we assume they have some special property that made them survivors and then extrapolate from that. But maybe it's coincidence, or maybe it's a different type of causality than the one we're looking at.

For example, a trope in a popular fandom will spread farther faster than a trope in a dinky little fandom, so maybe fandom size is what matters and not the nature of the trope. Most analyses assume it's the trope itself that matters.

On an individual basis, many specific tropes get popularized by a particular famous author or fic that other people imitate. Some get popularized by a fanworks exchange or fest. (That's how 5 Times fic spread.) But why do they stick around long term? Why do they gain traction elsewhere?

Aside from random chance, it's probably something to do with broad applicability and easy entry points.

So, for example, the show The Sentinel doesn't actually have Guides as such, but the AU added an official role for the other dude to make the two of them super destined. Sentinel AUs took off across a ton of fandoms. (Less so these days, but I've even seen them in BTS, so they're definitely not gone.) The AU version is basically soulmates + potentially codified top/bottom roles + superpowers. People like fantasy AUs. They like frameworks to fit their ship into. The trope isn't highly specific otherwise, so it can be tacked onto many settings, both real world and sff. It fits two-person ships easily, which is most popular ships. One can do some worldbuilding about whether there's One True Guide for a given Sentinel or whether the bond is more a matter of choice. Guides might be equal in numbers/prestige/public visibility to Sentinels or not. The existence of all this can be openly known by everybody or a secret like in the show.

A/B/O has a similar level of "proof my ship belongs together" stuff with room to play around with worldbuilding. It also overlaps heavily with prior popular tropes people like for pretty obvious horny reasons. Same with plenty of tropes. They're often a slight remix of already popular stuff.

Sense8 AUs, however, never really took off as a thing. I saw some fans sadfacing about this, but in this case, I think we could have predicted it. Why? Simple: the concept involves OT8, and that's not going to apply to most people's fandoms unless they happen to like a kpop group or a superhero team with 8 people. The 8 also don't have specific roles that would make this simpler to write. If you're going for less OT8 and more of a complicated network of relationships, that's a complicated story to write and it has much less of a template to work from. So low applicability + high barrier to entry.

Hogwarts AUs, on the other hand, are super popular. Why? My guess is that the biggest reason is that a million bajillion times more people know Harry Potter than know Sense8. Hogwarts also has some canned roles that are more obvious: which house is your Fave? Shit that could be in a clickbait-y personality quiz is easier to write fic about than something that requires you to make up everything yourself. But also, four houses are easy to keep track of in a way that all those Myers-Briggs types are not. Add too much mandatory complexity, and it gets too confusing.

If I had to guess about the popularity of Sold To One Direction, I'd say a lot of it is due to the problem of getting Mary Sue or y/n into the room with them. Why is she there? This fic concept provides the answer in one quick title or tag. Sexy slavefic and dubcon have had broad appeal since forever. There's room to go really dark or fluffier. Some of the fics are nothing but ravishment fantasies, while others are more abuse recovery stories (where 1D are better than whatever came before).

I don't think there's some simple answer for why this specific thing and not a closely related trope became such a known trope in 1D. Probably, if some BNF had posted a ravishment fantasy with a different pithy title at just the right time, some adjacent trope would be big instead.

As for why I've heard of this trope, it's absolutely due to 1D being a fucking massive fandom such that its popular tropes occur very frequently in a sample of Wattpad writing of the right eras. It definitely owes its lulzy memeticness to fandom size: lots of people care enough about 1D and 1D fic to know what the trends are and make jokes about them.

Here's Huffpo being dicks about 1D slavefic back in 2013. They don't mention the exact phrasing though. Here's a pretty standard specimen from 2013-14.

I presume this was also a big thing on Quizilla (RIP) and I see extant examples on Quotev. Sadly, these and Wattpad are fucking hard to study, and a lot of the meta-writing types stick to AO3, so I don't see as many good analyses of this part of fandom.

Any 1D fans want to weigh in?

#1d #sold to 1d #fandom history #fandom meta

165 notes · View notes

jilytoberfest · 3 years

Text

Author - @bcdaily

Thank you so much for taking the time to do this! Find her on ao3 and ffnet !

1. What would you say is your interesting writing quirk?

I don't know that I'd necessarily call them quirks, but I think I am highly fixated on alliterative phrases, and it is tremendously difficult for me not to open a story or chapter with a pithy one-liner. They are my happy place. Oh! Actually, maybe a real quirk is also that I absolutely can not write un-chronologically. It always leads to disaster when I try. I write so based on the feeling and pace of what came before that if I try to jump the gun and skip scenes, I inevitably mess myself up. It can be really frustrating when I'm stuck on one bit and would rather jump ahead, but it never works for me. Sigh.

2. What was one of the most surprising things you learned in creating your books?

That I'm funny. I know this seems IMPOSSIBLE to some because literally all I write is funny & kissing, but I am not funny in real life. Or, at least, not quick funny. Give me a good ten minutes (or a week) and I can whip you up a pithy lol, but just in moment by moment? No. I am so underwhelming. I'm so sorry. But writing taught me that I am funny...just at my own pace.

3. Do you have any suggestions to help others become a better writer? If so, what are they?

Read incessantly. Reading is the best tool available to you other than writing itself. When you read, you soak up so much--on a fundamentals level, you soak up vocabulary and grammar, but when you're consistently reading the types of books you want to be writing, you're also helping build your larger toolbox. You learn what characters appeal to you. What dynamics. What kind of pacing and plot works. The tropes you like. The conflicts you don't. There's so much to take in during the intrinsic research of reading. And it's fun. So do it.

4. What do you think makes a good story?

Anything that makes you feel something. Or see something in a new way. Storytelling is so complex, and "good" is so relative. I would probably say what makes a good story is whatever you enjoyed writing, though that seems trite. But as a writer, that's true. It's good if you enjoyed it.

5. What is the first book that made you cry?

I honestly had to think about this because I don't know?? Strangely, the first book that came to mind was that Molly American Girl book, where at the end she had to stay home from her victory pageant but then her dad came back from war...but I don't know that I actually cried at that?? Maybe I just remember it vividly as something heartwarming that maybe I ought to have cried at if I wasn't eight. But if not that, probably The Giver, which I read in 7th grade. That seems late, but then again, I am almost never reading a book that will make me cry. I am a light and jovial gal.

6. Does writing energize or exhaust you?

Both? I think the two go hand in hand. Writing is work. But if we didn't enjoy it, we wouldn't keep doing it. So I think everyone would say both.

7. Have you ever gotten reader’s block? If so, what are your tips to overcome it?

Reader's block? No. Writer's block? Yes. And really the only thing you can do in my opinion is give yourself enough space from your writing to quit being in your head about it--however long that might take--and then launch back on that horse. Even if you're only writing a sentence a day, that's still something. But you have to be able to find the joy again, and you can't force yourself into that.

8. Do you think someone could be a writer if they don’t feel emotions strongly?

Well, I don't know exactly what "feel emotions strongly" even means, because all of that is so arbitrary. I'm sure most people feel certain things more keenly or prominently than others. But I also think writing isn't just about emotion. It's about observation. It's about relaying the way you see the world, a character, a moment. And you don't need to feel anything strongly yourself for you to describe something in a way that can make other people feel. That's the magic thing about words. They can do a million different things for a million different people, and not a single one of those is wrong.

9. If you could tell your younger writing self anything, what would it be?

My quite young self? Absolutely nothing. Preteen Bee wrote like a demon and thought she was a genius. It didn't matter if she sucked. She didn't know what that meant, and bless her. Teenage+ Bee? Chill the fuck out, gurl. It literally doesn't matter. Write what you want.

10. What was your hardest scene to write?

It's difficult to pinpoint one. I think maybe that ending scene in the most recent chapter of Commentarius? Mostly because it was something I had living in my head for literal years, and then suddenly I was writing it...and it was so much smaller of an exchange than I thought it would be? In my head it always seemed liked such a LONG row, a lot of back and forth, but actually trying to write it out, that just couldn't be the reality. Because people can't fight for that long without going in circles or deviating wildly, and going in circles or deviating in fiction is dead space. So that took me awhile to really accept and quit trying to fit my square peg in the round hole.

11. What is your favorite childhood book?

Ella Enchanted. It's still one of my favorite books of all time.

12. How long on average does it take you to write a one shot or a chapter of a fic?

It depends? I am a slow writer in general, and some of my chapters and oneshots are quite long. They have taken at times literal years. But I am also the sort of person that if I start a shorter drabble or oneshot and I don't finish it either that day or in a matter of a few days? Then there's an 80% chance I don't finish it at all. I have approximately 9 million documents of 500 word things I've started and never picked up again. It's my way. So I'm basically a woman of extremes: it either takes me hours or years. XD

13. A fic that inspires you?

I don't think anyone will be surprised if I pick one of Sarah's ( @ghostofbambifanfiction )...and maybe I'll go with Shelf Awareness on that. It's just such a lovely fic and it's so dynamic and the trope is so strong and Sarah's writing is next to none. I've also always always loved Buried Treasure and Transmogrify by RiennaHawkes. It's the perfect mix of plot and smut and just brilliant characterization.

14. How do you edit your work?

I edit as I go. Basically every time I open a doc, I'm skimming back a certain percentage and editing through before I start writing anything new. Generally, once I finish something, I only read it over once or twice before posting because I've already edited so much as I went. If there's a larger problem with the story or chapter, I generally catch it before I get to the end (usually because I can't get to the end without fixing it. It will trip me up).

15. Where does inspiration come from?

Everywhere? Anywhere? The space between and the tears we cry?

16. Who has been helpful for you as you write for the fandom?

I've always said that the reason I have stayed in this fandom for decades (!!!???!!!) is because of the people. The community as a whole is just so lovely and supportive and sticks with you even when you don't update the things they want (lol sry). There have been dozens of people throughout the years that have helped me and been my friend and kept writing and fandom fresh. And there have been hundreds more who have never even spoken to me, but still read my stuff and lurk around, and that's amazing too. So, all of them. Also, you know, Sarah. Who is my light and love and everyone knows it, so she has to get her special call-out otherwise everyone would just call me a liar and they'd be right. ;)

17. What is your fav POV to write from?

Close third person, for sure. I've done first, and it has its moments, but I just find close third so much steadier and still really gives you a look inside the character's head. If you're asking me to choose between Lily or James's POV, though...I literally couldn't. It just depends on my day, honestly

18. What is a fic you would love to write but are worried you won’t be able to accomplish it/nervous it wouldn’t work out?

How long do you have??? There have been a MILLION over the years. I still have a half dozen in my head brewing at any given moment. I guess maybe the longest lasting one would be that I've always looooved delving into this idea of James growing up and what pushes him there and how that plays out with the people around him. And for a long time, I really wanted to write a chaptered fic about James trying to give up being Head Boy. Because he just didn't trust himself with it. And the dynamic of how other people see him vs. how he sees himself and him properly growing into a leader who would join a war effort at eighteen. But I could never make myself launch into yet another WIP, so I ended up sort of squeezing the concept out in a one-shot (Realising) because I wanted to do it in some way, but I do regret a bit never properly tackling it. I think that would have been a really cool story to delve into James as a character. But time is my enemy.

19. Do you ever self insert in fics?

No. I honestly rarely pull anything from people I know in real life, myself included. At most I'll drop in pop culture references to things I enjoy, but that's basically it.

20. What is the story you are proudest of?

I'm proudest of different stories for different things. Commentarius is my baby, and I can never not love it and what it's become to so many. Scenes from a Hogsmeade Pub is special. Elevator Love Song was my first Muggle AU that launched a thousand ships. Eight Days is such a fun world. Auror Training is really really fun smut. And so many more. Truly. I am a proud mama.

21. Do you prefer writing canon jily or muggle au?

Lately? Muggle AU. Just because it lets me flex my muscles more. And I like that. But canon will always hold a place in my heart.

22. How do you go about planning a fic and which of your ocs is your favorite and why

I hate outlines with every fiber of my being, so I don't do outlines. When I have a fic idea, my planning process is usually to have a beginning, certain middle points, and generally an end point, and then to let myself roam free as I write to connect those and fill in the gaps. Sometimes it's a hot mess that way, but I feel instantly claustrophobic if I set things down too firmly. Because then I feel beholden to the things written down, and half the fun of writing is coming up with the freshest ideas as you go.

My favorite OC is MJ Rosier from Commentarius. If you know, you know.

Thank you very much for doing this!

#bcdaily #jilyinterview #jilytober fest #jilytober 2021 #jilytober #writer interview

72 notes · View notes

mikkeneko · 3 years

Note

14 + 19 for the meta asks?

14 - At what point in writing do you come up with a title?

I’d say it’s not entirely consistent! Sometimes I have the title pretty early on in the process (sometimes the title is the inspiration FOR the piece, like with ‘hot necromancer singles’) and sometimes I get all the way to the finish line with only a working title -- sometimes I go ahead and publish with the working title because I simply cannot think of anything better (like with the Five Times/Jiang Cheng’s Core story.) Sometimes I have a title I like and then change it (like how ‘gravity ballet’ became ‘one hundred, ten thousand, thirty million.’)

But generally speaking, I would say that I usually have the title picked out during the planning and outlining stage, or before much of the text is written. It’s rare for me to get most of the way through with no title.

19 - Is there something you always find yourself repeating in your writing? (favourite verb, something you describe ‘too often’, trope you can’t get enough of?)

Offhand, I can’t think of anything? I certainly am vulnerable to the writer’s trap of repeating a phrase, verb, or pithy saying too many times within a certain scene, because once it’s ‘on deck’ in my head it will come up repeatedly in the shuffle. But I can’t think of something that shows up over and over again in my works. Possibly there’s some self-blindness there, regular readers might have noticed something I missed.

Fun meta asks for writers!

#mikke memes #mikke fics #curiosity-killed

6 notes · View notes

ghoste-catte · 3 years

Note

15, 17 and 19 for the meta ask

Thanks for the ask!!!

15. Which is harder: titles or summaries (or tags)?

Gosh, this is a tricky one. So, to start, I don't find tagging very difficult at all. I have some very basic principles that I think of when I tag:

1. Is the story about this thing? Does this tag encompass a genre, trope, or main theme?

2. Would someone searching for a story by this tag be satisfied with my fic showing in the results?

3. Is this a common trigger that is a major component of this work?

4. Does this tag give readers a sense of what's inside, even if it's not a 'canonical' tag (in the Ao3 sense of a searchable, indexable tag)?

1-3 are really just variations on a theme, and obviously anyone can tag any way they like, but that's how I think of tags. And I do give myself laterality to add one or two humorous tags if it fits the tone of the fic.

An example I've given before is: Hunting is a trigger for some people. If I've written a fic where a side character happens to go hunting and mentions it, or has hunting trophies on their wall, that doesn't warrant a tag, but I'll stick it in the warnings in the header note. If the fic is about hunting - the main characters are hunters, or they spend 5k words stalking a deer around the woods, then that warrants a tag.

Titles and summaries, on the other hand, are variable in their difficulty. Some titles walk right into my head before I've even written the fic, or the fic is inspired by some particular song or line of verse or whatever that makes a title simple to figure out. A lot of the rest of the time, though, I get to the end of writing the story and go "fuck, what the hell do I call this?" For fluff and humor fics, I often resort to googling "X jokes", where X is the main topic of the fic, and looking at the image search results since those tend to be pithy and easy to visually scan. So, like, for example, 'Chop it Like it's Hot' was a thanks-to-Google title (I googled "lumberjack puns"). I'm also not shy about crowdsourcing titles in the GaaLee Discord (shout out to Whazzername specifically for coming up with the titles for, like, a BUNCH of my fics).

Summaries are kind of similar: sometimes I know exactly which line or paragraph I want to pull or exactly how to sum the story up, and sometimes I have to agonizingly workshop it. It's much easier to write a summary for something plotty than it is for something more emotionally driven.

17. Do you think readers perceive your work - or you - differently to you? What do you think would surprise your readers about your writing or your motivations?

The weirdest bit of feedback that I've often received about my persona is people finding me intimidating to start up a conversation with? Which feels crazy to me because in my mind I'm just a simple idiot wizard who spends way too much brainspace and man hours on writing a truly ridiculous amount of fic for a single niche pairing. Like, all I did was hop on this train and refuse to disembark. So I don't really know where that comes from or how to, like ... fix it. I don't necessarily want to be intimidating, and I feel sort of bad that people find me unapproachable. Like yes I'm abrasive and a shitty conversationalist but also I'm not scary!

As far as my fics ... no, I think people generally get out of my fics what I put into them. There's been one or two times where readers glommed on to a detail that I intended to be a bit throwaway and not especially salient, particularly in multi-chapter works where the irrelevance isn't clear until later, but those moments are fairly rare.

I think what people would find surprising about my writing is just how often I latch on to a stupid sort of flight of fancy conversational whim in Discord and spin it out into like 10k+ of fanfic. Prompts and other people's ideas are actually one of my favorite ways to drum up fic concepts! I'm not that of a creative person on my own, so it helps me to have someone else's skeleton to flesh out.

19. Is there something you always find yourself repeating in your writing? (favourite verb, something you describe ‘too often’, trope you can’t get enough of?)

Ugh, yes! The bane of my existence is these little phrases I can't seem to stop repeating. I often re-read my own work and sometimes I'll come across a line and I'm like =_= "how is this already in here, I just used this in something I'm writing right this moment!" The one that's been stuck in my craw recently (and thank you so much to a reader who brought it to my attention!) is how much I talk about how small Gaara's hands are? I don't know why that's a fixation point--I think partially it's because I just can't stand to have a noun without an adjective attached--but it's something I'm trying to be more thoughtful about excising moving forward.

Trope-wise, I love an AU, especially sci-fi and fantasy AUs. They're some of my least popular fics, but they're usually the ones I have the most fun researching and writing for, and many of them number among what I consider to be my best works. I would go batshit if other people wrote GaaLee fic in those genres tbh.

#answered #ask meme #neuropraxia

1 note · View note

lightandwinged · 4 years

Text

When you are a mom trying to decorate your home, you come up against a LOT of word art decor, and it can be maddening. On the one hand, a truly unique piece with a phrase that really encapsulates your home or makes you snort laugh every time is 100% worth it. On the other hand, that piece does not exist unless you make it, and I’ll be real, I am too lazy to make such things.

In short: most of my home remains decorated in a “family photos and random shit like a Halloween mask mounted like a taxidermized deer head” manner.

Worse, even when you try to avoid word art decor because you’re very tired of the same phrases over and over again (”Live, Laugh, Love” is the most common, then there’s the “in this house...” followed by a bunch of twee things like “we laugh a lot!” and “we make mistakes!” and variations that talk about Hogwarts or Jedi, and then you have the one word arts that are always kind of ominous, like “GATHER” or :FAMILY” and the ubiquitous Bible verses), people force them on you. I have one that I’m hanging in my living room because I see the person who gave it to us very often (”this is our perfect chaos” it says) and another that’s hiding in storage because it, thankfully, does not fit anywhere.

Honestly, the only word art I want in my home would be art of Carrie Fisher quotes (maybe “g’night fucko’s” in my upstairs hallway), but even then...

Which brings me to the story of the Lettering Class.

I love me some good calligraphy, mind, and I love watching videos of people who’ve turned their handwriting into artwork writing just... anything. A grocery list. The word fuck. The name of the instrument with which they’re writing. And I feel like I could do well with calligraphy if I bothered to apply myself, but I don’t do anything that I’m not perfect at on the first try, so womp womp.

But nevertheless, my mom enticed me to a Lettering Class with the promise of good cheese (spoiler: the cheese was not good) but also with the promise of a much needed night off. We met up at this place that probably used to be a greenhouse but had been repurposed as the physical manifestation of HGTV. The walls were all shiplap. There were plants of indeterminate variety all over. The furniture was mismatched but in a boring, safe way. None of the lights had lampshades, and that hurt my eyes. In the corner, by a bunch of antique shit that didn’t mean anything to anyone there, a smart speaker played string quartet arrangements of pop music.

We took our seats without taking any snacks and received one of many picture frames onto which we would be writing our chosen phrase in a generic brush script font. Most everyone was doing the phrase provided in our lesson packet, which was something pithy like “always believe in yourself” or something. I hated that and decided to go with the old D&D chestnut “crit happens,” but my ability to recreate the brush script was lacking, and I ended up creating a messy mixture of serif and sans serif instead, alongside a couple of D20s. It wasn’t something I’d hang in my house, but it was passable and not “live, laugh, love,” so I accepted my own design.

When I drew the letters with a pencil, they looked great. When I inked over them with permanent marker, they looked great. But then I had to use a paint pen.

If you’ve never used a paint pen, let me explain how they work. You shake the pen. You open the pen. You press the tip of the pen against a surface until the paint starts to flow. The paint then flows at some speed determined only by fate and the position of Jupiter or some shit. If you’re lucky, the paint flows smoothly and you get some nice letters.

I was not lucky.

My mom was looking over my shoulder, as you do, and she was remarking on how nice my letters looked. I was almost done, adding some weight to the S in “happens” when Jupiter shifted and the pen just... exploded. A huge white splat of paint on the S of “happens.” The words that a moment before had been somewhat passable were now a disaster.

In the end, I think it was the universe’s way of telling me that no, word art will never happen for me, and I should probably give it up. I brought the frame home and shoved it at my husband. “I made it, so you have to love it and take it to work,” I told him.

“...okay,” he said after a beat and promptly buried it under a stack of bills.

And that’s the story of the Lettering Class.

#I don't even know how to tag this #mom gothic #not goth mom that's something different #not mom goth that is also something different #this is a story about the existential horror of stepping briefly into the world of Moms

17 notes · View notes

kylermalloy · 4 years

Text

Tagged by @evanescentdawn to do this author interview—thank you, Yuki! 🥰♥️

Name: Kyler

Fandoms: Supernatural, The Originals, BBC Merlin, Star Wars, Teen Wolf. Those are the ones I’ve written for recently, anyway!

Where you post: AO3, here on tumblr, and FF.net (more out of habit than anything else)

Most popular one-shot: Waiting Game (SPN, SamJack)

Most popular multi-chapter: I guess it’s my Host fic, Stubbornness—by virtue of being old and long! (holy crap this fic is going to turn 7 in January. I was so inexperienced when I started it! Maybe I should write that epilogue sometime soon...)

Favorite story you’ve written so far: You fool. You think I could actually choose ONE favorite fic? You absolute fool.

For SPN, Near Light is a favorite. Also, Can You Hear Me is a nice slice of angst.

For TO, Entre Tus Alas. And my newest obsession, the boyking AU.

For Teen Wolf, I fell short. You know, for the angst :)

Fic you were nervous to post: Definitely the boyking AU. Writing it continues to take me out of my comfort zone. And (how do I say this) it’s not...my usual brand of fic. I sat on the idea for a long time because I wasn’t sure there would be an audience for it at all. Luckily, there is! 😊

How you choose your titles: I have a few techniques! Sometimes I read through the fic and find an appropriate phrase to serve as my title. If that doesn’t work, I try to think of a pithy/witty summation on my own. Then if that doesn’t work, I turn to song lyrics and poetry.

Do you outline? In theory. I write out short descriptions of plots/scenes that eventually turn into fully fleshed-out prose. But I don’t always do that, and of course I don’t always stick to the plan!

Complete: 36 fics on AO3 + 3 older ones on FF.net I never cross-posted

In progress: 2 on AO3 - Stitch by Stitch (SPN) and the boyking AU (TO)

Coming soon/not yet started: the Star Wars AU. Plus a couple other TO fics - I’ve talked about them here, here, and here!

Do you accept prompts? Again, in theory. But I’m not the best at writing on demand! If you send me a prompt I will be delighted - and I might not ever fill it 😬

Upcoming story you are most excited to write: is it cheating if I say all of them? I’m having so much fun writing snippets in the boyking!AU. But I’m also chomping at the bit to post the Star Wars AU (but I’ve vowed not to post that fic until it’s complete!)

Tbh it’s not that I’m excited to write them per se—writing is HARD. I’m excited to share them with everyone! All in good time.

Tagging: Idk who wants to do this—so if you want to do it, consider yourself tagged!

#tag game #writing is hard #about me #kylerrambles #thanks for the tag yuki!

1 note · View note

coffeesuperhero · 4 years

Note

For the writer ask!: 5, 15, 19, 23!

Yay, hello! 5. What character that you’re writing do you most identify with? In TBTP fandom, Richard, hands down. “Grumpy and overthinking it” should probably be on my tombstone. Although (and I am very excited to get back to writing this for real now that I have some time!) the real answer for folie á deux is actually Charlie, because she’s a queer disaster in that story and I love her to death and can’t wait for her to show up for real. Queer Charlie forever! I accept no other canon. 15. Which is harder: titles or summaries (or tags)? SUMMARIES. The worst. What a fucking struggle. Legit last night when I posted this first bit of this Leverage thing at like 2am I wandered into our bedroom and said, “I need an adult!” to my wife, because I couldn’t come up with the summary. It was easier to write 32,000 words of story than it was to write like 10 words of a summary. Pithy, I am not. I will say this though: if I get to the end of a story and it hasn’t got a title yet, I know I’m in trouble. That either happens in the first few minutes of writing the dang thing, or it is the result of many hours of agonizing after I’m done, and there’s like, no middle ground there.

19. Is there something you always find yourself repeating in your writing? (favourite verb, something you describe ‘too often’, trope you can’t get enough of?) Apparently people laugh a lot in my stories? Like, that’s my dialogue tag, a lot? I probably overuse italics but I just find them so useful. The phrase, “Well, shit,” probably appears in a lot of my fic because fuck, what an eternal mood. I definitely tend lately to write way too many run-on thoughts broken up by commas. And I write a lot of banter. In every fandom. What can I say? I was badly brought up by an age of television where people did nothing but banter, and I am now doomed forever to repeat that in my own work.

23. What’s the story idea you’ve had in your head for the longest? This one is the hardest question on the list, possibly! I’ve got an unfinished epistolary novel that I started in college, so approximately a million years ago, that I may never finish now, because I think its season has passed from my life. It was about loss and grief and there is so much of that in the world that I just don’t feel like I want to put any more out there right now. I kind of hope I don’t ever feel like I need to pull it back out, tbh. And that’s a terribly sad way to end these answers, so: maybe the other longest held thing is this massive sci-fic epic I started writing with my wife, also when we were in college, also a million years ago. We had a decent outline and some fun characters, and as far as I recall, everybody lived happily ever after. It would be really fun to return to that.

1 note · View note

grayseeker · 5 years

Photo

What Starscream Means to Me

"In any universe, you are my dark star." - Young the Giant, Superposition

"What do you like about him?" my classmate asked, after I'd told her about my deep and abiding passion for Starscream.

She wasn't asking in a sarcastic way. She seemed genuinely curious, and I wanted to give her an answer. One that would make sense to someone who'd only just heard of him. And one that would somehow tell the truth by encapsulating a 30+ year relationship into a few pithy sentences.

I drew a blank. Still do. Not because I don't have reasons, but because there's so much to say. When I try to write it down, it inevitably sprawls off the page into long, rambling discourses that are probably of interest to no one but me. Perhaps the impact he's had on my life - in terms of my creativity, ambitions, spiritual path and more - is impossible to put in words. Yet here I am, giving it another try. If Starscream has taught me anything, it's the value of persistence. So...

Starscream is my hero.

He was my first and, really, only hero. He's more - much more - but I have always had the deepest admiration for his courage, his determination in pursuing his ambitions, his willingness to challenge authority, and his absolute refusal to back down from his dreams. He gives literal meaning to the phrase, "Never say die."

He taught me to never give up. To seek my own truth and to speak up for myself, even when my voice shakes. That disobedience is not the same thing as disloyalty, and that obedience to authority is not always "good." That being shot down for your ambitions is still better than not having any in the first place. That if you're stranded on a desert island with nothing but a few wrecked vehicles, you can still create your own army if you're creative and resourceful. That you can beat the devil *and* escape the jaws of death if you're smart enough and willing to work for it.

From Starscream, I learned that the will to survive, in spite life's cruelties, is the highest form of courage. It can even be an expression of love, if it means surviving long enough to find someone you care about and dig him out of the ice. Starscream taught me that where there's a curse on the door, there's likely to be something worth having on the other side. He taught me to explore the forbidden, to face my fears and my inner darkness, and explore my own personal underworld.

He taught me that no matter how often you are shamed, degraded, beaten down and humiliated, you can still have pride. You can still find it within yourself to rise and embrace life.

Those were the lessons I needed as a depressed 19 year old, and I still need them today. And no, Starscream is not perfect. Then again, I wouldn't want him to be. Perfection is dull. Starscream, on the other hand, is beautifully flawed. Like so many of us, he is his own worst enemy. Watching him struggle with that tendency is, itself, inspiring to me. It makes it possible to imagine that I can forgive myself for my mistakes, my shortcomings, my tendency to self-sabotage.

What else could I say about him? There's still so much. I could talk about how he inspired me to start writing, and is guide and inspiration to my creative process, whether I'm writing about him specifically or not. I could talk about how he gave me the courage to come out to myself as queer. I could talk about his profound effect on my spiritual path, which would be book in itself.

But perhaps I'll conclude by saying that Starscream is my Muse. He's my creative partner, co-author of my stories, my oldest friend, my spirit guide, my daemon - my Seeker.

And if there's more to be said than that, it will have to wait for another essay.

#starscream #tribute #my seeker #my hero #my muse

22 notes · View notes

robswrittenrecord · 5 years

Text

Welcome to the Show

I find myself thinking a lot. I guess that’s redundant because the function of the human brain is to regulate autonomous bodily functions and to think, so thinking may be the wrong word. I guess I have been contemplating then. I contemplate my future self and how I wish that I could control the flow of time. Like in the movie Click, but with less problematic humor and more earnest trips to Bed, Bath, and Beyond. I wish that I could take that over-sized remote and fast forward past my depressive episodes and pause on the content ones. I view my life as a TV show sometimes, which is probably a result of watching too much TV as a child, and I can’t help but feel like the viewer would find my depression, anxiety, and general mental disarray uncompelling. “Wow, another mid twenties Los Angeles native with mental health problems that considers himself funny? How impressive” they say as they flip the channel to something more palatable. I guess now the phrase would be “as they exit out of the Netflix preview that auto-played because they were reading the show description”, but the sentiment stands.

II feel like my generation was told that we were special. That we were the unique ones. That we were the generation that we deserved to be watched. My adult life has been the slow acceptance that I am not special and that I am just an average person trying to deal with twenty-six years of fucked up programming. I vividly remember teachers describing me as gifted or bright and I can honestly say that I feel like neither of those. I’m not the star of some Netflix television show that throws out pithy one liners and wins over the hearts of the audience members, I am just a child that happened to walk into adulthood under-prepared and overwhelmed. This is the TV pilot that never made it to Netflix because the actors refused to show up, the cinematographer is across the street spending the crafty money on drinks for himself, and the sound guy is passed out in the bathroom and I’m too afraid to knock louder. Welcome to the shit show, y’all.

I bet you’re asking yourself: “Well Robert, if you don’t believe that you’re worth watching then why are you writing a blog on the internet and why is your punctuation questionable at best?”. Because society has taught me that validation through the external world is much easier to achieve than finding inherent worth within myself. Plus, maybe someone will relate to my struggles with the oxford comma. So here I am, writing out my thoughts to the world. The proverbial pilot for a blog that I hope someone finds interesting. Hi mom, dad, and all of the high school friends that follow me on Instagram but don’t actually interact with me. Feel free to awkwardly bring this up next time I see you and we can collectively pretend like this has been interesting. Will Robert finally feel validated? Can he find a deity willing to give him a universal remote? Will he finally understand the difference between a colon and a semicolon outside of the context of emoticons? Find out next time of Dragon Ball Z.

#blog post #introduction #dragon ball z #welcome #netflix #anxiety #depression #ocd #thoughts #bad grammar

1 note · View note

traversetheatre · 6 years

Text

Interview with Tim Key

‘Poeticals, talking, standing, spotlights, cables, Kronenburg, foot-stamping and old school wistfulness.’ That’s how comedian Tim Key describes his new solo show – Megadate – which arrives at the Traverse in June.

Interview by Ben Williams.

Indeed, a Tim Key show features far more than just stand-up. His live offerings are ambitious and theatrical, an intricate web of pithy poems and playful anecdotes, short films and elaborate stunts, and, yes, plenty of lager guzzling.

Off stage, Key’s acting skills has scored him parts in TV treasures like Inside No 9, Peep Show and Detectorists, and back on stage in the twentieth anniversary run of Art at London’s Old Vic Theatre. Plus, for the last eight years, he’s been sitting alongside Norfolk’s premiere digital radio DJ Alan Partridge as the scene-stealing Sidekick Simon.

But it’s live on stage – reading silly poems off the back of playing cards, teasing the audience with semi-whimsical stories and sloshing cans of beer – that’s earned Key a legion of fans, and Megadate is his funniest show yet.

In Megadate, you reminisce about an elaborate first date. Is the show based on your own person experience? I think this show is rooted in reality – somewhere, somehow, someone – but blended with a lot of dreamy imaginings. There are moments, people, things that happened in real life. But I talk about throwing myself out of the Shard, so it can’t be entirely true. If there are moments on stage, however, where I look a bit wistful, that’s because I am a bit.

Short poems are your trademark, but there’s a large story element to this show. Which do you prefer to write? The short poems are the enjoyable bit. They take no time or thought – obviously! – and I like doing it. The long-form bits kill me. Lots of thinking, trying it out on stage, reaching deep, deep into your soul. That’s the hard bit, but, obviously, the more satisfying part, too. No gain without pain.

Megadate’s your first solo show in four years. Why the break from live comedy? Good point. To be fair I did make a TV show – Gap Year – that took ages and meant I was, weirdly, living in Kuala Lumpur for five months. It’s difficult to stay active on the live scene in those circumstances.

You didn’t attempt to break the southeast Asian comedy circuit while you were there, then? I did do ten minutes at a Malaysian lady’s fortieth birthday party one night, to be fair to me, it was a fairly mixed reaction. But I have missed not having a solo show, I must admit.

This is your third UK tour. What’s your favourite thing about being on the road? Best part is definitely the shows. You assume the show will only ever work in London, you’ll travel to some other town and be destroyed. Then you suddenly realise that no matter where you go it’s more or less the same. Maybe better.

And the worst? Hearing the applause die down as you walk to your dressing room and eventually you are sitting in silence staring at yourself in a mirror with light bulbs around it sipping a warm Grolsch.

youtube

On stage, as well as your solo work, you recently played Yvan in Art at the Old Vic. How did you find the role? Mmmm, the most difficult thing I’ve ever done? God, I still have flashbacks. But, inevitably, it was also one of the most rewarding. That’s the problem, you realise that you really have to go out of your comfort zone to get anything worthwhile done these days. Glad I did it, but at times I did feel like I was going mad.

Going mad? I was part of a three-person cast with Rufus Sewell and Paul Ritter – two very well-respected theatre actors – and I remember, in rehearsals, seeing those two gradually getting better and better at doing their parts. It did feel like I was slightly watching a masterclass at times. Ritter going absolutely mental at my character, spit flying everywhere, Sewell watching on callously. They were exceptional.

Would you like to do more West End roles? Yes. One day. I’d like to do some Pinter at some point.

Which Pinter play would you most like to take on, and who would be in your dream cast? Well, I guess I wouldn’t mind doing The Caretaker with Paddy Considine and Eddie Marsan if push came to shove.

Your TV acting CV is substantial, too. Does the writer in you want to change lines or edit scripts? It’s case by case, I think. Ideally, you take jobs because you like the writing. Sometimes the writing can be exemplary but it still might make the thing better if you just tweak a word or a phrase. I’m shooting Alan Partridge at the moment, that’s a pretty good example. Steve Coogan and [co-writers] the Gibbons brothers’ scripts are impeccable, but there’s always room for the odd tweak in the moment… To be fair, slightly more than the odd tweak with Steve. But he’s Alan Partridge.

What can you tell us about the new series? It’s kind of a bit like The One Show – so there are autocues around the place.

Does that mean you don’t have to learn your lines? Well, it helps you stay on top of them, because they change a bit on the day. The trick is not looking like you’re literally reading your lines off the autocue. Desperately hoping my head and eyes aren’t drifting slowly from left to right whilst I’m talking.

You were a Partridge fan before getting the part. How does it feel to be involved? If I wasn’t in this I would be counting down the days until I could watch it. It’s so odd. Steve shook my hand at the end of a scene the other day and said “thanks mate”. Not a great anecdote, but amazing how surreal that stuff is. Steve Coogan pleased with you. Feels good!

So, after shooting Partridge and going on tour, what’s next for Tim Key? Go to the Edinburgh Fringe, do the show there. Then I don’t know, maybe four years off? I was surprised I made this show, to be honest, so I’m interested to see what comes next.

Finally, why should people across the country see Megadate? Well, it’s only an hour and a bit. You can watch it and it still doesn’t screw up your whole night. I know it’s not really the hard sell but I guess I would say “you may as well”.

Tim Key: Megadate Wed 13 – Thu 14 Jun, 7.30pm BOOK NOW

#Tim Key #Megadate #Comedy #Traverse Theatre

8 notes · View notes