The Wayfaring Wordhack

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

What comes first, the chicken or the egg? That's the way I feel about how characters occur to me.  I cannot think of an instance where a character idea came to me that was devoid of any kind of situation or context. I often have what I think of as a "flash," in which a person plus action/setting stamps itself on my brain in vivid detail.

Sometimes, I have only to turn my attention to the person and their personality and past and possible future come pouring out.  Other times, I have to ask the questions: "who are you?" "what are you doing here?" "what do you want?" to help form the character in my mind. A third type of creation comes after an idea.  Meaning, a what-if or an event occurs to me, and I have to ask what kind of characters belong with those circumstances. So process really depends on how fully formed the characters and their needs are at the beginning. Perhaps unsurprisingly, characters and their more-or-less complete story arcs occur to me a LOT more easily now that I've been writing for a while.

Under the cut, I've detailed what came first character or plot for each of my WIPs and planned future novels.

( Read more... )

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

Sometimes. There are days I don't think of putting on music, and usually when I do, it is by accident, as it were.  When I do set out to listen to music while writing, it must be very mellow, what frigg  likes to call pot-smoking music.  She's a strange one, that frigg . :P  For The Traveler's Daughter, I listened to Damien Rice's O album on loop with Beck's "Lost Cause," and a few instrumental soundtrack pieces thrown in.

For Witherwilds, I had soundtracks worked out for 3 of the 5 POVs, but <insert screams of rage> they were "lost" with the "stolen/lost/thrown'out" hard drive back on Mayotte.

So, now it's Damien Rice again, but also AaRON (this one especially..."it's not the wings that make the angel." You said it)  and Alela Diane and...well, I could go on.  In contrast to my usual "mellow" choices, songs from Default (such as Deny and Wasting My Time) and Audioslave (frex Like a Stone) also feature. Writers like navicat  and the aforementioned frigg  who like metal probably scoff at those songs being classified as anything but easy-listening. *g*

And of course,  I must mention Johnny Cash's "Hurt" for one character in particular. 

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

Lelo, of Witherwilds, is my youngest character. She's 11, going on 12. My oldest is High Priestess Valsidire, from The Traveler's Daughter, and she's a couple hundred years old. She is descended from gods and knows a secret to staying young and, just as important, alive.

In terms of creation (again, I'm confining my answers to my novels), Bria (The Traveler's Daughter) is the oldest.  The germ of her story came to me in 1999, and she made it onto paper in 2001.*  

Funnily, the entire cast of Witherwilds is the youngest. The youngest of the young is probably Qeoe, but actually, the five POVS in book one occurred to me almost simultaneously, on February 7th, 2008, to be precise. It has always been a story with many players, not one character's story where the others clamored to have their say. 

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* I've been writing for nine years!  Where does the time go??? I've seen in many places, and most recently in rosefox 's Publishers Weekly article for Genreville "Advice for Young Writers and Editors," that it can take ten years from the date you start to write seriously to when you write something worth reading. 

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

Character names often occur to me at the very beginning with the initial story idea, and they can be very hard to change once I see that maybe the assonance is off with the ensuing world, culture, etc.  I sometimes chose based on meaning, in the case of Talion and Kenji in TTD.  Kenji is Japanese for "second son." However, if I decide to rework TTD, I will probably do a bit of language creation based on the clinic I mention below. The MC of a future work has an English-word name, and that will not change because it is important to her character.

Of late, as was the case with Baxente, a POV in Witherwilds, I’ll create a language and other names based on one character so that I don’t have to change the name. That's how much I love Baxente's name. (The X is pronounced "sh" and the final E is é[ay], in case you were wondering.)

I’ve spoken of this before, but I’ve found Holly Lisle's Create a Culture Clinic very helpful for designing a language.  In previous projects, I relied heavily on sites such as Behind the Name.  I would find something I liked and then search for additional names with a shared root. 

It's more fun creating my own character and place names, though.  The meaning behind the name may not resonate with the reader in the same way that a word from an existing Earth language does, but it has a deeper meaning for me.

I was tagged by mindseas to write about writing for thirty days.  I have a list of questions to answer for each of those days. Welcome to my world of processes:

1. Tell us about your favorite writing project/universe that you've worked with and why.

A favorite!? I must choose between my babies?  Ahem, I guess I better get used to it. Having read mindsea 's responses to the questions, I know I'll be asked about favorite characters and such, too.

Because it was my first, The Traveler's Daughter will always be a favorite.  I learned and put so much into it, it burned in me with all the power of a first love, that I'll never be able to capture that again. At least I don't think I will.

I love all my projects, but TTD really obsessed me. It still does...because I didn't end up with what I think to be a marketable story.

I'm still looking to get obsessed like that with my other stories.  I think I will with Witherwilds, but I need a little more meat to chew, I need the characters and story to start gelling just a little bit more, and then I think it will be mad love. At least I hope.  I thrive on obsession. :P

Been awhile since I've done a meme, so here's one from kmkibble75 (who picked "travel, photos, France, dreams, and mothers" for me on his blog)

This is what you've got to do to play along:

Reply to this meme by yelling with "Words!" and I will give you five words that remind me of you. Then post them in your LJ and explain what they mean to you.

( And mine are... )

Messy things, kmkibble75 , belong in fiction.

learningtoread tagged me for this the other day, and I almost forgot to do it. Since footlingagain posted today about what a weird lot writers are, I guess this is a good time to affirm my sisterliness with the 'hood.

*deliberately leaves off rules*

Seven facts about me

1. I mostly grew up in a children's home.

2. I often dream I can fly, and when I do so, I don't look like Superman, rather I levitate, sitting (cross-legged or on an "invisible chair") or standing, and then zoom forward.

3. I sometimes get sentences or partial phrases stuck in my head, often things I want to say or wish I had said, and they play on endless, unstoppable loop.

4. My mother called me Thunderhead when I was little because I could hear a storm coming before anyone else.

5. I have an insufferable desire to be right all the time. I'm working on being wrong a little more often, though. ;-)

6. I'm left-handed. Before I learned to tell my right from my left in a consistent way (no one taught me the L trick with the left hand until I was a teen), I had to pick up something to see which hand I used naturally. Then, when I was seven, the thumb on my left hand got sliced open, giving me a nice upside-down, flipped-around J-shaped scar, and from that moment forth...instant reminder of which hand was the left. However, I still, upon occasion, tell someone to turn right when I mean they should turn left. :P

7. Neither mana_trini nor I proposed to the other. We literally just ended up getting married. Ah, the joys of not being fluent in the language of your love.

And there ends today's spamming of LJ.

...and I've been spending my days either sewing or contemplating what I want to sew. So, first, a fashion meme:

Your result for The Fashion Style Test...

Hippie Kid

56% Flamboyance, 67% Originality, 27% Deliberateness, 36% Sexiness

The idea of "good taste" is alien to you because how can one style be judged better than the other? You are also not the one to follow what someone has currently decided is "fashionable." To you it's most important that you feel good in your clothes (You bet it is!). You like it if people notice an interesting detail (I surely do) you're wearing and you have some taste for extravagance but you don't spend hours composing outfits. This laid-back attitude leaves you plenty of time for other things in life and still most people remember a few interesting outfits they saw on you. I don't know if you wear hippy hippie (Consistency, quiz-creator-person!) clothes but perhaps they would match your philosophy?

The opposite style from yours is Uptown Girl/Boy [Tasteful Conventional Deliberate Sexy].

Take The Fashion Style Test at HelloQuizzy
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And now, back to why I'm spending so much time with the sewing machine. The sack! the sack! it is my bane! All I want to do is make my harem pants and a coordinated top, but I have. to. finish. the. sack. first. On the up side, any sewing I do after the humongous blasted thing is going to feel like a piece of cake, or so I hope. Yesterday, I spent almost an hour ripping off two pockets that looked like a preschooler had sewn them on (difference of fabric and elasticity). mana_tini said it didn't matter to him, but being a prideful sort, I don't want all his friends shaking their heads in pity behind his back when they see the wonky, patched-together thing. Because, yes, Mr Bigmouth already told everyone that his wife was making a sack for him. However, he has helped me out with it--measuring, pinning, and even a bit of sewing--so now he understands why I had first hemmed and hawed told him I was incapable of making it. And he understands why the tailor who lives next to us also turned down the work.

gakked from jodi_davis

"You know how sometimes people on your friend's list post about stuff going on in their life, and all of a sudden you think "Wait a minute? Since when are they working THERE? Since when are they dating HIM/HER? Since when???"

And then you wonder how you could have missed all that seemingly pretty standard information, but somehow you feel too ashamed to ask for clarification because it seems like info you *should* already know? It happens to all of us sometimes.

Please copy mine below, erase my answers putting yours in their place then post it in your journal! Please elaborate on the questions that would benefit from elaboration! One-word answers seldom help anyone out."

1. First Name: Miquela (M-short i-kay-la)

2. Age: 32, but only for a quarter more of a year

3. Location: Pamandzi, Mayotte

4. Occupation: As in the bringing home the bacon kind? Nope...

5. Partner: Julien

6. Kids: No

7. Brothers/Sisters: 1 younger brother, an older sister and a younger sister

8. Pets: Maxwell Soot, the quintessential aloof cat; Tiboy, the Dumbest Cat Ever; N'djema, aka "The Three-Legged Terror," thinks-she's-the-boss-of-everything cat

9. List the 3-5 biggest things going on in your life:

a. Trying to be a published author *keeps Jodi's answer, but adds "but not very hard" just after "trying"*

b. Going to be moving house next month which means...

c. I need to get a job that pays. *sighs*

10) Where and for what did you go to school for? High school in NM, uni in TX -- to become a teacher. 

11) Parents? Undoubtedly, surely, supposedly, apparently...unless...unless I was just hatched. *does not discount the possibility*

12) Who are some of your closest friends? N, who is going to abandon me soon, and online buds, only one of whom I've ever met face to face. *waves at frigg*

and the threads of the year draw taut and thin, the frayed ends already tickling my fingers. Yet another "winter" is being spent in Mayotte, and I can't say that I particularly enjoy missing out on cold, fog, and snow. I know several people on my flist suffer from SAD, and I must admit that as a lover of all seasons, it is a disorder I cannot understand. I adore the spring when pastels of every hue start creeping across the land once more; I love the hot days of summer when the redolent evening air is full of gold and the sound of cicadas; sated on heat and long days, I'm always ready when the time rolls around for the leaves to change color and start their drifting, skittering exodus into mounds of woodsy-mossy detritus; and I feel like a kid with eyes and heart full of wonder when the first freeze sets everything aglitter. I need that hibernating time of year when it is okay to bundle up, snuggle down with a good book and a cup of hot spiced cider, to have a raclette with loads of charcuterie. I enjoy the short days and the longs nights. I enjoy the holidays.

So naturally, not having the bracing cold here, I get a bit nostalgic for the fall/winter season, and it hits particularly hard November through January. Sometimes I have surreal moments, like walking out of the baking heat into the refrigerated grocery store at the end of November and seeing garish Christmas decorations tacked to a hideous, towering fake tree, garlands of tinsel thrown willynilly across the spindly branches. Or like last night, attending a Christmas concert in a church with the pivoting shutter-windows open and the ceiling fans going full blast. The music was lovely, but, as I said, surreal. They skipped Noël Blanc because they said they hadn't learned it, but I'm of a mind to think that they just didn't have the heart for it since the high yesterday was 99°F.

Taking a small trip might help with the seasonal disconnect, even if we can't afford to go somewhere with snow; hence, we've decided to go to Reunion Island for 8 days in January. We'll visit the "Snowy Peak" most likely, but we won't find snow during the middle of the rainy season. If the crater isn't offlimits due to dangerous activity, we might get to see lava flowing. That should either take my mind off snow or make me miss it even worse. We'll see.

In the spirit of nostalgia and year's end, I thought I would do the retrospect meme: