I'm having some technical trouble with joining this group. Once that's cleared up I fully intend to join, though, so here's my form in advance.
1) How about a brief introduction of yourself?
I am nobody.
I am what I am, and what I am is a classics buff (we're talking Tolstoy, Ellison, Boccaccio, Stendhal, Murasaki and J.D. Salinger here), a big time anime freak, a poetry lover who's no great shakes at poetry, and an eight-year fanatic (yes, you did the math right, I was about ten) of Yoshihiro Togashi's wonderful old animanga, Yu Yu Hakusho. I have a boyfriend who aspires to be a lover, Duo, who's too cute for words and thus won't get any of them, a black lab, and a massive jazz collection. My favorite jazz artist is Ella Fitzgerald, and if you know who that is you get +20 Sekah love.
As far as languages go, je parle un petit peu de français, to nihongo ga sukoshi hanasemasu. Very little Japanese, unfortunately, I'm trying to teach myself, and I've gotten just far enough to know I've gotten nowhere. Ignore that it's not in kana, I can't seem to find any programs for writing anything but English on Firefox. I even copy and pasted the cédille on français, and if you've ever tried individually searching out every kana for a single sentence in Japanese you'll understand it's tiresome.
And that, I suppose, is me.
2) Fabulous! And what got you into story/novel-writing to begin with?
I've always read everything I could get my hands on. Books are my playground, and I love every jungle gym of them. Writing, on the other hand, was not something I did. I guess you could say that I did write stories, but they were never on the page, they were just elaborate fantasies I kept locked in my head. When I was about fifteen, I wrote an experimental present for a friend's birthday, and once I realized how fun it was I just kept doing it. By the time I turned sixteen, I'd already started my main story (which is approaching novel length at 150-sommat pages), Counting Crows. Counting is now what I'm most known for, and I'm debating putting it up on this site. Things one writes at fifteen, even things that have gone through multiple transformations and thousands of edits, big and small, and whose most recent chapter was written at least partially by a technical adult, might not be the best thing to post.
3) I see, so what kind of story/novel do you like to write about? Why?
I love historical fiction, I love fantasy, and I love sadism. I seem to have an affinity for seeing my favorite character, Kurama, in pain; but I also love creating elaborate AUs and building on canon. When it comes to original fiction, I've only really written short stories, and they've all had elements of the fantastical in them. I'm just waiting for the switch that got me started writing to flip again, and then I'll start creating my own characters and putting them into stories.
4) What type of characters do you normally have (for the protagonist)?
Crafty, resourceful, witty, but out of his or her depth is how I usually write them - not an angel, not a fool, but unable to cope with whatever situation I've placed him/her in. That, or I go the Toguro route of staid and honor-bound, also not a fool, and coping with a life of decisions that shouldn't have been made. Sometimes I write for the complete basketcases of my fandom, too, because isn't that always amusing? Sakyo and Karasu deliver on that front.
5) What is your most popular/largest story/novel project? Describe.
My most well-known story, both in terms of response and popularity, is Counting Crows, previously described. To be frank, I've read many, many Karasu/Kurama fics in my life, and almost all of them took the easy way out on some level - Kurama was okay in the end. Kurama was never actually damaged by Karasu. Karasu didn't really hurt him. Karasu's about a fifth as brutal and crazy as he was in the animanga. Karasu actually loved him, which made it all okay. Karasu was a rapist bastard, but Hiei/Yusuke/Kuwabara/Botan/Eikichi (Kuwabara's cat) came barreling in and the power of Hiei/Yusuke/Kuwabara/Botan/Eikichi (Kuwabara's cat)'s love saved Kurama from psychological harm.
So I decided to write it right, and try to make a story that would show every emotion of every character, especially Kurama's, along with every depravity of Karasu's, and use it to break your heart over and over again. Luckily, in every opinion I've heard, I succeeded.
6) What is the story/novel you've written/writing that you are most proud of? Why?
Again, Counting Crows. It was an experiment, it was my first story, and I feel proud every time I reread it. Even the sloppy beginning, even the rushed parts, incomplete parts, and the parts I'm ashamed to have written make me happy, because I wrote them. It's going to end (if everything goes on schedule) in two more chapters, and I ache when I think about it. Counting will always have a place in my heart that's ten feet wide and ten feet long.
That's not to say I don't love criticism on it - just that it's got that special position of being my first and most popular story.
7) Do you find writing easy? Hard? What are the most difficult aspects of writing you struggle with?
Writing is easy, revising is hard. Both are necessary. What I struggle with is making everything look the way I want it to. I want it to be smooth and flowing and beautiful - hell, if I had an iota of the talent I'd want it to be Nabokov beautiful, Flaubert beautiful - but I know that it comes out pedantic, wordy, and overly-processed. Like all bad writing habits, though, it's a bitch to break. I've made progress, but it's a bitch to break.
8) Write a catchy intro on the spot NOW!
The cherry blossom's fold was a little too much for her. She was in ecstasy, enveloped by sentiments that mocked the endearing yellow stain her tea had left on the paper. Guilty thrills are no less satisfying than pure ones, no less fulfilling in their mania, and she was savoring them as she knelt, mind turned to one man at the expense of the other. The sunlight, dull and bleeding through the wax paper that covered the window, kissed her smooth skin and played with the curve of her full lips.
Catchy? As I said further down, it comes in boring flavor, with pedantic topping!
10) Are you guilty of those cliches that you hate?
The only cliche that I hate is the doe-eyed virgin, and yes, I'm guilty of it. In Silk & Sable, in the first chapter, I was going for naive and that's what I got instead. Now the plot's so wrapped up in it I can't quite make everything unentangle. It's a constant irritation.
11) What would you call your writing style?
Wordy, overly-processed, and pedantic. It doesn't get any more specific than that.
12) What type of story do you generally read?
I'll read anything that's not awful. The only genre I don't like on some level is Mystery, and even that, I enjoy it when the book's well-done. As for everything else, I'll read it if it's good, and I'll enjoy it if it's great. My all-time favorite books are Henry James's Washington Square, an old sci-fi book, Warchild, and everything Tamora Pierce, J.D. Salinger, and Bernard Cornwell ever wrote, to give you an idea of what I mean.
13) What's the one thing you have always wanted to write but are too afraid/shy to?
Original fiction. It's the same hang-ups that used to keep me from writing in the first place: what if it's bad? What if it's cliche? What if nobody likes it? I'm nowhere near brave enough to face up to those simple what-ifs.
14) Do you have trouble taking criticisms?
Some. I don't think I'm awful about it, and I welcome criticism, but there is that pull inside me when I read that I've horribly mishandled something. It doesn't happen to me that often, and when it does, I've asked for it, but still. The pull is there.
15) When you write, is there anything that helps? (Music, food?)
Quiet. I'm always yelling at people to shut up when I'm writing. Music is awful for me, it distracts my thoughts and I can't focus on the words, and I absolutely can't eat and write. Quiet is the one thing I can't do without. I also dislike writing with paper and pencil, oddly enough. It's so hard to change it! Christ!
16) What inspires you?
My stays in the mental hospital and food. I don't eat and write, but I often find myself basing whole chapters on something that tasted really good. Hell or High Water was started right after I ate a particularly juicy peach.
17) How do you sum up your writer's career so far?
A silly little fanfic authoress who longs one day to be an author.
18) [New] What kind of preparation and research do you do for a project? And how much?
[I'm stealing this question, because it's a good one.]
I research everything. I've bought five books already just for Counting Crows, and three for Silk & Sable. I use the library, I steal from my school's list of paid databases, heck, I just google. Currently I have five tabs of research things for Silk & Sable open just in this browser window, and a handful in another window, all of which I'm waiting to jot down in my pages and pages of notes (and my one map) on the subject. I research names, I research places, I once spent three hours trying to find the proper name for a completely unimportant lock that I ended up realizing would make the door unusable, and taking out. Research is inspiring and fun, and I love doing it (though I hate putting a chapter up and then realizing I'd done something egregiously wrong).
And yes I have gone to museums to find out what something would be expected to look like in real life. Call me crazy, I'll still do it. (Which reminds me, I need to add some of the porcelain descriptions I jotted down at the Met to Silk. I'll get right on that.)
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