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edenfalling25 – Music: do you listen to music while you write? Do you make playlists to get into a certain mood to write your fic? Do you need noise in general, or do you need it completely quiet?
I have great difficulty listening to music and writing at the same time. If I force myself to write, I block the music out; it might as well not be playing. If I pay attention to the music, I stop writing. (It can also be tricky for me to read and listen to music at the same time -- I tend to lose bits of either one or the other -- but I don't care so much about that.)
This effect can be somewhat mitigated by familiarity -- if I know a piece of music well, I can sort of shuffle it out of my active attention. New music, however, is hell on my concentration, especially if it has lyrics in a language I understand. (English and kinda-sorta German, for the record.) Classical instrumental is also difficult to ignore, despite the lack of lyrics, probably because it tends to have a very definite mood and also to change dynamics a lot. I need to have it turned up pretty loud in order to hear the quiet parts at all, which makes the loud parts REALLY LOUD, and thus really distracting.
I find that trying to synchronize music to the mood of a story or scene I'm writing is an exercise in futility, since I can never judge the shades precisely enough and I often don't know exactly what mood I'm trying to create anyway.
Anyway, I don't write to music. (Except this post -- this was written to random Savage Garden tracks on shuffle, because I unironically like that group and wanted to see if I could manage to be coherent despite the constant distraction. *grin*)
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26 – What is the oddest (or most entertaining) thing you've had to research for a fic?
Hmm. Probably stuff for "Intervention," an as-yet unfinished Star Trek: AOS fic. I have been researching things ranging from avian lung structure to heartworm medication to parasite life cycles to the orbital mechanics of planetary ring systems to Shakti Hinduism to Star Trek ship models to the organization of the International Red Cross. Quite fascinating.
I am also in the middle of researching American UFO culture in the 1980s so I can hopefully write convincingly about Avalyn Friesen from Mysterious Skin -- a woman who believes she has been abducted multiple times and experimented upon by aliens. This is largely taking the form of reading Skeptical Inquirer articles that debunk said UFO beliefs and following up on some articles and books they mention, plus flipping through recent issues of UFO Magazine (we carry it at the smoke shop), which gives me a window on contemporary attitudes toward aliens among UFO believers. I find the subject simultaneously fascinating, icky, and horribly, horribly sad.
I did some research on equine eyesight, social behavior, and coloration for "The Courting Dance" when writing Hwin's POV chapter, and the main reason "Debts," my Angel Sanctuary fic about Alexiel's cycle of incarnations, is on indefinite hiatus is that I set a bunch of her human lives in times and places I was utterly unfamiliar with, and I have been slowly working to remedy that. (I already know a LOT more about the history of the Indian subcontinent, Iran/Persia, and Central Asia than I used to, which is good from a general perspective-on-the-world sense as well as a now-I-can-write-my-story sense. *wry* Next up, western Africa and the Canadian sub-arctic!)
Those are more the exception than the rule, though. I have a lazy habit of arranging stories to utilize details of random things I already know, so as to avoid extensive research delays. This means that when you spot something that seems as though I specifically looked it up for a plot point, in reality the process often ran in reverse: I read about some fact years ago and designed a plot point around it. I don't think the reading counts as research in those cases, since it was done for pleasure and I only found a practical use for the knowledge later on.
I do sometimes pick up books on the theory that it would be useful to have some general knowledge on a subject, even if I don't have a direct need for it at the time. For example, I recently skimmed through a short book called Home and Workshop Guide to Sharpening, on the theory that it would be useful in real life -- hey, I have kitchen knives, scissors, and garden shears! -- and might also come in handy someday if I'm writing a character who uses knives extensively and/or has a high quality home workshop.
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27 – Where is your favorite place to write, and do you write by hand or on the computer?
I write at my computer, which is a desktop in my computer room. :-) I occasionally also write short bits by hand at the grocery store (bus schedules ensure that I always have at least twenty minutes to kill) or at work during slow closing shifts. In a pinch, I will write in one of Cornell University's public computer labs -- this happens mostly in the summer, when I take advantage of their air conditioning -- but that's a pain and I have a near-phobia of people reading computer screens over my shoulder that is much worse when I'm writing than when I'm just reading fic, so I try to avoid writing in public.
I prefer typing to writing longhand because I can type much faster than I can move a pen. I come closer to keeping up with my thoughts and am therefore less prone to overthinking and getting stuck on finding the perfect phrase.
(It is for exactly that reason that on the rare occasions I write poetry, I prefer to write longhand. With poetry, I want the exact perfect word, whereas with prose, I am more concerned with getting the general thought across and not fussing too much about style.)
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Today I was moderately productive: I paid my rent and credit card bills, organized and filed a bunch of financial papers, and opened and dealt with the sheaf of junk mail and charitable pitches that had been collecting all month. It's always a good feeling to look at the cleared area on my coffee table and the cascade of paper in my recycling and know I don't need to deal with that until next month. :-)
At work, I inventoried the maps and decided we needed to order new copies of the Mapless Map (which is exactly what it says on the tin -- a listing of how to get to various places around Ithaca without having to trace the route visually on a schematic)... except once I found the consignment forms and the record of past orders, I ran in to the rather baffling fact there's an order dated January of this year but our inventory level never went up, which means the order never came in -- or perhaps was never actually placed. So I clipped all the documents together and left a note asking PM what was going on, since the last order form is in her handwriting.
Tomorrow I get to work with BW instead of MS, boo hiss. Firstly, BW tends to annoy me in general, and secondly, MS and I have Monday evenings down to a science (rather like ET and I used to), whereas with BW I always feel half a step out of rhythm. Oh well, I am sure MS can use a break!
I have great difficulty listening to music and writing at the same time. If I force myself to write, I block the music out; it might as well not be playing. If I pay attention to the music, I stop writing. (It can also be tricky for me to read and listen to music at the same time -- I tend to lose bits of either one or the other -- but I don't care so much about that.)
This effect can be somewhat mitigated by familiarity -- if I know a piece of music well, I can sort of shuffle it out of my active attention. New music, however, is hell on my concentration, especially if it has lyrics in a language I understand. (English and kinda-sorta German, for the record.) Classical instrumental is also difficult to ignore, despite the lack of lyrics, probably because it tends to have a very definite mood and also to change dynamics a lot. I need to have it turned up pretty loud in order to hear the quiet parts at all, which makes the loud parts REALLY LOUD, and thus really distracting.
I find that trying to synchronize music to the mood of a story or scene I'm writing is an exercise in futility, since I can never judge the shades precisely enough and I often don't know exactly what mood I'm trying to create anyway.
Anyway, I don't write to music. (Except this post -- this was written to random Savage Garden tracks on shuffle, because I unironically like that group and wanted to see if I could manage to be coherent despite the constant distraction. *grin*)
-----
26 – What is the oddest (or most entertaining) thing you've had to research for a fic?
Hmm. Probably stuff for "Intervention," an as-yet unfinished Star Trek: AOS fic. I have been researching things ranging from avian lung structure to heartworm medication to parasite life cycles to the orbital mechanics of planetary ring systems to Shakti Hinduism to Star Trek ship models to the organization of the International Red Cross. Quite fascinating.
I am also in the middle of researching American UFO culture in the 1980s so I can hopefully write convincingly about Avalyn Friesen from Mysterious Skin -- a woman who believes she has been abducted multiple times and experimented upon by aliens. This is largely taking the form of reading Skeptical Inquirer articles that debunk said UFO beliefs and following up on some articles and books they mention, plus flipping through recent issues of UFO Magazine (we carry it at the smoke shop), which gives me a window on contemporary attitudes toward aliens among UFO believers. I find the subject simultaneously fascinating, icky, and horribly, horribly sad.
I did some research on equine eyesight, social behavior, and coloration for "The Courting Dance" when writing Hwin's POV chapter, and the main reason "Debts," my Angel Sanctuary fic about Alexiel's cycle of incarnations, is on indefinite hiatus is that I set a bunch of her human lives in times and places I was utterly unfamiliar with, and I have been slowly working to remedy that. (I already know a LOT more about the history of the Indian subcontinent, Iran/Persia, and Central Asia than I used to, which is good from a general perspective-on-the-world sense as well as a now-I-can-write-my-story sense. *wry* Next up, western Africa and the Canadian sub-arctic!)
Those are more the exception than the rule, though. I have a lazy habit of arranging stories to utilize details of random things I already know, so as to avoid extensive research delays. This means that when you spot something that seems as though I specifically looked it up for a plot point, in reality the process often ran in reverse: I read about some fact years ago and designed a plot point around it. I don't think the reading counts as research in those cases, since it was done for pleasure and I only found a practical use for the knowledge later on.
I do sometimes pick up books on the theory that it would be useful to have some general knowledge on a subject, even if I don't have a direct need for it at the time. For example, I recently skimmed through a short book called Home and Workshop Guide to Sharpening, on the theory that it would be useful in real life -- hey, I have kitchen knives, scissors, and garden shears! -- and might also come in handy someday if I'm writing a character who uses knives extensively and/or has a high quality home workshop.
-----
27 – Where is your favorite place to write, and do you write by hand or on the computer?
I write at my computer, which is a desktop in my computer room. :-) I occasionally also write short bits by hand at the grocery store (bus schedules ensure that I always have at least twenty minutes to kill) or at work during slow closing shifts. In a pinch, I will write in one of Cornell University's public computer labs -- this happens mostly in the summer, when I take advantage of their air conditioning -- but that's a pain and I have a near-phobia of people reading computer screens over my shoulder that is much worse when I'm writing than when I'm just reading fic, so I try to avoid writing in public.
I prefer typing to writing longhand because I can type much faster than I can move a pen. I come closer to keeping up with my thoughts and am therefore less prone to overthinking and getting stuck on finding the perfect phrase.
(It is for exactly that reason that on the rare occasions I write poetry, I prefer to write longhand. With poetry, I want the exact perfect word, whereas with prose, I am more concerned with getting the general thought across and not fussing too much about style.)
-----
Today I was moderately productive: I paid my rent and credit card bills, organized and filed a bunch of financial papers, and opened and dealt with the sheaf of junk mail and charitable pitches that had been collecting all month. It's always a good feeling to look at the cleared area on my coffee table and the cascade of paper in my recycling and know I don't need to deal with that until next month. :-)
At work, I inventoried the maps and decided we needed to order new copies of the Mapless Map (which is exactly what it says on the tin -- a listing of how to get to various places around Ithaca without having to trace the route visually on a schematic)... except once I found the consignment forms and the record of past orders, I ran in to the rather baffling fact there's an order dated January of this year but our inventory level never went up, which means the order never came in -- or perhaps was never actually placed. So I clipped all the documents together and left a note asking PM what was going on, since the last order form is in her handwriting.
Tomorrow I get to work with BW instead of MS, boo hiss. Firstly, BW tends to annoy me in general, and secondly, MS and I have Monday evenings down to a science (rather like ET and I used to), whereas with BW I always feel half a step out of rhythm. Oh well, I am sure MS can use a break!
