Snowflake Challenge, Day 3

[john_amend_all]

Day 3

In your own space, talk about your creative process - from what inspires you to what motivates you to how you manage to break through blocks. Does your process change depending on the type of creating you're doing? Leave a comment in this post saying you did it. Include a link to your post if you feel comfortable doing so.

As I've said before, the reason I called myself john_amend_all is that a lot of my fic started by seeing something broken in canon and trying to repair it. Or, if I'm in a bad mood, pointing out the broken thing and pushing it to its logical conclusion. Then there are random generators, and unconventionalcourtship plot outlines, and moments where I think 'wouldn't it be nice if...' and suddenly I'm 1000 words into a 30,000 word fic.

How do I break through blocks? A lot of the time I don't, and I've got dead fics littering my hard drive to prove it — some orphaned paragraphs, some complete up to the ending, even a few notionally complete but unsatisfactory in one way or another. Restarting work on a set-aside fic (or a programming project, for that matter) seems to be rather like working on something that's cooled down, and needs to be melted again first. That's one reason why I don't post anything until I've got at least a first end-to-end draft I'm happy with. I don't think it would be fair on my readers, if any.

Since I've been writing, I've been reminded from time to time of the discussion of artists in The Great Divorce: The artist starts by being interested in what they paint, then only in the act of painting, and finally only in their reputation. I hope I haven't got that far yet, but it's a worrying sign that I wrote a program to download hit and kudos counts from AO3...