AMC Interview with The Vampire

Challenge #12:
Make an appreciation post to those who enhance your fandom life. Appreciate them in bullet points, prose, poetry, a moodboard, a song... whatever moves you!

Stop me if I'm doing this wrong... but hey. lets just make this like a reverse call out post.


Dear queenslayerbee 
To you I dedicate this song: {X}

I'm so glad we're friends and that you don't think my incessant discord messages are annoying XD

You've become my accidental writing accountability buddy. And also someone who inadvertently reminds me to keep using this journal. The few strides I've made in writing this year have been things I look forward to telling you about. You're so very kind with your encouragement and empathy. And I'm always amazed at your writing and your passion for your chosen fandoms. You have put me onto so many writing opportunities. Like, I can't believe I never knew the joys of commentfic and bitesized exchanges. You keep me engaged, is what I am trying to say. And you have such brilliant (and correct!) opinions all of the time and one of my great joys is that sometimes we get to be huuuuge haters together.

Dear shiegra 
To you I dedicate this song: {X}

We can so easily pick up where we left off. Just, always and without fail. And that's a rarity for me, because, well, you know how I get when I leave things too long. You are maybe The Big reason why I never sink into that hole of loneliness. You're the light of my life and I'm proud of you always. You enhance my everyday life, not just my time spent with fandom. Love you babes.


Dear scorpiod 
To you I dedicate this song: {X}

This is maybe out of the blue because we haven't spoken in years. But I recently remembered Batman with a Personality Transplant and i lost my ever loving shit. I'm not kidding, I fell out of my chair remembering how dense I was when that happened XD Its the sort of joke that sneaks up on me, and also the sort that you can't really explain without ruining the humor. Its a you-had-to-be-there thing. And though the ancient days of tumblr and google chat are long behind us, all those specific ridiculous memories are wonderful and I think of them often and fondly.

Hope you're well, always. (And Heather, too.)



Dear Readers
To you I dedicate this song {X}

Had to double back for this one. My return to writing has been bitter sweet because its hard to reconcile all the time I wasn't creative or productive. But the number of people who have sent messages and left comments telling me that they are glad to see and hear from me again has been unexpected. And just. Amazing. I live to share my work and all my dreamed up nonsense. Knowing that there is such positive and enthusiastic reception makes the difference. So thank you. You make all of this feel all the more worthwhile.

Challenge #8:
Talk about your creative process.

This has been a bit of an off-putting challenge because there is a great deal about my creative process that I feel desperately out of touch with. The past two years my creative output has felt insurmountably stalled. (and part of me still hasn't interrogated one of the inciting personal/fandom incidents that made me even more self conscious as a writer) but I have recently been recommitting to writing fanfiction again, which has felt in a lot of ways like relearning an entire aspect of my personality.


Step One! The seed.
The initial part of the creative process generally starts with a seed idea. The seed is normally no bigger than a specific scenario/scene or bit of dialogue. The seed always needs to be jotted down immediately. If it doesn't happen, the idea is gone forever. But once in a document, if the seed is truly taking root then I will work forward and backwards to achieve this scene. And by achieve, I mean, make it make sense. for example: the best fic I ever wrote was Ouroboros, a 20k joe/nicky fic for The Old Guard. The seed scene for that fic was just one bit of dialogue where joe is asked by another character "why does nicky do anything?." and i wrote the entire story backwards and forwards like a pendulum to get to a place where it made sense for joe to respond with the emotional clincher of "because he loves me."

This is why I have a great deal of trouble talking about my in progress stories with people. Its hard to explain that I want to write my way up to a scene where Shane Hollander is breaking up with his shitty abusive boyfriend because his husband is coming home. But that's an image I definitely have been ruminating on for weeks XD.

Step Two! The document shuffle.
This part of the process is easy! Open several documents, title them poorly, and write the story in six different places at varying velocities and uncertain directions. Nothing will get lost this way. Nothing at all...

Step Three! Vibes.
Very much depends on the length and goals of the story. Longer stories get more cushion. A dedicated playlist or a pinterest board. For example, my 911 fic Retrograde has its own pinterest board i spent way too much time on. And another example, my ASOIAF fic A Song of Earth & Sky has a playlist. Never story is anywhere close to finished, but hey. No one said the process was efficient.

Step Four! Self Hatred.
What it says on the tin. This is where I tell myself over and over that my stories are meaningless and I'm a hack. I will earnestly debate deleting everything I've ever written. (However, I am still learning and unlearning this process with the new added benefit of being fucking medicated. Maybe this will lead to hating myself less? who knows. a girl can dream.)

Step Five! Set story to a low simmer and walk the fuck away.
This is the only counterbalance to step four. Generally a break of a few days or weeks (or even months to years) will make me enjoy what I've written again. It will inspire me to write more and perhaps add enough seasoning and polish to get to the posting stage.


And I was going to say that was all, but I was talking to queenslayerbee & just remembered that back in like 2019 during the lost days of quarantine, I came up with a short list of what i considered "rules" for my personal fic writing process. 
So, I present to you CypressSunn's Thirteen Rotating Rules of Writing*

1. All stories are promises.
2. You don’t have to know where to begin but you must know how it ends. 
3. Reel in the exposition. Subtlety gets you everywhere.
4. Immersion is sacred. From respecting the atmosphere to every last sensuous detail, setting is always a character in its own right.
5. No well-written character should ever have to say “I love you” or “I hate this” to be understood. The unsaid is powerful, but the unconveyed is meaningless.
6. Motivation matters. Even the most spontaneous act must spring from somewhere.
7. Change is essential. 
8. Failure is never optional.
9. Stories need consequences, but never authorial punishment.
10. All stories must endorse a truth about character or humanity (but that truth does not need to be good, pure, or even kind).
11. Trust in the intelligence of the audience.
12. Let the story breathe. Come back to it in time.
13. No writing is ever wasted.

* rules subject to change because i have free will and all that.