Superhero Muses

--What are some quotes that motivate you?

“I’ve dreamt in my life dreams that have stayed with me ever after, and changed my ideas: they’ve gone through and through me, like wine through water, and altered the colour of my mind.” --Emily Bronte, Wuthering Heights

"Never despair, but if you do, work on in despair." --Edmund Burke

I always like quotes about just going forward no matter what!

A few weeks ago, Bradygirl recommended I try to just write a couple of sentences a day no matter what, and while I can't say I did that, I did manage about half the time and have ended up with a few paragraphs of Gotham by Gaslight's Clark Kent and his reaction to his first sight of Bruce Wayne, which has been a lot of fun! It's always a comfortable feeling to write from Clark's POV again, to be honest. I hope this busy time of year is going well for you!

I've been talking about the Absolute DC comic series, but there's actually another alternate world I'm excited about--they've finally expanded the Gotham by Gaslight world to include the other DC heroes! In a way I feel like that's too bad for the original work, as Gotham by Gaslight worked best in a Batman-only world, I think, but... I'm not going to pass up a world where Clark is an aw-shucks Jimmy-Stewart-style small-town sheriff who uses his powers to keep the peace while seeming inept. There's going to be a Justice League by Gaslight spin-off, even!

So I'm going to take Bradygirl's advice to try and write at least a sentence every day from the POV of Clark or Bruce in one of those two worlds. That way I'll feel like I've got a better sense of their characters when I actually find some time to sit down and really write about them (I'm taking a weekend after Christmas to go and just rest in a hotel in the mountains, maybe that will be the time!)

I found a new "Questions about your current WiP" list and I think I'll go through those questions as we wind down 2024 (what a year). The very first question, however, is just "list 10 facts about you"! Ten might be more than I can muster (I am very boring) but here are a few:

1. I have three cats.
2. I made granola by hand for the first time this morning!
3. The most out-of-the-way place I've ever traveled is probably Palau.
4. I try to always be reading two books at a time: one electronic and one on paper.
5. Right now the electronic book is a history of the rise of Russian nationalism, and the paper book is Song of Achilles (which I'm enjoying much more!)
6. I love collecting perfume.
7. My current physical goal is to one day do a single pushup, lol. They're so hard!

OK, seven is good enough, I think! I'd love to know a little more about you as well!

So... how are we feeling? I'm still numb and horrified, and trying to figure out how to manage my information diet (I cannot, cannot, cannot deal with a steady flow of terrible news and doom; I have to figure out a way to get information without being buried in despair). Please feel free to vent here, or just to ignore the election and talk about fic.

The last time I posted, I mentioned that the new Absolute Superman comic wasn't out yet and I was curious how they would handle Clark. Well, it's not really to my liking in a lot of ways--Krypton exploded much later in this universe, when Clark was eight or nine, and he never met the Kents. They've shifted Lara and Jor-El's characters so that they're former scientists who have become outcasts and farmers, so they kind of have melded the Els and the Kents into one couple. Kal on Earth itself is very kind and humane, looking out for the downtrodden, but also very definitely alien, with no real human connections/friends at all. I don't know if I can get something to work with a Clark/Bruce setup with them, but it does seem worth a try... Weirdly, now it's Superman who watched his parents die in front of him when he was a young boy. Absolute Batman's Martha Wayne survived the shooting! It's a very odd shift.

I'm curious if that would make Kal unwritable for you guys? (For the Clois shippers among us, Lois is a government agent trying to stop the mysterious do-gooder alien, and I'm sure that'll be a fun dynamic as well, it's just quite odd).

In canon reactions, I'm very sad about the ending of this week's Wonder Woman, but there's a really beautiful page of Clark and Bruce comforting a grieving Diana that I loved a lot. The current writer really loves his Trinity, and has taken pains to establish a second-generation Trinity that I also like quite a lot. I'm looking for a hook back into writing comics fanfic, and that's at least making me feel like it's possible!

I hope something is inspiring you this week, whether it's canon or your life or even spite (I find spite an excellent motivator!)

I'm sure those of you who have actually written books (as I'm not among them yet) will understand this struggle--I really thought I was done, but suddenly I got the option to interview the people I've been writing this biography about! And I had a fairly good formal interview, but after it was done one of them sent me a DM saying they'd love to meet in a more informal setting (the formal interview was in Zoom with a representative of the wrestling promotion sitting there monitoring it to make sure we didn't talk any shit about their former evil sex-trafficking boss). I want to! But every time I meet with them it pushes the publishing date back and I am in anguish about that! Argh!

So this week I'll ask: what's blocking you in your current WiP? Either what you've overcome or what's keeping you from finishing (though of course I hope we all overcome them eventually!)

We've talked about the setting of your latest work, how about a plot? What's the basic story of what you're writing and where do you think it's going?

I confess the plot of the fic I'm working on is remaining stubbornly vague! A sea-dwelling person (like Aquaman but less human, more sharky) gets turned into a human and has to deal with trying to pass as a human when she doesn't know how to do that... but what's the McGuffin that turned her human? And what is trying achieve while human? I suppose they could be connected, she's looking for whatever turned her human to get herself back to normal of course... I just have to figure out why someone would do that, lol. There's got to be a reason! I hope your plot is being less stubborn than mine!

 I hope writing is going well for you! Since we're discussing tropes the last few weeks, what's a trope you've never written, whether you hope to or would never want to? I don't think I've ever touched either A/B/O or mpreg, I did have one fic that slightly hinted at mpreg, but that's all I'm interested in doing, honestly.

 Last week I asked what the rarest pair you've ever written for was, so I guess this week I'll flip it and ask what's the most popular pairing you've ever written for?

I thought Clark/Bruce might be it at 11K fics, but nope, I wrote a few Holmes/Watson fics and they clock in at a whopping 72K! They're both aided by having so many different forms and canons out there (fingers crossed I find the Clark from the upcoming Superman movie shippy in some way! I like Cavill but his take on Clark left me cold at the shipping level).

Are you working on something with a lot of fics out there for it right now? Is your current sandbox large or small? I'm thinking about writing a small story for a pairing with five whole fics about them in a fandom with 103 extant fics, so... it's more than the last one, at least! Maybe I'm working my way up slowly to pairings that people are actually invested in lol.

--What's a piece of writing advice you've read or received that you actually do and find useful?

I know it doesn't work for everyone, but I'm very firmly of the Steven King/Ray Bradbury school of thought that quantity is important, even if you end up scrapping a lot of it. Output is how you learn and grow more confident! So just parking my butt at the keyboard a few hours a day and writing something--nearly anything!--has been really valuable.

I finished the manuscript! Well, I have one more transition paragraph to write in the first chapter and some tidying to do, but I believe once I find time to finish that chapter it'll be ready to send to the publisher for edits (and to the people I'm writing about in case they strongly object to something! I don't think they will but if they do there will be some hard decisions to make...)

How has your writing been this week? What's your next challenge?

 --If your writing process were a recipe, what would the main ingredients be?