IWSG Post #03

NOVEMBER’S QUESTION: What is your favorite aspect of being a writer?

Look at me remembering this in time and posting during NaNoWriMo! These are a few of my favorite things:

* Getting lost in daydreaming about a story. I enjoy this part even more than actually writing it.

* This is work I can do in my pajamas before I’m even out of bed for the day. I mean, I don’t get paid for it and I usually have to get out of bed anyway and go in to the office, but still. Weekends are great.

* Writing to try and make sense of reality or explain something to myself. I did this a lot with research papers in college, but it works with fiction too.

* The “ah ha!” feeling of finally figuring out a solution to a troublesome plot hole.

* Character building. I love taking an idea for a person and fleshing them out into a believable, unique character with their own hopes, dreams, and motivations. Even if they sometimes take an odd turn and develop traits I hadn’t expected or planned for in their story.

* Being impartial. As the writer I don’t feel like it’s my place to pick a stance one way or another about what happens in my stories — not that I don’t, but I keep it out of my writing because that responsibility falls on the characters that live in inhabit the story. As a person who’s never been terribly good at picking sides, it’s a nice reprieve.

* Feedback. I really enjoy getting constructive criticism and figuring out which comments I should take into account and then working the suggestions and new ideas into my writing. Honestly, I don’t think I would have turned out this way if it hadn’t been for college writing classes and seriously getting into writing fanfiction at roughly the same time. The support, camaraderie, and positive feedback (from either source) was enough of a counter note to the negative crap (from either source) that I ended up fairly resilient.