#MYWRITINGPROCESS BLOG HOP

Thank you, Lucas Scheelk, for inviting me to participate in this blog hop! I feel honored and a little overwhelmed in being included in such a fantastic group of Autistic writers/poets/etc.

On what project(s) are you working?

I’m still working on Acceptance, a BBC Sherlock fanfic featuring a demisexual and autistic Sherlock in a polyamorous relationship with John Watson and Mary Morstan.  The storyline diverges from BBC canon quite a bit, but I have an idea of where I’m going with it.

I have an untitled 100,000+ word story (that is the culmination of two years of doing NaNoWriMo) of post-Reichenbach Sherlock fanfiction.  I’m undertaking the tedious task of splitting it into different segments so it’s more a series of vignettes with a connecting theme than it is a novel-length fanfiction.  It’s an exploratory piece focusing on the female characters in Sherlock, giving them their own stories, much of which the original source text has failed to do (either in the original Arthur Conan Doyle stories or in the BBC programming).

I’m also working on an untitled collaboration project with one of my close friends, which features a genderqueer Sherlock.

I’m also involved in roleplaying within a couple of different universes, sort of based on BBC Sherlock canon, but definitely with divergent storylines.  In one of those roleplays, I play a 20 year old allistic but not neurotypical John Watson to my rp partner’s 17 year old autistic Sherlock.

I have some other fanfiction works in progress which are mostly in the planning stages for various fandoms, including Harry Potter, Cabin Pressure, Welcome to Night Vale, and The Chronicles of Narnia.

How does your work differ from others in the genre?

I don’t really know how to answer this question fully, because I think that every writer’s work is different, and unique to their voice.  I think maybe the way that I tend to focus on character’s emotional states and then try and reflect that in the physicality of the work is the biggest difference.  I don’t know if other authors work from the inside outwards like I do, but it seems like a big difference.

How does your writing process work?

I hear conversations in my head between characters.  It usually starts as a bit of dialogue, or maybe something like a gif or a photo or just a phrase will get stuck in my head and just evolve from there.  For longer fics, I tend to have something more planned out, and I tend to be able to see the bigger picture.  But even with longer fics, I may have an idea of what’s going to happen but I can’t just sit down and write.  I know that other people do, but as much as I want to be able to plan to write and write and write, if I don’t have some sort of inspiration, my writing is going to fall flat.  For example, I’ve been writing Acceptance since late December/early January, with the last update being in mid-January, and I’m just now completing chapter three and beginning to edit.  I knew where I was going with it, but I wasn’t quite sure how to get there until I had a sudden jolt of inspiration.  That’s how most of my writing has gone, really, and it might not work for everyone, but it works for me.  I also am lucky that I don’t have the pressure of this being my occupation.  It isn’t something I’m paid to do, so I don’t have time pressures or demands that soemthing be publisehd by a certain date.  I can afford the luxury of taking my time and figuring out how I want to explain a character’s emotional state by the circumstances surrounding them.

Next Monday (9th June)

My good friend Heather will be answering these questions! Look forward to her post then!