The Creative Process & Writing Sh*t

the creative process & writing sh*t

Hello friends!

This week, as I get back into the swing of working on my original story and the challenge I’ve set for myself with tackling the seemingly insurmountable task of worldbuilding, I’ve been thinking a lot about how I’m going to approach crafting my fantasy world. I’ve been kicking around the interwebs for a bit for some guidance (how-to videos and blogs, inspirational content, etc.) and I’ve not had much luck. I’ve been looking into a few courses (mainly https://rmarcher.com/resource-library/the-worldbuilding-toolbox/) and resources (mainly https://milanote.com/guide/worldbuilding & https://inkarnate.com/) but I’m not sure about any of them. 

(^ me this week)

I’ve said before that I am not Tolkien (though I wish). I have never built a world with the extent of detail and specificity and concreteness to which I need to build the one in which my story takes place. I have no idea what I’m doing. 

I think, however, that's part of the creative process, though it pains me to say. I like when outcomes are known and things are in order (though life rarely ever truly is). I’m gonna admit something to y’all….  I am a total perfectionist. I like things the way that I like things, and I don't like not being able to make things the way I want them to be. 

But part of writing, as I am slowly coming to learn and accept, is creating complete sh*t. And if you create enough sh*t then every so often you’ll stumble across something that's gold. All you need to do is have the courage to dive in and the willingness to get messy.

Therefore, what I really need to do to start building this world for my story, is to just dive in and mess around. That scares the crap out of me because I know some of the stuff (maybe even most of the stuff) that I’m going to make will be terrible. But with all the terrible stuff, there is going to be some stuff that is awesome. And, I don’t know about you, but for me a lot of terrible stuff and a little bit of awesome stuff is better than no stuff at all. 

As I’ve been cutting down on procrastination, I’ve been trying to make intentional space to be creative. So, as I continue to make time to do my other creative hobbies like crocheting and graphic design, I am going to make time to write as well. I’m going to throw myself head first into this whole worldbuilding thing and just try stuff out. I may use worldbuilding resources or aids, but for the most part I’m just going to write. I want to  make the commitment to do this thing, but also give myself space to let my creativity grow. 

So, I will keep you all updated as I go along. Hopefully I'll have enough good stuff to share (because I don’t want to bog down my feed with crap), but we shall see. That’s all from me today, I guess.

And remember, dot your j’s and cross your t’s (even when your writing sh*t ᕱ__<)!

~Clementine J. Quincey 🪷

NANOWRIMO: the conclusion + learning from failure

Hello friends!

Long time, no see! ᕱ__ᕱ These past two weeks I have been giving myself a little break from this blog. I have been swamped with final projects in all of my classes and have been trying to balance getting all of them done with middling success. I’m not thriving, but I am surviving. 

However, to make up for my absence, I will be giving y’all some extra content within the next two weeks. In those posts I won’t be boring you with my rambles as I usually do and instead will simply be giving you some content that I have created for my novel! In this post, though, I will be updating you on my novel’s progress and giving you my thoughts on NANOWRIMO.

For those of you who have been here for a bit, you will know that I attempted to participate in National Novel Writing Month for the first time this November. (As always, here is a link with more info about NANOWRIMO for your perusal.) My personal goal as a full time student with a part time job, was to write a 25,000 word manuscript instead of the full 50,000 words. November has ended and I am happy to report that I failed. I failed to reach even my cut down goal. However, I am surprisingly really happy with my progress this month. I learned a lot about myself as a writer and about my process and while I didn’t manage to write even a 10,000 word manuscript, I feel much more prepared to tackle writing this novel.

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So, here are the things that I learned:

Character design and building is VERY important to me

This, I already knew. One of the main things that bother me about book to movie translations or “hot takes” about books on social media or even some fanfictions is that characters, their personalities and development and relationships, are often either misunderstood or sacrificed for the plot or the sake of another character's development. It’s so annoying. I personally belief that every character in a work of fiction should be able to stand on their own, especially if they are a main or secondary character. Characters should be their own individuals with their own motivations and backstories and for goodness sake they should be consistent! (Crappy character development is a thing that bothers me about published novels too. The wasted potential of Severus Snape, Albus Dumbledore, and Draco Malfoy, among countless other characters, in the Harry Potter novels bugs me so, so much!!)

 So, one of the things that happened everytime I sat down to write this NANOWRIMO was that I would find myself getting “stuck” on this character’s backstory or that character’s personality. I have 13 characters that exist for this story in my head. 2 are the main main characters. The 11 others are also going to have their own plot lines and spin offs. Before NANOWRIMO, I knew that this would make my novel complex. After NANOWRIMO, I realized that I was going to have to organize and map and structure and detail my characters (along with several other things) to the metaphorical gods before I even try to manuscript anything or else I am going to be stuck forever and I will never get this book out of my head.

Worldbuilding is also VERY important to me

This was a bit of a surprise. I am definitely no Tolkien and before I started this blog, and my creative writing journey, at the beginning of this fall, these original characters simply just floated around in my head in a vague fantasy realm with no discernible structure or detail. I expected to be able to just continue with this vague fantasy world and as I started writing let the structure fall into place. Yeah… that’s not what happened. 

As I began to outline character backstories and a basic plot to start writing, I would find myself drawing up short when I needed to insert a detail about the world in which my story is taking place. This month made me realize that I need to also worldbuild to the metaphorical gods before I try to manuscript anything, and in some cases before I try to go deeper into outlining my character’s backstories and such as well. I’m such a detail oriented person that I have no idea why this didn’t occur to me before, especially because I am including a magic system in my book. I hate fantasy books (that are meant to be serious and not just cozy reads) in which the magic systems rely on the “because it’s magic” excuse and the author doesn’t make any attempt at giving at least some sort of structure or rules. So yeah. I really need to worldbuild, which I am going to hate because it is going to take FOREVER (detail oriented person).

I work better on lists and schedules

This I did know, but I didn’t realize it applied to my writing. A lot of the reason why I failed to write anything of substance for the plot of my book is that I thought I could just throw myself in and make it up as I go. Incorrect. As November passed, and I kept getting stuck on details, I realized that I would need to incorporate my penchant for planning and list making if I was ever going to complete a task this large.

Also, side note, but I keep referring to this story that I’m writing as a novel. It will most certainly not be a novel. It will be a whole dang book series. (13 characters!! Who will each get their own POV at some point!! “A novel” my a**.) 

I can throw myself head first into school essays and short writing assignments no problem, but with a story this big, all coming straight from the mess I call my brain, I need to do a lot of planning beforehand. That, above all, is what this failed NANOWRIMO taught me. 

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So! Now that I have torn my failure to shreds and dissected all the little pieces and given yall a short (yes that was short for me - I’m starting to think you guys don’t know me at all ᕱ__ᕱ) summary of who, what, when, where, and why my failure occurred, what’s next. Well, I plan. I outline to the metaphorical gods (as I seem to be fond of saying in this post), and next year, when November rolls around, hopefully I have done enough planning and outlining and detail work that writing a 50000 word manuscript should be a breeze!

That’s all for now folks! If any of y’all are curious as to some of what I did manage to get done on my novel/series over NANOWRIMO then stay tuned for the first of your special content posts which should be up within a few minutes of me posting this. Also, if any of y’all have suggestions about how to store/order worldbuilding content in an easily searchable way that would be fantastic!! Please do let me know. Thanks for bearing with me! ᕱ__ᕱ

And remember, dot your j’s and cross your t’s!

~Clementine J. Quincey 🪷

housekeeping, AI, and naming systems

Hello friends! ᕱ__ᕱ

I suppose I should start with a quick forewarning: this past week has not brought a whole lot of progress in regards to my creative writing and the story I am crafting. I was very busy with school assignments during the beginning of the week and very busy being ill at the end of the week. (Just a common cold and/or my allergies acting up thankfully but regardless being ill always makes my brain feel weird and often messes with my vision, hearing, and sense of balance which is a joy to deal with… not).

However I will update you with some thoughts that I had this week. 

Housekeeping

Firstly, some housekeeping. I have decided to change the name of my blog. I am a very private person. I always hesitate to give out my name on the internet. I didn’t have any social media until I was 18, and even now that I do have some social media accounts, none of them have my full name or face attached. This is just how I feel comfortable existing on the internet. I have also always toyed with the idea of writing under a penname. (These two things connect, I promise). Firstly because pennames are cool, but also because of privacy reasons. 

When I decided to create this blog, I was unsure about naming it. I eventually decided to choose something close(ish) to my real name because I had the tagline “dot your j’s and cross your t’s” thought up for years before I decided to commit and actually start a blog, and the penname I had picked out for myself did not have a “J” in it. However, recently I have come to the realization that middle names do exist. Also, plenty of authors use their middle initials. All this to say, the penname plan is back in business babes!! ᕱ__ᕱ 

So, if anyone was confused as to the name change, that is why.

AI

This is a bit of an abrupt shift in topics, but this week I was required to use AI for a couple different assignments in my classes and it got me thinking about it. I know AI is a bit of a hot button topic right now, especially in creative spaces, so since I was thinking about it a lot this week, I figured I’d put my two cents out there. 

I do think AI has the potential to be really helpful in making people’s lives easier (that's what progress is all about, right?). However, I disagree with the usage of AI in creative, professional, and educational spaces until the moral and ethical problems it brings up are addressed. And there are a lot of moral and ethical problems that come with AI. 

Plagiarism of other people's ideas and creations is the issue that I’ve been thinking about most often. We are constantly told in academia to “cite our sources” and most universities even have policies that can lead to students who plagiarize being kicked out. Yet, many people don’t see a problem with using works created with AI. All AI is, is an amalgamation of other people’s ideas and content that’s either been mined from the internet or fed to it specifically. So every piece of work AI spits out is a cut and pasted collage of other people’s stuff. And its sources are never cited. 

I am most certainly not a techie kind of person so I couldn’t tell you how to fix this issue, or any of the others AI brings up, in a way that I’m sure is plausible. All I can say is that the use of AI without addressing the moral and ethical concerns makes me mighty uncomfortable. 

Names

Finally, I can give you at least a little information on my story. I have always been the most obsessive about naming my characters. A 5 minute writing exercise? Eh, it’s whatever. Just use any names that come to mind. But give me any type of fiction writing that’s meant to be workshopped and it’s over for me. I’ll spend 3 hours searching for an appropriate name for the background character that’s going to be in 1 scene tops and never seen again. I get it from my dad, I think. He was always insistent that me and my siblings had names with good meanings. At least, that’s what my mom tells me. I’m like that with my characters.

Now, I have nowhere near as good of a grasp on linguistics and linguistic patterns to create my own language or a naming system from scratch. I’m not Tolkien. However, when I am writing a larger work, or at least a work with some worldbuilding/lore, I like to come up with systems for things like names. This past week, I started to create a naming system for the story I’m currently working on (Ailidh’s story btw if that wasn’t clear). What I have so far is that the type of fae folk Ailidh, Ruslan, and their people will have names pulled from Celtic, Russian/Slavic, Germanic, and French origins. Don’t ask why I chose those languages. I couldn’t tell you. 

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That’s pretty much all I got done creative writing wise this week. I know it’s not much, but at least it’s not nothing, right? ᕱ__ᕱ Sorry for being so scattered in this post but as I am currently still ill, everything is a little fuzzy. I hope you all have a lovely week and hopefully by next week’s post, I’ll have gotten some more things done within my story. 

Remember, dot your j’s and cross your t’s!!

~Clementine J Quincey🪷

nanowrimo + more fanfiction

Hello friends!

Today I have some exciting (and mildly terrifying) news to share. I have decided at the last minute to attempt to participate in NaNoWriMo this year! ᕱ__ᕱ  I know I’ve mentioned it on here before, but for those who don’t know NaNoWriMo, short for National Novel Writing Month, is a 30 day writing challenge that takes place in November every year. The goal is to have a 50,000 word manuscript of something done by the end of the month.  (Here is a link with more info if y’all are interested!) As an ardent fanfic reader, consuming 50,000 words is all in a day's work. As an amature writer who is currently struggling to gain back a bulk of my creative writing muscles that I have lost from disuse, writing 50,000 words is an uphill battle. 

Since I am a full time student with a part time job I have decided to be nice to myself and make my own personal goal 25,000 words in 30 days. If I hit 50,000, that would be awesome, but I don’t want to beat myself up if I fall short. And for those of you (my fellow AO3 enthusiasts arise!) who are looking at 25,000 words and saying “Clem! That’s going to be a piece of cake! 25,000 words is nothing!” let me put it in perspective for you. 25,000 words is about 100 pages of double spaced 12pt font typing. 100! PAGES!!! 

So, what does that mean for this blog? As this is still a school assignment, I do need to keep up with posting weekly, but I may not be posting anything about my original story for the month of November. I want to give myself space to work on that on its own as my original story is the project I am working on for NaNoWriMo. However, like I said, you can count on me to post something involving creative writing here once a week. ᕱ__ᕱ 

For this week, I have decided to post part of the class assignment that I wrote a Harry Potter fanfiction for 2 weeks ago. Below are images of a letter that my original Slytherin character wrote to her father during her (and Harry Potter’s) first year at Hogwarts. 

I am done with the assignment now, but I think I may decide to continue on with this OC at some point. Who knows? Not me! All I know is that by the end of November I am never going to want to touch a keyboard again. (“Do creative writing,” they said.  “It will be fun,” they said.) Well, that’s all from me for now! 

Remember to dot your j’s and cross your t’s this NaNoWriMo season! ᕱ__ᕱ 

~Clementine J. Quincey 🪷

organizing thoughts + setting microgoals (ya know productive people things)

Hello friends!

Happy 2024!!

It seems like my winter break has just flown by and tomorrow my university’s spring semester starts. I haven’t had as much time to work on my story as I would have liked, but I do feel rested after this break, which is always a good thing! ᕱ__ᕱ Despite not a lot of visible progress in my original story, there have been a few things I have been thinking about and attempting to iron out in my brain which I can update you on this week.

World-Building

Before I get anywhere else and make real progress in the plot of my story, I have come to the conclusion that I need to spend some time on worldbuilding. I knew the funky little magic world and my funky little fantasy story is taking place in needed some serious work before I started writing anything, but it’s come to my attention that it needs that work now, before I continue to develop anything else. Which… sucks.

Not that I am not going to enjoy creating my own fictional world but it's going to take A LOT of work before I see real progress and I am going to have to complete that work in very small increments because I have other Important Things™ I need to be doing. Like school. Ugh!

I am very notoriously bad with time management (which is something I’m working on in therapy actually - shout out once again to my therapist who is literally a God-send), so I think my goal for next week will be to create an outline/schedule/list for what I need to get done in the realm of world-building so that I can organize my thoughts a little better and have something tangible to work on. I’ll share it here next week if I have managed to make progress on it. One of the big things I know will absolutely be making it on that list first thing, however, is developing my magic system.

Magic System

As I have mentioned briefly in a previous post, janky magic systems with little-no rules are a huge pet peeve of mine when it comes to fantasy fiction (unless it makes sense within the story, which is rare). So, I know that crafting my own magic system will take me some time because I want it to make sense, be clear, and have outline rules and limitations. 

Another thing that's important to me is that any magic system I create/include in my story, is in accordance with my own personal religious beliefs. NOW HEAR ME OUT IN THE ENTIRETY BEFORE Y’ALL GO JUDGING ME, OKAY?! I am a Christian, so nothing aligning with demons, Satan, or the occult will be happening in my story (on the side of “Good” that is). It may seem like a small or silly thing to some but it’s 100% a priority to me. However, I want to write a fantasy novel that is accessible to ALL, not just my fellow Christians, and one that doesn’t feel preachy or anything of that nature. I’m not trying to push my beliefs onto my readers. I just don’t want to compromise them in my writing. 

This is an interesting article on writing magic systems into Christian fantasy that I have been looking over the past few days if any of y'all are interested in what my magic system may look like. 

Stereotypes

I also don’t want to accidentally write any story of -isms or -phobias into my novel and I know a surprising amount of magical beings and tropes fall into the “developed from a racial stereotype” category (just look up J.K. Rowling, goblins, and Jewish stereotypes if you don’t believe me). So, I wanted to create my own magical beings without the baggage. If, in the following posts, y’all see anything that could be rude or prejudice developing as I continue to grow my story please just let me know. It’s never my intention to cause harm. As I said, I want my story to be accessible for ALL. ᕱ__ᕱ 

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That’s pretty much it! That’s what I’ve been turning over in my head and working on in the past few weeks while in the midst of family and friends and the chaos of the holiday season. I hope to get something more substantial to give to y’all next week, but for now I’ll let you go. For my fellow students returning to school, good luck in this new semester! ᕱ__ᕱ 

And always remember, dot your j’s and cross your t’s!

 ~Clementine J. Quincey 🪷

PS. I also finally taught myself how to crochet something and spent 3 days working on a flower garland for the canopy above my bed. It is quite cute and I feel very accomplished!!

i need a fanfic stat

do yall think there is a universe where Jason was given to one direction instead of the wolves