Luma-az - Luma Azane

I have … a tip.

If you’re writing something that involves an aspect of life that you have not experienced, you obviously have to do research on it. You have to find other examples of it in order to accurately incorporate it into your story realistically.

But don’t just look at professional write ups. Don’t stop at wikepedia or webMD. Look up first person accounts.

I wrote a fic once where a character has frequent seizures. Naturally, I was all over the wikipedia page for seizures, the related pages, other medical websites, etc.

But I also looked at Yahoo asks where people where asking more obscure questions, sometimes asked by people who were experiencing seizures, sometimes answered by people who have had seizures.

I looked to YouTube. Found a few individual videos of people detailing how their seizures usually played out. So found a few channels that were mostly dedicated to displaying the daily habits of someone who was epileptic.

I looked at blogs and articles written by people who have had seizures regularly for as long as they can remember. But I also read the frantic posts from people who were newly diagnosed or had only had one and were worried about another.

When I wrote that fic, I got a comment from someone saying that I had touched upon aspects of movement disorders that they had never seen portrayed in media and that they had found representation in my art that they just never had before. And I think it’s because of the details. The little things.

The wiki page for seizures tells you the technicalities of it all, the terminology. It tells you what can cause them and what the symptoms are. It tells you how to deal with them, how to prevent them.

But it doesn’t tell you how some people with seizures are wary of holding sharp objects or hot liquids. It doesn’t tell you how epileptics feel when they’ve just found out that they’re prone to fits. It doesn’t tell you how their friends and family react to the news.

This applies to any and all writing. And any and all subjects. Disabilities. Sexualities. Ethnicities. Cultures. Professions. Hobbies. Traumas. If you haven’t experienced something first hand, talk to people that have. Listen to people that have. Don’t stop at the scholarly sources. They don’t always have all that you need.

En ce moment, niveau écriture, j’avance difficile et de plus en plus à contrecœur. Je me suis demandé si ce n’était pas un doute sur mes capacités après un nanowrimo qui m’a beaucoup remise en question, ou le stress au travail, ou (ces derniers temps) le stress de la pandémie mondiale avec laquelle on se débat tous. Je pense aujourd’hui qu’il y a de ça, mais pas seulement.

La vérité, c’est que je m’ennuie en écrivant.

Je travaille sur le tome 2 du premier roman que j’ai autoédité, une histoire qui me tenait vraiment à cœur, mais dont j’ai commencé le tome 1 il y a dix ans. Ça fait trois ans maintenant que le tome 1 est sorti et que les (quelques) lecteurs attendent le tome 2, et je n’en suis même pas à la moitié du premier jet, autant dire qu’il me reste du boulot. En plus, j’ai commencé la prépublication sur Wattpad, une sortie toutes les semaines, je ne peux pas lâcher comme ça. Pas après avoir passé tant de temps à rassembler des lecteurs.

Mais je m’ennuie.

Je sais ce que je fais, je sais où je vais, je sais comment y aller, je sais ce que j’ai à dire. C’est devenu une routine. Je suis attachée aux personnages, mais leurs péripéties ne m’émeuvent plus. J’ai perdu l’étincelle.

Et en plus de ça j’ai une nouvelle idée de roman, quelque chose qui serait plus simple, plus vif, plus drôle, avec des personnages déjantés assumés et qui reprend certains thèmes qui m’ont beaucoup touché pendant la crise actuelle…

La question étant : si je mets mon tome 2 en pause, c’est fini, je ne le terminerai jamais. Mais si je laisse trainer la nouvelle idée, elle va finir par s’étioler et ne plus avoir de sens. Donc, qu’est-ce que je fais ? Sachant qu’avec mon travail, les horaires calmes consacrables à l’écriture ne sont pas infinis non plus…

Pour l’instant, comme une adulte responsable, je fuis ce choix en me lançant dans la réécriture d’une vieille fanfiction que je devais faire depuis longtemps. Mais bon. Il va bien falloir que je me décide un jour…

fyi the point of fucking up your data patterns isnt to avoid suspicion. it’s to make EVERYONE suspicious. same logic as the bloc, pals.  protect your comrades, be suspicious. ESPECIALLY if you aren’t doing anything likely to get you arrested.

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