Get-To-Know-Yous and Project Intros

[vintagewitch]

Hey everyone!

I know a bunch of people are interested in using this space to track our NaNo projects, so I figured it'd be nice to have some intros.

Let's do a round of posts to get to know each other.

Here are some possible questions to answer:

1. Who are you?
2. What are your fave books?
3. Have you ever done NaNo before?
4. What's your project looking like? What kind of support do you want/need?
5. Anything else you wanna share!

I'll start!

1. Who are you?

I'm a queer femme witch, living in the Twin Cities, MN. I'm a total weirdo, in love with pop culture and trying to become a professional writer.

2. What are your fave books?

It feels cliche to say this, but the Harry Potter series was incredibly formative for me. The HP Fandom fostered a sense of community for me when I was just learning about being a witch.

Otherwise, in terms of books, I love Fun Home by Alison Bechdell, The Border of Paradise by Esme Weijun Wang, The Red Tree by Caitlin R. Kiernan, and countless - COUNTLESS - books about witchcraft. I'd say The Border of Paradise and Fun Home probably have the biggest influence on my thinking about writing fiction.

3. Have you ever done NaNo before?

Yes! I won one year, and I think I've participated 2 other times.

4. What's your project looking like?

I'm writing a couple of things, and want to use NaNo to finish them. I'm working on a grimoire for a class I'm teaching, and I'm also writing a book about Norse mythology. I need to have the grimoire done by the end of the year, and I'm not quite set on a goal for a manuscript of the book, but ideally by summer. This is kind of like a jump start - I really want to do getyourwordsout next year, so this is a bit of a jump start of that.

I'm not totally sure what kind of support I want - mostly I want a chill space to talk about word counts and such. I've already got beta readers for my various projects, but sometimes I need a lil encouragement. Would also love any suggestions on the editing process, as well as pitching work if any of you have done that. Also ... encouragement on the fiction front! I love writing and reading fiction, but I write so much for work stuff that I don't have much energy at the end of the day for fiction writing.



5. Anything else?

Not totally sure! I love horror and weird fiction, and so I kind of want to jump into writing some of that in short story form. I'm also back on my bullshit with fandom, and I've got a fanfic that is on the backburner while I try to get other stuff finished. I'm constantly reading like, 5 books at a time and so my attention is a little scatterbrained.

Like I said above, I'm a professional witch and tarot reader and that is a HUGE part of my life, but I kind of want to keep Dreamwidth more anonymous. I need to do other things than chat about work all the time. 

Comments

[ariestess]

Who are you? 49yo pagan queer dyke, cat mama, writer/creatrix, multishipping fool who's fluffy, wacky, honest, loyal, empathic... Living in the greater Puget Sound area and wholly dedicated to the #MillsWomen, particularly Regina Mills. I write fiction, fanfiction, nonfiction, poetry, whatever strikes my and the muses' fancy. I also dabble in other forms of creativity, including crochet, watercolor, divination, and Zentangle, among others...

What are your fave books? So many, but some of my top faves are The Fall of Atlantis by Marion Zimmer Bradley, The Wicked Years Series by Gregory Maguire, The Trumpet of the Swan by E.B White, and The Betrayal by Kathleen O'Neal Gear and W. Michael Gear.

Have you ever done NaNo before? I've done every NaNo since 2002 and every single session of CampNaNo since they started holding them in 2011. Haven't always officially won, but any words written is a win in my book.

What's your project looking like? What kind of support do you want/need? This year, I'm planning on working on my OutlawQueen Advent Calendar project, which will be some combination of fiction, poetry, and fanmix, maybe a little Zentangle-inspired art thrown in for flair. Sill trying to decide what my basic plot will be and which of my various verses it will come from, but I'm basically a plantser when it comes to the plotter vs. pantser debate, so...

As for support? I'm really not sure? This is the first year in over a decade where I've had a job during NaNo, so it's going to be really weird to have to structure when I write around my job. Probably just some encouragement, I guess?

Anything else you wanna share! Um... Not off the top of my head? I'm pretty much an open book, so feel free to ask. If it's something I'm not comfortable answering, I'll say so.

[vintagewitch]

I love the idea of using NaNo for writing many different short fiction pieces! Also love that you're doing some fanmix in there too - that's fabulous.

[ariestess]

I've done the single novel approach several times, both successfully and unsuccesfully, and tend to do a lot of theme week/month projects within my various fandoms, including Advent Calendar-style stuff for December that's due in November, so the last couple of years have been focused on doing those instead of a single novel idea because I also haven't had any good single novel ideas, and I like doing multimedia projects with art and music, so...