The Many Ramblings of K. A. Webb

As I enjoyed writing the metaconversation with Persephone, that I’m planning on expanding, I’ve been thinking about other characters I’d like to meet. I want to do a metaconversation with Alice, because she’s always been one of my favourite characters. Of there’s anyone you’d like me to see a metaconversation with then let me know and feel free to let me know if there are any question you’d like me to ask them.

Then, as I said before, I’d also like to explore some more unusual fictional forms and thanks to Elizabeth I do have a couple of ideas. I have a few ideas for fictional diaries, or at least excerpts from one, including the fae’s record of the destruction of their first world, the records of the world and race creators during the history of the fae, and Elizabeth suggested Leolin’s records. If anyone else has any ideas for fictional diaries they’d like to see I’d be happy to hear them. Then I also want to try out some glossary fiction, because that looks fascinating to try, and some docufiction, which I was already beginning to plan for the World Walkers. Of course any ideas are again welcome. Finally I’ve always wanted to play with epistolary fiction and I did do a bit before during last years’ advent story, so again I’d love to hear any ideas for this form.

Mirrored from K. A. Jones Writing.

Even with all the work I’ve done this month on the World Walkers collection there are more posts to write, more races to create, and I haven’t finished any character profiles yet, so my plan is to continue with World Walkers world building during the next couple of months. I’m still going to focus on the Donor House collection next month, which is going to be more stories and character profiles than world building posts, while working on the World Walkers world building posts.

This month’s prompt session had less prompters than any of the others, which has disappointed me slightly, but I’m still going to keep going with them, because I love prompts. I might have a random number session next month as well as the prompts session.

In December, while posting the advent story, I think I’m also going to have a story month. I’ll attempt to post on story of at least 500 words every day, in all of the collections I’m currently working on, and then I’m going to spend 2013 posting much more than I have in 2012.

Mirrored from K. A. Jones Writing.

I have closed the prompts post today. I still have one story to write and post, which will hopefully be up tomorrow or Thursday. Then I'll do a proper update. I am still waiting for four people who linked this prompt session to get back to me about which story they would like me to write another 500 words for, so if you could do that asap that would be great.

At some point today I should have one of my random stories up. This will probably become part of a collection, but I'm still working out all the details, because it will mean that I have to change a couple of other things. I think I'm early enough into this that I can change the things that need to be changed easily. If I do decide to make it a new collection then it will be the World Walkers collection - and this is a collection that will have a number of sub-collections. This is something I have wanted to write for a long time and it means that some of the other ideas that I've had will work well in this collection (which is why there will be sub-collections).

One thing I have noticed - and I'm not very happy about - is the way that LJ doesn't automatically change the date for posts that have the date changed. Everything that got posted on the 1st of November was prewritten because it is much easier to do things that way but LJ didn't update it to show that it was posted publicly on the 1st. The round-up for October, November's free story, the collection spotlight and character spotlight were all posted then.

I've just been making some notes on characters I want to write about and things that I feel I need right now, like a couple of maps and lists of magics or characters so I know what I'm doing. The lists of magics are going to difficult because a lot of them are still in the process of being created. When I write I basically write about what I know before working around that, which means I know certain parts but the rest of it doesn't really exist in my head. It's not until I have someone doing a different part of the magic that I know what's happening there. Nothing I write is ever completely thought out when I start and often I find things changing as I write.

I have a love hate relationship with that process. Some days I am happy to let things work out the way they do when I'm writing because I've never been able to work from a definitive plot or keep characters out of storylines when they have something to say that they think will add to whatever it is I'm writing. That's probably why I'd never really be any good at being published by one of the big publishers. They'd want me to take bits out that I thought were important and I don't think they'd appreciate having a huge cast of characters simply because some of them won't shut up. :) Other days I just wish I could plot something out, write it, and then not have one of the 'secondary' characters step up to wake me round the head with a plot line. I don't know why. I've never been like that.

The other thing I find myself wanting to do is change decisions and show why certain choices worked better than others, which means that I could easily end up with six different versions of a story. It interests me to see the way my characters deal with different situations. Maybe I sound really weird when I say this but when I write I let them make their own choices as though they're real people. Then they want a redo because they know they haven't made the right one. It's like life, only you get the chance to have a redo. However there are some stories where I know the decisions wouldn't be different. The characters in the Donor House are one example. Every one of the characters I have written about or am thinking of writing about would absolutely stand by the decisions that they made and make the same choices if the situation happened again. I don't know why.

Anyway, the plan at the moment is to get some full character lists down, especially for the stories where I shove a collection of characters into a house or a school and then leave them to it. I think I like writing about communities more than I like writing about anything else because I like character interaction. I am much more a character writer than I am a plot writer, and maybe that's why I've never been able to stick to a plot. I really wish I had is more people naming characters so I don't have to. I'm really stupidly picky about names.

I'm sad that I haven't been getting much feedback. It would be nice to know what people think of what they're reading, but I know it will take time to build up a readership. Please send people my way if you think they'll like anything I've posted so far. If someone friends me based on a recommendation and I know about it (make sure they tell me if you have sent them my way) then it will hopefully lead to some bonus material. Strangely I actually really would like to start working on the bonus material. I enjoy working on that sort of thing almost as much as I enjoy writing. :)

Over the last few days I've been thinking about what I'm going to do in the future. I am going to open up to commissions at some point in the next couple of months if people are interested. That means people will be able to order a specific story from me set in one of my worlds and I will write it. I may start out with auctioning off four commissions with a set number of words, just to see what people would be happy paying. Then I want to try out a livewriting session at the end of September in an attempt to start saving for Christmas. For every prompt I'm given I will write for half an hour and then people can donate money to see the story continued for however long they wish. If someone wants me to write for five hours or above I may have to do that after the session but I will write for that amount of time. Another thing I've been thinking about is making my work available in audio form for people who would prefer to listen than read. It's something I've always wanted to try.

Thinking about Christmas got me thinking about maybe doing Christmas/Yule/Winter Festival cards for people who have donated during the year, even though I have't yet had a donation. It would be kind of like a long distance signing and I might add in little bits of writing or something. I have several months to make a definite decision but I really like the idea. Everything I do at the moment is Internet based and I think having something handwritten would make me seem more real.

I spent some time this afternoon putting some excerpts up on my sponsorable stories page to give people an idea of what they're sponsoring. Hopefully this will be helpful to those who would like to sponsor a story but doesn't know which one because I don't have a lot of information posted on anything at the moment, apart from the free stories and the random stuff I put up last month. There are more random stories I want to work on because my brain never seems to stop, but I'm still having problems with translating what's in my brain onto my computer.