Tuneup
Crossposted from muse_academy today. OOC post.
We all know that our cars need regular servicing, in order to keep running well.
It's time for your muse to get put up on the lift and given his/her 50,000 mile tune up. Anything stuck? Need to change some filters? Have you worn out the brakes? How's the engine? Purring like a kitten or sputtering?
Physically. Emotionally. Communities. Storylines. Take a good, hard, critical look at your muse, both as an independent entity and where they are in their game, and evaluate what needs to be tuned up.
I'm actually very happy with Q right now. In the beginning, back in 2003, I created the journal for a Star Trek RPG, and then a separate journal for theatrical_muse. But the RPs kind of died, and I kept doing the TM posts but really didn't get any kind of response, so I sort of let that die too.
But in 2008 I decided to get back into it. I consolidated the TM journal into the RP journal, using the new tags function to keep them separate, and I started doing TM posts again. And this year, I've joined a few other prompt communities, and a pan-fandom RPG. The other prompt communities have forced me to expand my formats; in the past I'd always done Q's entries as first person, since, well, it's his journal (and I almost never write fic in 1st person for him, it's always 3rd, so that seemed to be expanding my formats at the time that I started.) Many of the ficlet requests I've seen in prompt communities besides TM, however, are too well suited for a third person fic, so I've begun doing them, and some of them I can actually use in longer fanfics, or can post as standalone stories to the various web sites I post Q fic on.
Most recently I decided to screw up my courage and actually join an erotic prompts community. I've developed a strong interest in writing about really alien sexuality -- writing about human sex usually bores me because it's so overdone, but if you can make the sex games of two amorphous blobs of energy sound so hot they turn the reader on, *that* is a nifty trick to pull off. Thus far I haven't managed to do anything more than 1st person question answering, but I do intend to do mostly 3rd person ficlets for it (3rd person because Q is such an ass that having him describe sex that he had can only be funny, not hot; if I actually want to write something hot for him I've got to switch to third person.) I am very easily embarrassed by writing about sex and don't do it that often, so this is actually a serious attempt to push my own boundaries as a writer.
The one problem with all this is that with an RPG, an RP posting community, and four prompt communities, I'm writing more in Q's journal than I am in regular fanfic! And I'd wanted to move toward publishable original fiction, too. So maybe I might want to back off a little with the muse, but on the other hand writing Q is one of the most fun things in my life right now... so maybe not.
We all know that our cars need regular servicing, in order to keep running well.
It's time for your muse to get put up on the lift and given his/her 50,000 mile tune up. Anything stuck? Need to change some filters? Have you worn out the brakes? How's the engine? Purring like a kitten or sputtering?
Physically. Emotionally. Communities. Storylines. Take a good, hard, critical look at your muse, both as an independent entity and where they are in their game, and evaluate what needs to be tuned up.
I'm actually very happy with Q right now. In the beginning, back in 2003, I created the journal for a Star Trek RPG, and then a separate journal for theatrical_muse. But the RPs kind of died, and I kept doing the TM posts but really didn't get any kind of response, so I sort of let that die too.
But in 2008 I decided to get back into it. I consolidated the TM journal into the RP journal, using the new tags function to keep them separate, and I started doing TM posts again. And this year, I've joined a few other prompt communities, and a pan-fandom RPG. The other prompt communities have forced me to expand my formats; in the past I'd always done Q's entries as first person, since, well, it's his journal (and I almost never write fic in 1st person for him, it's always 3rd, so that seemed to be expanding my formats at the time that I started.) Many of the ficlet requests I've seen in prompt communities besides TM, however, are too well suited for a third person fic, so I've begun doing them, and some of them I can actually use in longer fanfics, or can post as standalone stories to the various web sites I post Q fic on.
Most recently I decided to screw up my courage and actually join an erotic prompts community. I've developed a strong interest in writing about really alien sexuality -- writing about human sex usually bores me because it's so overdone, but if you can make the sex games of two amorphous blobs of energy sound so hot they turn the reader on, *that* is a nifty trick to pull off. Thus far I haven't managed to do anything more than 1st person question answering, but I do intend to do mostly 3rd person ficlets for it (3rd person because Q is such an ass that having him describe sex that he had can only be funny, not hot; if I actually want to write something hot for him I've got to switch to third person.) I am very easily embarrassed by writing about sex and don't do it that often, so this is actually a serious attempt to push my own boundaries as a writer.
The one problem with all this is that with an RPG, an RP posting community, and four prompt communities, I'm writing more in Q's journal than I am in regular fanfic! And I'd wanted to move toward publishable original fiction, too. So maybe I might want to back off a little with the muse, but on the other hand writing Q is one of the most fun things in my life right now... so maybe not.