Hi. As you might have noticed or not, I am slowly but gradually reading my way through your fics over on AO3. I really like your style and content. I need a hint, though... How do you manage to be so productive? I've seen the dates of publishing and I had

Hey, you nice thing, you! This is really nice! Thanks about my style, content, etc. I don’t think I’m particularly gifted at handling real life, though, haha! At least, no better than average. All I am is really, weirdly fast, and really, weirdly prolific. I don’t know why it’s like that; it just always has been like that. If I average it out over the years, I turn out around 11,000-12,000 words per week. Sometimes I go for a week or two without writing at all, but then other times, it’s genuinely insane - I think my record is something like 60,000 words over three days. Those little spates just come around every now and then. I still get up, go to work, etc, but I drop everything else and do nothing but write. I forget to eat, I don’t sleep very much (or at all); I just write until whatever I’m writing is finished. It honestly freaks me out a little bit, but that’s just how I’m wired, I guess.

I think part of it is that some part of my brain is always writing. Either it’s the story I’m working on or else it’s the next thing. I see the scenes playing out in my head like movies and then I sit down and try to capture it exactly as I saw it. Some of my favourite comments are actually when people say that they saw the story playing out like a movie while they were reading and then I think, oh good, I managed to transcribe it, then! But I think it’s that mental pre-writing that makes it so much shorter, possibly? I don’t do drafts at all - or rather, I think I do that part in my head. Once it’s written, it’s finalised, with the exception of typos and missing words (MOST of which I usually catch in edits, haha, though not always!). Basically, I never sit down to a blank page with the hope that inspiration will come. The thing I need to write is always already there - I just have to deal with real life obligations around it, you know?

It’s definitely freakish, though. I was in a writers’ circle for a bit and would get so bored because it seemed like all they wanted to talk about was what to do about writers’ block. I sort of think that we shouldn’t write because we want to have written something - we should write when there’s a story bursting its way out of our heads (and fingers?), because then it just goes on its own, you know? That said… I do think it’s unusual. I don’t mean to make that sound like a talent or some special thing that I’ve somehow achieved. I think it’s sort of like your height - it just is what it is, and if a person is seven feet tall, it’s not so much a personal accomplishment as it is something a bit odd. I’m a bit odd, is what I’m trying to say. Lol.

When I’m in those crazy writing spates, though, I will say that my dishes don’t get washed, I don’t sleep anywhere near enough, I’m probably a little under-prepared for the classes I teach, and sleepy on the job on top of it, so really - don’t credit me for life skillz!! :P We just do what our muses command, yeah?

All the very best with your own writing! :)