KJ

1. Tell us about your favorite writing project/universe that you've worked with and why.

My favorite writing universe is the first one that I created: fleshing out the Final Fantasy X universe for A Guardian's Legacy. In the process of giving Auron a backstory, I had to improvise details about Spira, its small towns, Yevon, the warrior monks, the other characters... And since half the story was written in Spira's future, I had to build the world in that direction, as well. I enjoyed the process a lot, and was quite happy with the world I came up with. Unless the idea I'm writing is incompatible with the AGL continuity, every FFX or X-2 story I write is, in my head, set within that iteration of Spira. (Aftermath is probably the most important example. I even re-used original characters.) I find it helpful, to have done all the world-building already, but also I think it's a pretty decent intepretation of the world we discover in the game. There are a few inconsistencies with Ultimania, but I can live with that.

An entry on my favorite projects would not be complete without a mention of the Death Shall Have No Dominion AU that I wrote with the late, great kunstarniki. Although I am proud of the story we created, my fondest memories are about the process: sharing ideas, the awesome clarity of being on the same wavelength with a collaborator, surprising and delighting one another as we fired snippets back and forth. Collaboration is an amazing creative high for me. The Confessional was a similar experience, and even more intense: I have never written a story that quickly before, and I don't expect to ever capture that kind of exciting creative madness again.

If we're talking more recently, I think my favorite is probably Political Considerations, the FFXII pinch-hit I wrote for the 2009 round of Final Fantasy Exchange. That story threw some pretty difficult political and character curveballs my way, and I was quite happy with the way I handled them. I was still getting the ground under my feet in that fandom at the time, too, so the fact that I got it all to come together under time pressure was something of a rush.

30 Days of Writing: Complete list of questions

...for The Confessional.

http://www.owlmoose.com/fic/confessional/

I guess this also means my site is live, although this is currently the only thing there. Still trying to figure out this CSS thing. Maybe this weekend?

The Confessional has found a permanent home on the Web! And it looks just wonderful.

Although I'm sure most of you who care about this already know, I have to tell the world anyway. Because I'm just too excited to not say anything! :)

For the uninitiated, this is the story that I wrote collaboratively with three others -- kunstarniki, hellbait, and iamleaper, who is our fabulous web designer -- in July and August. And I was swept up in a whirlwind of creativity -- it was a ride unlike any I've ever taken. The stories were posted individually on Fanfiction.net, but now they are all collected together, and I think they read more smoothly that way. Of course, I have no hope of objectivity in this matter. I loved the experience of writing this piece so much that there's no way for me to evaluate it fairly!

Anyway. Hooray!

My second of three planned follow-up pieces to "One More Confessional" is posted.

This is not a happy story. Parts of it came easily and others were terribly difficult to write. I almost abandoned it a couple of times, but in the end I'm glad I didn't. Mostly I'm glad I got through it.

... is finished.

My work isn't finished -- I've got multiple follow-ups in the works at varying levels of completion -- but this piece of it, "One More Confessional", is done. This is the first multi-chapter story I've ever completed. It was a weird thing, closing out that last document and adding the word "Complete" to the summary.

So much heartfelt thanks to all my collaborators -- Lee, Ry, and most especially Ikon, without whom none of this would have ever existed. I am so looking forward to whatever else you all come up with, and maybe even working together again.

This is starting to sound far too much like something I would write in a yearbook, so I'll stop now.

I have been attacked by a surplus of ideas and seem to be working on three stories at once. The last two chapters of OMC are in progress, of course, each partially written. And then two separate epilogue pieces, one journal style and one vignette. (The idea for the vignette snuck up on me rather suddenly while driving home from work yesterday, shrouded in fog on the Bay Bridge. I spent most of the night that followed in its grip, setting down bits before I lost it.) It would seem that I have a lot of work ahead of me.

That's not even mentioning AGL 30, which is as yet completely unwritten but already brewing in the back of my head, and my plans to do a minor overhaul of the parts of AGL already written and posted. And my thoughts of upgrading and spiffing up my other LiveJournal and combining it with this one (I'm finding it complex to maintain two active LJs, and my personal journal, owlmoose, is much longer established; nothing will happen on that until the weekend at the very earliest, though, so don't change any pointers yet). Yes, it's going to be a busy weekend...

Seventeen is up. I've been wanting to get to this one for awhile, ever since we started plotting bits of it behind the scenes. So I'm glad to have it out there.

Over dinner tonight, a friend who has never played the games and knows literally nothing about them told me that she'd read OMC and enjoyed it. She didn't understand much of what was going on, especially in terms of backstory, but she still liked it. I suppose that's a compliment! She also read bits of the other pieces of the Quartet, mostly for context; she said that helped a lot. I guess that partially answers the question of whether OMC stands alone, something I've often wondered. Obviously it's much richer if one reads the rest of the Quartet as well, but could someone just read it and still feel that they've seen a complete story? Hmm.

Thanks to an unexpected afternoon off of work (hooray for book publishers and the boondoggles they offer), Sixteen and Seventeen are both basically drafted.

Now I'm going to let them rest for a bit. Not only because I don't want to race them out before their time, but because my weekend suddenly booked itself -- it looks like a friend is coming into town at the last minute, and she will be whisking me away. (Oddly enough, this is the same friend whose visit caused my last mini-sabbatical from writing.) That's probably a good thing; the chapters can marinate in my mind, but I won't be able to get at them for tweaking. Should make for fresher editing, I hope.

Fourteen is posted.

I have not yet written a single word of Fifteen. Bits of Sixteen, yes. Fifteen, no. But I'm not worried; I'm sure it will come.

Edited to note that this is no longer true. I think I've found an angle, one that I think will work. I hope.

Thirteen is finished and up. Amazing how productive I can be when I have a nasty cold that makes me unfit to do much more than sit in front of a computer. On such lovely summer days, too. Bleah.

Twelve and Thirteen came much more quickly and easily than Ten and Eleven. I needed to agonize much less over them. I suppose that's to be expected, given the emotional punch and importance of the earlier chapters; these last two are lighter overall, although not without their key moments.

I only have a small scene of Fourteen drafted, so that chapter may be a while in coming. Of course, I've said that before...