It was Petra Jacobs who posed these questions to her fellow bloggers in her blog, Inkbiotic. I decided to ponder over….
Do your dreams ever give you inspiration for stories? If so can you describe one that has?
More often than I’d like to admit. Many pieces of my poetry are based in dreams/nightmares. I guess my subconscious is a better writer than my active brain. My vivid dreams of various breathtaking locales and very realistic nightmares create the base for a lot of my poetry.
One of my frequent dream destinations is an ancient temple on a mountain. Not sure what deity or what religion…but it calls to me. It is dark, mysterious and beyond time. I only get to see it from a distance though. Every time, I spend all my time trying to reach it–walking up the mountain road, sometimes trying to persuade my companions that it is worth it but failing, sometimes stuck in the small colorful market that falls in the way wasting precious hours, and sometimes climbing up and down a maze of overpopulated stairs.
I only reached it once. It was just as dark inside, so still don’t know if it has any deity, and it had a lift that took me to the underworld, where ‘life’ was…as usual. Just a little darker due to lack of the Sun.
Do you feel comfortable writing characters of other races/ genders or with extreme experiences you’ve never had? What are your no go areas for characters?
I mostly write stories that are unlike me and have experiences that I haven’t gone through. My characters do not belong to any particular race. I actively avoid describing my characters, so their stories are universal, since my readers come from 40 countries across 5 continents. (I think penguins don’t read WordPress yet).
I have written both from the point of view of Satan and God. So I don’t see any no-go area in Characters.
Have you ever written anything that you wouldn’t write now? What was it and what’s changed?
I never publish anything I cannot stand up for in the future. So nothing yet.
Do you ever work on a style? Or do you simply write and a style happens?
I simply write. I have no particular style in mind except keeping it simple.
How about a genre? Do you always stick to the same one? Is there a genre you’d like to work in, but don’t know how?
Earlier I always stuck to realism. I tried to make my stories as close to the present reality as possible. But later I tried my hand at horror, nature stories, science fiction and mythology. I loved them all. So I’m expanding my horizon. I would like to try classic poetry, but somehow it seems beyond me.
If you’ve written a novel, what was your method? did you plan it all out beforehand with flow charts and lists? Or did you have a vague idea of what would happen and just start writing?
I cannot stick to a story for more than two days in a row. Novel writing is for people with a stronger resolve than mine.
Thank you Petra, for giving me a chance to babble. Yet again.
Short Stories | Fish-eye Perspective 