Sing me a story, laugh me a lullaby

Saw this on tumblr, and it seemed interesting. I took out two questions that were a bit stupid and kept the rest.

1. What setting have you written that you would love to go and spend time in, in real life?
2. Are you like one of your characters? Which one? In what way?
3. Would you trade places with one of your characters? Who? Why or why not?
4. What has writing done for you personally?
5. What do you hope your writing does for your readers?
6. Does art imitate life? Or does life imitate art?
7. Describe your drafting and writing process.
8. Do you have any writerly advice for your fellow writers? Show off. Don’t be shy. Tell us what you do well and how you do it.

( Natter, natter. )

I just did a properties check on my fic folders. The Sherlock folder alone (which is not all Sherlock, it's my communal folder as well at the moment) has 274 files in it, and even discarding some which are chapters of the same story or resource files, I'm pretty sure I have at least 250 separate stories on the go. To be fair, some haven't been touched in ages and some are different versions of the same story until I find the version I like, but geez brain, couldn't we find something else to do?

And my brain's answer to this usually, 'yes, Tay, why don't you photoshop some animals?'

It's a miracle I get anything accomplished ever.

Hope those who celebrated had a nice Father's Day with their guardians of choice!

I saw a tip for writers on Pinterest yesterday, and discovered that it is actually very useful, so I am passing it along in case it helps others.

When you're done writing your story (or essay or paper or whatever), run it through a text-to-speech programme (the tip suggested Google Translate, which will read what you paste into it aloud if you press the speaker button, though make sure you're on English). You will definitely hear the mistakes, as, because you know what it's supposed to say, your mind fills in the gaps when you read it to yourself, but hearing it read aloud by something that doesn't know what it's supposed to say makes you pick up on all the missing words or wrong tenses, which is something I have a lot of trouble with.

It's also hilarious to hear a computer try to suss out your character names. My favourite was one UK Speech Programme which for some reason registered 'Siger' as something closer to 'Sigula'. And hearing the unemotional computer voice reading out your characters being emotional is also quite entertaining.

ETA: OMG, I got an extra birthday present today, Rainbow Dancing Water Speakers, and I just hooked them up and OMG, they are the best thing I have ever seen. Seriously. My speakers are dancing.

I am so easily entertained.

This is a bit of an odd question, but I've grown up surrounded by couples who have never been divorced, or lost a partner and remarried, so I don't really know how people refer to their step-parents in relationship to the parent they are married to.

I have two characters with step-parents: Alec, whose dad is remarried and whose mum is not, and Sarah, whose parents are both remarried. So, if those characters were to refer to visiting their parents, would they be likely to say 'my parents' or 'my mum and step-dad/my dad and step-mum'. Would it depend on how they viewed their parents? Alec sees his step-mum more as a mother than he would see his own mum as his mother, whereas Sarah's parents divorced late in life, so she was raised by them both. I suppose it would be a personal choice, but I'm trying to be realistic. It seems clumsy to have to specify, but perhaps that's one of the complications of being a child of divorced parents.

Ugh. Anyone want to come and write the part of the story where all the clues are put together and we know how solve the problem, so I can get on to writing the part where our heroes kick ass and save the day and everyone is okay?

I am drowning in exposition. Especially with two Holmes in the room. Neither one will shut up.

Please send help.

I've noticed lately that I tend to act out my character's facial expressions while writing. So if I'm writing 'so and so smiled', I smile while I'm writing it, or if they're saying something clever, I look clever, or if they're angry I furrow my brow. I found myself typing about someone biting their lip while biting my lip.

I'm not sure if it's the actor in me, or the fact that I'm very visual, so maybe I feel I can see what I'm writing and doing the sympathetic mimicry we all do when having conversations. As though I'm talking to the characters.

Or maybe I'm just weird.