Project Athena | Author Spotlight

disney_fanatic36

Dive into a captivating universe of boundless creativity with disney_fanatic36, an extraordinary writer whose fanfiction transports readers to extraordinary realms and enthralling adventures. Get ready to embark on a spellbinding journey through beloved fandoms and discover a world where imagination knows no limits.

What inspired you to become a writer? When did you first start writing?

I've always been pretty introverted and never felt comfortable just saying whatever came to mind. Writing was my method for expressing my feelings and allowed me to feel as if I were being heard. A major source of inspiration for my writing has always been Disney. I absolutely love their storytelling methods and it's my desire to share that sort of magic with other people.

I believe I started writing when I was ten. They were these cute little short stories that I still occasionally go back and read. Obviously, they're nowhere near the quality of my writing today, but it's still nice to look back and see where I started.

How do you balance your personal life and responsibilities with your writing? What strategies do you use to find time to write?

Balancing a writing life with a personal life I've found pretty difficult, and I'm not sure there's just one way to do it. However, you have to make the time because there's always going to be something else that prevents you from finding the time. I'll set aside an hour and sit down at my laptop away from all distractions. I try not to make writing feel like a job or an obligation, but like a reward because at the end of the day it's the thing that I love and I'm writing the story that I myself would want to read.

Can you discuss the role that feedback and reviews play in your writing process? How do you handle negative feedback or criticism?

Feedback and reviews I take pretty seriously. I'm constantly searching for ways to elevate and improve my writing. After I've been staring at a chapter for so long, there's still going to be obvious holes or something I overlooked. The story's already in my head and sometimes some concepts don't fully make it out onto the page that someone with no knowledge of the extensive world I've created could possibly understand without context. An additional set of eyes never hurts.

As for negative feedback and criticism, I take it with a grain of salt—sorting through what might actually be helpful and what's intended to tear me down. At the end of the day it's still my story and it's going to be written the way that I intend. Negative feedback can help locate problems, but it shouldn't be permitted to stop the story from being told or completely change it so the writer's voice is no longer their own. I might change a thing or two to help the clarity of the plot, but I won't rewrite everything to simply please everyone who's ever going to read my story—it's just not possible.

What do you do when you encounter writer's block or feel stuck in your story? How do you get unstuck and keep writing?

When experiencing writer's block, I'll take a minute away and switch gears at how I'm approaching my story. I'm an artist as well, so if I can't figure out what's next with words I'll try and storyboard with pictures. Or I'll create a playlist that would match the soundtrack as if watching my story play out like a film in my head. Sometimes it helps to establish the mood. There are also times when this simply doesn't work and I just have to force myself to sit down in front of my laptop and get anything down on the page. It doesn't even have to be related to my story. Random prompts sometimes help inspire me to get the ball rolling like a warm-up before jumping right back into my story once I have momentum.