Liebster Award

I am happy to say that MsMidnightBlonde, author of Another Life to Live, and lovesstorms, author of Lovesstorms' Stories, have nominated Blink of an Eye for the Liebster Award. This is my tenth nomination, and the second one for Blink of an Eye. My first was Jinx, who nominated my Wordpress blog, where I keep a compilation of links to my actual stories. Second was MrsOogieBoogie, who nominated The Compound, my completed story about a cult. Third was MsMidnightBlonde, who nominated Blink of an Eye, my apocalyptic story. Fourth was Stormy, who nominated Echoes of Eternity, my legacy. Fifth was Daijah V, who nominated Painting the Townies Gorgeous, my challenge story. Sixth was from Julie, who also nominated Echoes of Eternity. Seventh was from hellohannah2, who nominated L'amour Vrai, my Disney story. Eighth was from AndanteZen, who nominated Echoes of Eternity. Ninth was from sandybeachgirl, who nominated Echoes of Eternity. Tenth was lovesstorms, who nominated Echoes of Eternity, Blink of an Eye, and The Compound. Thank you all for thinking of me. ♥

This award is passed on from blogger to blogger, to show appreciation and support for stories they feel deserve recognition. There are some rules attached to accepting the award, which are as follows:

1. Post the award on your blog.
2. Thank the blogger who presented the award and link back to their blog.
3. Nominate 5-11 bloggers whom you feel deserve this award and have fewer than or equal to 3,000 followers.
4. Answer 11 questions posted by the nominator, and ask your nominees 11 questions.

---

My Nominees

Since I have already been nominated by Jinx and MrsOogieBoogie, I listed and told my five nominees initially about the award. I'm not nominating them again, but for information's sake, I'm listing them again here. If you are looking for some good stories to read, these five are definitely worth checking out.

1. The Insane Dubois Legacy by Simcomix aka MrsOogieBoogie
2. Another Life to Live by MsMidnightBlonde aka RaeNic
3. Different Winters by LilyShadowWriter
4. Perfection by littlesims2chick aka alexandrea
5. Summerdream by caterpillarsims

---

Questions From MsMidnightBlonde

1.  If you could restart one generation or a couple chapters from your story, would you?
Never. When I planned out Blink of an Eye, I had exactly what I wanted to happen in mind before I published it, so I don't feel like there is any need to re-write anything. As a general practice of mine, I don't re-write things I've already published, even if they're "not as good" as other things I come up with because I like to see my progress as a writer. It helps me see how I've improved over time, as well as reminds me that there is always room for improvement, and I like that.

2. Do you prefer making sims, building houses/lots, decorating, or any combination of the three?
When I first started playing Sims, my favorite thing to do was make Sims. I love to make celebrity look a like Sims just because I really like movies and I would love for some of my favorite actors to run around my Sims town with my Smself. As I continued to play, and started writing stories, I became interested in challenging myself to build my own lots. It started with just me remodeling an existing lot or house to make it bigger or more in tune with what my story needed. Now I build a lot more elaborate things, even though I think my building skills have a long way to go before they're really, really good. I've only recently become interested in decorating, just because I've realized how much it adds to the feel of a room, making it more aesthetically pleasing. I used to just put the essentials in a room, and there'd hardly be any sort of decor, but now I've started to make the house/lot look more lived in, like it's a real place. I still only build for myself and my stories, just because I don't really feel like my lots compare to those people who build grand elaborate things and put them up for download.

3. Who is your oldest and most cherished sim you created?
Hmm.. I'm going to take 'oldest' to mean a Sim I created towards the beginning of when I started playing. I'm going to have to say my Christian Bale Sim is my most cherished Sim. LOL. I just adore him.

4. When writing your stories, do you already have an idea of how you want the generation or chapter to go or do you just play and take it a chapter at a time?
A little bit of both, I'd say. I have a rough idea of how the generation will go, but the chapter gets put together one at a time. I rarely ever have a rigid plan for anything, and if things change, I accept the changes, evolving my thinking and challenging myself to come up with something that will fit. Since I have a rough idea of the big picture, I still do try to keep my changes fitting within the parameters of the big picture, but there is definitely a lot of flexibility in my writing.

5. Have you ever made a sim you didn't really like too much, but they grew on you the more you played them?
Probably Ephemera Wallace, from Generation Two of Echoes of Eternity. At first, I wasn't quite sure where I wanted to take her personality, and I would get roadblocks when I tried to write for her or put her in a chapter. I knew I wanted her in the story though, so it wasn't a matter of me putting her in for no reason or anything like that, it was more like her personality needed to be developed more. I never have any of my characters be all good or all bad, and when I have troubles liking a Sim it's because they're leaning too much on one side, either the good or bad, and then I find them boring. When I figured out Ephemera's back story a little more, and gave her an additional facet to her personality, that's when I began to like her and then eventually love her as much as my other Sims.

6. When developing your story, have you made a complete character background of your main characters, or even the minor ones, or do you learn more about them as the story progresses?
With the way Blink of an Eye was designed, I made up the four main characters backgrounds in my head before I ever wrote anything down for publication. I don't like physically write it down, I just think about it in my head as I'm writing. Learning more about them as the story progresses is also something that can happen though because I don't always reveal all aspects of who they are right off the bat. I tend to keep a realistic outlook and feel to my stories, so often times life events will change their personality somewhat, or reveal something about them even the characters themselves didn't know.

7. Dialogue: difficult or the easiest part of the story? Does it feel natural, like it flows, or kind of stilted?
Most of the time dialogue feels natural to me, and I can tell really fast if it's starting to feel wooden, so I immediately change it. I really like writing argument scenes, they get me pumped up and energized, LOL, I don't know why. Writing arguments also helps me when I'm in a bad mood because as I write, my anger gets released and I feel calm.

8. If you’re introducing a character with a background (i.e. a doctor, police officer, scientist) or a place (i.e. city, state, country, time) you’re unfamiliar with, do you research it or just make things up?
I definitely always research it. I like to have my stuff be realistic, so I'll research at least the things I want to put in the chapter, like I won't spend my whole time learning everything there is to know about medical stuff just because I want to write about a doctor, I'll just research a specific thing so that it doesn't take forever. LOL.

9. What time period(s) do you typically write in? Are there others you’d be interested in doing in other stories?
So far, I've only really written in modern times. Blink of an Eye is slightly different because it is modern times, but it's a fictional modern time situation, since it's like what if the apocalypse happened now sort of thing. I would be interested in other historical time periods, but I just haven't hashed anything out that's definite in my mind yet. I do have a practice writing thing that would take place in Colonial America, so that's an interest for sure.

10. Do you write via pen/pencil, computer, or a combination?
I write with my computer. I have never written a Sims story with anything else, partly because since I'm doing it in blog form, I can just edit it directly into the blog and not have to worry about where did I put this page or that page, or why are all my pencils out of lead and my pens out of ink? LOL. It's just more convenient, especially since I have a laptop, so I can write anywhere, and I don't have to go to a specific room where the desktop is or anything like that. I think if I did have to be confined to a certain room simply cause I couldn't take the computer with me, I'd either go buy a laptop, LOL, or possibly jot some things down on paper. I find editing on the computer to be way easier too because I can hit backspace and poof it's gone, or I can rearrange paragraphs and that's something I don't think I could do easily with paper.

11. Do you get nervous showing your work or are you pretty confident in what you've written?
I'm confident. I've always been a confident person at heart, and I don't publish something to the public unless I am 100% okay with it. I don't really care what people think of me, so if I publish something that I'm happy with, it makes me happy to share with them.

---

Questions From lovesstorms

1. When you write, do you choose the computer or paper/pen?
I always use my computer. I write directly in my Blogger editor because it makes for easy editing, and organization. I don't have to worry about 'now where did I put that page for that chapter?' LOL, knowing me, and how much I leave shit everywhere in my house, no doubt I would lose pages from my drafts if I didn't have it all in my computer.

2. Do you write your story ahead of time, then take photos (if you have any)? Or do you take photos, then write?
Neither. LOL. What I do is open Blogger, and then open my game. I'll write a paragraph or two, and then go in game to get the pictures for those paragraphs. Then I hit the "Windows button" and go back to Blogger, write some more, and then get pictures. I'm way too scatterbrained to take pictures before hand because I would probably not even know what I got the pictures for anymore if I didn't work on it right away. I'm a very visual person, so if I just write and write with no pictures, it's easier for me to get distracted, or get stuck.

3. What made you want to start writing? A book? Life? A person? Other?
The Sims. I never wrote anything until I bought the Sims3 other than school reports, but I never wrote for fun. I feel like Sims really opened my creativity as far as writing goes. Honestly, I didn't even know I liked writing that much until I discovered Sims. LOL.

4. What’s a country you’ve always wanted to visit?
Oh man, this is hard, I want to visit a lot of places, but they're mostly in Europe, which is not a country. LOL. I like Italy, I want to see the Coliseum, France for the Eiffel Tower, England and Scotland for the castles, and Germany for the World War II stuff. I'm a huge history nerd, so seeing anything that's "old world" is fascinating to me.

5. Outside of the Sims, what’s another favorite game you play?
Tomb Raider. Sims is the only game I play on the computer. I play Tomb Raider on my PS2, and I love everything about it, the shooting things, jumping around, finding treasures, riding motorcycles, disarming traps, it's just really fun. XD

6. When you become disinterested in your story/characters, what do you do?
I will change something in my story or characters to spice it up again. Usually if this situation happens, it means I need to start thinking in a different way for the story because what I am doing is clearly not working. LOL. Sometimes I'll question whether I need to add another character, which a lot of times really solves the problem because the new character adds a level to the story that makes it fresh, usually sparking that interest I was missing. Downloading CC helps too, it's probably not the best way to deal with it since I have too much CC as it is LOL, but it does make things more interesting. It's amazing what a new outfit, hairstyle, piece of decor, or car can do for my creativity. It's such a simple thing, but it is incredibly effective. Building a new lot or house helps too because it can give me ideas.

7. When you write, do you prefer quiet or noise in the background?
Noise, noise, noise always. Hahaha. I grew up in Chicago, and although this isn't true of everyone who grows up in cities, I myself can't stand the quiet. The television is usually the noise of choice when I'm writing. I usually watch shows on prime time, so like 7pm, but then I'll write during the commercials. Once the shows I'm interested in are over for the night, the tv still stays on for a few hours after that. I can't use music as my noise though, because I end up singing along to it, and then I can't type or think about the chapter properly. I usually end up typing the lyrics to the song, and then being like, what the fuck did I just type. LOL. It's only me and my hubs in the house, I have no kids, so as far as noise like that, like if my hubs is talking to me, sometimes I can't concentrate.

8. If everyone stopped coming to your blog, would you continue to write and share?
LOL. Yes. I'd definitely keep writing and publishing. I'm proud of what I write, and I always write for myself. Readers are a very welcome perk to my writing, but I don't write for my readers, so if they just disappeared one day, I'd miss interacting with them, but it wouldn't make me stop writing.

9. Do you have a routine for reading other blogs, like reading until your caught up on one, then moving to the next one? Or do you enjoy reading little bits of many stories?
It depends on the story, to be honest. The more I like the story, the more likely it is that I will read until I'm caught up. If I don't like the story as much, but it is still somewhat interesting to me, then I will read a few chapters, and then go on to a different story.

10. Do you keep a notepad & pen/phone/tablet by your bed for those late night ideas? If so, do you actually get up and write them down?
No I don't jot down ideas by my bed. Incidentally, I am usually up at the late night hours, since I'm one of those night owl Simmers who's still up at 2-3am, so I'm already at my computer typing them out. XD

11. When you write, do you just do a quick glance and post? Or do you take a day or two or more and proofread, move things around, delete, re-write, etc, etc?
Oh, god no. LOL Quick glances for me are non-existent. A single chapter will take me at least three days to perfect and publish, depending how motivated I am. I always maintain that even though I am writing for fun, it doesn't mean I should half ass it and put no effort into it. Three days is the quickest I think I've ever completed a chapter, from initial writing to the final completion with pictures. The longest I've ever taken is a few months to perfect one chapter. I proofread as I go because I like to make sure things flow consistently, text, and picture wise. If I change a sentence or a paragraph, I'll proofread from the beginning. I'll only rewrite if I've had a draft in Blogger that I wrote a while ago, which I haven't looked at and sometimes forgot what I wrote. If I reread it and I decide I hate it, then it gets deleted. More often than not, I won't hate the entire draft, so I will write some new stuff, and then move some old stuff into the new stuff, if it fits. If it doesn't fit with the new stuff, then it gets deleted.

---

My Eleven Questions

Since this is my third nomination, and I didn't pick new nominees, no one has to answer these questions again. LOL. I'm listing them so people can see what I asked.


1. What got you interested in writing? Have you always been a natural writer, or did some life event spark you to start the hobby?

2. How serious are you about writing? Do you want to be a world famous author someday, or do you just write Sims stories for fun?

3. Is there a time of day that’s the best time for you to write?

4. What do you do to get over writers block?

5. What made you start playing Sims?

6. Do you prefer creating and writing about male or female Sims? Why do you prefer the one you do?

7. Other than Sims and writing, what are some of your other hobbies?

8. What are your favorite and least favorite expansion or stuff packs?

9. What is one of your greatest fears regarding your writing?

10. If you could pick five personality traits for your Simself, what would they be? I know when I do it, there’s always more than five I want to use, but just think of the first five that come to mind.

11. What is your favorite type of CC to download and why?