I am Canadian. Being Canadian isn't about being rah rah rah patriotic - although, I definitely consider myself patriotic without the rah rahs. Okay, fine, occasionally, there's rah rahs. It's about living in a country where most of us are gathered along the southern border with a lot of empty real estate at our backs. Real estate that can and will kill you for four to six months of the year. No wonder we have so many excellent horror writers. And comedians.
An Ancient Peace
I'm an introvert who pretends to be an extrovert. This can probably be said of most authors and actors. If we were extroverts, we'd be politicians. "Don't look at me," we say. "Look at my creations." Some of us fake it better than others. I think I fake it fairly well. I also drink a lot of coffee.
I've been on my own since four days after my 17th birthday. I have zero patience for entitlement and a major competence kink.
I don't like angst. Honest emotions emerging out of circumstances or character creation, yes. The kind of metaphorical hand-wringing that over-rules everything else in the story, no. Now, admittedly, given my background, I sometimes feel that any overt emotion is too much emotion, but I'm working on it. Apparently, you may only include a single instance of your character thinking: She didn't know why she felt nothing; she knew she should be (insert relevant emotion here) but she'd worry about it later. Who knew?
Hockey was better when there was little to no fighting. I don't know when that was, but it was better then.
I used to game. Old school D&D based RPGs. Group storytelling. As a writing aide, there's nothing better for seeing how characters who didn't come out of your head behave under extreme circumstances. I'd still be playing but I moved out to the country where the only gamers are teenage boys. Not only do I not want to game with teenage boys, but they don't want to game with grandma. Understandably.
I may quote from work by the late Tom Stoppard at random intervals. Mostly from Rosencrantz and Gildenstern are Dead as I think that may be the world's cleverest bit of writing.
Years ago in a Locus interview, Stephen Brust said - and I'm paraphrasing - that writers write about what they think is cool. He thinks cloaks and swords are cool, so that's what he writes about. I think witty repartee and kick ass women are cool, so that's what I write about.
I will never kill the dog. This is a specific promise. Back in the 1980s while Frank Miller wrote and penciled the Daredevil comic, a boy's dog was lost (taken?) and at the end of the story, Daredevil arrived too late to save it for no reason whatsoever except that shit happens. Look, you can kill, in a literary sense, anyone or anything you want if it supports the story, but if there's no reason, if it's a death to hammer home the point that life sucks, you're being a dick.
As a corollary to #9, I don't like grimdark. Life's too short for all that misery. Well, mine is at this point, but your mileage may vary. I mean, if you can't laugh in the middle of an intergalactic war started by sentient plastic as a social experiment, when can you?