This morning, Lorraine Ambers posted about her and Ari Meghlen‘s initiative ‘Writers tag’ to connect blogging writers and hopefully have some fun as well. Sounds nice, right?

The point of this is simple: to answer some questions and pass it along by ‘tagging’ others. The rules of this game are:

• Post the Tag and Image on your blog (see above)
• Thank whoever nominated you and give a link back to their blog.
• Mention the creators of the award and link back to their blogs.
• Nominate 6+ deserving bloggers and notify your nominees by commenting on their blog

…as well as answer the following questions about myself. Before I get to that, I’ll admit that I did not expect to become a part of it, for two reasons. First: I am not finished, let alone published writer, at least yet. Second: I know only a small handful of people and am know by even fewer. But hey, I was tagged by the extremely helpful M.L. Davis and I am not going to break the chain if she trusted me to pass it on. Anyway, on to the questions now.

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Name one novel that inspired you to write.

Impossible for me. It’s the existence of self-published writing community as a whole that nudged me to think about letting my story out.

What’s your favorite genre to write and read?

Reading: Fantasy (I’d share details on sub-genres if asked for it) as well as a bit of sci-fi.
Writing: Sword-and-sorcery fantasy

Do you prefer to write stand-alone or series?

What I started to write – and still am working on – is a trilogy with a potential for standalone side stories afterwards. I expect my writing to stay within a single fictional universe for at least another decade.

 Use 3 words to describe yourself.

Shy, dreamer, curious.

Reveal your WIP aesthetics or an image that represents your MC or setting.

The main characters of my WIP fantasy live on the edge of dense pine forest.

How long did your first MS take to draft?

I started drafting it 7.10.2015. At this point, I expect at least one more year. It’s a long time but I am doing it as a hobby and working (in different stages of development) on the trilogy as a whole – and it’ll likely end somewhere around 2000 pages total.

Who is your author idol?

Another hard one. Since I am into epic/sword-and-sorcery fantasy, I guess there should be a mention of Christopher Paolini. Though, in the last months, Daniel M. Ford got quite a good share of my respect (I wrote my reviews of his Paladin trilogy a few weeks ago). Plus a few more self-published authors.

Share a writing memory that made you determined to carry on.

The strange mixture of relaxation, mental challenge, and joy of turning my dreams into something slightly more real – and eventually shareable, in its time.

Tell us something surprising or unique about yourself.

I am into maps since being a child and studied Geoinformatics (Wikipedia link in case you have no idea what it is).

Share the hardest part about being a writer and how you overcame it.

Doubt, definitely. It follows me in most parts of my life and more so in writing. My ultimate solution to everything is ‘go to the hills’ and that works on doubt as well, for a while. Good thing I live near the hills, I guess.

What’s your favorite social media and why? Share your link.

I am too shy and thus not active on any true social media – just this blog and Goodreads (my profile).

Share some uplifting wisdom in six words or less.

Just do it.
I wish I knew that a decade earlier. But then, maybe I would not be here…

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Now, I am supposed to pass the tag along to 6 other blogging writers. I am, genuinely, screwed. My steps into blogging about writing are still going slowly and I know barely a few people so tagging 6 would be tough even if I was the first. When I discount Lorraine herself and the four more bloggers tagged by her and her tags, I am left almost without options. Hence, I have to cheat a bit and tag fewer people. I am genuinely sorry about that. I hope that this initiative will help me to find more people to follow.

So, my nominees are (I will let them know very soon):

Milly Schmidth
Mary E. Jones (who is currently on hiatus)
Outpost Dire
We write fantasy
Since the last one is a group of authors (and more than six), I hope that I can get away with formally four tags.

To close this off, I wish Lorraine and Ari the best of luck with this effort and hope it’ll bring people around. I’ll surely look at who was recommended by the participants and hope to find more sources of inspiration – and fruitful discussions – among them.