Snowflake Challenge 2026 - Day 8

[gothikmaus]

Challenge #8

Talk about your creative process.

I've never really thought about my creative process, but for writing it usually starts with a scene, a sentence, or even just an image. At the moment I'm only actively writing fanfiction in the CSI and Lupin III fandoms and most of my inspiration comes from one of the following:

a) Specific canon moments, like a certain scene or something the characters said.

Examples of this are Little green-eyed monster (CSI, Nick/Greg), which was inspired by a scene from S09E05 - Leave Out All the Rest; Make a muscle (CSI, Nick/Greg), a coda to S05E04 - Crow's Feet; A promise is a promise (Lupin III, gen), inspired by a line from the Jigen Daisuke live-action film.

b) Writing prompts. I follow Creative Prompts for Writing on Tumblr, and a lot of my fics were inspired by prompts I found on that page. I mostly write ficlets or short fics and I find it quiet easy to develop a short story starting from a few words or a little scene.

Examples of this are Prove it (CSI, Nick/Greg); The way you smile (CSI, Nick/Greg) and a lot of the daily ficlets from the various Nick/Greg Advent Calendars I've done these last few years.

That's where I get inspiration. For the development of the story I don't have a fixed process, but a couple of years ago I changed the way I write. I used to spend a lot of time trying to find the right words in the past, and often got stuck and frustrated. Then I finally embraced the "just write the first draft" approach, and things got so much easier. Sometimes, when I know what I want to say, but not how I want to say it, I just write down a short summary, or a very tentative version of what I have in mind, just to get it out of the way. Then I come back to it and edit it: sometimes it's just some minor twists, like using a certain word instead of another, other times I completely rewrite a sentence or even delete whole scenes.

As for fanart, I started doing redraws of screencaps and illustations lately, just to see if I could do that in my style. I'm not very confident with my art, and by doing redraws I find I'm more relaxed in my approach, it feels like I'm doing a study (which I am, in a way), so I don't care if the final result isn't perfect (which is never going to be).

Examples of this are this Goemon redraw, this Sailor Mars redraw and this Rose of Versailles redraw.