The Write Way | ✔︎

15 | WOHNDERWALL

Today's interview features Eiman, the lovely writer behind wohnderwall. Her story, Almost Everything, has been featured by Wattpad and, if I'm not mistaken, long-listed for the Wattys 2018! In this interview, we talk about One Direction fanfiction paving the way to telling her own stories, YA romance, and her favorite books on Wattpad!

Bolded text are mine. Italicized text belong to the interviewee. Regular text are notes added by me!

* * *

Hi! Thank you so much for agreeing to this interview. To start off, please introduce yourself to our lovely readers.

Hello lovely people who are reading this (amazing) book, my name is eiman! I've just recently turned 18 and between getting through being an architecture major and balancing personal life, I like to write on here! Some know me because of my old story, that thing called love (it's being rewritten under a different title) or because of my current novel that recently got featured, Almost Everything. Besides my obvious love for reading and writing, I enjoy sketching, creating art, shopping, blogging about fashion, rewatching Disney princess movies, and eating my body weight in oreos.

Let's get right into it. How long have you been writing? When and how did you get your start? Was there a specific moment when you realized you wanted to tell stories?

I've been writing ever since I was 12, which was 6 years ago. I remember being an avid Sarah Dessen reader, and her YA romance books have always had a special place in my heart. Then I discovered Wattpad and read a ton of fanfictions (yep, the first things I read and loved on Wattpad were fanfictions. Specifically one direction fanfictions. Embarrassing, I know.) and in a way, they inspired me to write my own stories. Except they weren't fanfiction because while I loved reading those, I've always wanted to create characters and worlds from my imagination so they're unique and only mine to explore.

And then I stopped writing because everything came out horribly and too cringe worthy after I compared myself to my favorite authors (don't ever do that, we all grow differently and anyway, the first draft is always horrible). And then when I was on the verge of being 14, I thought I had finally experienced love, something my hopeless romantic self have always longed to experience just like her favorite heroines in her favorite books. It made me start writing again and I actually ended up writing my first short story that I finished.

There isn't really a specific moment when I realised I wanted to write stories. I've always wanted to write a story, I've always dreamed of it. A story just never presented itself to me. Until I thought what love really meant (it was a silly stupid crush that I'm still embarrassed about) that gave me the push to write a story and actually finish it. Give it the ending I wished life back then gave my love life.

Walk us through what the writing process is like for you. Do you have any traditions or a specific set of steps that you follow, for example: do you start with the plot idea, then move to characters, or the other way around? Additionally: how long does the planning process take for you before you start writing and how long does it take to finish a story?

The plot is always the most important to me because personally, I believe you shape characters around the plot and not the other way around. Recently, I've tried to shape the plot around the characters, write a story just because I've always wanted to write about this certain character and I can't say I've liked it. In the end, the plot starts to seem weak to me and I lose the love I had for the characters and by default, the inspiration to write. At least that's how it's like for me.

After getting the plot and characters and their traits done and described in my notes, I start building their world. Their relationships with people. Their friends and family. Their past, where they live, how old they are, their favorite foods, their quirks. Basically everything. Then I finally start planning the events that are supposed to happen in each chapter. What the key moments are and when they should happen. But I don't restrict myself to these notes because sometimes, plot holes present themselves that I have to solve. And other times, I decide to change the course of things. After all, the best things in life are often unplanned. The planning is to mostly keep me focused on the plot and not wonder what each chapter should hold.