At First Light

Liz says:
I feel like if I had today free I would probably go spend it outside and writing. something like that. actually I'd probably waste it procrastinating but that's how I SHOULD spend it.
Val says:
that does sound lovely
[...]
Liz says:
"This is one of the most singular experiences, waking on what feels like a good day, preparing to work but not yet actually embarked. At this moment there are infinite possibilities, whole hours ahead."
Val says:
oh. what is that?
Liz says:
from The Hours
Val says:
*___*
Liz says:
but not for me today. I'm already mentally stacking up all the other things I need to do before work. sad.
Val says:
mm
Val says:
and then maybe tomorrow gets to be that day
Liz says:
I don't know. even on the ones when I really feel it work shows up too quickly. I mean, there are more of those days now, but I can't make use of them. *laughs* catch 22.
Val says:
yeah, I know. I feel like that now and then. but not very often.
Val says:
have to wake up even earlier than usual
Val says:
and not be too tired
Val says:
tricky
Liz says:
yeah
Liz says:
that's kind of the problem with the creative stuff. it needs a lot of time and space. even if you're only doing about half an hour or an hour's worth of writing it takes up more of a day than that
Val says:
mmhm.
Val says:
that's what A Room Of Ones Own is about, you know
Val says:
well. sort of.
Liz says:
oh?
Val says:
yes. well.
Val says:
it's about women writers and how women have never had their own space. this makes it more difficult to develop artistic gifts.
Val says:
and then she talks about a bunch of female writers and their careers and there is a section about Shakespeare's sister. it's very good.
Liz says:
I will get it out from the library. I think I need it.
Val says:
yes, required reading

So A Room Of One's Own is sitting in my bag now, along with The Hours and Orlando. Today hasn't been a creative day because, as alluded to above, creativity is often something I have to catch just right, with a good start, preferably early in the morning with the prospect of a decent day ahead. There are all sorts of problems with this and I think I've chewed most of them over in my mind pretty often by now. In the end I'm a writer - by which I mean someone who feels uneasy when not writing more than someone notably talented at writing - who all too often needs a little more stability or a little more than she has to function as such. Balancing stability and time is going to be the eternal battle, I suppose.

All the same, that little frustration aside (I could have written... what? no idea now), today has been a Good Day.

Original writing. I've had a number of moderately serious conversations with people about this recently; it is something I really want to do, and if we're making (really belated) new year's resolutions then mine should probably be -- rather than write so much every day or write so much this year -- just write, and write with my own characters, in my own little worlds, embryonic as they may be.

I spent a lot of last year thinking really hard about this and not managing to get anywhere, so if I can make any progress that'd be sort of amazing.

I'm not a very good original writer. When I last regularly wrote original fiction it was 2005, and if you've known me in fandom since then you'll know how far my writing has come in that time. I have far better technical skills than I did at that stage, but the problem is, my skill at developing characters from scratch and all those other Rather Important Things hasn't really moved at all.

But I'm getting ahead of myself here.

The first barrier is confidence, because I'll never improve if I'm too scared to put words on paper.

So the goal is to write, and write, and write, and keep the worrying as far in check as humanly possible. And to remember that it's okay if stuff is crap at first.

(This post sponsored by firescribble, dshae47, and readerofasaph, primarily. I'm not sure how I'm going to manage any of this, but it's their fault so they get to deal with the consequences. :D)

Do not expect great things of me; I am the person who planned to cook gluten-free pasta bake for dinner tonight only to realise about five minutes ago that she had no gluten-free pasta. But I do my odd, warped, somewhat confused best.

My subrosa_tennis fic was Split Function, as I mentioned before. I also mentioned that I didn't really consider it complete, and would like to write a much-expanded version of it.

So should I:

a) chapter it and post stuff if not as I write it then at least while I am still writing (ie, I might try to keep my writing a chapter or two ahead of what I've actually posted rather than writing then instantly posting), or
b) write the whole thing and post it all at one?

Actually, it'll probably pan out as chapters of around 4,000 words each however I do it. I do have a bad record with completing chaptered fics in a timely manner, it's true, but on the other hand it is going to be quite huge and by the time I've finished the whole thing probably no-one will care any more. XD Also, hm, the final version of this is set to be quite different to the currently posted version; the first five thousand words or maybe a bit more can stand in their present form just fine but after that I start having extra scenes to weave in between existing material and details to adjust to account for the reinclusion of side-plots.

Oh, who do I kid? I'm going to take forever to work on this anyway, and I'm sure I'll ignore all advice when it comes to how to post it really. *headdesks* This is because I am masochistic and do not learn. I am trying to train myself, but. XD; Any thoughts, anyone?



Yes, I'm still sitting over here contemplating sci-fi war epic.

And I have stuff on That AU which I have to stop faffing about and just write, though basically, I keep having issues with how it all fits together. Pez, can we please have stuff like... uhm... a timeline? Some kind of York Notes on the whole thing? I'm giving myself a headache. XDDDDD

So, yes, I did write Split Function (Niou-centric sci-fi AU in the setting of Altered Carbon, featuring all of Rikkai to some degree or other, probably lurking somewhere in the PG/PG-13 range) for subrosa_tennis. I'm not planning on reposting it to my fic journal right now because, well, really incomplete. Embarrassingly so, in fact. >>;;; It's on the list for reworking and expanding upon; it's not just that it doesn't end properly, it's also that I cut out a whole chunk of the planned cast and several substantial subplots on my way to getting it done, you know, this year instead of some time in 2010. The bloody thing really wanted to be a novel. Anyway, it's over there as it stands, and one day a better version might make itself known.

Also, I are guessable. Yup. *laughs*

Why have I not finished Subrosa yet.

Well, I know what this weekend is dedicated to.

At least over the course of the last few days I've developed a more solid idea of where I'm going with D1 exchange, and have a bunch of scenes sitting in my head being all awesome at me. Now I just have to hope that they a) hang around long enough for me to give them the attention they deserve and b) prove to be translatable from mental image to text, which is a problem I never ever used to have but have been struggling with more and more over the last year. I think this is probably because I'm thinking much harder about it. How hard is too hard? Niou, don't answer that.


General rambling about fic-writing. I think I've been writing Better Fic this year than the year before, and that I wrote better fic that year than in my first year in fandom. One of the nice things fandom has done for me* is allow me to feel myself improving. I wrote a lot before I was in fandom, but without so much of the same sense of progress, probably because it just got written and then vanished and no-one ever saw any of it except my high school English teacher, who was just amazed that one of his students could sort of construct a sentence. It was that kind of school; you were doing well if you used the correct word four times in five, and even better if you knew how to spell it. Anyway, it's not so much that I think people have given me amazingly helpful feedback because (apart from readerofasaph when I was entirely new to fandom and no-one was talking to me) this is mostly not the case. But all the same; it's out there. It's a lot easier to look back at and talk about at people (which I'm often guilty of, with horrible self-indulgence -- usually those who don't run away fast enough, like crystalusagi, get most of it) and consider critically. Not least because I don't write it all in notebooks which then get lost in the depths of drawers never to be seen again...

Anyway. I can feel myself improving and see that I'm doing things better than I used to and like Lynn says, I AM still improving. But it's nice to see that I've come a fair way already since I wandered into a fandom I knew nothing at all about and started writing epic AU fic which I actually never intended to be epic in the first place. (You know, I cannot read that story. But I do like that it's there.)

* and honestly, there are quite a lot of things fandom has done for me that I'm NOT so happy about, like making me forget how to write original characters.


Oh my god, why am I trying to make sense. It's early(ish) and I have a cat balancing on the back of my chair wobbling threateningly at me and I don't have any tea and this is all just procrastination about my subrosa fic anyway when we get right down to it. And I think I need painkillers and a hot water bottle, unless my body is still messing me around. X_x

Name a character from one of my fandoms, and I'll give you either:

(a) three facts about them from my personal canon/fanon,
(b) a reason he/she sucks,
(c) a reason he/she is awesomecakes,
(d) five things that never happened to that character, or
(e) five people that character never fell in love with and why.

(Yes, yes, you can take pot-shots at my more obscure ones, too.)


I've got a few things I need to get back to people about -- sorry about that. I've been really restless the last few days and spent a lot of time fidgeting around the house since my hips have been being a bit painful and don't like the computer chair. I'll get to it soon. :)

...woah, they actually have any form of Rikkai merchandise for sale? What is this madness? XD;;


Lynn wrote a Hunter x Hunter ficlet (Killua, Gon). This sort of thing is to be thoroughly encouraged. Everyone should write HxH fic.


I haven't completed fic in a while, or so it feels. But I am 3000 words into classified project no. 1 and once I'm done with that I'll need to bounce straight over to classified project no. 2 if I'm going to meet my deadlines. After that it's a deathmatch between projects 3 and 4. Shoot me. :) Yes. Me and my writing-masochism ARE enjoying this, thanks. Ever so much.

1. So. I seem to have become General Help Person at the workshops; I fix things! I answer questions about jobhunting (even though I'm not good enough at it to have a job myself yet)! I teach basic computer use! I type up documents! I... get mistaken for a secretary by visitors!


2. The people who viewed Pez's flat today wanted to know if the Tezmobile was included.


3. Writing is just... *stares unhappily at fic* I have a new one on the go which might end up being one of the many things I'm writing for challenges/exchanges this autumn, so I'll not say too much about it, other than that it's weirding me out a bit and that it promises to be no less of an uphill struggle than anything else I've written this year. Brace for impact? Something like that.


4. Two people today were talking about how they'd be really uncomfortable if they found out someone was gay and probably would avoid them, as though this was a totally acceptable thing. I'm glad the supervisor was disgusted with them, anyway. But it was just one of those Moments. All the environments I've lived, worked and studied in have been really tolerant; I don't think I've heard things like that before from people in person, really, though of course I know those sorts of views aren't nearly as rare as they bloody should be.


5. Recent conversations & events prompt this, in a loose sort of way: I don't require all of my friends to be friends with each other. I don't require anyone to pick sides if I don't like someone. No lines have been drawn. I don't mind, so long as peace is maintained here.

That is all.

I wrote Gundam 00 fic last night: A Piece of Sky, Tieria, G. It's written for the weekly fic challenge on the forum of the Mechaphiles fic archive. Now to find the courage to crosspost and all that crap. Eek, new-fandom writing nerves.

It's shining through the gap in the curtains as though there's a streetlight outside, though the light isn't close to orange enough.

Sarah (elyndys) tagged me:

Sometimes it's ok to pimp yourself out. Post a list of your top five fics favorite you've written, regardless of fandom or the reason you love them. This isn't about the BEST things you've written, but what you LOVE most. Then tag five other people to do the same.

In no particular order...

Though this is going to be tricky, not least because I have a bizarre love/hate relationship with a great many of my stories. (...the more I hate them when I'm writing them, the more likely I am to love them with hindsight.)

1. In that light, Moments of Grace (Sanada/Yukimura, Niou/Yukimura, NC-17) probably shouldn't be a surprising choice, given just how much I hated it while writing it. I don't know how well it succeeds as fanfiction, to be honest, but I really pushed my own limits a long long way with this one, and I think in terms of writing it let me explore some new things, so I'm fond of it. Now. At the time I just wanted to murder it in its sleep, the damn thing. It's also an incredibly personal story, but that is another tale.

2. Damage Done (Niou/Yagyuu, Yukimura(/Niou?), PG through to light R by section, AU, angsty as hell), I've been told, seems like a prelude to a much bigger story. This is more or less true, although it's so open-ended that really I have no idea where a longer story might take me, which is probably why I'm afraid to find out. Basically, it would be a much bigger story. And that's pretty much why it doesn't deserve a place as one of the best things I've written. It's just not all there. It's also written in a disjointed way due to the nature of the challenges I was writing it in response to. HOWEVER. I really do have a soft spot for it, mostly because it's about the aftermath more than the event... and because making Niou angst is strangely enjoyable.

3. Redshift (Hakkai/Gojyo reincarnation fic, R) is written pretty damn badly (although not as badly as Gentleman and Trickster (Yagyuu/Niou, PG-13, AU), which falls into the same category in my mind). I'm not going to apologise for it on that front. It's an older story of mine, and it's my first Saiyuki story, and it's the only really substantial story I've written for that fandom to date. At least, the only one available in public. I often think about it and want to work on it and make it coherent and all sorts of things. It will almost certainly never happen. But I think about it enough that it probably has earned its place on this list, because I really wish it could've been something good and it takes up a lot of brain-space.

4. The level on which I am fond of Silver Bullet (Yagyuu/Niou, NC-17) is a sort of nostalgic one, because Parts Of This Story Are True. It reminds me a lot of my time in Japan, and it was written with our experience of Hokkaido fresh in my mind, even though we were there in summer, not winter. And there are trains. Anj used to laugh about my Thing with trains. But yeah, it's a Thing. I'm honestly not fond of the plot of this one, because it's so damn unoriginal, but the bits that are true make me like it anyway. In a weird personal way.

5. Ad Interim//And Moving Onward (Sanada/Yukimura, Yagyuu/Niou, Yagyuu/Niou/Yukimura, NC-17) fits into a similar sort of class to Silver Bullet, actually. The SanaYuki side especially. Nostalgia for Japan. Also, this 'verse seems to be all about the filthy porn and frankly, any shame I should feel about this has been MIA for some time. It's just fun, okay? Look. Sometimes I get my kicks from things other than murdering characters and then making other characters deal with the mess. Honest!

...okay, so mostly that's Tenipuri fic. Because I tend to like my longer stories better than my shorter ones (more to remember them for, I guess), and almost all the longer things I've posted are for Tenipuri. Huh. Also possibly less AU than might be expected of me? Though there's some in there, so no-one has to die of shock.

I'm going to bed now. *g* I am way too sleepy to think of people to tag, but please, I'm always ridiculously curious about what other people make of their own writing. Go forth and tag yourselves.