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dysonrulesSince my journal has turned into nothing but a BROTHEL with constant PIMP PIMP PIMP lately, I figured I'd better jot something else down before the rush unfriending. XD
So I've been thinking a lot about writing lately after the![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
hd_holidays experience from hell. I seemed to have loads of company in the "OMG I CAN'T WRITE" category. Despite the fact that I wrote 30-something fics this year, I feel like I hardly wrote at all. I spent a lot of time fiddling around wishing I was writing, especially in the latter half of the year. The exception was my Travel Fair fic.
I write in a linear fashion. I start at the beginning and I write straight through to the end. If I get stuck on a scene, for me it's like hitting a giant brick wall. There is no getting around it. The fic is completely stalled until I power through the block and continue on. I know a lot of you write in clumps: A scene here, a scene there, and then you stitch them all together. I have done that a few times and I am never happy with the "seam" if you will. It never seems to flow right because events leading up to the pre-written scene will usually have a different tone than the scene and I always feel I'm trying to jam it together, usually causing me to rewrite the whole damn thing anyway. I finally stopped doing that and now I just write the damn thing as it will be read.
Which works great with something like The Incredible Race, which I had outlined nicely as to what would happen challenge by challenge and the boys were being brilliantly cooperative with their dialog and their growing attraction and everything was flowing like a river. Each time I sat down to write the words exploded onto the page and it was the easiest thing ever. I had plenty of time to do weeks of research and set the scene properly and still create a 50k fic. It was blissful.
And then came HD Holidays. I loved the concept of the fic. Epilogue compliant Harry and Draco masquerade as their own sons and return to Hogwarts. It would be brilliant! And then it all fell apart. ***spoilers ahoy - if you haven't read Decoy Dilemma and don't want my whining to ruin it for you, skip to the CHEATING section below*** Continuing on... I was never sold on the premise for them returning to Hogwarts. My bad guy was a pale shadow of a "real" villain, but I talked myself into it because the story wasn't about him, it was about the boys falling in love. But it lessened my excitement for the fic a bit. Then they got to Hogwarts and the kids pumped it up a lot because oh how I love the Nextgen. Louis Weasley turned out to be a delightful surprise. But then I realized with the existence of the Marauder's Map it would be a simple task for Harry to locate and apprehend Nott. END OF FIC. So the Map had to go. In hindsight, I should have just destroyed the damn thing, but I just couldn't bear it. Enter one comedy of errors with Hugo borrowing the map never to be seen again. I'm sure this annoyed readers who figured Harry would stop being distracted by Draco long enough to FIND HUGO. Thankfully, Draco was being VERY distracting, so I think the readers forgave that. *crosses fingers* And then came the wards. The "crumbling wards" at Hogwarts was never meant to be a huge plot point - it was meant to explain that it would be relatively easy for Nott to access the grounds Polyjuiced as whomever, and also to explain why the boys wouldn't be safe AT THE SAFEST PLACE IN THE WIZARDING WORLD. *nods*
I had a nice solution worked out, wrote it in, my beta said "LOLNO" so I had to take it out. An entire, painstaking scene that had taken ages to write because this fic WOULD NOT BE WRITTEN. I would write a paragraph and want to tear out my hair with hate for it and then I would go make a bracelet to relax. And then attempt to write more. (If you got a bracelet from me, consider it a piece of my HOLS fic that refused to be written. I made a lot of them!) Anyway, I tore out the scene and worked out an alternative. And then I completely ran out of time. D: For the first time ever I completely dropped a plot point and it's eating at my brain to the point where I refuse to post the fic anywhere else until I can FIX IT. I also only got halfway through the final read-through (during which I change every other sentence). If I'd finished it I would have added in the tantalizing LIST that belongs to Albus and Scorpius. *headdesk*
And THEN with all the torture of writing it up to the point of confrontation, the scene took five seconds. I was sobbing with frustration and pleading with Harry. "Come on, you're killing me. It's thirty thousand damn words and you take him out in a single page? I wanted a huge battle! Beams falling! Danger! Drama! Big action scene!" But Harry just shrugged. "I've been an Auror for twenty damn years. It was easy. You don't want me to look stupid and incompetent in front of Draco, do you? He might never give me another blow job." So I tore at my hair, sucked it up, and let Harry have his ten-second moment of glory.
IN SUMMARY. I HATE MY HOLS FIC. I HATE IT LIKE BURNING. I WANT TO DELETE IT FROM THE INTERNET FOREVER. *sigh* But instead I think I'll just fix it and post it here in a revised version that I hopefully won't want to destroy with a flamethrower. And that was 2010 for me. The easiest fic I ever wrote and the second hardest. (The Medieval Fic was the hardest and I won't even go there.)
NOW ON TO THE CHEATING, WHICH MOST OF YOU PROBABLY SKIPPED TO, ANYWAY.
I have a fic I want to write. I've had it plotted for pretty much a couple of years now. With my history of writing ten million fest fics per year, this fic will most likely not be written this year. Unless... I plan to peruse the Smoochfest prompts and find one that will fit this fic and write it. In fact, I may or may not have already started it. *looks shifty* The prompts won't start coming in until February 14th and Claiming doesn't start until March. I hope to have a good chunk of this fic done by then. So my suggestion to you: If you have a fic in mind you want to write, GET STARTED ON IT NOW. Chances are, there will be a prompt that you can use to tweak your story. You can write the fic you want, your prompter will get an awesome gift that you LOVED WRITING (see TL:DR above) and everyone wins. (And also you have extra time to write your story and submit it on time and thereby avoid earning modly wratch forever and ever.) It's a WIN WIN WIN situation! AND I LIKE TO WIN.
In other news,![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
faithwood is back!!!! *squeals gleefully* Be sure to go and poke her. She likes it. And then go contribute to GROPEFEST over at insaners . Feel free to keep contributing to CUDDLE FEST because none of the "days" over there actually end. Think of it as sort of an Internet version of Wonderland. FULL OF CRAZY.
I think that's enough babbling for awhile. *falls over*
So I've been thinking a lot about writing lately after the
hd_holidays experience from hell. I seemed to have loads of company in the "OMG I CAN'T WRITE" category. Despite the fact that I wrote 30-something fics this year, I feel like I hardly wrote at all. I spent a lot of time fiddling around wishing I was writing, especially in the latter half of the year. The exception was my Travel Fair fic.I write in a linear fashion. I start at the beginning and I write straight through to the end. If I get stuck on a scene, for me it's like hitting a giant brick wall. There is no getting around it. The fic is completely stalled until I power through the block and continue on. I know a lot of you write in clumps: A scene here, a scene there, and then you stitch them all together. I have done that a few times and I am never happy with the "seam" if you will. It never seems to flow right because events leading up to the pre-written scene will usually have a different tone than the scene and I always feel I'm trying to jam it together, usually causing me to rewrite the whole damn thing anyway. I finally stopped doing that and now I just write the damn thing as it will be read.
Which works great with something like The Incredible Race, which I had outlined nicely as to what would happen challenge by challenge and the boys were being brilliantly cooperative with their dialog and their growing attraction and everything was flowing like a river. Each time I sat down to write the words exploded onto the page and it was the easiest thing ever. I had plenty of time to do weeks of research and set the scene properly and still create a 50k fic. It was blissful.
And then came HD Holidays. I loved the concept of the fic. Epilogue compliant Harry and Draco masquerade as their own sons and return to Hogwarts. It would be brilliant! And then it all fell apart. ***spoilers ahoy - if you haven't read Decoy Dilemma and don't want my whining to ruin it for you, skip to the CHEATING section below*** Continuing on... I was never sold on the premise for them returning to Hogwarts. My bad guy was a pale shadow of a "real" villain, but I talked myself into it because the story wasn't about him, it was about the boys falling in love. But it lessened my excitement for the fic a bit. Then they got to Hogwarts and the kids pumped it up a lot because oh how I love the Nextgen. Louis Weasley turned out to be a delightful surprise. But then I realized with the existence of the Marauder's Map it would be a simple task for Harry to locate and apprehend Nott. END OF FIC. So the Map had to go. In hindsight, I should have just destroyed the damn thing, but I just couldn't bear it. Enter one comedy of errors with Hugo borrowing the map never to be seen again. I'm sure this annoyed readers who figured Harry would stop being distracted by Draco long enough to FIND HUGO. Thankfully, Draco was being VERY distracting, so I think the readers forgave that. *crosses fingers* And then came the wards. The "crumbling wards" at Hogwarts was never meant to be a huge plot point - it was meant to explain that it would be relatively easy for Nott to access the grounds Polyjuiced as whomever, and also to explain why the boys wouldn't be safe AT THE SAFEST PLACE IN THE WIZARDING WORLD. *nods*
I had a nice solution worked out, wrote it in, my beta said "LOLNO" so I had to take it out. An entire, painstaking scene that had taken ages to write because this fic WOULD NOT BE WRITTEN. I would write a paragraph and want to tear out my hair with hate for it and then I would go make a bracelet to relax. And then attempt to write more. (If you got a bracelet from me, consider it a piece of my HOLS fic that refused to be written. I made a lot of them!) Anyway, I tore out the scene and worked out an alternative. And then I completely ran out of time. D: For the first time ever I completely dropped a plot point and it's eating at my brain to the point where I refuse to post the fic anywhere else until I can FIX IT. I also only got halfway through the final read-through (during which I change every other sentence). If I'd finished it I would have added in the tantalizing LIST that belongs to Albus and Scorpius. *headdesk*
And THEN with all the torture of writing it up to the point of confrontation, the scene took five seconds. I was sobbing with frustration and pleading with Harry. "Come on, you're killing me. It's thirty thousand damn words and you take him out in a single page? I wanted a huge battle! Beams falling! Danger! Drama! Big action scene!" But Harry just shrugged. "I've been an Auror for twenty damn years. It was easy. You don't want me to look stupid and incompetent in front of Draco, do you? He might never give me another blow job." So I tore at my hair, sucked it up, and let Harry have his ten-second moment of glory.
IN SUMMARY. I HATE MY HOLS FIC. I HATE IT LIKE BURNING. I WANT TO DELETE IT FROM THE INTERNET FOREVER. *sigh* But instead I think I'll just fix it and post it here in a revised version that I hopefully won't want to destroy with a flamethrower. And that was 2010 for me. The easiest fic I ever wrote and the second hardest. (The Medieval Fic was the hardest and I won't even go there.)
NOW ON TO THE CHEATING, WHICH MOST OF YOU PROBABLY SKIPPED TO, ANYWAY.
I have a fic I want to write. I've had it plotted for pretty much a couple of years now. With my history of writing ten million fest fics per year, this fic will most likely not be written this year. Unless... I plan to peruse the Smoochfest prompts and find one that will fit this fic and write it. In fact, I may or may not have already started it. *looks shifty* The prompts won't start coming in until February 14th and Claiming doesn't start until March. I hope to have a good chunk of this fic done by then. So my suggestion to you: If you have a fic in mind you want to write, GET STARTED ON IT NOW. Chances are, there will be a prompt that you can use to tweak your story. You can write the fic you want, your prompter will get an awesome gift that you LOVED WRITING (see TL:DR above) and everyone wins. (And also you have extra time to write your story and submit it on time and thereby avoid earning modly wratch forever and ever.) It's a WIN WIN WIN situation! AND I LIKE TO WIN.
In other news,
faithwood is back!!!! *squeals gleefully* Be sure to go and poke her. She likes it. And then go contribute to GROPEFEST over at insaners . Feel free to keep contributing to CUDDLE FEST because none of the "days" over there actually end. Think of it as sort of an Internet version of Wonderland. FULL OF CRAZY.I think that's enough babbling for awhile. *falls over*