Story update

[brigdh]

Wordcount on the story I'm working on at the moment: 1,467

Amount of hatred I currently have for my own writing: immense!

Man, what happened there? I had a few months where stories seemed to come so easily, and now I'm back to obsessing over every single word choice and loathing the majority of complete sentences*. I sort of want to write something very short as a break from this, to get back into the feel of writing again. But I hate all of 31_days prompts this month, and I'd rather sulk about that than be productive and find other sources.

*And yes, okay, a voice in the back of my head says that taking time and obsessing over word choice means this will be a better story than ones I've written recently, but hush.

Comments

[threewalls]

You don't want random snippets of Richard/Alec that I can't find a home for?

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

...Of course I want random snippets of Richard/Alec! You have to ask?

[(Anonymous)]

Well, I meant more in the sense of 'snippets: free to a good home'?

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

Well, I meant more in the sense of 'snippets: free to a good home'?

I figured that's what you meant. I can't promise I'll write them (I feel vaguely guilty about taking someone else's ideas), but I'd certainly love to hear them.

[threewalls]

I think it's the way that Kushner writes sex sentences rather than scenes, for the most part, that's stopping me ("Richard held him down until Alec was too breathless for lies and his body honest enough to hurt them both." goes with something I'm sticking beating against walls in the hope that more shakes loose.)

Also, please tell me there's some canonical leave-taking between SP and PoTS in the short stories?

---

"Richard had known a man who, under threat of discovery, had swallowed the diamond he'd stolen. The guards had found nothing, but their parting punches to the thief's stomach slowed his journey home and made his wife a wealthy widow.

Sometimes, he thinks Alec's mind must be like a diamond, sparkling, expensive, sharp."

---

"Sometimes, his imaginary opponents were nobles, all flash, no training, but they were still the ones most likely to leave him feeling beaten. You couldn't kill ghosts with a sword."

---

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

Oh my God. These are gorgeous. These are amazing. I certainly can't take them, because the contrast with my own writing would be too much, but thank you so much for sharing them. If you finish the story that goes with the first one, I might have to love you forever.

Also, please tell me there's some canonical leave-taking between SP and PoTS in the short stories?

No, alas. The only story set between the novels is just about them hanging out in Riverside shortly after SP.

(And I already used my 'best things evar' icon being silly, and now I don't have any icons appropriate for my love. But it is massive; these are such lovely, perfect pieces of writing that I'm in awe.)

[threewalls]

If only there was enough in any of them for a drabble...

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

Which is too bad, because I'd love to read them.

[quixotic-sense.livejournal.com]

.......... well, there's always 52_flavours? :D

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

Wow! I haven't seen this community before; thank you so much. These are some lovely prompts, exactly what I need.

No slash allowed, though, so I may not be able to post to the community. Well, I suppose if there's no explicit kissing or sex, I may be able to claim it's gen.

[weirdquark]

Explict het is okay though. What the fuck?

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

I know! Man, it's been a long time since I've seen slash banned like that. I enjoy my happy gay corner of fandom, thank you.

[veleda-k.livejournal.com]

I was actually looking into that community until I noticed they didn't allow slash. I have to boycott it on principle. Not that anyone there knows or cares, but my conscience is assuaged.

(Er, not that anyone else has to boycott it. I'm just saying what I do.)

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I feel a bit iffy about it. But on the other hand, fandom's a bit of a different place than the real world. I'm pretty sure kitty-whatshername-I'mtoolazytogobackandlook is aware that the majority of the people around her think she's crazy and stupid.

[quixotic-sense.livejournal.com]

*cough* One of my friends have staged a take-over of the community. Word has it that she's going to change the rules.

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

Heh. Yeah, when I saw hemlocke's name as one of the admins, I thought, "Well, she certainly doesn't have any problems with the gay..."

[veleda-k.livejournal.com]

Ah, good old "my writing is crap!" angst. I'm well familiar with it. It comes and goes, though you probably know that. I'm pretty sure the best course of action is to plow through it, if only because if you don't write you can't move beyond the "argh, I suck" stage.

Then again, there's also the possibility that I have no clue what I'm talking about, and should be ignored on principle.

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

Yeah. I'm trying to write past it, but I'm getting to the point where I hate the whole story, and everything associated with it, possibly because I've already been working on it for a month and am still on the first scene. Well. For definitions of "working on it" that include it sitting unopened on my desktop while I feel guilty for refusing to even look at it.

Which is why I think I might write something short first instead, and then come back to this.

*ignores your invitation to be ignored*

[ravenbell.livejournal.com]

Are you the type to write everything in order? What helps me sometimes is just going ahead and finishing the parts I *can* write and then going back and filling in the gaps.

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

Usually I do, but this story is actually the rare case when I haven't. I wrote all the good bits first, and now I'm trying to connect them up into a story. Which means I've been spending a lot of time staring at the screen and going "All I need to do is think of a sentence that means, basically, 'they got into bed'. It is really not that hard. Why do I loathe every possible way of saying this I can think of?"

[weirdquark]

Have you tried doing that thing where you give yourself permission to write crap, pick one of the sentences that you loathe, write from there, finish the story, and then go back and see if you can think of better ways to do the transistions later?

This sometimes works and sometimes doesn't -- I have things that I can only write once I find a good place to start, and then it flows, but if I can't find a beginning that I like, it doesn't go anywhere at all.

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

That's what I was trying yesterday: attempting to just put something down, in the hopes of getting to more interesting bits and coming back to fix it later.

Of course, right around now I should be starting writing for today, but I dread looking over what I did yesterday.

[veleda-k.livejournal.com]

Heh, yeah, I'm "working on" my Yamato/Kouya story, so I get where you're coming from. But I'm feeling more upbeat since I finished the second chapter of my Bleach/YnM crossover. Finishing something can definitely make you feel better.

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

And once you've posted it, there's the potential of getting feedback to reassure yourself that at least other people don't think you suck.

[p-zeitgeist.livejournal.com]

I think there's something in the water supply. I can't even bear to look at things I've finished and posted, let alone anything in progress.

I wonder whether this is related in any way to that psychological disturbance where you look in a mirror and know that you -- and only you -- are too ugly to leave the house without a bag over your head? In a way, it might be useful if it were, since at least once you know what that is you can ignore it or if not ignore it, remind yourself that no one else can tell. -- Or it might not be useful. You can stay away from mirrors when you're having an ugly day, but there's no way of not looking at your sentences when you're trying to write something.

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

I thought about looking at some of my finished things earlier, as a form of inspiration, but then I decided that way lay madness. I'm sticking with the story where I can at least reassure myself that no one else has seen it.

You could stop writing! Or, rather, do the thing where you open up the story file, and then say, Oh, I'll start as soon as I check my email. And then I need to look up that thing. And maybe see if I can't find that song I wanted earlier. And...

And before you know it, it's eight hours later and you still haven't had to so much as glance at the actual story. Which is the tack I've been taking for the last month or so.

[p-zeitgeist.livejournal.com]

You could stop writing, but that's not useful. I was thinking more along the lines of telling yourself, sure, this is beastly. I know it; there's no point in trying to pretend otherwise. Except that experience has taught me that sometimes I am insane! Probably if I keep going even though I hate every single word, including 'a' and 'the' it will turn out that it's really fine. I might even like it, and wonder what was wrong with me, once I am no longer insane -- that has actually happened, so it might happen again!

But the pain, you know? It's like that thing where your heroes are cast into some nightmare hell world, and have to convince themselves that it's all illusion. It's one thing to watch it on the screen; doing it yourself is harder than it looks.

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

Well, yes. I wouldn't actually stop writing, or at least not for more than a few days while I was busy with other things.

I wonder if other people go through these bouts of insanity. 'Writer's block' is so famous; do accountants ever wake up simply unable to bear the sight of numbers? Do travel agents think they did a terrible job with that last cruise, and they should never be allowed near a guide book again?

It is so reassuring to know other people can develop a hatred for perfectly plain words. I couldn't stand 'when' earlier tonight.

[ravenbell.livejournal.com]

2600 words of bad, bad sex. Aaargh. Why do I think I can do these things?!

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

Hee. What are you writing?

[ravenbell.livejournal.com]

A three-way with bondage for yaoi_challenge. Don't want to give away anything, but I've done the relationship before. Just not with explicit sex.

I think I need to read more porn.

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

Heh, I have that problem sometimes. I've found the kink-list and neglected body parts-list I linked in the previous post to be very inspirational for porn.

[gamera.livejournal.com]

That's like me with the yaoi_challenge story I'm working on now. And it doesn't help that one of the characters I'm writing has a very unique sort of mindset and voice and I'm doubly obsessing over word choice because of it.

52_flavors looks interesting, but... no slash? Ah, well, I swipe prompts from communities that only allow pairings or don't allow original fiction or don't allow fan fiction and use them for all sorts of unsavory purposes outside of the actual community all the time. I may have to do that with this one.

[gamera.livejournal.com]

Er, 52_flavours. Me and my silly American spelling.

[veleda-k.livejournal.com]

Oh, good plan. Subvert the dominant paradigm! Er, well, subvert the homophobic community at any rate. That's good too.

[gamera.livejournal.com]

Hee, those were my thoughts, too. Ironically enough, I usually do it because communities don't allow general series claims and for some fandoms-- like, say Gintama (HI ZURA ICON~)-- it just works best with everyone involved. Sticking it to them (except not really) by writing gay porn with their prompts strikes me as a fun idea.

I'm sorry, I just feel the need to fangirl whenever I see anyone mention (or use an icon from) Gintama because it's such a tiny fandom.

[veleda-k.livejournal.com]

Hee, now I need to check out the prompts, and see what kind of porn I can (attempt) to write.

(IT'S NOT ZURA! IT'S KATSURA! :D)

[gamera.livejournal.com]

Your comment above makes me think that Bleach/Yami no Matsuei crossover porn is in order. Just because there are so many possibilities of hot.

(WHAT ARE YOU, ZURA, A GIRL FROM KYOTO?)

fixing the html...

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

Hee. I'm amused that so many people are having problems with writing right now. I wonder if Phoebe isn't right, and we've caught it off something in the environment.

Yeah, I thinking I'll probably just steal the prompts myself. After all, I can still post to my own journal and the story's fandom's communities! 52_flavours need never know.

Re: fixing the html...

[gamera.livejournal.com]

I'd believe it! Of course, it may be because we're all coming out of the holiday exchange/Nanowrimo/giftfic season and are written-out. I know that I was wiped out after that (especially since I was masochistic enough to pinch-hit in one challenge), and I certainly wouldn't discount it being behind this in my case. :p

I think that illicitly-used prompts combined with the kink lists you linked in the last post (thanks for those, by the way!) will lead to some stress-free writing to get me back on track, though! Porn makes everything better, after all.

Re: fixing the html...

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

Ah, that could be it, too. The whole deadline-writing to others' requests thing stresses me out.

Mmmm, porn. &heart;