dbskyler

I think I finally have an idea for my

public_call fic! It'll be another day or two before I know if it's a solid idea or a "fizzler" (i.e., an idea that fizzles out on me). In the meantime, I think I should do more canon review. Such a shame that I have to re-watch this show for the sake of fic. If only I had a pile of DVDs ready and waiting for my review. Oh look, I do!

And ha, even if I end up choosing different characters than the ones I matched on, I have those DVDs, too! Perhaps I should watch my entire collection just to be safe. Then again, I only have until Nov. 20th to get this fic written, so I'll have to exercise some restraint.

Here are my answers to the writing meme:

( cut for length )

This writing meme has been going around, and since I've been having fun reading other people's answers, I thought I'd give it a shot.

Ask me [one or more of these] questions about writing:

1. Which is your favorite of the fics you've written for X fandom?
2. Favorite piece overall?
3. Which was the hardest to write, in terms of plot?
4. Which has the most "you" in it, however you'd define that?
5. What is an image/set of images that you're particularly proud of?
6. Idea that you always wanted to write but could never make work?
7. Least favorite plot point/chapter/moment?
8. Favorite plot point/chapter/moment?
9. Favorite character to write?
10. Favorite line or lines of dialogue that you've written
11. If I'm showing off just one of your pieces to someone, which one should it be?
12. What WIPs do you have going now? Are you excited about them?
13. Are there any things that might have happened in any of your stories, but you changed them at the last minute? (So-and-so dies, they don't actually kiss, main character has long extended ballet-based dream sequence, etc.)
14. Would you want to write canon for any of your fandoms (like be hired by showrunner to do an episode)? Which one?
15. Does font matter to you when you're writing a draft?
16. 3 favorite comments ever received on fanfic.
17. Any mean comments? How'd you deal with it? Who laid the smackdown?
18. If you could go back and revise one of your older stories, which would it be?
19. Do you make up scenes at work/on the bus/at the gym? Who are the characters that pop up the most? Do you write them down?
20. Go nuts, and talk about writing.

I just found out today that Karen Gillan is in Guardians of the Galaxy. I am SO out of the pop culture loop! I'm sure everyone else has known about this for months. Anyway, I'm glad I found out now, because I've been meaning to go see that movie, and if I'd just been sitting innocently in the movie theater and been unexpectedly confronted with Karen Gillan, I would have probably made all sorts of inappropriate noises.

In other news, I have re-read one of my old WIPS, and I've actually gotten myself excited about the story again. This is big news. You see, for ages I had tried forcing myself to work on it, and I never seemed to get anywhere. So I gave up and put it aside. But now, as I was re-reading the fic, instead of experiencing "oh god, this thing again," I wanted to keep reading. And when I got to where I had left off, I wanted to read more! Except of course there is no more. So I am now attempting to channel those feelings of wanting to read more into wanting to write more. And, I think I might be succeeding. I even have new ideas for how to end it, which is good because I wasn't ever that enthusiastic about my original idea for the ending (which might just have had something to do with why I never did manage to finish it). Anyway, I'm feeling the motivation again, although before I really start writing I'm going to have to do some episode re-watching -- specifically "Whatever Happened to Sarah Jane" and "Turn Left."

In other news, my kitchen has been overrun with fruit flies. It is so bad, I can't even cook in there right now -- flies land in whatever I have cooking on the stove. Yuck. I have cleaned everything I can, and taken out all the food-related trash, and poured clorox down the drain as I suspect they are breeding in the drain. And I have a fruit fly trap, which has successfully caught quite a few of them, although there are still tons more. Not sure what else I can do except wait for the current batch to die out and keep everything food-related out of their reach so they have nothing to eat or breed on. Which is kind of hard to do in a kitchen. I think I might be eating out for the next few days.

Yuletide is over, which means I can now reveal that I wrote The Recorder in the Room, a Sarah Jane Adventures fic. My recipient requested a fic on the development of Rani and Clyde's romantic relationship, which was a bit of a challenge for me because although I do ship them, I also am not someone who generally writes shippy fic. The result is probably the least romantic fic ever written about a romance, but fortunately my recipient seemed to like it, so whew!

It turns out that one of my gift fics was from someone on my flist,

paranoidangel42, who wrote me fic about Gita saving the world after reading my two recent fics about Gita saving the world. We have now decided that Gita Saving the World should be A Thing, and so I am hereby Declaring It So. There is even a Teaspoon series for it, here. If anyone reading this is inclined to write fic about Gita saving the world -- and you know you want to *g* -- please feel free to add your fic to the series.

Happy New Year, everyone!

Via several flisters, here, have an anonymous writing feedback meme. All constructive criticism is welcome! (Really.)

END OF YEAR FEEDBACK MEME
my thread here

-- I realized that I have another fic to post to dw_50ficathon. No, not the Four/Sarah fic I claimed; this is a piece of writing that used to be part of the Gita fic I just posted, back when I thought the fic would be a series of times when Gita saved the Earth from destruction rather than just the roses incident. I just re-read this piece and I think it will work as a stand-alone, so why not use it to fulfill a year? Now I just have to figure out which year. There are several possible ones, so I think I'll wait to see what's left to be claimed by this weekend.

-- I still don't have a good idea for my Four/Sarah claim. Anyone have any prompts for me? (I know the slash usually denotes a pairing, but genfic prompts are very welcome!)

-- I still haven't started writing my Yuletide fic. Ideas are percolating, though. (At least, I am pretending that they are percolating.)

I came across this article on self-editing, and it has some really great advice that applies to fanfic as well as to original fiction:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/kristen-lamb/six-easy-tips-for-selfedi_b_3838124.html

I have to admit, I have been guilty of doing some of the exact things it says not to do! At least I know there's room for improvement in my writing, right?

So it's looking like I am actually going to finish my most longstanding WIP! I am currently just half-a-scene away from completion, which is a big deal considering that I started this thing around, um, 12 years ago? I think that's about right.

It's Randall & Hopkirk (Deceased) fanfic (based on the original, 1969 version), which means two things: 1) it's a British show, so needs to be Britpicked; and 2) probably very few people on my flist know the fandom, let alone are interested in it.

But hope springs eternal, so I'm throwing this out here: anyone interested in Britpicking it for me?

( more information here )

Like a lot of people who are into fandom, I have all sorts of old shows on videotape and DVD, and sometimes I wonder why I keep everything because I can go for years without watching a given show. And then for some reason I get in the mood for it, and next thing I know I am marathoning an entire series. Which is what is happening right now with Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased).

So there I was watching this show again for the first time in ages, and then I came to the Doctor Who crossover episode and just had to stop and post here about it. It's not really a Doctor Who crossover episode, of course, but it was filmed in 1969 and has both Nicholas Courtney and Roger Delgado in it. It's a fun episode, and what's more, Nicholas Courtney plays a villain and Roger Delgado doesn't! The only thing that would make it better is if the two of them had a scene together, which unfortunately they don't. Or if Jon Pertwee and Katy Manning were also in it, and perhaps John Levene. But it's still a ton of fun, and when I watch it carefully and in slow motion, I'm sure I can spot the TARDIS in one of the closets. Except it's the Master's TARDIS, so it's camouflaged. : )

I'm a little surprised at how much this show has re-eaten my brain. In fact, I've pulled out an old unfinished fanfic and started to edit it a little, and I might even take a whack at finishing it. Not that many people want to read Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased) fanfic, but it would be nice to finish a WIP. I just never expected that if I got into the mood for writing again, it would be for this fandom.

So Yuletide signups are open, and I am thinking about actually doing it this year. Part of me is petrified at the idea of committing to writing something as my muse is still very unreliable, but I have been feeling more in the mood to write lately, and a commitment might be just what I need to really get going again. Also, I took a look at the nominated fandoms, and I was able to find 4 fandoms that I think I could offer. But I still get really worried about getting a pairing request for characters that weren't paired in canon, as that's a popular type of request and something that I have a hard time writing (not only am I bad at writing ship!fic, but if it's not a canon pairing, it usually strikes me as OOC). However, apparently you can now add a gen/het/slash tag to your offer/request, and although they can't promise you'll match on that, they'll take it into account? That makes me feel slightly less nervous about it. Come on, genfic requests!

Of course, I still owe a fic to the incredibly patient

justice_turtle, who has not once asked me about the status of the story I owe to him from, um, well, ages ago now. But perhaps if I sign up for Yuletide, I will be spurred to hurry up and finish his story too.

I've been in kind of a weird fandom headspace lately. I haven't been spending much time on LJ or Teaspoon, although I don't feel like I've been missing much as the DW-related traffic has been very slow anyway. I've also been depressed about my latest fanfic story, which not only didn't do very well, I've decided it didn't deserve to do very well after I read it over again. It just really didn't achieve what I wanted it to achieve, and I'm not sure if that's because it was too difficult a set-up to pull off, or if I just failed to pull it off well enough. I spotted the fundamental problem before posting, and I thought I'd managed to solve it, but now I think I was wrong. I also felt very "rusty" while writing it, which isn't a good sign. I think that in order to get better at fanfic writing again, I need to spend more time getting back into fanfic writing.

So, of course, last weekend we had a fic_rush round, and this weekend we had a fic_rush mini-round, and did I take advantage of it? No. Well, I spent time modding, and I can never write while I mod, but I also was around during hours when I wasn't modding, but I just didn't feel like writing. In fact, the mini-round is going on right now, and I've just given up because I don't feel like writing.

Part of me thinks I should force myself because if I don't write, I am unlikely to get back into the "swing" of writing. On the other hand, why force myself into doing something that is supposed to be a leisure activity, and hopefully a fun one at that?

Arrgh.

If my last fic had gone well, I think I'd be motivated to do it again, but since it didn't go well, I am feeling anti-motivated. Even though I know intellectually that if I can jump-start myself into writing more, I am likely to enjoy it again, and also likely to get over feeling "rusty" (which hopefully will make me more likely to write a good story).

Well, I definitely have a fic coming, but I don't know yet when it'll be ready to post. It could be as soon as tomorrow, or it could be quite awhile off still. Which brings me to a hopefully interesting question -- how do you know when a story is ready to be posted?

Let me tell you how I do it. First off, I edit as I write. I type a sentence, then edit it immediately if I decide I don't like it. Sometimes this leads me to go back and edit the entire paragraph. Sometimes I will then end up getting rid of the entire paragraph (a little trend I like to call "writing in reverse" -- sometimes the more I write, the fewer words I have in the document!)

Once I get to the point where I have a finished draft, I start doing read-throughs. The trick here is that I have to let the story "rest" in between so I can come at it from a reasonably fresh standpoint. (Not entirely fresh, of course, but fresher.) I read it through and edit it, then I let it rest again. Then I read it through again. If I find myself editing it some more, it's not ready yet -- I have to rest it again, and do another pass. The story is ready to post when I do a read-through and don't find anything else to change.

I don't remember how many times I've read through this latest fic, but it's been at least four passes I think. I thought it might be ready to post tonight, but instead I made some pretty major changes to it again. It's possible that I'll read it tomorrow and love every word, or it's possible that I'll go "what was I thinking?" and hack at it some more.

Anyone else edit like this? If not, what do you do instead?

I have written something! Hopefully it will turn out to be a story! It looks like a story. It has a beginning, a middle, and an ending. The ending took awhile, to be honest, but now it is there, and I just need to let it sit for a bit and then see if I still like it. I might need to do some more editing, especially if it turns out that I don't like the ending after all, but if all goes well, I will actually have fic to post soon!

I am actually working on a fic! I don't have much written for it yet, but it's "jelled," if that makes any sense -- I feel energy and momentum with it, which is something that has been missing from my writing attempts for a very long time. It's still possible that I will stall out on it, but for now, I am enjoying the experience. : )

I have also been inspired to go back and look at some of my past writing, in particular my work for

50ficlets. Some of those ficlets turned out to be pretty good stories, and I posted them on Teaspoon when I wrote them. Some of the ficlets are probably best forgotten. (But that's okay; in fact, part of the point of doing it!) Then there are a few ficlets -- I've identified two so far -- that don't really work as stand-alone stories, but are nice little pieces of writing that I still like, and therefore think are worthy of getting posted.

My original goal for

50ficlets was to take the best of them and put them up on Teaspoon as a collection of vignettes, possibly loosely woven together. I'm now thinking that I don't want to wait. Even though I only have two, I've decided to go ahead and create a "ficlet collection" story on Teaspoon, and put these in as the first chapters.

Apparently I am still starving for new reviews . . . *embarrassed cough* . . . but I also hope that actually posting something on Teaspoon will spur me on with my current fic.

I just finished reading a really good story on Teaspoon that had one tiny flaw: the writer kept referring to the city of Berkeley, California (and once to UC Berkeley), but kept misspelling it as "Berkley." No big deal, right? One little missing "e." Except each and every time I came across the misspelling, it took me straight out of the story.

This particular mistake probably only affected people like myself who are very familiar with Berkeley. But it got me wondering: what takes you out of a story?

For myself, I think the number-one thing is OOC behavior. (Or, to put it more accurately, behavior that I consider OOC, which I recognize may not be the same as what the author considers OOC.) After that, it's misspellings and grammatical mistakes, but this depends on their frequency -- a typo or two isn't a problem, but a consistent error drives me crazy (I start waiting for the next time it will show up). Cultural errors are also big issues for me. Well, since I read mostly in Doctor Who, I probably don't notice a lot of the cultural errors (and maybe even make some myself), but if I do happen to come across one, it takes me right out. Finally, I also have a problem with canon errors, which can be difficult when I'm reading a story that has been jossed. Usually I can think, "Oh, this was written before 'X' happened" and then go on, but I can never not notice the discrepancy.

How about you? What takes you out of a story?

I had an absolutely dismal year for writing, and I wondered if I should even bother with the meme this year, but I decided to do it in the hope that 2012 will be tons better in comparison. Speaking of comparisons, you might want to also check out what I wrote for this meme last year and the year before.

And now, here's what I wrote in 2011:

( meme )

It's been so long since I've written anything, I'm not sure how long it's been. Well, actually, that's not entirely true, as I did end up writing a short little piece of crack!fic for the last

fic_rush round. But other than that, it's been, um, well . . . awhile.

I blame it on a couple of things. First, I've been away on trips for a lot of the summer. Which was a lot of fun, but not exactly conducive to writing. Second, I've been spending time on RL things. Which has been annoying, but also necessary. But probably the biggest issue is that I have been feeling completely uninspired for a long time now. Which is also the hardest thing to fix. How do I get myself inspired again?

I have two WIPs going: first, a fic promised to

justice_turtle (who has been incredibly nice and patient) for his

help_japan donation; and second, my "yes, believe it or not I am still working on that" chronic WIP "Turn Again."

Then there's my claim at

50ficlets. I haven't done anything for the claim since, um, December 19, 2010. Plus, the owner of the comm has just asked people with inactive claims -- a category for which I certainly qualify -- to get active again, or drop their claim. If I were sensible, I would just drop the claim, but I've realized that I don't want to. I'd rather continue, because even though my pace has been laughably slow (I've only written 8 of the 50 prompts), I've been very happy with some of the fics that have come out of that, and I want to see what will come out next. Besides, who said writing fanfic was about being sensible?

Now if I could only get inspired . . .

This month's

fic_rush starts Friday night at midnight GMT! In case you're not familiar with the awesomeness that is

fic_rush, it's a place where people come together for a weekend to encourage each other to write fic. It's a great way to get motivated to write, but it's also lots of fun just to hang out and make jokes about penguins and alien fish. Drop on by and check it out! If you drop in between 1-5 a.m. GMT on Sunday, you'll catch me hosting a shift.

And to get us all in the mood, here is the Fanfic Flamingo:

Click here to see what the Fanfic Flamingo has to say

I am way behind on writing something for work, but I hope to get some fanfic writing done this weekend, too. Or perhaps I'll just end up looking at fanfic flamingos all weekend . . . ; D

Crossposts: http://dbskyler.livejournal.com/104586.html

Doctor Who S6 will be starting in less than three weeks!!!! And it's getting broadcast here on the same day as in the UK! WHEEEEEE!!!!!!

I'll be reccing Calufrax that week, and I've got to figure out what to rec on April 23rd. Would that be a particularly good day to do an Eleven-era rec, or a particularly bad day? Any thoughts? What about the day before, and the day after?

I got my package of stuff from amazon.co.uk! I don't know why, but it's much more exciting to get a package from overseas than to get the same package in regular domestic mail. I've started reading "The Writer's Tale," and I'm really enjoying it. The book could have been "The Producer's Tale," as some of the more interesting things (to me, anyway) are about how decisions for the show got made. For example, there's a section on getting Catherine Tate for S4, which starts off with RTD saying "Well, of course she won't do it, she doesn't have time," and then progressing through to the "OMG, she's going to do it" stage with all the changes that entailed to the S4 plans. There was similar stuff about planning the post-S4 specials, including a) a regeneration if DT left and b) no regeneration if he decided to stay on. Although the book is purportedly about writing, and was written by RTD, I now have a much better sense of what Julie Gardner did for the show than I used to.

I've started work on my

help_japan Man From U.N.C.L.E. fic for

curuchamion. It feels like Yuletide, only better, because I don't have to keep the fandom a secret and I can ask curu questions whenever I want. I'm excited, because today I got the first idea for the fic. I don't have the whole shape of it yet, but it's nice that ideas are coming to me already, and I haven't even finished my re-watch yet.

Writing update

Writing meme answers

Writing meme

Miscellaneous ramblings

Yuletide reveal

Happy New Year! and Anon Writing Feedback Meme

writing ramblings

Interesting article on self-editing your fic

Britpick favor for Randall & Hopkirk (Deceased) (1969) fic

when it's nice to own the DVDs

Yuletide musings

frustrations

still editing . . .

I have a draft!

I'm writing!

what takes you out of a story?

end of the year writing meme

I really need to get writing again

Fic_rush this weekend!

joyous things

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November 2022

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