Tag Archives: change of plans

Reading and Writing, October 14

by Liana Posted on October 14, 2013
This entry is part 13 of 103 in the series Daily Scribble Reports

Stage One: Assess

So today, I wrote a blog post before getting to other writing. A lot of stuff about fandom and original fiction has been hammering in my head lately and that gorgeous piece of early Yuletide goodness put me over. Of course, now I owe a Laurie fic back and that's mulling in the percolator. In the meantime, there's what to write for Nano to consider and how many ficlets I can plow through today running on a late start, to say nothing of the three I haven't read yet from thecatisacritic.

Submissions

Got a rejection letter late in the day. It was a good rejection letter and very helpful. I do have a strong tendency to write vignettes, and I'm not entirely sure I'll ever be cured of that, though curiously, this fic isn't actually a vignette. Nevertheless, the comments gave me some great ideas on where to go when I'm ready to flesh out Alliance more, as my first angles were fizzling badly (I'm apparently not that into school fic, I just thought I was), and it also made me realize something: I have come to expect rejection. I never actually want to see the response to a submission. That's a very odd thought.

Stage Two: Work

I tried to make some progress on "Everything is Blood" and I did make some, but I wasn't impressed and it's still not coming together for me, so I decided to hit Kingdoms and Thorn again instead. And there goes 184 190 198 words on Lovemark the Seasons. I was actually thinking ficlets, o muse o' mine. Please?

Oh, bother it. Sorry, thecatisacritic. I'm going to bury myself in Lovemark.

Stage Three: Count

  • Fiction: 1,187 words - Month to Date: 16,629 words
  • Blog: 822 words - Month to Date: 6,512 words

365 Challenge

Speaking of the challenge, what day am I on and how's the overall progress going? I'm on day 287/365 and written piece 215/365.

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Reading and Writing, October 12

by Liana Posted on October 13, 2013
This entry is part 11 of 103 in the series Daily Scribble Reports

So I signed up for Nanowrimo, and ONLY because there's a 50% off Scrivener attached to winning. Am I pathetic or just greedy for Scrivener?

Ahem. Anyway...

So got Scrivener all set up on my machine, replied to a couple comments, noted I really ought to peek at the hundreds of spam notifications in my email, but decided not to. Thought I'd write more off the computer, but percolated instead. While I did get something written, it was short enough to lump it in with when I actually finished the piece.

Calling it a night.

Count

  • Total Fiction: 0 words - Month to Date: 13,881 words
  • Total Blog: 95 words - Month to Date: 5,590 words

 

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Reading and Writing, October 11

by Liana Posted on October 11, 2013
This entry is part 10 of 103 in the series Daily Scribble Reports

So this morning was one of those mornings where feeling weird and what-have-you, I skipped straight past anything I ought to do and went and read Beneath Ceaseless Skies on my morning work break. It's a double issue. Then I dug through my email and dug up Laurie's story instead of waiting until I was at home this weekend where I already have it saved.

When I feel weird, I read. That's me. When I hurt, I fanfic or write an angsty poem. Otherwise, I write. I wonder what that says about how often I feel weird.

So I finished Laurie's story. Awesomeness. Then I finished editing all 13,574 words of story from inferno goodness—which I only say because it's done. Unfinished stories are not good. They taunt and tease and bother me. This is the first novelette I've written ever. Now, of course, I want to typeset it and publish it, which requires getting a Rachelle-worthy cover which makes me need to buy a stock photo I don't have, which would imply the need for a Kickstarter-type campaign, but this is micro-funding on a micro, micro, micro scale, so…

Thinking.

Maybe I ought to write. Hm. Nope, first I read through the ficlets from thecatisacritic. I'm glad too. I'm still not all that settled down for writing.

Talking with the beta yesterday about maybe doing Nano, which would mean picking a story for it. I'm all over the map on what I'd want to do: Collateral Damage, the Seven Days book, or something in Vardin, or seriously, Lovemark the Seasons. So yeah, on the fence there.

I edited and finalized a story. I'll write more this weekend. Bad me, but it's Friday, so no after-work scribble-time was available anyway.

Count

  • Total Fiction: 0 words - Month to Date: 13,881 words
  • Total Blog: 291 words - Month to Date: 5,495 words

Finalized Pieces

  • "Dowse and Bleed," Kingdoms and Thorn, 13,574 words
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A Bit About the Scribbling...

by Liana Posted on September 1, 2013

I've been getting some serious jabs of conscience for stories not finished, particularly as trovia's birthday whizzed by without an appearance of a completed version of "Summercome," her promised sports story, and then the three prompted stories I'm working on: a five times fic for in_the_blue, the rest of one for thecatisacritic, and "Everything is Blood" for lithiumlaughter. To say nothing of "Safe," which I still haven't gotten back to for whipsy.

In the middle of all this, I'm starting to get people bugging me for more "Son o' de Guild." Normally, I'd be okay with this, but I have a problem when people review a separate ficlet with just "Please update Son o' de Guild" and when they tell me they thought I wasn't going to finish it after I told them last chapter I would, and they all think I owe them the next chapter because I said they definitely wouldn't get another one for at least another two weeks, but that I'd be working on the story more now.

I am working on it. I'm not trying to update by a particular time because I'm currently trying to write the next chapter in some natural way without starring Jean Grey. Again. This is a story about Remy, and I've got a very important main character who is not the main character who's outgrown the bounds I want her in. It's tough, okay?

And then I go wandering through my beta emails and discover the information on the Roswell/X-Men Movieverse crossover I never got off the ground, and I wonder again how I'm ever going to get all the stories in my head out of it.

Ah, well.

How's your scribbling?

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So on general updateyness and a story-hopping muse...

by Liana Posted on July 10, 2013

I'm learning to roll with the punches. I'm just as bad at changing stories due to reading something as I've ever been, and I'm nothing like Dean Wesley Smith: I read my own work. A lot. That's why I wrote it.

What this means? I'm currently quite anxious to write some more Niko & Collie (read genderswap Black Widow and Hawkeye from Avengers) fanfic, finish up the story of the Thorn Rebellion I thought I'd never touch, and add new chapters to my various WIP while also finishing out whichever fics I think I can wrap up and off my plate.

Can you tell what I've been reading? My own work. And it's inspiring me. The only problem is I have a voracious readerly appetite and by the time I've read enough to get full, I'm inspired in waaaaaaay too many directions.

How's your reading or writing going?

:goes back to scribbling:

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Writing into the Abyss, Part II

by Liana Posted on May 12, 2013

I did know what froze me up on writing my chaptered fanfics after a while, and it's weird to admit this, but here it is: they were too long.

When I realized it was going to take more than 100 chapters to wrap up some of those stories, my brain and muse froze up and it suddenly became very, very hard to keep writing. It was easier when I didn't realize that and could just scribble into the abyss, not knowing, not caring how many words it would take me to reach the end. I cannot tell you how liberating it is to not know.

And you know what? I think that's what happened to the Story from Inferno as well. I realized how much work and words were involved and almost got over it before my brain went too much, too much, too much—I'm scared.

Some writers write scared. It drives them, keeps them writing. I don't. Never have. Never have been able. Scared freezes up my brainpower and even if I know exactly what should come next, I don't write it. If I don't know what comes next, that suddenly becomes an ultra-handy excuse to let it go and hack away at something else while nibbling every now and then on the overwhelming, too long story. And I wonder why I've only ever finished one satisfactory novel. :shakes head ruefully at self:

There is no commitment to the abyss. It is like life, only visible one step at a time, and with infinite possibilities for continuing or coming to a satisfactory end. We live by moving forward. There is commitment once a story rears itself out of the abyss and shows its overall shape. Suddenly, I feel obliged to make the story fit that shape, reach that end satisfactorily. There's pressure.

I've been thinking about how to take that pressure back off. Cross your fingers for me or share your tips if you have any. It's time to throw a few stories back into the abyss.

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An Update on the Scribblings of the Scribbler

by Liana Posted on October 25, 2012

As some of you know, I'm quite busy trying to keep roof over head, redo a website, and provide necessary support for the movie project I've been a part of for... a long time. You probably don't know what I've been up to or why it's taken me so long.

En brief, am:

  1. proofreading a novella for a client
  2. drafting three stories for the last Ficlet o'Clock—Room for Magic, Breath from a Stone, and (fanfic) Girls that Go Bump in the Mind
  3. submittingsomething once weekly via the Heinlein challenge
  4. creating huge swaths of new functionality for a client's website
  5. creating huge swaths of new functionality for this website
  6. in the process of the above, identifying a plethora of bugs for the Pods CMS team
  7. finishing a huge special cleaning job and then heading into my regular time-consuming cleaning job
  8. applying for work in Civil Services :prays... hard:
  9. trying to order the muse to pipe down on City of Glass and Storm (It's a tad ambitious to try to finish three shorts and two novellas simultaneously. Just saying.)
  10. reading everyone else's blogs and posted fiction in the smatterings of moments I dare to ambitiously call "free time"

What's on your docket?

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