aaa ive spent so much time being anxious about writing and trying to write things that i know are "good" and i realized the other day that like. i am writing for literally no one but myself. i do not want to be a writer as a job. i can literally write whatever self-indulgent shitty bs that i want and its okay!!!! feels real good. will probably share some of my much less forced sounding writing here soon
Gawd, yes. I was making so much fuss about writing kink fic because I can bash it out quickly without getting too attached, while I've had a full novel (or novella) idea in my head since I was twelve and haven't done a thing with it because it won't be as good as I want it to be :( I know it can't be worse than no story at all, so I really have to get writing and see if I can get it done before I'm thirty. I'm kind of glad I didn't write it when I was twelve because it would have been shit, but still.
for reference on my self-indulgent bullshit, the google doc ive been working on for the past few days is "gay ladies have a good time", in which my dumb vampire and werewolf ocs (urban fantasy type setting) meet for the first time and beat each other up and set up the bit where they can meet later to Solve Supernatural Crime :3c and im having a grand old time!!! its so nice to write with literally zero expectations and not going back to edit and re-read every paragraph (edit; and overanalyze my characters and setting and feel bad about not being Originale(tm) and Groundbreaking and....etc) i'll probably reread and edit once i get to a natural finishing point but man, that doesn't stress me out nearly as much as getting it all right on the first go
A couple of scenes from a dream that stuck with me, to avoid falling out of writing completely while I've been brainbroke. Rough, received a once-over after I finished each part but otherwise unedited: Spoiler: Queen and commander (what even is present tense) She doesn't comment on how young the commander is to have such white hair, and in return the commander doesn't comment on how young she is to be queen. Instead she takes in the scars, some healed neat and clean and others angry and jagged, and the commander's overcoat. It's very red, the color of spilled blood instead of any order or family's color, long and billowing behind her with every step. Cut from long pieces of leather, it must have been expensive to dye so perfectly. Behind her, in the coat's wake, are the guard. All women, the queen knew them by reputation even in seclusion. One pale woman with dark hair wears her armor tight to her flat chest and has a spiral burn scar twisting up one arm. A pair of twins beam at the young queen with identical dark faces, both their hair dyed deep red-violet, one wearing her hair traditionally short while the other wears half of it in braids pinned to the top of her head- the queen thinks it must be terribly asymmetrical when down. The commander declines a chair and the viewing platform as well, sits down on the grass of the hill. The guard sit behind her and to the left, three neat rows, but seemingly at ease. The commander gestures to the grass beside her and with no one to see her the queen, in her white dress, joins her. The maids will have fits, but she's glad to be, in her way, on even footing. Spoiler: Dinner request She's only a witch's daughter but the woman in green insists on referring to her by formal address. The table is round, smallish, seats four, and they sit opposite each other. The woman in green is enamoured, it's clear. And flattering as well- usually when lavished with such attention it was out of fear, or in hopes of earning the favor of a potential witch. Her mother was well known, but the daughter kept her talents hidden, ambiguous. She would not reenact her mother's story no matter the voices screaming in her head. Halfway through dinner the gambler joins them. He steals small bites off both plates without shame but politely declines the offer of being allowed to order for himself. He laughs readily, pokes and prods at the woman in green as if they've known each other their whole life. She unbalances as she laughs, a wariness showing in the black behind her eyes. He doesn't fear the witch's daughter in the least, but he avoids her hands despite her gloves. Somehow the rumor has gotten out- she can see the past of what she touches, and he's heard. What he doesn't know is she can see a little without touching, enough to make his attempt at subtle avoidance seem clumsy as a drunken ox. He's a patchwork of pasts, real and invented. Three of his rings are stolen, one from a dead man. His coat, an expensive brocade, belongs to the man whose name he wears. For a second as he gets up, before both ladies have finished their meal, he catches her eye and pieces fall into place for both of them. He places a gentle hand on the woman in green's shoulder, communicating something unspoken. The meal is finished, the plates taken. The woman in green stares at the table for a long moment. The meal wasn't an obligation. She honestly wanted to meet the witch's daughter. But there was something she wanted to ask. (There's always something they want to ask.) Her mother left her a necklace- she pauses to touch it, a simple cylinder of some bright green stone attached to the chain at each end- before she. There's The Pause. Everyone lost someone, back then. She never got to know her, and the witch's daughter has clever hands... There's no malice, so the witch's daughter agrees. One glove off she reaches out to touch the stone (the woman in green's breath catches) and Sees. The color was important. The woman in green could now be wearing chilling sapphire. (She would be so much different, then.) The memory is tinted an odd purple-gold-black, but the stone had been another color. It had taken several tries to make it the way. She had been exacting. The intensity of the memory rolls out in a wave from the necklace, and the woman in green Sees along with her. They both share the same realization through different paths: the witch's daughter knows that only a living soul with a strong tie to an object can bring forth such fierce memory, while the woman in green connects with a deeper part of the memory, filling her with an absolute certainty. "She's alive."
Rewriting Mistfisher, again. Four paragraphs in and Jhenya is going on a tangent about weeds. They need to talk more about Gwyned. At least now I have an actual plan for the structure of the damn thing, thanks to @IvyLB helping me brainstorm and telling me how to twelfth-option the Xanatos gambit of the Big Bad. Spoiler Sixteen generations ago, Kiliskalea, City of Wonders, stood at the coast of the Spineridge continent and attracted scholars and artists from all over the world, coming through mountains and over forests, by shores and seas and other things that hold no meaning any more. That is history. Eight months ago, we -- that's Gwyned, Vaska, Amber, and me -- stood at the top of the Stargazer's Tower and peered beyond the edge of Kiliskalea onto the world below. There wasn't that much to see through the haze, mostly just gree and grey shapes, half-eaten by the bottomless blue sky. That is a memory. Four hundred years ago, Debarach, God of Magic, blight on their legacy, and Vereyann, God of Technology, blessed be their very name, fought and destroyed the world. Debarach, victorious, cast Vereyann into the depths and raised the remains of Kiliskalea into the skies, the last bastion of civilization and life. That is bullshit. At least that's what Amber said, and she knows like, everything. Never seen her without a book in her hand. Life's stubborn, she says. Doesn't get destroyed that way. I've seen some of the stuff we Sage grow on our roofs. Sungrass sprouts on the pavement if you let it. Or window frames, where it burrows in. Good thing it's edible. Even the mages eat it. But if a place gets sunlight and looks at a sprig the wrong way, it's gonna sprout there three days later. I believe her. Two equinoxes ago, the mist came.
Two days into NaNoWriMo and I haven't done a damn thing for it though I said I would :( Somebody make me write!
I mighta mentioned this already, but I’ve been working on a book for about five years now and though I only started writing last year, I think it’s going okay. I’m still conflicted about the title tho but I can change that later so no worries. Spoiler: Here’s a little bit of it I wanted to share Keida was in no particular rush to get home. Fear was an understatement at what he felt in thought of confronting his father. His mother was more than likely worried sick - his sister, too. He didn’t enjoy bringing them discomfort, but he’d been so set and sure when he’d left home. Keida glared hard at his feet. A fool, is what he was. No better than a war thirsting tween. If not for Nanid and Thiln - two strangers, who needed not have intervened - he’d have been dragon shite about now. Fitting fate for him now, though. At least then he’d not need to explain to his father why he thought it was a good idea to go hunting a dragon - a dragon that hadn’t been bothering anyone. Also I’m trying to write some fics but everyone I start one I end up not finishing it ;-; maybe some day
Well, I didn't write any of the novel I was supposed to be writing, but I've bashed out about half of a short story I intend to try selling today.
Trying to think up ideas for a "spoiled slave-owning rich boys brought down to normal and join abolitionists" scenario, not quite sure what the catalyst incidents could be.
Need to work on that draft to make it more to the anthology's tastes on Monday or Tuesday. I get to figure out how to mix kink and an unreliable narrator. I'm going to clack out a less dark submission (I swear to the gods I don't usually write dead dove fiction, I wanted to write something fun. oops). Depends on what world building you've got as story scaffolding but here are a few ideas: seeing a friend shunned for something the narrator judged innocuous which leads to a greater questioning of societal mores, seeing a formerly wealthy friend lose status and get treated badly due to caste reversal (depends how good you are at writing class systems--I've got an eye for that, but it's a tricky skill) a slave helping the rich boy when they were in dire straits and their support network fucked off or is unavailable at the moment, seeing a public or private punishment of a slave and deeming it cruel.
It's a Homestuck AU involving the hemospectrum, so I have a pre-made caste system, and I'm planning to include some Dead Dove stuff so that's an obvious option.
Also I think I need some assistance in working out the human family trees in a 'verse where they aren't all clones. I'm trying to get both pre- and post-Scratch versions in to fill it out a bit, and the Crockengharberts are doable, but either the Strilondes are badly unbalanced or Dave is calling his father Bro.
i generally lean toward “bro’s a weird motherfucker and the being a dad doesn’t jive with his idea of a cool dude, so he has dave call him bro”
Could work! He might have legit reasons for not wanting Dave to know, even... Problem with balancing the kids though if Alpha Dave and Alpha Rose are also there. It's not a problem with the Prospit dreamers because they were grandparents so having more of them per person works. But we can't have four siblings sharing four bio parents, and who ends up as whose sibling if we try to pair them out? I need to go back and rewrite a years-old start-of-fic because it's clumsily put together and I wanna make a full AU of it. Bah. Work.
I thought of Dave and Rose as being Mom and Bro's offspring, Alpha Rose and Alpha Dave being their aunt and uncle and Dirk and Roxy being the Alphas' kids, but I need Dirk to be the crown Prince, and if I split them by gender then two of them have the wrong Guardians, and then how are the adults related to each other...? This is hard. Also thinking the trollcestors should be going by eight-letter first names in order to avoid confusion with the pre-Scratch kid trolls. Happens when one lumps both together but I enjoy doing that. Marquise Spinneret Mindfang is done, although Spinneret makes for a fairly weird first name but whatever, trolls are strange.
Badly stuck on the ending of an origfic I've been struggling with for years, I have a separate thread for it. Advice?
Quick, I need ways for the princes and princesses of two kingdoms at war to meet outside parental supervision!
