This could end in tears and recriminations.

This blasted writing thing. I mean, if I weren't fed up because of the S.E.N., I'd be writing DS and XF next.

I had (okay, stole) an interesting idea for a DS story. Not a great DS story, but possibly a cute enough little effort. I've been watching a bit of DS recently and I think it could work.

I had an interesting (okay, perverse) idea for an XF PWP. I wrote a lot of odd (okay, perverse) little stories in XF. Another one couldn't hurt. Right?

For one wild and crazy moment I was tempted....but, no! I'm not getting sucked back into the vortex o'porn!

I'm just writing this one. That's all. Then I'm going to stop. Anyone sees me reaching for a pen after I get the S.E.N. off my back, please hit me with a brick and put a bag over my head.

Lemme see...what else is going on?

Blanketman has started apologizing for bothering me. I'm not sure why. He's always there, outside Starbucks, with his orange blanket over his head, asking for spare change. I don't usually have any change, so I give him a dollar every couple of days. This morning he apologized. Maybe it was because I was carrying two cups of coffee, a manila folder, and a piece of pumpkin bread.

Also, when I accidentally pulled out a five at first, he said that was too much. Well, yeah, it is, but what kind of homeless person would say so?

I saw the BaGiMan yesterday, but the light was green so I couldn't give him anything. He's the other one I hand a buck to sometimes. Only when I hit that light red, though. If I hit it green, he's out of luck. He always calls me, BabyGirl when I give him a dollar. Since I'm pushing fifty (but not very hard yet), I find that rewarding.

You meet the nicest people, on the streets some days, you know?

Like SmilinSam. I haven't seen him for months now, but it used to be that every morning, when I came out of the building and headed for Starbucks, he'd walk past me and give me a big smile. And all he wanted in return was a smile and a 'good morning'. He never asked for money. I think he moved on to a new corner or something. I miss his smile sometimes.

I don't like to encourage homelessness, especially as winter comes on. That's why I give homeless people some money sometimes. Maybe if they collect enough, they can get some food or a night's shelter, you know?

And I'm a sucker for the ones with the signs that say, "Vietnam Vet." I still have a whole generational-guilt thing going there.

Okay...what else? My favorite Starbucks guy is leaving. He says it's time. He doesn't know what he's going to do, but he's sure something will come up. I think he feels the election (his site) will go the right way and that there will be a lot of opportunities out there in a few months. I wish him luck.

I'm beginning to see that the only thing more boring than me droning on about my writing is me trying desperately to find something else to talk about.

I mean, it's fabulously interesting to me that I've written and re-written and filled in gaps until all of the out-of-order scenes are now slotted into the body of the story. In official writing terms, I have only the crisis, climax, and resolution left to write. (None of which have anything to do with sex.) (Well, okay, since I'm running two plots, one of them will climax, forgive the term, in a sex scene, but technically those words don't necessarily refer to anything sexual. Not in a writing context.)

It never quite got good but I will say that, slowly but surely, it's beginning to suck less. I wasn't that crazy about the other long OaT story I wrote but it was better, as a piece of fanfiction, than this one is. The characterization was better, especially for Mac. The development of the slash plot was more linear and was, I think, better-constructed.

This one has a better-developed case story plot (although much of that may disappear in the editing), but that doesn't improve it as slash. It would take more talent than I possess and more time than I'm willing to spend to balance the "case story" plot and the "slash" plot against each other properly.

I still haven't decided if I'll be sharing this one publicly. (I know...you listened to me bitch and moan for two months and that was above and beyond. But, just think! If you get lucky, you might not have to read it.) I still don't regret the experiment, though. I always whined that I wanted to write long, plotty stories. Now I know better. (Heck, I should have known better when I turned out a 36-card outline* even without any of the slash-plot filled in.)

(*I don't regret that either. I still maintain I've had more fun arranging my colored index cards and colored pens and colored flags than I have writing the story.)

All in all, I'm feeling good about the effort.

One year I finished NaNoWriMo. That effort clocked in just over 60,000 words. I never finished the novel in question, but I still could some day and I'm happy about that one because it was original fiction, not fanfiction. It was a fantasy story with original characters in a whole made-up fantasy world I constructed.

And before this, I'd written two fanfiction stories that went over 50,000 words. This will be my third fanfiction "novel."

Maybe each of these actually just proves I'm better when I'm shorter, but by gosh I did write some longer stuff. I am capable of it.