Comments are closed while I'm out of town. I won't have time to fight the spammers.
(I have my list...SG vids is all that's on it, so I won't forget!)
Posted by AnneZook at 03:56 PM | Comments (0)There are few things more disconcerting than having the JCC of Latter Day Organized Nuisances show up at your door while you're struggling with an uncooperative sex scene.
I'm just saying.
I don't feel a bit badly that they stood out there, shouting Have A Nice Day through the door I closed in their faces. Passive-aggressive twerps.
They broke my hard-won train of thought and I'm very bitter.
Sigh. I'm about done trying to make a more palatable pig's ear out of this pig of a story. I'm pretty sure it's just time to admit that I've lost the battle. I've added three or four thousand words, here and there, to flesh out the slash story, but it remains a hopeless mess.
Ah well. I said I was looking forward to the return to the land of PWP anyhow. Maybe it's time to put on my travelling shoes.
Posted by AnneZook at 02:02 PM | Comments (0)Publishing/publicizing RPS?
So very, very wrong.
It is my intent to go through everything I've ever written and remove any reference to "fandom" just to distance myself from that kind of thing.
I really need to stay away from the food blogs, but I can't, you know?
Some of them actually inspire me to take up French again, so I can read the descriptions that go with the pictures.
Some remind me that I have got to get back to San Francisco.
Or, back to England. The range of fabulous European restaurants that were available, even when I was there in the mid-80s, lingers on in my memory. Food porn, indeed...especially on the Passionate Cook's blog, where the amuse-bouche category alone can fill me with lust.
The competitions (challenges?) are a favorite event of mine every month.
I'm hungry today.
I should have eaten my sensible but boring breakfast yogurt before I read these sites. Sigh.
Either that, or I have to stop surfing the net when I'm sitting on hold.
Today's lunch. A French roll with warm, melted cheese soaking into it, and a crisp apple. For such a simple meal, it tastes amazingly like a gourmet feast.
(I lunched with friends this weekend who promised a road trip to a nearby Cheese Nirvana. I hope they don't forget. I also hope they don't scorn me for actually loving cheddar cheese.)
I brought ham, too, but I didn't eat it. At least, I don't think I'm going to eat it. Buehler went out and brought back a turkey sandwich today. We split one once or twice a week. It was very thoughtful of him, but I suspect it was a sort of tacit apology for that screaming, cursing fit he had earlier this morning. (Wasn't directed at me, but at another employee and a project they're working on that I'm grateful not to be involved in.)
The problem is, he brought this "lunch" to me at 11:30 and I normally don't eat lunch until around 1:30. So...I ate the sandwich and now 1-1/2 hour later, I'm already starving again, which is why I'm now savoring bread and cheese. If it proves necessary, I have the back-up ham sandwich for later.
In the meantime, I'm filling up the gaps with chunks of almond-studded dark chocolate.
Maybe it's because half a six-inch sandwich (1 oz turkey, a suggestion of cheese, a tomato slice, and some lettuce) isn't really a humongous meal, but I feel pretty certain I'll wind up eating the ham.
Yes, I'm obsessing about food again. Having porked on 3-1/2 pounds in the last couple of months, I'm about to have to go back on the old diet again.
But I'm also obsessing about good food. Sigh. I've made the decision to be diet-free until after Escapade.
So...what else is new? I'm frightfully busy at work. Too much so to be blogging, but ten minutes won't make that much of a difference. (In fact, after tonight's viewing of the climactic episode of the Spike-a-thon, I'll probably spend a couple of hours working.)
Glancing SEN-wards, we see that particular monster sitting there, looking smug on the sidelines. It's happy because I spent Sunday fussing with it. Being, as it was, a lovely sunny day, I took the text of the story, toddled across the street to my neighborhood Starbucks, and soaked up sunshine and lattes in equal measure for three or four hours while I made yet another attempt to carve some slash into this ostensible slash story.
Given the chance, I'd have done the same thing yesterday, intead of working. Once again it was sunny and almost seventy degrees. A perfect day for sitting outdoors, drinking coffee, watching the world stroll by, and dinking with a non-urgent project.
Today, snow is pouring down. If nothing else, it makes it a bit easier to focus on the job.
And, speaking of the job, I'd better get back to it.
Whoosh! Once again I protest against the people who employ me expecting me to work during the day. Especially this working all day, every day, sort of thing.
It's only going to get busier, at least for a while. I've even had to muzzle my inner control freak and hand 50+ "active" clients over to BossyBoots to fail to* follow up with. I just don't have the time. I had 86 potential clients on my plate already and another ten or fifteen showed up yesterday.
(Okay...I didn't entirely abandon the "active" list. I'm sorting the 50+ into regions and matching them up with the regional reps so I can send e-mails to all the reps telling them to do some follow-up. But after that I'm abandoning responsibility for these groups.)
I've been going home exhausted this week, collapsing into a chair, and staring blankly at the TV screen (waiting for the SpikeMoments in various episodes as we work our way through the S6 and S7 eps that Lynn missed on account of having had to leave town, but I promised I wouldn't go all SpikeCrazy this time, so I won't continue).
One potentially good thing about being so busy is that I don't have time to obsess over the flaws in the SEN. By the time I have the energy to get back to it this weekend, I'm hoping I'll have a bit of fresh perspective on it. A better idea of why it continues to suck so massively and even some notions about how to correct said suckage.**
I still have ideas for about ten PWPs, sitting on the sidelines and waiting patiently, but I tell myself that they'd have had to wait for me to get over the SpikeMarathon and watch some DS and Sentinel eps anyhow.
I have notes for each of them. Nothing extreme, about 500 words, but enough to remind me why I liked the idea so that when I do get around to writing them, I won't wonder what the point was supposed to be. (Okay, the "notes" are bits of dialogue. Sue me if I consider dialogue to be the point.)
That's a fairly humongous stack of "new calls" sitting there by my right elbow. When added to the calls I didn't get done yesterday (too many meetings that ran too long), there's really no excuse for me sitting here blogging, but here I am.
I've started politiblogging again, at least occasionally. That turned out to be a harder habit to break than I'd anticipated. And people kept sending me links to stories or their own blog entries, inviting me to comment, which also tempted me. But I swear I'm not going to let it get out of control this time. Not like last time. I don't have/want to have 4-6 hours a day to spend on that any more.
Hmmm.... If I'm not talking about Spike, or obsessing about the SEN, I'm not sure I have anything to say. (Not that that normally shuts me up.)
_________________
* He won't do it. I know he won't do it. He does a half-assed job of following up with the people he had on his list before. But I wasn't getting it done and at least this way I don't have the stress of realizing I'm the one dropping the ball.
** I am, to a tiny extent, sort of over that concept. The one about writing more for the SEN, I mean.
I took 40k perfectly good, if extremely boring, words out of it. I'm not sure I should reward it for being so hard to get along with by writing it lots of nice, new words, you know?
But I'm not obsessing about it right now, I'm letting it "rest" until the weekend. I'm not even thinking about the possibility that the one remaining scene that's still miles too long is the one I originally came up with, the one I wanted to write the story for in the first place, and that it might have to go.
I will say that the problem with most writing books is that they weren't written for fanfic. It's all very well to talk about using descriptive language or to experiment with regional or ethnic perspectives, but you can't tamper with fanfic characters the way you can with OCs.
One thing I did accomplish for the SEN? I wrote the disclaimers, which include:
Author's note: Before sending criticism, stop and consider how much worse this might have sucked. Because for many moons, the suckage factor around this one threatened to create a gravity well that would obliterate the planet. The fact that it achieved the status of "marginally postable but you should reconsider that pseudonym thing" is a triumph of persistence and dedicated beta readers.Yeah, I know that editing is a valuable and necessary skill. And I learned a lot, mostly about how badly I'm able to write when I put my mind to being boring.
The thing is...I still miss the days when I wrote in a white-hot fever of inspiration. The stories I wrote then had a lot of problems, but "mind-bogglingly boring" wasn't usually one of them.
Also? I miss just sitting down and writing. Editing is hard, she whined for the five-thousandth time.
Well, it feels like years.
39,000. That's where the word-count stands this morning. I've pulled nearly 40,000 words out of this puppy, all told.
I have to say...that is a lot of wasted writing. (Not that it was actually wasted, no, I understand writing is about learning and writing a lot of the wrong thing is a learning experience. I do. I understand that.)
But I remain a teeny bit frustrated by the vast divide between the Case Story as it existed in my mind and the Case Story as it became on the page. Okay, it was never going to be a world-beater, as plots go, but it was a decent case story and the elements in the case reinforced the developing slash plot nicely. There were all these reflections and echoes of what happened in the case affecting the guys' relationship and stuff. Just the sort of thing you're supposed to have in a Long, Plotty Story. Bits of random weirdness and Dramatic Moments and funny stuff and in my mind, it was all worth writing. Somewhere between my brain and my fingers, there was a humongous disconnect.
I reserve the right to remain bitter about this for the next five or six years.
Anyhow. What with one thing and another, yesterday I completed all the rewriting of bits and transitions necessitated by the drastic way I once again hacked the story to bits, removed scenes, moved scenes, and rearranged the order in which things happen.
There's only one Major Scene left to write, and it's a doozie.
It's all-new, nothing I wrote before can be adapted to work. And it's the money scene, the one where the slash plot either boards a rocket for romance or fizzles and sputters to a halt.
And I'm sitting here...staring at the screen and trying to decide. Have I just lost the knack of slash entirely? Or is it a characterization issue? Have I become so fixated about the characters as they exist on-screen that I'm just unable to write anything they don't do on-screen?
One Kind Friend who read through an interim draft of this monster kept noting, in her comments, that "all I know is (a) or (b) about theses characters. And I kept scratching my head and thinking, "well, that's who they are." She hasn't seen the show, but she picked up exactly who the characters are on-screen from what I wrote.
Problem was, all she was getting was what was on-screen and, as I've said a bazillion times already, the show was not well-written and the characters were not well-served.
What I have so far failed to do in this story is the one thing fanfiction is supposed to do. I haven't managed to flesh out the characters so that they're more than they were on-screen.
At the moment, I'm stalling. And listening to an episode, but that probably won't help.
Part of my brain is saying, "go wash the car, do that last load of laundry, dust the bookcases, go to the grocery story, walk across to Starbucks, vacuum the living room" and a thousand other things, but I'm determined to sit here until I work this problem out.
Of course...I could walk across to Starbucks. I'm pretty sure a Chantico would provide the inspiration I need. And a Chantico followed by a Venti Latte...what writer's block could possibly stand against the combination?
I'm all about the procrastination.
Contemplating: Fandom
I don't think I'll share any more fandom rants with people. Heck, I don't think I'll write any more. Fandom has become such an oddly splintered place with little pockets of psychosis here and little pockets of goodness there that I'm finding it more and more difficult to think of "fandom" as a single creation with (really) any single, overriding commonality.
Plus which, I'm just kind of over whining about the idiots. The idiots will always be with us. All one can do is ignore them and disinfect the furniture after they come to call.
Contemplating: BtVS
How can I be so madly, passionately obsessive about Spike and have no desire to read/write any stories about him? This is my second go-round with SpikeLove and neither time have I had the slightest urge to jump into the "fandom" and read.
It's a new kind of fannishness for me. Or, maybe an old kind. A return to the days, so long ago, when I knew nothing of this thing called fandom and life was worth living anyhow.
I have no particular objection to the idea of licking him all over, quite the opposite, but I've no desire to read about it. I rather suspect that's because I don't see him with slash eyes.
I just don't see Spike relating to the guys on the show that way. I think he is slashable. I just don't think anyone on BtVS worked with him. Can't see the spark.
So...maybe I don't feel any desire to jump into BtVS fandom because I'm not a het-story fan and I can't see the slash?
Posted by AnneZook at 10:19 AM | Comments (0)Okay. So, I pulled another 10,000 words out of the monster today. (I love having a day off in the middle of the week.)
I need to rename this thing. Silly to keep calling it the Stupid Effing Novel when it's down to novella length.
Anyhow. Now we're down to around 39k words and I'm beginning to see the vague outline of a caseless slash story there. It's not good but at this point, with this story, I'm willing to settle for "marginally readable." (As I think I've mentioned about seventy-five times so far, right?)
There are a couple more chunks that need to go. Nothing extreme. Just two or three thousand more words. Then I'll have to actually sit down and read it and figure out what I have left.
I'm still avoiding the moment when I have to write some Actual Slash for this slash story.
So, yesterday morning on the way to work I had to stop and gas up. And when I get there, there's something weirdly wrong with my gas cap. Part of it must be stuck in the little hole or something, because the nozzle won't go in.
So, I try screwing the cap on and off a few times and nothing works. I try pushing harder...but that never works. I cancel the sale and try again, and notice that the gas pump isn't doing its beep thing when I try to select my fuel grade.
These things always happen when you don't have time for them, right?
So, I'm thinking, I'm driving practically on fumes already. I'll have to go home and call the office and tell them I can't come in because I can't gas up my car, which is just ridiculous, but I don't have a lot of choice.
So, I go to stick the nozzle thingy back in its cradle and that's when I notice...the pump is marked "diesel."
Apparently they make those nozzle thingies a different size in case someone like me comes along, insufficiently caffeinated and with most of her brain on something else entirely.
So embarrassing to be me.
No, I wasn't thinking about Spike on a workday on a week where every day on my calendar is already crowded. Really. Sigh. Not a bit. (Mmmm..)
I do love a new obsession, but I need my brain for other things from 8-5!
Spike...all angsty and nekkid. (Wow. Major head rush, there.)
Anyhow. The I.C. isn't so much I. these days as it is in full-throttle. I hate this. It's hot, I'm sweaty (even when I'm not thinking about Spike), and I don't sleep well. Friends have recommended Estroven and I'm trying it, but I'm discouraged by the news that it can take as long as 60 days to kick in.
Also, my first meeting this morning was at 6:15 so I think I feel going home early coming over me in a big way today.
Posted by AnneZook at 01:57 PM | Comments (2)