rivers_bend

I can't believe it's been over a week since Wincon and I haven't managed to post about it yet. I had a fantastic time this year, right up until the point when I didn't. Unfortunately, my Wincon was cut rather abruptly short by food poisioning which meant I missed the prom and festivities, a night I look forward to all year, and most of the saying goodbye which happens on Sunday. I did, however, get to have a great day out on the strip--Wincon was in Vegas this year--with beckaandzac on Thursday, window shopping in the Venitian and then eating an absolutely amazing steak lunch at the Paris hotel. We had escargot to start, which I hadn't tried since I was fifteen. I hadn't liked it much then, but I was all about its garlic-y herby deliciousness this time. Especially with the crusty French bread and fruity tart Sangria we had with it. My steak was perfectly cooked, tender, juicy, and served Au Poivre, which is my forevergirl steak sauce. It came with the most amazing pommes frites, thin and crispy and tender. It was as though a stack of pringles had sex with a plate of french fries and had a baby. A delicious baby. We definitely didn't need dessert, although as we were walking out, I spied some delicious looking bread pudding that I'd like to try sometime.

In the hotel, on my part there was a lot of screaming about the boys from One Direction and the girls from Little Mix, sharing of stickers and decorating of cups, playing of Spanking Yoda, and screaming about One Direction some more. A group of us also played a Breakfast Show drinking game along with Nick Grimshaw's breakfast show (which on Pacific time airs live at 10:30 at night). I gave up and went to bed just after midnight, though others stayed the 3.5 hour distance. I didn't make it to as many panels as I'd hoped, due to the whole sick thing, but the kink panel was excellent, and the incest panel was enthusiastic as always :D

I made it down to the strip a second time with itsthedetails, deirdre_c and beckaandzac and we wandered the casinos at the south end. We got back just in time for Becka and I to attend the 1D panel, which turned out to be all introductions and discussion of how we got into the fandom, but was no less awesome for that. I seem to be one of the very few people who never had 1D blacklisted on tumblr. I was always willing if not ready.

I've signed up for a fic exchange posting in January, in the hopes that it would kick-start my words. I managed 1500, which is great, but my problem the last few months has lain in finishing anything I start, so I am not out of the woods yet. Fingers crossed though.

And now my lunch break is nearly over, so I leave you. hopefully I will return soon, however!

... so I just found this post in one of my tabs, dated July 13th, and apparently I stopped in the middle of writing it, and I am not totally sure where it was going, but I'm just gonna post it like this, because at least it says something...

My mom is fascinated with slash, and why her lesbian daughter who has zero interest in dick personally is so interested in writing about it, so I find myself thinking about the whys more often than I might if no one was questioning me. I was just looking at this gifset and the tags (whatup, balefully), and was struck with how much sexual freedom that represents. The freedom to sit, drooling for their genitals, at the feet of two people standing over you, is something so politically loaded for women, that it almost feels impossible. And, yes, what I'm writing is fiction, but I tend to write stories set in our world in our time, and the reality of that setting is that women and girls have grown up dealing with a fuckton of shaming (and often violence) around female sexuality. In an ideal world, I'd be able to fling off the weight of that and write characters who navigate not only the bedroom but their whole lives without feeling the effects of that, but I find it exceedingly difficult to do so.

For me, one thing writing explicit m/m fic does, is give me a way to express and explore my own sexuality without feeling the press of the socio-political. I can co-opt the less complicated sexual freedom men and boys are afforded (at least in the US and England, the two places I have experience living), and claim it as my own through my POV character and the characters they have sex with. This is far from the only reason I write slash, and the reasons are complicated, but it definitely plays a factor.

The Fanfiction Writer’s Questionnaire
♥ List all the fandoms you have written in:
Brokeback Mountain, Supernatural, House, CSI, CSI:NY, Alias, Buffy, Deadwood, NCIS:LA, Prison Break, Highway, Firefly, Star Trek, Dark Angel, Desperate Housewives, Dr. Who, Garden State, Ginger Snaps Back, Glee, Grey's Anatomy, Heathers, Hell Cats, Jeeves and Wooster, A Knight's Tale, Live Free or Die Hard, Merlin, NCIS, Ocean's Franchise, Pirates of the Caribbean, Roswell, The State Within, Sucker Punch, Thelma and Louise, Torchwood, Tigertrapped/Spooks(MI5), White Collar, X-Men (movieverse), CWRPS, Adam Lambert, Pundit RPS, Glee RPS, Bandom, Actor RPS. But my big three have been SPN/CWRPS, Adam Lambert, and Bandom, with House and Tiger Trapped close behind.

♥ How many published fics have you written?
significantly more than three hundred, I'm pretty sure, ranging from true drabbles to 70k words.

♥ In terms of wordcount, in which fandom have you written the most?
there is no easy way to determine that because I still haven't gotten all my SPN fic onto ao3 yet. I have written by far the most stories in SPN, but my word count with those averaged about 2.5k words. Adam and Bandom I'm closer to 10-15k average.

♥ At the moment, which one of your fics is your favorite/you are the most proud of? (you can include unpublished fics)
That is a split between You Only Live Forever and Let the Darkness Lead You Home, both of which are big bangs, and both of which I worked on for more than nine months.

♥ Which writer (fanfiction or not) inspires your own work?
I am inspired everywhere. I have such a phenomenal community of writers around me, and some of them compose sentences like dreams, some kick you in the heart with emotions, some write smoking hot sex, some have such great things to say about process, some poke me to work harder... on and on and on. Fandom is like the best grad school--one where no one looks at you funny for writing gay porn.

♥ What was your first fanfic about?
My first fanfic was about Lureen's dad having hired a hitman to kill Jack in Brokeback Mountain. I ended up re-working it later that year and finally posting it as a Yuletide stocking stuffer.

♥ Out of all the characters whose POV you have written, which one do you feel you identify the most with?
All of my POV characters are me and I am all of them. Though I feel most connected to my teenagers, I think. Arrested development and all that. And definitely the ones I've written the most. Sam, Dean, Adam, Tommy, Frank, and Gerard. And Julian, though that was more an RP situation, and is weird and different for me.

♥ What do you feel is your biggest challenge when writing?
Depends on the day. Sometimes it's hearing the voices, sometimes it's getting past my need for every word to be the perfect word right out of the gate, sometimes it's finding time when I'm not exhausted, often lately it's tumblr.

♥ Do you generally outline your fics or do you prefer to write spontaneously and then revise?
never never never. On my really long ones I'll do notecards in Scrivener once I've written the bulk of it, but I almost never know what is going to happen in a story before I start, and very rarely before I'm half-way done. Generally I hear a sentence in my head, and then I write it down and hear another one, and then another, and it builds from there. I rely on my characters to know what to do.

♥ Which one of your fanfics has the most hits? the most comments? the most kudos? (if applicable)
The fic with the most hits is a false high, because one of the people in the story found it and tweeted a link. But the one that has the most naturally generated hits is You Only Live Forever. The most comments are on my Sam/Dean time travel stories, I'm pretty sure. The most Kudos are on my Danny/Jackson teenwolf story. Teen Wolf is a crazy big fandom.

♥ What proportion, if any, of your fics are rated M or above (# of M-plus fics/ total # of fics)?
lololol. I don't know the percentage exactly, but I'd be surprised if more than 10% of my fic is below M and if more than 20% is below NC17.

♥ Finally, tease us with the title of one of your upcoming fics:
Since I usually choose a title as I am posting it, I cannot tell you an upcoming title, but the file name of the fic I'm most likely to finish next is Because Stiles.

The Fanfiction Writer’s Questionnaire
♥ List all the fandoms you have written in:
Brokeback Mountain, Supernatural, House, CSI, CSI:NY, Alias, Buffy, Deadwood, NCIS:LA, Prison Break, Highway, Firefly, Star Trek, Dark Angel, Desperate Housewives, Dr. Who, Garden State, Ginger Snaps Back, Glee, Grey's Anatomy, Heathers, Hell Cats, Jeeves and Wooster, A Knight's Tale, Live Free or Die Hard, Merlin, NCIS, Ocean's Franchise, Pirates of the Caribbean, Roswell, The State Within, Sucker Punch, Thelma and Louise, Torchwood, Tigertrapped/Spooks(MI5), White Collar, X-Men (movieverse), CWRPS, Adam Lambert, Pundit RPS, Glee RPS, Bandom, Actor RPS. But my big three have been SPN/CWRPS, Adam Lambert, and Bandom, with House and Tiger Trapped close behind.

♥ How many published fics have you written?
significantly more than three hundred, I'm pretty sure, ranging from true drabbles to 70k words.

♥ In terms of wordcount, in which fandom have you written the most?
there is no easy way to determine that because I still haven't gotten all my SPN fic onto ao3 yet. I have written by far the most stories in SPN, but my word count with those averaged about 2.5k words. Adam and Bandom I'm closer to 10-15k average.

♥ At the moment, which one of your fics is your favorite/you are the most proud of? (you can include unpublished fics)
That is a split between You Only Live Forever and Let the Darkness Lead You Home, both of which are big bangs, and both of which I worked on for more than nine months.

♥ Which writer (fanfiction or not) inspires your own work?
I am inspired everywhere. I have such a phenomenal community of writers around me, and some of them compose sentences like dreams, some kick you in the heart with emotions, some write smoking hot sex, some have such great things to say about process, some poke me to work harder... on and on and on. Fandom is like the best grad school--one where no one looks at you funny for writing gay porn.

♥ What was your first fanfic about?
My first fanfic was about Lureen's dad having hired a hitman to kill Jack in Brokeback Mountain. I ended up re-working it later that year and finally posting it as a Yuletide stocking stuffer.

♥ Out of all the characters whose POV you have written, which one do you feel you identify the most with?
All of my POV characters are me and I am all of them. Though I feel most connected to my teenagers, I think. Arrested development and all that. And definitely the ones I've written the most. Sam, Dean, Adam, Tommy, Frank, and Gerard. And Julian, though that was more an RP situation, and is weird and different for me.

♥ What do you feel is your biggest challenge when writing?
Depends on the day. Sometimes it's hearing the voices, sometimes it's getting past my need for every word to be the perfect word right out of the gate, sometimes it's finding time when I'm not exhausted, often lately it's tumblr.

♥ Do you generally outline your fics or do you prefer to write spontaneously and then revise?
never never never. On my really long ones I'll do notecards in Scrivener once I've written the bulk of it, but I almost never know what is going to happen in a story before I start, and very rarely before I'm half-way done. Generally I hear a sentence in my head, and then I write it down and hear another one, and then another, and it builds from there. I rely on my characters to know what to do.

♥ Which one of your fanfics has the most hits? the most comments? the most kudos? (if applicable)
The fic with the most hits is a false high, because one of the people in the story found it and tweeted a link. But the one that has the most naturally generated hits is You Only Live Forever. The most comments are on my Sam/Dean time travel stories, I'm pretty sure. The most Kudos are on my Danny/Jackson teenwolf story. Teen Wolf is a crazy big fandom.

♥ What proportion, if any, of your fics are rated M or above (# of M-plus fics/ total # of fics)?
lololol. I don't know the percentage exactly, but I'd be surprised if more than 10% of my fic is below M and if more than 20% is below NC17.

♥ Finally, tease us with the title of one of your upcoming fics:
Since I usually choose a title as I am posting it, I cannot tell you an upcoming title, but the file name of the fic I'm most likely to finish next is Because Stiles.

So I may have been talking to dreamlittleyo tonight (YAY) and we may have been discussing how we had seen that AO3 meme floating around and were going to do it but forgot. So we decided that we should do it now, even though everyone has moved on to something else by now. Because that's how we roll apparently :D

I think? the idea is you list your top ten fics in AO3 sorted by hit count and then maybe discuss them a little if you want. If it's not, close enough. ( meme! )

So there you have it. top ten by hitcount. In 'other things that interest me that it's easy to discover on AO3' news: out of 113 posted fics, one is >50k words, 3 are between 20k and 50k (plus one I co-wrote with dreamlittleyo, and 3 are between 10k and 20k. All the rest are under 10k. The fact that I can't even write a PWP without it topping 10k anymore is boggling to me.

I opened gdocs the other day for the first time in ages because I use Scrivener to write now, and I realized that there are things languishing on there. This seemed the perfect opportunity to dust them off and see what's what. The idea is this:

Post the first sentence (or three or random large chunk) from three WIPs you're currently working on (and when I say working on, I mean: haven't completely given up on). Then invite people to ask questions about your WIPs. With any luck, you'll get talking about writing, and the motivation to take that WIP one step closer to completion will appear as if by magic!

( I'm not giving up on you... )

Assuming I've kept my sticky posts as up-to-date as I think I have, the next story I post is going to be my 300th posted fan fic. THREE HUNDRED. No wonder my sticky posts are a total mess and don't look all neat and pretty the way lots of peoples do.

It's making me feel all *flappy hands* though, because I feel like my 300th fic should be a significant one. But my big bang date isn't until January 9th, which is a long way off. I'm certainly hoping to have the fic I'm working on now done and ready to post before then. But I spent 10 months on my big bang fic, so it feels like that one should get the nice round number.

Except, what is in a number anyway? Whatever I post it will be one of many that came before, and hopefully of many, many more to come after. Still, though. THREE. HUNDRED. Good lord.

At some point when I was in grad school I acquired a book that gave me the following advice: In order to write a story worth reading, you must put your protagonist up a tree and throw rocks at him repeatedly. (in the book, context clues told you that rocks are a metaphor for obstacles, here we will use a parenthetical)

I have generally been more the kind of girl who puts her protagonist up a tree and throws the boys of his dreams at him and watches them make out. I like that method. It makes me happy. But this last week I've been writing a story where I cannot seem to stop throwing rocks at my protagonist. It also makes me happy (so happy, omg it's so much fun this story), but it means that I've hit 12K and my protagonist has yet to utter so much as a single word to the boy of his dreams. Apparently what the advice-giver dude meant was If you want to accidentally write a novel when you meant to write a PWP...

I was going to finally get to the whole speaking point this morning, but a rock was thrown at me, in the form of THIS VIDEO IN WHICH THE BOYS FROM MY CHEMICAL ROMANCE DRESS UP IN SNOW SUITS, JUMP AROUND, AND SING ABOUT SPECIAL SNOWFLAKES HOW EVERY SNOWFLAKE IS DIFFERENT

See???

Yo Gabba Gabba, I appreciate you. You bring me this.

Woo! So this looks kind of amazing and awesome. I can't wait to see what comes out of it. and find a prompt that grabs me :D




Join us over at ladies_fest, where all the fandom ladies kick ass, take names, and don't let anyone stand in their way!
Prompting starts 17 September 2011!

I know what I feel like I write over and over, but I'm curious if that's what others see. And so, a meme:

If I made Cinderella, the audience would immediately be looking for a body in the coach. — Alfred Hitchcock

When I write a story, what do you immediately look for?