Fannish fun

So I finally finished one of my WiPs. I need to give it a good strong polishing, but at least the meat of it is done. Why can't I bring myself to just do it? I don't know. I figured I just needed a bit of distance following finishing that draft and starting the polish so I walked away from it for most of the day. Doing other stuff so I can look at it with fresher eyes is always a good idea anyways.

Only now I can't even bring myself to look at the file.

I also need to be packing, and dealing with a few issues that have popped up this weekend, and doing some massive cleaning to prep for guests.


On a positive note, I did go out for a lovely dinner with my parents, so that is a nice thing.

Have you ever been just going along, happily typing away with good momentum and a seemingly clear idea of where you want to go with a story, and then just... hit a wall? Like, out of nowhere, smack into it? Repeatedly and painfully?

Argh!

(Very) Rough draft of the McCoy 5+1 fic is done. It's currently over 4900 words long (and what is with my inability to keep 5+1 fics short and sweet? Isn't that the point?), but there is a TON of editing that needs to happen even pre-beta, so I have no idea how much will actually remain in the second draft. We shall see. Tomorrow. Perhaps with a little assistance in the form of a glass of wine. For right now, sleep.

So I think I'm going to have to put the finishing touches on it tomorrow because I'm exhausted and still recovering from the plague (or, you know, allergies with a side order of intense hypochondriacal drama). But yay! Creativity!

Anyone wanna act as a beta? It's a fairly lighthearted 5+1 fic with a bit of McCoy/Jocelyn and winding up with suggestion of McCoy/Spock and inspired by this kink meme prompt. I'm anticipating around 2500-3500 words, but haven't yet brandished the red pen delete key of doom yet.

Please?

So tonight's activities resulted in two bridge2sickbay ficlets and a batch of seriously delicious chocolate cookies.

The B2S theme for this week was poetry quotes.

I wasn't familiar with either of the quotes when I read them at the comm, so the fics were inspired by the line(s) alone. I googled the poems after the fact to find out where the lines came from.

( To Share a Journey, Gaila/Pike, PG )

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( Warmth, Spock/Uhura, G )

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So, yes. I feel absurdly proud to have produced anything at all tonight. I've been struggling all week, wanting write and yet not typing a single keystroke. So yes, glad to have anything at all to show for my weekend :)

My cookies are excellent as well :) Far more polished an attempt than the ficlets, by far :) I used a recipe recommended by wesleysgirl which can be found here only without using the buttercream to make them into sandwiches. I've found that while I adore the cookie part itself, I stink at making buttercream frosting (when I tried the recipe originally it wouldn't stiffen up and was gooey and messy and grainy and just overall terrible). So I left it out and nommed nicely tonight on lovely chocolate coffee cookies. Half the batch is tucked away into the cookie jar and the other half is packed up to take to work for my coworkers to descend upon like a ravening horde.

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Back to bridge2sickbay for a moment. A couple of my prompts were posted but not filled. I am reposting them here to a) hopefully encourage someone to write them for me *pleading eyes* or, if need be, b) remember them for some undisclosed time in the future to try out myself.

~Pike, Kirk or McCoy, Kirk - Follow me ever - desert me not while I live. (Ashes of Soldiers by Walt Whitman)

~Author's Choice - The sun and moon get crossed, but they never touch (On Looking Up By Chance at the Constellations by Robert Frost)

~Spock, Uhura - Your soul is oftentimes a battlefield, upon which your reason and your judgment wage war against passion and your appetite. (Reason & Passion by Khalil Gibran)

~Winona, Pike - I could've died for love - But for livin' I was born (Life is Fine by Langston Hughes)

It's been an excruciatingly painful process, but I've actually been getting a bit of writing done. It's been entirely in fandom_stocking rather than my WiPs of doom (or would it be W(s)iP?) but it's still writing. I've been greatly helped in the process by a friend who recommended the following sites:

Write Or Die
13 Tips For Actually Getting Some Writing Done

So, these have helped me to sit down and just write something. I'm trying to sit and write and just do it without psyching myself out about the general suckiness of whatever it is I'm working on. I guess the current motto is: At least write something and if it sucks, you can delete it. But at least you did it. We'll see how this works as an MO for me.

The story I am currently working on is giving me fits. Fits of frustration, most especially. Argh!

Written for wizard_love. The community's explanation/intro post can be found here. My story there can be found here.

Title: A Moment of Silence
Author: exiled_mind
Recipient’s LJ name: le_calmar_geant
Rating: R
Pairing(s): Remus/Tonks
Word Count: 1251
Warnings (if any): heights, really light bondage, outdoors!canoodling, mild angst
Authors notes: Many thanks to amor_remanet for being such a fantastic beta. She is deserving of cocoa and appreciation. I managed to hit a few of le_calmar_geant's requests, working in the outdoors smut, really light bondage, and even managed to dial down the angst (an impressive feat for me :) ). Feedback is greatly appreciated.




( Although the moon was waning… )

wizard_love fic is edited, finished, and sent in. Thank you amor_remenet for betaing so quickly and capably :) (Don't worry, her name won't be appearing on the fic itself until after the reveal/after I post the fic elsewhere, so I'm not actually giving anything away).

I have a seven-item long list of ideas that I want to start/continue writing NOW, but so much else to do. Yarg. It's a really odd list, too, for me at least. One would be a new fandom for me (Firefly/Serenity), and though the rest are HP, for the most part they aren't the pairings/characters/styles that I've done before. Which is a good thing, but it makes it harder to actually buckle down and write something that I might actually end up keeping.

But for the moment - laundry beckons.

*sigh* I think I need to stick with gen. The gen muse is definitely more free with her blessings.

I'm trying to stay awake until 7am so as to stay on my night shift schedule, and I thought that this would be a great opportunity to get some writing done, I'm trying to get a good jump on my Valentine's fic, but it's just not coming to me at the moment. I'd also like to go and read more of the shackinup_sesa submissions (think I've read about 1/4-1/3 so far), but after two night shifts wherein all I can do afterwards is collapse into sleep, I've got TONS of back reading to do on my friends lists. Oy, I think I definitely need to filter out fanficrants and metaquotes though - those'll slide without me missing out on much.

And themed100 is due in a little over a month and I'm not even half finished... and my winter break is about half over.