louiselux | Entries tagged with writing

We went round to a friend's house for dinner last night and I do believe that afterwards we drank a whole bottle of whiskey between us. Oh how I suffer now. The tea is helping a little though. And the sun is shining and birds are bouncing around in the garden so that makes me feel nice. I have some frilly pink tulips this year and they have come out.

Some announcements:

daegaer- sorry to be so slow on the beta. I will have something for you by tomorrow evening. Also, I wish I had your magical resistance to hangovers.

emungere, you can keep the copy of The Virtu I sent, because I was unable to resist buying another copy yesterday and rereading. Mildmay is so fabulous. *paws teh book*

toscas_kiss, no worries about the arrangement last week, because I had forgotten it too! Behold the power of my brain.

The spring kinks are going okay. By which I mean am writing the first one and it is totally running away with me. A dead cow features prominently.

I'm experimenting with a new methodof writing: writing it by hand and then dictating it into a voice recognition programme, Dragon NaturallySpeaking. It's accuracy seems good, even now when I've hardly trained it. Except that Gojyo still tends to come out as 'got you' and Hakkai as 'I can'.

So, the speaking is fine. The writing is harder, because if I want to change or add to the handwritten stuff I have to compose sentences in my head. I don't know if other people write like that, but the physical act of writing is somehow important in channeling my ideas and using my voice instead is very odd.

A more comprehensive to do list than usual, because I'm feeling guilty about everything I am not writing or am behind on.

emungere said I should make a list, with the ~~most perverted~~ ~~shortest~~ things that make me feel most guilty first.

( writing list )

mood giddy

A miracle - Forbidden Planet in Brum was actually up to date with its manga, so I got Wild Adapter vol 1 on Friday. Yay for translations! I think that ( spoilers )

I have no idea what George Takei is saying, because I have no earphones and the office is full, but he looks like he's just made a good point.

I posted another timestamp story last night, a tiny sequel to One Summer, here. It has sex and happiness and was very fulfilling to write. When I wrote the original story, I planned to expand it into something much longer, something maybe even novel length and that never happened. I think I need to make another to do list.

I watched Primeval last night, the new ITV rival to Doctor Who, even though ITV insists that it's not. It had anomalies and giant centipedes and spiders. I had no idea what was going on and apparently there was someone from S Club 7 in it. Lots of people were pretty though, even though many of them were also annoying.

mood sleepy

( Stories I wrote this year )

( Unfinished )

( Co-written with Eleanor K and poll about what we should finish next )

( End of year story meme )

( More poll: most sexy story )

mood achy

I dreamed about frogs last night - tiny little ones patterned like sea shells, that I was afraid of squishing with my toes. They were all over my bedroom carpet.

No,

trensaddiction and

new_kate, they did not talk and they were not rentboys. What do frogs signify in dreams? I could google it but I am horribly lazy.

Talking of talking frogs... Iris Print has a call out for its fairy story anthology, so I think I am going to send in my magical talking frog story. It does turn into manlove, honestly, not man/frog love.

So, with the frog story and my last

yaoi_challenge story (which is percolating in my brain... hopefully. At least, it's doing something up there. I trust my brain), I have enough to keep me officially busy for a wee while. Unofficially, the brain is working overtime on stories that do not have a deadline. Stupid thing.

In more gripping arm news, the tennis elbow pain has largely gone. The double crush (!) is still giving me thumb and forearm tingles, but they are lessening, I think. I am back at work, gently typing.

mood still moody

So I was meant to spend today turning my

yaoi_challenge notes into fic, but ended up sleeping till lunchtime, then going shopping, writing completely unrelated porn, cleaning the kitchen and the bathroom and then reading lj (very important, that). I suck.

On the bright side, I got a good haul from the shops. ( Louise's shopping )

Reviving an old meme...

Ask me anything about my stories and/or writing process: inspiration, process, characters, what the hell was I thinking, etc. No limit on questions, just ask away.

mood contemplative

Greetings! Why do I always post on Sunday nights these days? Is it to do with not wanting the weekend to be over? Brief update on me: tendonitis much much better, back at work, applying for new job.

Have some more recordings of my brain in action:

crystal_lilly suggested talking about how I write: Places for writing in

and then

daegaer was wondering about my views on: Hakkai and Gojyo and why they should have lots of sex. I am pretty certain I have far more coherent ideas than this, really. Yes. But they just derail me slightly. A lot.

mood pensive

Going back to work tomorrow after a nearly three week break. God I feel stressed about it. The aches in my hands and arms have mostly gone, although I am still having twinges and aches in my back and shoulders. I'll see how it goes tomorrow.

On a funner note,

crystal_lilly wanted me to reupload a couple of Lou podcasts, so here they are, via yousendit: catboys and Hakkai the porn novelist (6.5mb, mp3) and me talking about works in progress and pwps (1.8mb, mp3)

I'd like to do a few more of these, but was wondering if anyone had any requests for things they'd like to hear me talk about? It's hard being faced with a microphone and potentially anything as a subject.

mood doomed

Okay, so it looks like I will defintely be going to

squee_fest_uk, and in the company of the illustrious

daegaer, yay! So, perhaps now might be a good time to find accomodation, yes? I must remember to sort out my

connotations booking too. And decide about Yaoicon this year while I am at it. And find a nice cheap holiday on a beach somewhere.

In other news I am working my way slowly through Anansi Boys by Neil Gaiman, and enjoying it. I like the style and the tone - it reminds me a lot of Neverwhere, but seems far more solid somehow.

I have been writing screeds of fiction, but none of it is in a postable state, or often even properly finished. But about a 1000 words a day on various things, which I am pleased with. This morning on the train I began an original short story that I hope to send off for a deadline at the end of this month. I don't know if I can meet the deadline, or if 23 days is long enough to write and edit it, but seeing as it's going to be about 6000 words long, it seems enough time if I don't let myself get too distracted by other things, by which I mean manporn. Shut up. Speaking of which, I need to start editing my chapters of the epic porn novel. There are just so many things I want to write, aargh. Frustration. I wish I had more time for them all. But at least I have a plan, even a vague plan.

So, June looks like it's going to be fairly busy, and here I was thinking it seemed quiet. My parents are insisting on taking me to a boat show on Sunday, and the weekend after that is a family party in Kent. The week after that I hope to have off and was planning on doing the face-down onna beach thing. Thankfully work is not too demanding at the moment, or I feel like I might pop a gasket.

Finally, have a photo of my garden:

( big giant poppy )

Lesson 1: if you whine pitifully, then

daegaer will entertain you with Saiyuki drabbles and

lydia_petze will show you pictures of flying cats.

Lesson 2: there is no lesson 2

***

In other news the janitor story has reached 7000 words and not much seems to have happened apart from some mopping, significant looks and Hakkai being strange. Mostly, I don't start with a full plot outline, but I know that certain things have to happen to take the plot forward and I have an idea of what they will be. The snag is that I can only ever see up to a certain point and what happens next tends to be obscured by murk. So, somewhere after weird sex and pigeon poisoning the janitor story goes... somewhere. Somewhere I don't know until we've got there.

Some Saiyuki fics I've enjoyed recently:

Tangles by

hibem, Hakkai/Gojyo and Rabid Youkai Sexx0rs. The sequel to Damage Control.

Hearts Like Flowers by

springgreen, Hakkai/Gojyo, explict m/m, which is a very intense partner to Senses Working Overtime by

devikun

Series of four stories by

kazaera - interesting short character pieces.

mood dizzy

Am waiting for a short person with a moustache to come and have a meeting with me about some Very Exciting References I have that he doesn't. He's very sweet. I think he probably won't turn up though, because we've developed this game of saying we'll meet and then mutually ignoring it. It doesn't knock my duck off though, as my mum would say, as he's only down the corridor.

Life on Mars is sooo slashy. Sam Tyler is like this exotic creature from another planet, all clean shaven and short haired and sensitive. I love the attention to detail in this program, because he even looks physically different from the others somehow, healthier, with his better skin and teeth and hair. How can his grumpy-bastard boss fail to be charmed, in the end? That's right, he can't. Are they doing it on purpose?

olympia_m woke me up to the potential last week and yay, last night's episode just cemented it that little bit more. Also, John Simm is very cute.

Update - the man came to the meeting, at last, after all these months! It was a good meeting.

It occurs to me that I haven't written in a film or television fandom for years, not since the X-Files. I don't know if this is to do with any differences between these types of fandoms, for example, are there are easier points of entry into lit and manga fandoms? Maybe I'm less likely to fall in love with a character on screen than on a page - but that can't be true because I love the Doctor and Benton Fraser and Greg House, but have not wanted to write them at all. Maybe it's to do with what stimulates me more - characters created and presented with either words or pictures? Hmmm, I'm sure I had more thoughts, but I'm not getting any further with this so I'd better leave it here.

My four hour meeting of doom today was so good. I am happy! About work! I have an angle for my paper and I know what I want to do with the past year's research. I'm revelling in the complete and utter joy of having a direction, finally. All I have to do now is write the damn thing.

In other news, I signed up at the last minute for

yuletide, too and am feeling pretty pleased.

A handy list for me: ( Louise's fic to do list )

papersky on naming characters

I absolutely hate having to name my OCs, especially if it's in manga fandom, as there's that little snag of not knowing the language. Saiyuki is a particular problem, do you pick an old name and is it Chinese or Japanese? About is quite useful for looking at old fashioned/popular names.

I'm a fortunate person -

xsmoonshine wrote me a Jeep drabble and she also did a cartoon with frillyapron!Snape and wolfy Remus

Also, I'm off work all week. *collapses in relieved heap*

I began the

bb_shousetsou story this morning. Go me! I have 7 days and plan to make it about 5000 words.

Otherwise, there's so much I want to write. I need to make a list. First get the bang bang story done. Then the Hakkai story, possibly. *eyes

emungere*

And the Hakkai/Gojyo with the sweet romantic fluff! And lots ofadventure. Reading Due South fic made me yearn for some long, plotty adventure stories of the type that don't often get written in Saiyujki fandom. There are some very good ones out there, just not very many. And that made me think about why I veer from wanting long fic to short fic and back again. In Due South I only want to read long stories but for Saiyuki I'll read anything. Perhaps it's about what's available, or what I'm reading for; entertainment, gratification of emotions and scratching an itch that other forms of modern entertainment don't cater for very much. But, still, more adventures with villains and possibly mystical Mcguffins too, and sweet, tentative eyeing each other up on the quiet days.

After I finished that last bit of Sanzo underwear porn, I had, and still have, an intense longing for sweet romantic one-true-love Hakkai/Gojyo stories, and for fluffy gen stories about Hakkai and Jeep. Which also might double as a sweet romantic one-true-love stories I suppose. Of a sort. So, sweet fluff and long involved adventures are my two main requirements right now.

It didn't stop me signing up for

yaoi_challenge though, just now. Yeah!

In other news, I feel like crap. Still not really over the con plague and work is just one big enormous gloomy sigh.

I decided to download 18-26 of Samurai Champloo. Only 14 hours to go...

Work was good today - had a productive meeting and got some ideas for the papers that we are supposed to be writing for the research department. Train home was absoluely packed, people standing in the aisles, and a baby relentlessly screeching. There are still lots of police at Birmingham New St station, not so many at Reading station.

lexin made an excellent post on the bombings, here.

Anyway, as a distraction from badness I suppose, in the past two days I've surprised myself by writing more than 3000 words of a cracktastic, deeply smutty Batman/Saiyuki AU. The mind is a wonderful thing.

This post is veering wildly, but I've decided I actually really hate CLAMP's art after all. RG Veda is to blame - I can't tell anyone apart. On the other hand, I like Blade of the Immortal very much. I bought vol one today, but at a tenner a go and up to 14 (?) volumes, it might be an expensive habit.

Right, I'm shattered. Time for a large glass of port and then bed, I think.

The remix story is in bits, literally. This is the problem of writing at work, then on the train, then at home. No.1 on things-to-do-this-weekend list: shuffle it into some coherent whole. This is often a harder and longer task than writing it.

I used to think that the initial narrative flow of a story I'd written was something set in stone - that it had come out of me this way and therefore must be right, and that if I could pick up a paragraph and put it somewhere else and it would fit better, then that was a sign I was doing something wrong. What a strange thing to think. Like I was putting my faith in the notion that creation was the most important thing, and that any change after that weakened the supposed pure form of what you'd done. Who was it who said writing without an editor is like mumbling to yourself in the dark? I can't remember, but I wish I did. Writing, like painting or music or design, is a process of trial and error and the application of critical faculties to be able to tell if the original thing is lacking something and needs to be improved. In fact, in design, it's always assumed that the original thing is lacking, because it hasn't been exposed to use and testing. Hello, red pen of the editor. After time, and some experience, I've come to think it's okay to shuffle and to chop up and arrange stories, to make them, hopefully, better.

*shriek of despair*

Spent all day trying to make one of our websites work. Have smashed it up good.

The bright side is that it's only a test site, but can I kill the person who designed this so called 'easy to use content management system' ? Please?

****

In other news, February has bought me many blessings! (am channeling Tohru for this part) So far this week I've had a card with sweet mini ficlets from

daegaer, Wild Adapter 2 and 3 from the gorgeous, seductive Sasuga Japanese Bookstore and a cup! The cup comes, I think, from

jamjar and it's a special Reload cup. So cool-- thank you:D

My

remixredux fic is shaping up to be very interesting, for me at least - I've thought more about form and structure for this than for anything else I've written. My usual approach to structure is to not. Or to rather let the story fall out of my head as it wll and then either impose something on it, or to leave it as is.

Am leaving work now. In two hours I'll be in the swimming pool, so if anyone wants me you can reach me there.

Happy Random Wombat Day

Am at work, in mental pain from dealing with the hnngggh web developers. Will this never end? Luckily it's only a small part of my job, but nevertheless the problems seem insurmountable at times. But we were given chocolate and fruit pastilles by nice people, so the sugar rush is helping.

Just as a note, it's a bad idea to insert large quoted chunks of a pro novel into your own fanfic, because not only does it stop the flow of the story like a brick wall across a motorway, but it might alert the reader to the fact that they could be reading something else, something better. But then it might work the other way round and you'd just be relieved you weren't reading Wuthering Heights (the novel in question) and having to work out again who the hell everyone was, and who were they related to again? But generally I can't help thinking it's a tactical mistake.

We watched Best in Show last night and laughed a lot, which was good because Brokeback Mountain is a classic Annie Proulx genre novel (short story, rather), and that genre is MISERY. Beautifully written and sometimes quite funny misery, but misery all the same. It'll be fascinating to see how they've filmed it - her prose is very visual and ideas for scenes spring easily to mind - I hope they keep the ending as it is in the story.

I haven't forgotten your snippets, dear requesters, I just keep getting distracted by real life - they will be coming along, I promise. And furthermore, if an angel and demon did just happen to have sex and one of them got pregnant, what would the resulting child be, exactly? I suppose, genetically, it would be angel, if demons started out as angels.

From loads of people off my friends list, and they've all been fascinating to read. I like kissing - I'd even go so far as to say kissing is a definite kink for me, but looking at this selection of five kisses from my stories, it strikes me that they're not very descriptive of the kiss itself, but of what the characters are thinking, or smelling, or feeling. There's not much actual mechanical explanation of whose tongue is where, etc, in the later ones. In the earlier ones there is but I'm trying a bit too hard to fit in, I think.

In decending order of age, er, youngest first:

( A is for Angel, Crowley/Aziraphale )

( Flowers of Earth, C/A )

( Time Under Glass, RL/SS )

( Wish Trip, Mulder Krycek )

( Touched, Mulder/Krycek )

[Fixed the typos now. Sorry. That'll teach me to be twitchy with the post button]

I've been thinking for a while about sex. Ahem. Writing sex, that is. I think what I'd really like is for people to point me to their favourite sex scene/PWP and then tell me why they think it's good. I don't know if I should try and define what I mean by 'good' at this point as everyone's definition of what's good in a sex scene is different. All I can do is to describe the things I think make a sex scene good: that they be erotic, charming, moving, intense, warm, human and real, either all or a combination of these qualities. There.

A long while ago, someone gave the best advice ever about writing sex scenes. I can't remember who it was, sadly. They said, before you embark on writing, go back to the stories that you think had wonderfully written sex in. Now, sit down and work out exactly what it was about it that made it so good, what you liked about it, what turned you on. Apply that when you write your own.

( Some sex scenes that are good and why I think so )

I had a wonderful birthday. Thank you to everyone who sent birthday wishes my way - I felt very loved and spoilt. And

daegaer wrote me this fic (eeee!), which is the funniest thing I've read in an age. You'll never think about Crowley and his Bentley in the same light again.

I read a wonderful reworking of a fairy tale yesterday: Lubberkin by

gehayi, a rewriting of Rumplestiltskin. It's beautiful, elegant and haunting.

And now, at long last, I've managed to finish the talk-through of Innocence and Experience, my first go at the Aziraphale-and-Crowley-have-sex story.

( DVD style commentary on Innocence and Experience )

( Commentary on 'New Day' )

( fannish addiction and Blather )

*groan* I ate too much cheese. I know better than to stuff it down my face in those quantities but I still do.

In other news, my GO NaNoWriMo novel has passed 50,000 words. The past 4 weeks have been really hard, very exhausting, and at some points even quite upsetting. But at the end of it all I'm dead chuffed. I did it! Even though I've been posting it in

space_angels it's not strictly fit for human consumption, or even finished, but I'm quite hopeful now that I'll write quite a bit more and then settle down to edit it into something cool and froody.

Along with my new copy of Good Omens (the old one fell apart, literally), I bought 'Master and Commander' by Patrick O'Brian. It's fabulous. I loved it right from the start, with that hugely entertaining description of what's going on in Aubrey's head at the concert and the way he's responding to the music. Reading with furrowed brow the insanely complicated nautical descriptions- I have no idea what's happening most of the time but it's worth it for terms like foretopgallantsail and cunt-splice! Now there's a term you don't see everyday.

Profile

louiselux

Navigation

June 2019

S	M	T	W	T	F	S
						1
2	3	4	5	6	7	8
9	10	11	12	13	14	15
16	17	18	19	20	21	22
23	24	25	26	27	28	29
30

Page Summary

Syndicate

Expand Cut Tags

No cut tags

frog princess

the Iberio-Swiss divide

Entries tagged with writing

Hangover of blehhh

To do and doing list

Wild Adapter and other things

Big long end of year story round-up

Frogs again

Onrushing doom

Writing questions

Further podcasts

Sunday and podcasts

Just my life, writing

Things, writing, some quick Saiyuki recs

Life on Mars, my life, thought fragment

Life, fic deadlines

Fings

Things to do

Things

Story

Wailing

Update on life in general

Five kisses meme

Sex! Again.

Thank you and a commentary on Innocence and Experience

Commentary on 'New Day'

I can't think of a title for this post

Masterful!