frog princess

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.

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.

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

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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.

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 )

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.

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.

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.

[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 )

*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.

Prologue and
Chapter one of the Good Omens all singing, all dancing angels-in-space story.

I saw Finding Nemo and thought the animation was stunning but the script was hopelessly sugary. Humbug! But I really enjoyed the gulls, and the peevish crabs, and Dory. And Alison Janney as the starfish!

And I now have season 5 of Buffy. So this weeks it's digging, writing, Buffy.

Last night I dreamt of getting into a long, very low, shiny train. It was all bit too disturbingly knob-shaped. Maybe I've been taking too many of daegaer's Penis Pills TM.

Pop! The sound of my head exploding from sheer busyness. Still, to make up for it I carried on the theme of senseless luxuries and bought a new skirt and some hair clips that I didn't strictly need. Easy there, Lou.

Wanton thoughts continue unabated on the train. It's all very well me thinking these things, but when I get to writing them down it's another matter entirely, as usual, as with anything, even a boring scene involving tea-drinking. In fact, tea-drinking scenes are hard too. It's all difficult. I can get my imagination fired up, characters behaving themselves, or not, as the case may be, even sometimes, a plot. It's all there in my head, and sometimes (rarely) on paper in diagram form. I'll be practically quivering with the right mood to be writing. But even with the right mood, characters bouncing off the walls, a diagram (!), even then, shifting from that state to one of actually picking up a pen and facing a blank piece of paper, all that stuff doesn't help. Well, it helps a small amount, because at least I know who and vaguely what I want to write about. But it's still me, sitting there, writing crap, rewriting crap and then crossing things out and adding things until it all seems generally okay. It's still 'shit, bugger, that's rubbish, scrub that', seemingly for infinity. Or at least until about version 5, by which time I'll be fairly happy with it. But, despite having to face the pain that is version 1, I still think it's the best fun you can have alone.

And the thing that we all want: I got some nice feedback today, by email. You can't beat the good old-fashioned ways. Fresh crusty emails, just like Ma used to make.