Sleep-speaker

This ain't flocked cus it ain't secret, but also, it's just me rambling about personal crap, so feel free to move on. ;) No awesome geeky fandom content here!

***

So...once upon a time, I kind of wanted to be a writer, because I like writing and it sounded more fun than a real job. And I was sort of good at it, at least good enough to ace my pointless undergrad creative writing degree and sail through my pointless masters, before landing in the real world and discovering neither made me employable in any sense of the word. (I am too hard on myself; I knew exactly how ten-a-penny and useless they would prove to be before I took them, but I loved writing, and it sounded more fun than a real degree.)

(Let us also acknowledge and move past my simultaneous desire to badmouth my own academic achievements as worthless in order to prove I am a realist at the same time I hate the realist worldview that demands it and wonder why an arts degree in writing is considered less impressive than an arts degree in drawing, painting, music or film direction.)

So anyway. I love writing, but fuck me if I can handle plot. I hate plot. I'm bad at plot. All my plots require long, drawn out backstory explanations that are...boring and confuse people. The plot and I are nemeses.

And that's when writing stops being fun and starts being work and I tell myself I'm not giving up, I'm just...wandering away for a while few months four years.

(OMFG, srsly, I got my masters almost five years ago, I was 21, I was a baby - the youngest on the course and I don't think I had a teacher who didn't remark on that; it felt like there was absolutely no hurry and then suddenly shit happens, I've lived in three different countries, gotten married, am closer to my 27th birthday than my 26th, and know more about mental illness - not mine - than I ever, ever wanted to, from both ends of the system. I wonder where the time went and then I think, that's where it went. On my unspectacular, unique life. I wanted to write a book. I never had the time plot.)

Last week, I had an awful week. It sucked ass. And, for some reason, it gave me a plot. I had actual ideas about...not the nitty gritty detail plot; the sleight-of-hand that makes "and then they went to this place and found this clue!" moments seem organic rather than arbitrary, and I'm sure that will terrify me still. But about how to hang the idea I've had for two years on an honest-to-god sequence of events that involves four distinct protagonists and parallel plotlines and revelations and events. It has, I hope, a perspective-shifting endpoint, and characters who, through their existence, ask interesting questions. And the only human is dead and stuck in a robot body, which possibly I should address, but then again maybe not.

The point is, I'm kind of terrified. Cus now I have to write it. Which, if I do it, is going to be amazing. Cus I love writing. I love it. I always forget until I'm doing it and then...I have no words to explain how fantastic it is.

But now I don't have an excuse; now I might fail; now the way it is in my head might not be the way it is on paper.

I mean, I'm okay. I'm going to try and do this; I want to - that's half the reason I'm posting, diary-style, here. To remind myself I can.

But I feel like I'm about to jump off a cliff.

So, this is that thing I was talking about. It's enormous and therefore in multiple posts. It's also finished. The first 2,700 words were originally posted in this post, although they are also reposted here as there have been some minor edits to that section. And I want it all in one place. As you can see, I started this over seven months ago, although it languished on my HD for about five of those. It's so odd to actually finish something. As hmpf says, I'm back in the fic fold. :/

PART 1

Title: The Body is a Myth
Word Count: 28,182 (complete: all three parts.)
Spoilers: AU from 4x09 The Hub, but major spoilers for 4x10 Revelations.
Rating: Um, PG-13ish, I guess?
Disclaimer: Not mine, making no money.
Summary: Laura dies and wakes up on a basestar, Natalie is alive, and D'Anna breaks Kara Thrace by telling her the name of the final cylon. Then, of course, they get to Earth. JUMP!
with many thanks to asta77 for the beta.

( The Body is a Myth )

END PART 1

PART 2.

Well...I thought I'd write up all the stuff I learned and it'd be long. But really it's pretty damn short:

1) At least within a smaller story, such as the ones I was writing, I am nowhere near as bad at plot as I thought. Though I do not believe I could as easily write one that spanned a novel(la).

2) I am already forgetting that for about a week I felt like I was not bad at plot.

3) Yes. Still love the whole writing thing. Love it.

4) Should probably do this again, and should probably keep trying to write more in between. We'll see.

Finally, thank you everyone who gave me a prompt or commented; you helped me probably more than you'll ever know. So, from my heart, thank you all.

Writing request for greycoupon! Who requested either Hera's first words, or Starbuck making new year's resolutions. So I tried to give you both, after a fashion!

Disclaimer: Not mine, making no money.

( Babysitter. )

* * *

( Authorial Ramblings... )

Thanks all, and next up is hmpf's surrealistic prompt about animals. WISH ME LUCK!

Okay, sorry guys - but the next prompt won't be up tonight. In my defense, I have written about as much as I have on other evenings (and I have been at work all day), it's just this one's shaping up to be a bit longer. Probably longer even than the Laura/Lee piece which I got a start on the evening before I posted, having finished the preceeding piece a little early. I think I'm about 2/3rds of the way through? Maybe 1/2? Either way, it'll be up tomorrow. I promise.

I know I don't have official deadlines, but I don't want to lose momentum. So I just thought I'd update everyone who might be keeping vague tabs on this project as to where I was at.

But soon! Soon there will be non-explicit BSG girlslash for projectjulie! I'm using the Laura/Maya/Six "shape of the future" prompt.

For were_lemur! Who challenged me to write something in some way inspired by the awesome Star Wars & Pants Game, wherein you replace key words from Star Wars quotes with the word "pants"! This actually isn't a silly story (well, not really, though it might be daft). The first line is a "pantsed" quote, and I took it from there.

Disclaimer - not mine! No money being made! Don't tax me!

( Like Pants & Taxes )

***

( Authorial Ramblings... )

Next up, a story for tiniago, and if you've read her prompt(s), you'll know why I'm a leeeeeeetle nervous... ;)

Okay! Next up on the writing request is i_kender's request for some zombie apocalypse fic. I have done my best to oblige!

Clocks in at about 1600 words.

( Heave. )

***

( Authorial Ramblings... )

i_kender - thanks again for the prompt; whether the story ends up one of my best or kind of shabby, it's really good to have the motivation to actually write and finish these little, short tales.

Next up - asta77 requests some Lee & Laura in Razor! Now I just have to get an idea...

Okay, here's the deal. I like writing. I think I'm not too bad at it. No, wait, I love writing. And I don't do it enough anymore. I'm...shabby at plot, and tend to focus on words too much, maybe? I wish I could fix that part of me. The people who can spin a tale - three or foud different threads impacting on each other - amazes me.

But back to the point: the deal -

Give me a prompt and I'll write you something. Maybe a paragraph, maybe more. Hopefully more. But give me anything.

I won't be upset if in a few days there's nothing here in the comments, but I will be thrilled if there is.

And I'm serious; anything. Original fiction, fan fiction, poetry, humour, drama, angst, apocalypse, romance, noir. I don't mind trying to challenge myself, so things that might squick me are acceptable too. I'll just have to write around that and see where it leads me.

Be as brief or as detailed as you like.

Please. I'd really, really appreciated it if you gave me a prompt.

Thank you.

First off - a BIG thanks to everyone who responded to my previous, manic entry.

I'd respond individually but I don't know how to make "THANK YOU! THANK YOU A THOUSAND TIMES OVER!" seem non-repetetive. So just consider yourself recipients of said message. ;)

( More blather about the Crash; what I lost; what I saved. )

Sooo.

It was kind of weird seeing what made it through the Crash or not. It was so random. So much stuff just gone, but stuff that survived that I'd forgotten I even had/had written.

Like these two things. They must have been from stories I had ideas for at some point, but now? Couldn't tell you. They're just two two paragraph sketches floating in the ether.

( Sketch 1. )

( Sketch 2. )

A the moment I think I like the first one better. Hmm.

So I decided to find out whether my suspicion was right, and whether the Beach Scene in the last episode of Doctor Who really was filmed on Southerndown Beach. (I was probably the only person watching the scene thinking, DAMMIT, QUIT WITH THE CLOSEUPS!)

Yay, it was! I love that beach. It's the most awesomest beach ever. It's so awesome, for my eighteenth birthday, I actually made my parents hire a mini van and someone to drive me and my friends down there for the day. It was the best birthday ever. Seriously, my love of this beach is totally irrational. It's just beautiful.

It's been ages since I posted any bits or pieces of writing on this blog (probably because I'm avoidant and shy about that sort of thing, but this place is anonymous enough I'm cool with it. I makes me feel I've accomplished something by being brave and also, if I don't have anything new to post, it's like...an unavoidable demonstration of my failure to produce anything. The *theory* being it'll prod me into writing more regularly). I've been struggling a bit to get back into it. I'm also still warring with my bloody desire to write fan fiction for this stupid show.

As a sort of compromise, since I don't really want to write fan fiction, and since I haven't really got enough new stuff to post from my "book", I'm going to post a nonfiction piece I wrote a while back about Southerndown beach and time and being a kid. I promise, the time aspect is purely coincidental.

( I was reworking it today, but the opening paragraph is still refusing to be concise. BLAH! )