Nicki's Lair

Well, I made it through Friday closing/Saturday early shift/Sunday morning one last time and henceforth I can unload the Friday closing shift on new supervisor R. I cannot even express how happy that makes me. I absolutely hate that Friday closing shift, particularly because I've effectively been short staffed since D.'s last day -- I've been unable to schedule a middle-of-the-day catch-all/support person to back me up. Now things can return to normal, meaning I'll be the mid day catch-all person, and someone else can handle the direct supervising and closing-up at the end of the night.

Unfortunately I am sick. Snuffly, scratchy throat, more irritable than usual, skin feeling sensitive and itchy, food sounding terrible, no sense of smell kind of sick. No running for me this week, then. I wish I could call in sick today, but orders have to get placed, at least. Anyway, I'm sure it's just a cold that will go away soon.

The big good news is the writing! My NaNo story is at 8000 words! My original goal was just to write my smallfandombang, and I ought to have the 10,000 words for that by... tonight, if all goes as planned. The story's not halfway told, though, so obviously I'll keep going until it is. If it gets done before 50,000 words, I'll start on another story within the same series -- which may be cheating, yes, but you know, I'm okay with that.

I'm drawing on an idea I started in summer of 2010. When there's talk about, "How would you do movie adaptations?" in Pierce fandom, I always say that Circle of Magic should be a TV show instead. So what I'd like to is write a series of long-ish fics that take place in Summersea, post Will of the Empress, and follow our four protagonists as they solve magic-based crimes and mysteries, have romances, sort out their career plans, and generally go about their lives. I made a lot of progress on the first installment, but somehow never finished it, so I hope to go back to that story. The one I'm writing at the moment is a later installment -- let's call it the second, unless I have a particular reason to move it. I also have a couple of key OCs I've introduced in drabbles and ficlets elsewhere, and they need to somehow be introduced within the main story.

So that's what I'm doing. Here's how: I haven't outlined anything. I have a short page of notes and details to include later in the story, but that's it. I don't know who my villain is; I just yesterday figured out what's causing the big problem Our Heroes are trying to solve. I'm probably going to re-order everything. I'm probably going to scrap half of what I've written so far. I'm not even clear on who my POV character is (but that might be all right, for Circle of Magic fic). And I'm good with all of this! I'm having fun. Last night I knocked out 2000 words in less than two hours. The words just come. I have no doubt that I'm capable of getting to 50,000 words by the end of the month. And the story will come together in its own way. Editing the thing will be a whole other adventure, but there's no need to stress about that now. It'll happen. Or maybe it won't, but that's okay too.

Contrast last year, when I had spreadsheets and outlines and was hell-bent on winning. I did win, and I'm pretty happy with my story, and it was a really, really good learning experience. One of the things I learned is that outlines and shit are not for me. So I'm taking a completely different approach this time, and I fucking love the experience so far.

Typically, as soon as I write about how I can't seem to write anything, I unblock myself where the writing of fiction is concerned. I'm now three pieces into the story of Aniki leaving her home in Scanra and meeting up with Kora and Rosto. Win.

So this is what a 5000 word day feels like.

( writing about writing, not part of word count. ) 

I want to write a long, rambling self-indulgent post about all the things bouncing around in my brain, such as:

• friendship
• food
• work
• sneaky hate spirals
• onion soup
• attention deficit disorder
• depression
• mental health-related medications
• creativity
• writing
• self-editing
• NaNoWriMo
• Glake
• fic exchanges
• chat

And yes, the end of that list circles right back around to the beginning of it again. ^.^

But I can't write that wandery-rambly post, because.... I get home from work about 8 Saturday night, and I think I really need a good ol' Glake crack!chat... which will mean no writing on Saturday. So I'm trying to write at least another 2200 words tonight or tomorrow night.

I guess it can wait until December...

*waves to f'list*

I'm 21 days into my 31_days  collection ('m a little behind...), and I've about just reached 6,000 words (which is about the length of my longest completed story). That's an average of just under 300 words per installment, and I really don't think the last few will be shorter than the early installments. Assuming I manage to finish, the whole thing could easily end up close to 10,000 words. I don't know if it's a single story, exactly -- I think it is a collection of related pieces, though with some (significant) future editing, I could turn it into a kind of novella. I'd like to make that happen, maybe for Piercefic 2011.

In between working on that, I've been thinking about NaNoWriMo. I've been thinking about how I can write 2000 words of anything I want to write in the first place, and I can write 4000 to 5000 if I really have something to say, but after that I start to get lost. I really want to do NaNo, and I'd like to further develop my writing skills. This means I somehow have to get from 6,000 words to 50,000, and I don't really know how.

Well, somebody over at Glake mentioned that Alanna: The First Adventure is just about 50,000 words. ( That's a whole lot of action and adventure. )

*Bounces*

I just got my au_bingo  card! I know, I know, not like I need another project... but this one's open until January 31, so I'm not even starting it until I'm done with the 31_days  thing. Also, I'm writing Doctor Who fic for this, because I haven't written any yet, and it's about damn time. :D It should be fun.

( card under the cut! ) LJ theme!fail: for some reason, table lines don't show up in this theme. Trust me, it's not a code!fail, it's the theme. Possibly I'll look for a new one soon.

I just signed up for the femslash10  fic exchange. Now I'm pimping it to my flist -- you should all sign up, too! Sign-ups are open until June 26, assignments go out June 30, and a 1000-word story is due September 2.

There are 18 "listed fandoms," of which you have to request and be willing to write at least one (I picked Buffy and Doctor Who, which I'm sure surprises no one). You can also request up to three "wildcard fandoms," which can be absolutely anything, and you can sign up to potentially write as many wildcard options as you can think of. 

Last year there were somewhat more than 100 fics posted to femslash09  , which is a nice medium size for a fic exchange. It should be a fun little summer (or winter, depending) writing project, but I'm not sure how wildly followed the community is, so I wanted to spread the word.

Part 2 of the Commentary on Trickster's Pawn , my genderbending Tamora Pierce Tortall-verse AU, is under the cut.
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( More babbling about writing, under this cut. )
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Commentary on part 1 is here.