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lomonaaerenYou knew it was coming.
One thing that’s struck me in the last year is, again, how happy writing makes me. There are intense moments of joy in certain stories—especially when writing scenes in the novels that I’ve been planning since the beginning—but most of the time it’s a quiet feeling, too deep for me to know it’s happiness. I turn around and suddenly (according to the word count on FF.net, anyway) I’ve written 849,732 words since mid-April of 2007 and 28 stories, counting the unfinished WiP’s.
When I’m happy, stories multiply. Like Tribbles.
I’ve been very lucky in finding dozens of intelligent, sympathetic online friends this year. Thanks to everyone who’s let me know what they think of a story; almost every day there’s a perspective I hadn’t thought of or a reaction I didn’t count on. (Comments on the WiP’s are very useful in this regard, because they help me catch plot holes and implications to the actions and emotions I haven’t thought of before I write the next part). If there’s anything I can do to give something back—well, head on over to the one-shot request post and let me know. Or comment with something here.
So, I ended 2007 with:
20 completed one-shots (Minister Scrimgeour Does Not Approve, Small and Stupid Arguments, A Finer Unconsciousness, Surprised By Joy, How to Introduce Your Boyfriend To Your Parents, Psychometry, The Last Runespoor, The Sundew, Work After Wartime, Reparations, Knowing the Price and the Value, A Comedy of Errors, Watching Them, Sympathy and Admiration, Lives of Quiet Desperation, The Bizarre Incident That Must Never Be Talked About Talked About, The Fortunate Fall, Cycle of Fire, This Is What You Get For Saying That Word, Still Pools and Starlight)
1 short chaptered fic (Keep It Simple, Stupid)
5 completed novel-length fics (A Year’s Temptation, Building With Worn-Out Tools, the two stories in the Frames of Mind series, I Give You a Wondrous Mirror)
2 novel-length WiP’s (Forgive Those Who Trespass and A Potion Named Desire)
Not bad! I’m looking forward to writing many more.
1) Continue with the WiP’s, of course. Because, with me, the novel-length stories always come first. I put the most time and effort into them; they’re my babies.
2) Write the rest of the stories in the ‘Intellectual Love Affair’ series. These are the two sequels to A Potion Named Desire, which will be novel-length in of and themselves (keep in mind that I think of a ‘novel’ as anything over 40,000 words, because that’s the technical definition in SF/F fandom, where I’ve spent most of my time), and possibly some side-stories. This is the first novel/series I’ve written where the viewpoints of other characters and missing scenes are a real possibility. The other novels were simply too tight and contained all the plot I could think of for them; plus, Harry and Draco were so much the central characters that extra scenes not written from their POV’s wouldn’t add that much. But A Potion Named Desire sees Harry and Draco concocting a potion that will affect the wizarding world like a stone hitting a pool. Imagine a drug that will take away what you most loathe about yourself, and continue doing it as long as you take the drug every two weeks. There will be politics, politics, politics, and ethical implications, and even some stories to tell that could reflect ways the potion helps out other people. Plus, I have Charlemagne Diggory, my OC who’s going to be a very formidable political opponent for Harry and Draco. Side-stories from his POV after the series is done could be interesting.
3) Write the gen story that will not leave me alone. This is ‘The Conservation of Fame,’ which originated as a Harry/Draco story but refused to comply with any of the twists I came up with to make the romance plausible. So now it’s an epilogue-compliant gen story; the only couples mentioned are canon ones. I thought it would be a one-shot; it’s a novel, or at least the length of ‘Keep It Simple, Stupid,’ which ran six chapters. I really want to write it, but I also don’t want it to take away from my WiP’s. So what I’m currently, tentatively, planning is to work on it for 500 or 1000 words every day, and post it only when it’s done. Summary: The day after his son went to Hogwarts, Draco Malfoy woke up famous for defeating the Dark Lord.
4) Write “Run.” This is a horrible little epilogue-compliant one-shot that is not in answer to anyone’s request; it just came over and fastened itself to me like a leech yesterday afternoon. It’s pure darkfic; one of the first scenes is Harry murdering Ginny and Lily, if that gives you an idea. And yet, it does make sense (in my twisted brain). The ending is completely unhappy. I do not want to write it because I loathe it. And yet, there it is, and I will not get rid of it until I write it.
Tribbles, I tell you.
5) Write some stories connected to other one-shots. I’ve beenthreatening promising sequels to some of the one-shots I wrote for a while, but there are so far only two ideas that are concrete enough to have both titles and plots, which for me is a must before I write them: “The Third Day,” which is a gen prequel to “Knowing the Price and the Value” and tells how Harry survived and escaped his Auror partner’s betrayal and a den of werewolves; and “Maturity and Wisdom,” a sequel to “Sympathy and Admiration” in which Harry has to deal with Scorpius not being willing to accept him as Draco’s boyfriend, as well as Scorpius’s mother (who, in that story’s universe, tried to force him to not have the magical disease he does) coming back and wanting to be part of the family again. There will be other sequels to this as well, as I really like my little partial AU.
6) Work on the one-shots I still owe. I know these have taken a long time, but, well, I don’t think I’ve been idle. *grin* For me, it’s more a matter of mood and needing to let the story idea grow for a while before I tackle it.
7) Write Changing of the Guard. This is the novel I described here, about which I am very excited, because it will be the most delicious combination of humor and angst and bad decisions.
8) Find out where the hell I squirreled away my HP books in my family’s basement so I can write Written By the Losers. WBtL is a time-travel story idea, ranging back through canon scenes of interaction between Harry and Draco, which means I need the books in front of me to check on details. (There are some things I regard as “canon” which are probably not, but only impressions born of fanfic). I can somewhat cheat here because Harry will be altering their history together, but not that much.
9) Come up with an outline and suspects for my murder mystery novel-length. I love mystery fics where Harry and Draco work as Aurors, but the problem with the one-shots is that they’re almost always too short to contain a twisty mystery—by “twisty” I mean “multiple red herrings and suspects and scenes where things explode or people try to poison Our Heroes”—and the WiP’s update so slowly that I forget the twists during the wait (and sometimes they still don’t make much sense, such as every fic ever that tries to make an OC mentioned only in the last chapter the main villain). So I want to write a murder mystery fic that contains a slash romance at the same time, is at least 100,000 words, and has multiple suspects and murders. There will be scenes where people are cursed, poisoned, dangled off high places, kidnapped, knocked on the head, and perhaps shot. And, of course, Harry and Draco fall in love.
10) Write some non-Harry/Draco stories, too. I’ve only written one so far, a James/Scorpius fic. I’d like to try some Pansy femmeslash, and a few pairings with Luna in (I love Luna). I want to portray Ginny as a real human being. I want to be able to overcome my aversion to Albus/Scorpius—so far, too much fluff and/or retrodden H/D for me—and come up with distinct personalities for them. I want to write gen.
11) Find more H/D clichés and transform them. I’ve done a Veela fic and the “Harry leaves Ginny for Draco” fic, several times. I’ve had a request for a one-shot that involves Draco courting Harry, which is twisting interestingly in my head. I’ve also considered doing more Hogwarts-based stories, and a story where both Harry and Draco are Quidditch players.
Happy 2008!
One thing that’s struck me in the last year is, again, how happy writing makes me. There are intense moments of joy in certain stories—especially when writing scenes in the novels that I’ve been planning since the beginning—but most of the time it’s a quiet feeling, too deep for me to know it’s happiness. I turn around and suddenly (according to the word count on FF.net, anyway) I’ve written 849,732 words since mid-April of 2007 and 28 stories, counting the unfinished WiP’s.
When I’m happy, stories multiply. Like Tribbles.
I’ve been very lucky in finding dozens of intelligent, sympathetic online friends this year. Thanks to everyone who’s let me know what they think of a story; almost every day there’s a perspective I hadn’t thought of or a reaction I didn’t count on. (Comments on the WiP’s are very useful in this regard, because they help me catch plot holes and implications to the actions and emotions I haven’t thought of before I write the next part). If there’s anything I can do to give something back—well, head on over to the one-shot request post and let me know. Or comment with something here.
So, I ended 2007 with:
20 completed one-shots (Minister Scrimgeour Does Not Approve, Small and Stupid Arguments, A Finer Unconsciousness, Surprised By Joy, How to Introduce Your Boyfriend To Your Parents, Psychometry, The Last Runespoor, The Sundew, Work After Wartime, Reparations, Knowing the Price and the Value, A Comedy of Errors, Watching Them, Sympathy and Admiration, Lives of Quiet Desperation, The Bizarre Incident That Must Never Be Talked About Talked About, The Fortunate Fall, Cycle of Fire, This Is What You Get For Saying That Word, Still Pools and Starlight)
1 short chaptered fic (Keep It Simple, Stupid)
5 completed novel-length fics (A Year’s Temptation, Building With Worn-Out Tools, the two stories in the Frames of Mind series, I Give You a Wondrous Mirror)
2 novel-length WiP’s (Forgive Those Who Trespass and A Potion Named Desire)
Not bad! I’m looking forward to writing many more.
1) Continue with the WiP’s, of course. Because, with me, the novel-length stories always come first. I put the most time and effort into them; they’re my babies.
2) Write the rest of the stories in the ‘Intellectual Love Affair’ series. These are the two sequels to A Potion Named Desire, which will be novel-length in of and themselves (keep in mind that I think of a ‘novel’ as anything over 40,000 words, because that’s the technical definition in SF/F fandom, where I’ve spent most of my time), and possibly some side-stories. This is the first novel/series I’ve written where the viewpoints of other characters and missing scenes are a real possibility. The other novels were simply too tight and contained all the plot I could think of for them; plus, Harry and Draco were so much the central characters that extra scenes not written from their POV’s wouldn’t add that much. But A Potion Named Desire sees Harry and Draco concocting a potion that will affect the wizarding world like a stone hitting a pool. Imagine a drug that will take away what you most loathe about yourself, and continue doing it as long as you take the drug every two weeks. There will be politics, politics, politics, and ethical implications, and even some stories to tell that could reflect ways the potion helps out other people. Plus, I have Charlemagne Diggory, my OC who’s going to be a very formidable political opponent for Harry and Draco. Side-stories from his POV after the series is done could be interesting.
3) Write the gen story that will not leave me alone. This is ‘The Conservation of Fame,’ which originated as a Harry/Draco story but refused to comply with any of the twists I came up with to make the romance plausible. So now it’s an epilogue-compliant gen story; the only couples mentioned are canon ones. I thought it would be a one-shot; it’s a novel, or at least the length of ‘Keep It Simple, Stupid,’ which ran six chapters. I really want to write it, but I also don’t want it to take away from my WiP’s. So what I’m currently, tentatively, planning is to work on it for 500 or 1000 words every day, and post it only when it’s done. Summary: The day after his son went to Hogwarts, Draco Malfoy woke up famous for defeating the Dark Lord.
4) Write “Run.” This is a horrible little epilogue-compliant one-shot that is not in answer to anyone’s request; it just came over and fastened itself to me like a leech yesterday afternoon. It’s pure darkfic; one of the first scenes is Harry murdering Ginny and Lily, if that gives you an idea. And yet, it does make sense (in my twisted brain). The ending is completely unhappy. I do not want to write it because I loathe it. And yet, there it is, and I will not get rid of it until I write it.
Tribbles, I tell you.
5) Write some stories connected to other one-shots. I’ve been
6) Work on the one-shots I still owe. I know these have taken a long time, but, well, I don’t think I’ve been idle. *grin* For me, it’s more a matter of mood and needing to let the story idea grow for a while before I tackle it.
7) Write Changing of the Guard. This is the novel I described here, about which I am very excited, because it will be the most delicious combination of humor and angst and bad decisions.
8) Find out where the hell I squirreled away my HP books in my family’s basement so I can write Written By the Losers. WBtL is a time-travel story idea, ranging back through canon scenes of interaction between Harry and Draco, which means I need the books in front of me to check on details. (There are some things I regard as “canon” which are probably not, but only impressions born of fanfic). I can somewhat cheat here because Harry will be altering their history together, but not that much.
9) Come up with an outline and suspects for my murder mystery novel-length. I love mystery fics where Harry and Draco work as Aurors, but the problem with the one-shots is that they’re almost always too short to contain a twisty mystery—by “twisty” I mean “multiple red herrings and suspects and scenes where things explode or people try to poison Our Heroes”—and the WiP’s update so slowly that I forget the twists during the wait (and sometimes they still don’t make much sense, such as every fic ever that tries to make an OC mentioned only in the last chapter the main villain). So I want to write a murder mystery fic that contains a slash romance at the same time, is at least 100,000 words, and has multiple suspects and murders. There will be scenes where people are cursed, poisoned, dangled off high places, kidnapped, knocked on the head, and perhaps shot. And, of course, Harry and Draco fall in love.
10) Write some non-Harry/Draco stories, too. I’ve only written one so far, a James/Scorpius fic. I’d like to try some Pansy femmeslash, and a few pairings with Luna in (I love Luna). I want to portray Ginny as a real human being. I want to be able to overcome my aversion to Albus/Scorpius—so far, too much fluff and/or retrodden H/D for me—and come up with distinct personalities for them. I want to write gen.
11) Find more H/D clichés and transform them. I’ve done a Veela fic and the “Harry leaves Ginny for Draco” fic, several times. I’ve had a request for a one-shot that involves Draco courting Harry, which is twisting interestingly in my head. I’ve also considered doing more Hogwarts-based stories, and a story where both Harry and Draco are Quidditch players.
Happy 2008!
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no subject
Date: 2008-01-02 04:36 am (UTC)I'm glad the reviews help you. When you update a chapter (or one-shot) I really like I can't seem to shut up, and I always thought you might find that annoying ::lol:: One of the reasons I started reviewing is that I saw you always respond kindly, even if it just to thank.
At this moment, I’m really looking forward to the ILA series (which I’m loving so far, something I might have mentioned a hundred times) and “Maturity and Wisdom”, because I love wandless magic and Scorpius was a sweetie. Oohh and the murder mystery one! Draco and Harry falling in love in the midst of gruesome murders, red herrings and assassination attempts? Cool.
On a lesser degree, because it sounds like a very angsty fic, I want to read the time travel one. So I hope you find the books soon! And if you ever need help verifying a fact or something, I don’t mind helping (I’ve read the books far too many times).
Of course, I’m sure anything gen will be good. As well as anything you do with a cliché. They are clichés for a reason, and still with the veela one you found some new twists.
Looking forward to whatever you decide to write :)
Happy 2008!
no subject
Date: 2008-01-02 03:13 pm (UTC)I don't mind longer reviews at all! Not at all! Sometimes it'll take me a while to respond because I want to address it properly, not just with a "thank you," but I do always try to respond in the end. And they make me happy when I get stuck at a rough patch in the writing and think it's the end of the world.
The world set up in "Sympathy and Admiration" definitely has my favorite of the child characters I've written so far. I hope to get back to that one soon.
The Harry/Draco murder mystery is hilarious in my head, because they bicker about evidence even as they're fighting back-to-back and dodging the assassination attempts.
The time travel fic is indeed angsty along the way, but it has a fairly happy ending. I might take you up on your offer of details. (I know I saw my other books sometime last year, but I haven't seen my copy of OoTP in much longer than that).
I started the gen fic 'The Conservation of Fame' last night, and I love it so far. Draco, in whose POV the story is written, is such a priss, and has an epic level of Not Getting It.
And a happy New Year to you as well.
no subject
Date: 2008-01-03 02:24 am (UTC)Oh, if it has a happy ending, then I don't mind the angst. Now I'm more eager to read it. If you ever need my help, let me know and I'll send you my e-mail or something.
'The Conservation of Fame' sounds good, it's always fun when a character just Doesn't Get It.
no subject
Date: 2008-01-03 05:10 am (UTC)I just finished another 1200 words on 'The Conservation of Fame.' Draco takes a potion to calm his nerves and is totally bullied by his wife. This is fun!
no subject
Date: 2008-01-03 07:29 am (UTC)Malfoy bullied by his wife? ::lol:: I so want to read this, it doesn't matter if I hated the epilogue.
It's 5:30 am so I better go get some sleep (I'm doing IGYAWM kids pics and James wanted to be finished today ::sigh::).