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[blamebrampton]

Busiest week in months, up to my eyeballs in work, visitors arriving Saturday morning just as the city goes into lockdown (Why oh Why did I not organise to be in Wellington this weekend?), so what am I doing? I'm reccing fics.

(And writing 3000 words for the fic that no-one but GB reads, not that I'm bitter, and writing tips for writing ... what the

Comments

[blamebrampton]

Oh now don't let being sensible get in the way of my muttering, young lady! How am I meant to work my way up to being a mad old cat lady if I start letting common sense get in the way?

(And thank you for allowing me to rec your stuff. It's not as easy as I thought it would be to have a weekly three or four that I can sincerely say "This is good!" about.)

The thing is that lj is not normal. Flists are such an odd thing to get your head around. Mine at the moment is just the people whose writing I've enjoyed and who seem to be witty, kind, smart people that I would talk to if we were stuck on a train. It was odd enough adding the few of you without feeling like a champion stalker, though I did do the crazed happy dance when you and silentauror friended me. Because I am a sad, sad, mad old cat lady in the making.

And the oddest thing is that I still haven't told the original Ms Brampton that I'm here. Mostly because she will laugh and laugh and laugh ... She is very supportive that way.

Er, yes, finishing. So, somewhere around 2010 at the rate the bugger is growing. I am the woman who started with an idea for a picture book eight years ago and currently has a 564,000 word YA novel that explores the clash of Baltic pagan cultures with the Hanseatic League-led Crusades and their 14th century fallout. Admittedly, that's everything that happens along the way, which I needed to know, the final draft will be shorter ...

Archive's not a bad idea, though. However, I worry that what sounds good to me may well be cliched to fandom. Can I beg a favour and ask you to read the first chapter which was written as a stand-alone and has a real ending? No is a genuinely fine answer, but if you can, please DO point out madness, typos, blunders and anything just bleagh. I do know that there are some ideas in there that diverge from canon understandings, the bits that I *know* about were intentional ...

Must pop outside now and feed strays while quoting from King Lear and perfecting my high-pitched cackle. I believe that I shall affect a beret, or perhaps an opera cloak.

[norton_gale]

To aspire to mad cat lady-dom is very noble indeed.

My flist is entitled "journals I read." Basically, I add people if I want to read their LJ and I usually leave a comment explaining why. Often, I add authors whose fics I like. Most people friend back, but if they don't, I keep them on my flist if their journals are worth reading. I recently added mistful who I am sure will never add me back, but I don't want to miss her posts. Also, there are some people who wait to add people back until they feel like they've gotten to know them- I've had the experience of being added back a year later. I guess what I'm trying to say is that I don't really get into the friending/defriending drama- I just friend the journals I want to read, and friend back most of those who friend me.

As far as your story- I'd be happy to take a look at it. I'm no canon expert, but I'll let you know if anything inconsistent jumps out at me. Hopefully I will have a chance tonight before things get too hectic with the move this weekend.

[blamebrampton]

Move comes first! But thank you very much, any time would be great.

That's actually an excellent way of thinking about an Flist. I have another lj indentity that came about a while ago when my RL friends all started having ljs. I live far away from many of them, so it was an easy way to read and leave notes. But the difference is that I know each and every one of them.

Your very sane approach is a completely elegant solution to what was indeed a bit of a drama in my head. See! I would SO chat with you if we were ever stuck on a train. I'd probably open the conversation with: "Do you own a cat?"

I friended mistful, too. Mostly because she reminds me very much of my peer group 20 years ago. I fear she was in nursery at that time.

Off to embrace fandom a little more closely ... thanks again, you're like my fairy godmother of fandom. Let me know if you ever need Tim Tams or Berocca!

[norton_gale]

I read your story and I enjoyed it very much. It was quite well-written and nicely paced- I think you're very talented. I loved that Harry punched Draco but didn't want to do anything else, and that you made this quite romantic without having to go into the gruesome details.

There were only a very few things I would change. One would be the references such as "the blond boy" (Draco) and "the tall man" (Snape) These generic descriptions don't gibe with your POVs- all the characters are quite familiar with each other and wouldn't think of each other in those impersonal terms, which are better to describe characters who are unknown. Harry might see Draco as "his old rival," or "his lover" (for example) not as an anonymous blond.

Also, there is some POV switching between Harry and Draco mid-scene, which is all right but might be cleaner with sticking to a single POV. Just my two cents.

[blamebrampton]

Bejesus burgers ... blond boy four times? I can only suspect someone's been mixing the crack in with my cocoa again (er, is that funny in North America? Has sudden attack of panic that it's terribly non-PC). They are hunted, slain, eradicated, destroyed. Just poddling off to see what happened to my longer reply to you ...

[blamebrampton]

Thank you very much. I feel very guilty for distracting you from the moving, though!

Heh, you've cunningly spotted where I wussed out on good descriptors. I will have to fix that, you're my idea of what a reader should be, and if it jumps out at you, it's bad.

And yes, I am a guilty and inveterate POV switcher; I blame growing up on French New Wave cinema, or Umberto Eco, or possibly my five-second attention span. Sorry, what were you saying? When this was a short story I didn't mind that, but I think now it has following chapters, I need to go back and reread and rethink whether I want to keep some choppiness, or let the narrative have more flow.

As to gruesome (or not so) details, I cannot write a graphic sex scene without sarcasm to save my life. And no one likes sarcasm in the bedroom or on the dining room table. Therein lies a tale of twentysomething woe in RL ... One too many years of the Literary Review's Bad Sex Prize and any possibilty of even tasteful detail is destroyed. If you have not encountered the Lit Review, it is a wonderful magazine run by bad, wicked people.

Thanks again, I'm quite buoyed by that. I'll tighten it up and then face my last frontier: the fic archive. The end of the larger occurred to me today, no multi-hundred-thousand word excursions for this story!

Good luck with the move. And after tomorrow night, I am free for any editing you may still require. (It's my cunning plan to read your stuff early, subtle, no?)

[blamebrampton]

That's odd ... they were written the other way round ...

[norton_gale]

I'm sure you'll get a very satisfactory response to your fic. Does it have a title, by the way?

Empathic Siren pointed out a major scene that needs to be deleted and completely rewritten, so I still have some work to do on my fic and am not sure when I will finish. I will send it to you when done, though. (And that's often why I volunteer to beta- I love reading new stuff by my favorite authors!)

PS- if you're looking for new fics by writers you may not have heard of, my friend (actual) frayach is quite good. Her fics are linked on her user page.