The "I Finished A Fic" Dance Of Glee
I finished a fic. I opened my word document, wrote the last two scenes, typed "THE END" in large, encouraging letters, and rejoiced. I have finished something, and wow is that a happy place to be.
Those of you who know me well are familiar with how seldom I finish stuff. I think there's a good reason for this - the same reason I sometimes stop reading books 5/6ths of the way through, because I don't want it to end. Because I want to keep tweaking forever, rather than be faced with the prospect of bringing something up to posting standard.
Anyway. I'm working through it *g*. So I've finished this 20k sga fic, for a given value of 'finished'. It...needs work. I'm a seat-of-the-pants, plans-kill-my-mojo sort of author, since one of the main reasons I write is to find out what happens next. As a result, my first drafts (and, actually, all my drafts ever) read like something dark and uncertain dredged up from the muddy waters of my subconscious, with a lot of noodling around and unspecific hints and people being complicated and confusing. Which they are, but in fiction, ideally, there should be a line of logical progression running from the incipient event through to the end. I have yet to firmly succeed at this, and doubt my fiction will ever be the tight, direct, Robert Ludlum-style prose so appreciated by bestseller lists, but I'm aiming for readers to actually understand why these people are doing all these weird things and avoiding each other and getting angry and so on.
Edits ahoy, I think. I've never accomplished this to my satisfaction with a "long" fic (ie longer than, say, 7k), but I really ought to post something I've written for once, instead of declaring it unfit for sight by other people and hiding it in my hard drive. Really could use a beta, too. Wish me luck!
ETA: To which end, I'm going to take draft 0.5 off LJ then repost the finished version without the beta filter. If you feel like donating your eyes for a test-read, comment and I'll email it.
Those of you who know me well are familiar with how seldom I finish stuff. I think there's a good reason for this - the same reason I sometimes stop reading books 5/6ths of the way through, because I don't want it to end. Because I want to keep tweaking forever, rather than be faced with the prospect of bringing something up to posting standard.
Anyway. I'm working through it *g*. So I've finished this 20k sga fic, for a given value of 'finished'. It...needs work. I'm a seat-of-the-pants, plans-kill-my-mojo sort of author, since one of the main reasons I write is to find out what happens next. As a result, my first drafts (and, actually, all my drafts ever) read like something dark and uncertain dredged up from the muddy waters of my subconscious, with a lot of noodling around and unspecific hints and people being complicated and confusing. Which they are, but in fiction, ideally, there should be a line of logical progression running from the incipient event through to the end. I have yet to firmly succeed at this, and doubt my fiction will ever be the tight, direct, Robert Ludlum-style prose so appreciated by bestseller lists, but I'm aiming for readers to actually understand why these people are doing all these weird things and avoiding each other and getting angry and so on.
Edits ahoy, I think. I've never accomplished this to my satisfaction with a "long" fic (ie longer than, say, 7k), but I really ought to post something I've written for once, instead of declaring it unfit for sight by other people and hiding it in my hard drive. Really could use a beta, too. Wish me luck!
ETA: To which end, I'm going to take draft 0.5 off LJ then repost the finished version without the beta filter. If you feel like donating your eyes for a test-read, comment and I'll email it.