idek you guys
Back in October 2009 I wrote mayhap a NYR fic about a pairing; it happened to be Hilary Thorpe/Viscount St. George, I wrote it because otherwise I would've gotten banned from Yuletide, and it was the first fic I had posted in two and a half years. Having written that much, I kind of looked at the pairing and went "Hey, it would be fun to give these two a mystery to solve. Maybe they team up to impress Uncle Peter and turn out not to actually be very good detectives. Maybe they should have to pretend to be a couple while doing this." I was planning to do 30,000 words for NaNo that year, so I figured I might as well give it a go, though I honestly didn't think there was enough story there to reach 30K.
I bring this up now because it's been twenty and a half months since then, this fic just passed 100,000 words, which I suspect makes it longer than most books in the actual canon as well as fully twice as long as the next longest thing I've ever written. It is still nowhere near done.
Actually, I don't know that for sure. I don't know much of anything any more. This is kind of like being lost in the house if the house were a piece of novel-length fanfiction, which for all I know it is. Sometimes I find entire scenes I don't remember writing, and there is one particular edit I swear I've made three times to the same sentence.
I know an awful lot about Lady Winifred Wimsey, most of which I made up myself. I know a thousand percent more about the history of Asians in Britain than I did a year and a half ago and it still isn't nearly enough. I know that I like some of these OCs so much that I have developed an entire outside original work about transparently adapted versions of them. I know that if Hilary and Gherkins had ever been played by contemporary actors they would have been Valerie Hobson and Phillips Holmes. I have read an awful lot of AA Milne's war poetry. I have friends in fandom who I made just because I told them that this fic may someday exist and they thought it sounded excellent. I know that this fic has spun me around so badly that I may give up writing fanfic entirely, apart from Yuletide, once I finish my current WIPs in this fandom--which would be this, and the haphazard Hogwarts AU which I estimate at a relatively modest 30-40K if ever complete, and the Band of Brothers crossover which I forecast at a positively miniscule 10K.
Okay, maybe also after I take a shot at that one about Honoria and her children trying to get to London when the Martians invade in 1898. And that other one where they're all on Starship UK and Lucy Parker finds a crack in her bedroom wall.
I do not know much about 1930s sexual slang in the UK, even though I was positive I had something bookmarked, and if anyone knows the page I'm talking about I'd love to know where it's gone. I do not know when or if this fic will ever end. I am routinely anxious that by the time I finish my draft I will have no friends left to beta it or they'll all have gone and inconsiderately gotten real lives or the Internet will explode or something. I have something of an idea of where my plot needs filling in, and my outline is getting clearer every day, but I am so far past the ability to estimate how much more I need to write to produce a functioning draft that I can't really even imagine the possibility. It might be ten thousand more words. It might be fifty thousand. I suspect it's closer to fifty than to the other end.
I would say "help me" at this point but I'm very much afraid that this is the kind of thing with which only I can help myself.
I bring this up now because it's been twenty and a half months since then, this fic just passed 100,000 words, which I suspect makes it longer than most books in the actual canon as well as fully twice as long as the next longest thing I've ever written. It is still nowhere near done.
Actually, I don't know that for sure. I don't know much of anything any more. This is kind of like being lost in the house if the house were a piece of novel-length fanfiction, which for all I know it is. Sometimes I find entire scenes I don't remember writing, and there is one particular edit I swear I've made three times to the same sentence.
I know an awful lot about Lady Winifred Wimsey, most of which I made up myself. I know a thousand percent more about the history of Asians in Britain than I did a year and a half ago and it still isn't nearly enough. I know that I like some of these OCs so much that I have developed an entire outside original work about transparently adapted versions of them. I know that if Hilary and Gherkins had ever been played by contemporary actors they would have been Valerie Hobson and Phillips Holmes. I have read an awful lot of AA Milne's war poetry. I have friends in fandom who I made just because I told them that this fic may someday exist and they thought it sounded excellent. I know that this fic has spun me around so badly that I may give up writing fanfic entirely, apart from Yuletide, once I finish my current WIPs in this fandom--which would be this, and the haphazard Hogwarts AU which I estimate at a relatively modest 30-40K if ever complete, and the Band of Brothers crossover which I forecast at a positively miniscule 10K.
Okay, maybe also after I take a shot at that one about Honoria and her children trying to get to London when the Martians invade in 1898. And that other one where they're all on Starship UK and Lucy Parker finds a crack in her bedroom wall.
I do not know much about 1930s sexual slang in the UK, even though I was positive I had something bookmarked, and if anyone knows the page I'm talking about I'd love to know where it's gone. I do not know when or if this fic will ever end. I am routinely anxious that by the time I finish my draft I will have no friends left to beta it or they'll all have gone and inconsiderately gotten real lives or the Internet will explode or something. I have something of an idea of where my plot needs filling in, and my outline is getting clearer every day, but I am so far past the ability to estimate how much more I need to write to produce a functioning draft that I can't really even imagine the possibility. It might be ten thousand more words. It might be fifty thousand. I suspect it's closer to fifty than to the other end.
I would say "help me" at this point but I'm very much afraid that this is the kind of thing with which only I can help myself.