On "Desperation"
I don't normally chat here. The LJ is mainly a home for stories too weird to go anywhere else. Besides, a good LJ is an art form, and I'm just not that kind of artist. But Saffronhouse has encouraged me to talk about "Desperation," so I will,
There's a lot of it that is sort of blurry. And a lot of the 'process' that I'm not proud of. And lots of personal stuff got dragged into it. I don't know how to talk about any of that. "Desperation" was unplanned, I can say that. Sometime last summer (after Duet and Trinity) we were talking about SGA and I mentioned that it was sort of surprising that Rodney's staff hadn't killed him yet. I may have also said that while I had no intention of ever writing in Atlantis (there was plenty of good stuff out there, the fandom didn't need me) if I did, that would probably be the story.
And then Stroke!aagh! happened and she was in the hospital with unknown amounts of damage and a really horrible immediate future (at least) and I was going to have to finish my thesis without her holding my hand (selfish and petty, I know, but in my defense, it took me a week to notice that, so I'm not a total ass, just sort of) and she wanted to read Atlantis and all I had was this half-baked idea....And I had to write it fast, because it would have to be sent snailmail which would add three days on to everything I wrote.
And see, while it turned out that I could manage nonfiction without Martha (I'm a graduate now)...my fiction went completely to pieces. All the stories I had almost ready to post last August got left in their file. (There's this SG1 poly series {four parts so far} that still isn't finished) Any clue I had about narrative flow or cause and affect or what point I should be trying to make--was suddenly gone! She said I "did all the heavy lifting" on "Desperation," but (Ha!) there was twice as much heavy lifting as there should have been because without her I was incapable of making narrative decisions.
She's never told me what to say, don't think that. The decisions were mine. She was 'just' the data set I used to make them. She has always (starting way back with "Sudden Death Overtime") given running commentary from which I could judge what was working, what was unclear, what was necessary to the story, what was worth more attention. And frequently, we would be writing different stories at the same time (going in completely different directions) and sometimes that was like dancing.
For a lot of people, fanfic is about expressing a vision or making a point or telling a story they had inside themselves. But that is--for me--only half of what is going on. The other half is communicating (both ways) with audience. And Martha has always been the first audience. (I have not seen very much written about this phenomenon in recreational writing. I suspect I may not be alone in my experience, but the technology that facilitates this interaction is less than a decade old, so our society doesn't know how to classify or talk about it yet). Not the entire audience, and I've met lots of really cool people online who add a lot. But the First Audience. And the most important.
"Desperation" got written twice. I couldn’t decide what form of attempted murder Zelenka would chose, so I wrote two. A lot of major scenes could have gone differently, so I wrote out the options, sort of AUing myself, complicating things horribly. And then I gave it to her.
It took a while before she was up to it, but when she started seriously messing around with the text, well, it was educational. Very. (For me, not her). Martha is very talented with violence, physical terror, and bodily violation. She took moments that were already as scary as I could make them and gently notched up the peril. And what would be totally over the top and silly in anyone else's hands was convincing and terrifying in hers. She showed me different ways to increase tension and delay resolution. It made me very happy to watch. She makes writing fight scenes fun opportunities to cultivate adrenalin (which is much more delightful than my usual slog through the mechanics of who hits whom and how does gravity contribute?)
And now, after waiting five years to write with her and finally seeing her additions to this particular project, it is really, really clear that she has been all through all of my projects. I'm working on "Imperfections VIII" now, and a lot of little moments in the text are directly dancing with things she is saying in "Red Door," except inside out and upside down.
Wow. I'm at a page and a half and I'm still not sure what I'm trying to say here. If I admit that words are inadequate, then what is the point of trying to write? On the other hand, words are limited and finite, so how can things that are new or unlimited or experiential be packaged into words? But I'm supposed to talk about "Desperation." Right. "Desperation" started out as a frantic gift, the best moments I could make, as vivid and convincing as I could make them. My partner gave them discipline and shape and meaning. She made it story.