WIPs and zombie poodles
Saturday. Great day for writing. All that free time. No pesky spreadsheets to bore me, no idiotic conversations to tire me out.
So far, I've gone through my wardrobe turfing stuff out for the charity shops, baked bread, cleaned the kitchen, and 'researched' (ahem) an erotic fiction site. Competition closing date is on Monday and my entry still looks like something I routinely threw together when I was fifteen (Mary Sue saves the world, anyone?)
Right now, I'm listening to the radio, eating Angel Delight out of the mixing bowl I whisked it up in, and giving some serious thought to a Bloody Mary. Do you get the impression it's not going well?
On a positive note, the male-male original fic I read as part of my research did inspire me. In fact, it should inspire any writer currently on LJ because any one of us could do a million times better.
I picked it because:
1) the premise made me laugh (a gay couple are the only survivors of the zombie apocalypse and have to fight off zombie biker chicks, zombie school teachers, zombie zoo animals, zombie insects and even a zombie poodle)
2) the front cover didn't make me wince- readers of romance fiction, you KNOW what I'm talking about, here...
And, it was okay, broadly speaking. The writing was a bit intrusive- the authorial voice was a tad over powering and the witticisms sometimes got in the way of the dramatic tension, but the protagonists were real and believable.
The zombie poodle totally rocked!
Trouble was, the moment the plot actually kicked in (they found signs that others might also have survived the apocalypse, and the zombie poodle seemed to recover, suggesting that others might also be cured), the writer... STOPPED WRITING.
And, i don't mean that in a horrible, disappointing fanfiction-writer kind of way, when you get into reading a wonderful work in progress that goes on for a long while before the writer runs out of steam and stops updating. I mean, that's bad, but it's forgivable- we're fanfickers, we're learning how to be 'proper' writers, so the petering out of fics is par for the course. Also, it serves us right for reading WIPs.... we knew what we were signing on for. But this story- no word of a lie, reached this cliff hanger with the narrator stealing a gun and going to rescue his lover...
And. Then. He. Woke. Up.
Seriously.
I actually thought that was illegal in writing...
So, fellow struggling writers, keep struggling. We're not bad at this scribbling shit. And please, please, please promise me, you will NEVER end anything with the phrase 'and then he woke up'. In fact, even if that means leaving it as some poor orphaned little WIP that sucks fanfic readers in and has them relentlessly clicking to check for updates, then so be it.
Or, you could, like. Not post it till it's done. Just saying:0)
But, anyway. Let the research continue...
So far, I've gone through my wardrobe turfing stuff out for the charity shops, baked bread, cleaned the kitchen, and 'researched' (ahem) an erotic fiction site. Competition closing date is on Monday and my entry still looks like something I routinely threw together when I was fifteen (Mary Sue saves the world, anyone?)
Right now, I'm listening to the radio, eating Angel Delight out of the mixing bowl I whisked it up in, and giving some serious thought to a Bloody Mary. Do you get the impression it's not going well?
On a positive note, the male-male original fic I read as part of my research did inspire me. In fact, it should inspire any writer currently on LJ because any one of us could do a million times better.
I picked it because:
1) the premise made me laugh (a gay couple are the only survivors of the zombie apocalypse and have to fight off zombie biker chicks, zombie school teachers, zombie zoo animals, zombie insects and even a zombie poodle)
2) the front cover didn't make me wince- readers of romance fiction, you KNOW what I'm talking about, here...
And, it was okay, broadly speaking. The writing was a bit intrusive- the authorial voice was a tad over powering and the witticisms sometimes got in the way of the dramatic tension, but the protagonists were real and believable.
The zombie poodle totally rocked!
Trouble was, the moment the plot actually kicked in (they found signs that others might also have survived the apocalypse, and the zombie poodle seemed to recover, suggesting that others might also be cured), the writer... STOPPED WRITING.
And, i don't mean that in a horrible, disappointing fanfiction-writer kind of way, when you get into reading a wonderful work in progress that goes on for a long while before the writer runs out of steam and stops updating. I mean, that's bad, but it's forgivable- we're fanfickers, we're learning how to be 'proper' writers, so the petering out of fics is par for the course. Also, it serves us right for reading WIPs.... we knew what we were signing on for. But this story- no word of a lie, reached this cliff hanger with the narrator stealing a gun and going to rescue his lover...
And. Then. He. Woke. Up.
Seriously.
I actually thought that was illegal in writing...
So, fellow struggling writers, keep struggling. We're not bad at this scribbling shit. And please, please, please promise me, you will NEVER end anything with the phrase 'and then he woke up'. In fact, even if that means leaving it as some poor orphaned little WIP that sucks fanfic readers in and has them relentlessly clicking to check for updates, then so be it.
Or, you could, like. Not post it till it's done. Just saying:0)
But, anyway. Let the research continue...