N-1 things make a post
Work related blather got really long, and also a bit sharp, so it's under lock in its own post.
1. I've been sick for what feels like forever. This nasty cold just kept coming back every time I thought I was done, until finally I went to the doctor a couple weeks ago. They gave me antibiotics and I feel so much better now, but I'm still digging out from under all the stuff I didn't do when I felt like crap.
2. One of those things I haven't been doing is keeping up with the LWW read-along over on the NFFR boards, but heliopausa and adaese have been making a valiant effort at keeping it going. Some of their points are worth really digging into -- you should all go take a look and chime in!
3. I haven't been writing. To the point where I'm not even carrying my notebook with me anymore. (To be fair, it doesn't fit in my bag with all the winter/cold paraphernalia in there at the moment.) I'd like to get back to it, and I've been trying to prod my brain in that direction. Perverse entity that it is, it promptly presented me with two new Narnia fics, one of which at least would be a major AU undertaking. When I tried to squelch that, it wandered off to other-fandoms' kinkmeme fills. When I tried to hook it back into the stuff currently languishing in my Scrivener project, it wanted to talk about major rewrites to one of them. Anyone have any tips for care and management of your creative impulses? Herding cats does not even begin to do it justice.
4 (3a?). On the subject of major rewrite project. One of the key concepts of Lies -- that the flashbacks are from the perspective of the frame -- is really, really, really not working out. Too subtle. The easier way to go would be to edit it out, which would be annoying but not super time-consuming. But I would rather not lose it. But the more I think on it, the more I think there isn't any way to do it subtly; the readership investment just isn't there to support it. So if I want to keep it, I have to go back in and punch it hard. The first thing that comes to mind to do that is to shift it to a more internal academia style: history books, letters, etc. But if I do that, I don't think I can keep Paukhep and Hekaios as POV characters, and I like them, especially Paukhep. Opinions, anyone? Advice?
5 (3b?). Purely hypothetically, if someone were decidedly not thinking about doing a story in which Lucy wound up with the Witch instead of Edmund, which point of divergence would be more interesting: Tumnus doesn't have a change of heart and kidnaps her, or Jadis gets wind of it sooner, arrests him, and is waiting for Lucy when she goes back? The first appeals to me because I've long argued that Lucy and Edmund do exactly the same thing and it's sheer luck that she met someone nice and he met the Big Bad, but it leaves the question of how to get the other three into Narnia, since they've never heard of it at that point and have no reason to go poking in wardrobes. The other one handily explains why Edmund wouldn't meet the Witch (she's off capturing Lucy when he gets to Narnia) and then he can bring Peter and Susan in later, but it lacks the emotional parallelism.
(6? 4? feck it) N. I'm also seriously thinking about making a gifset (my first gifset, oh dear, am I really joining the tumblr - blech - age? or, actually, is it a picset? picspam? I don't think I actually want to do moving gifs.) about a Merlin headcanon/theory that occured to me the other day. Uhm... how do I gifset? Is it one big image or lots of little ones and if the latter how big do they have to be for tumblr to play nice?
1. I've been sick for what feels like forever. This nasty cold just kept coming back every time I thought I was done, until finally I went to the doctor a couple weeks ago. They gave me antibiotics and I feel so much better now, but I'm still digging out from under all the stuff I didn't do when I felt like crap.
2. One of those things I haven't been doing is keeping up with the LWW read-along over on the NFFR boards, but heliopausa and adaese have been making a valiant effort at keeping it going. Some of their points are worth really digging into -- you should all go take a look and chime in!
3. I haven't been writing. To the point where I'm not even carrying my notebook with me anymore. (To be fair, it doesn't fit in my bag with all the winter/cold paraphernalia in there at the moment.) I'd like to get back to it, and I've been trying to prod my brain in that direction. Perverse entity that it is, it promptly presented me with two new Narnia fics, one of which at least would be a major AU undertaking. When I tried to squelch that, it wandered off to other-fandoms' kinkmeme fills. When I tried to hook it back into the stuff currently languishing in my Scrivener project, it wanted to talk about major rewrites to one of them. Anyone have any tips for care and management of your creative impulses? Herding cats does not even begin to do it justice.
4 (3a?). On the subject of major rewrite project. One of the key concepts of Lies -- that the flashbacks are from the perspective of the frame -- is really, really, really not working out. Too subtle. The easier way to go would be to edit it out, which would be annoying but not super time-consuming. But I would rather not lose it. But the more I think on it, the more I think there isn't any way to do it subtly; the readership investment just isn't there to support it. So if I want to keep it, I have to go back in and punch it hard. The first thing that comes to mind to do that is to shift it to a more internal academia style: history books, letters, etc. But if I do that, I don't think I can keep Paukhep and Hekaios as POV characters, and I like them, especially Paukhep. Opinions, anyone? Advice?
5 (3b?). Purely hypothetically, if someone were decidedly not thinking about doing a story in which Lucy wound up with the Witch instead of Edmund, which point of divergence would be more interesting: Tumnus doesn't have a change of heart and kidnaps her, or Jadis gets wind of it sooner, arrests him, and is waiting for Lucy when she goes back? The first appeals to me because I've long argued that Lucy and Edmund do exactly the same thing and it's sheer luck that she met someone nice and he met the Big Bad, but it leaves the question of how to get the other three into Narnia, since they've never heard of it at that point and have no reason to go poking in wardrobes. The other one handily explains why Edmund wouldn't meet the Witch (she's off capturing Lucy when he gets to Narnia) and then he can bring Peter and Susan in later, but it lacks the emotional parallelism.
(6? 4? feck it) N. I'm also seriously thinking about making a gifset (my first gifset, oh dear, am I really joining the tumblr - blech - age? or, actually, is it a picset? picspam? I don't think I actually want to do moving gifs.) about a Merlin headcanon/theory that occured to me the other day. Uhm... how do I gifset? Is it one big image or lots of little ones and if the latter how big do they have to be for tumblr to play nice?