The Secret Oasis, part 1

[lytrigian]

About time I posted something, isn't it?

It might look as if I've labored mightily and brought forth a gnat here, but the truth is I haven't been working on my writing as hard as I should. I still have stories to tell, but it's been hard to gather the creative energy I need to get them out. Hopefully, with this one out of the way, the next will go

Comments

[qui_te]

I haven't read it yet...

But I was wondering if you'd dropped off the face of the planet or if we'd ever see more of your writing! I'm glad to see some! And I, too, hope that the next installment is shorter.

Speaking of shorter, if you're posting directly from word into LJ, word likes to put in a bunch of invisible--and useless-- formatting-like characters, which prevent posts of long things, but if you can get rid of the ghost-text (or whatever it's proper name is) you can post longer stuff. I posted a 7000-word story on LJ in only one part last night, for example. Might be something to look into.

Anyway, I have to work soon, so I don't know when I'll get around to reading this (possibly this afternoon?) but I'll try to remember to post a response when I *do* read it.

[lytrigian]

Hi! Not dropped off, just not very productive. And since I don't use the LJ for personal things, that means I just don't post much. (And I'm also behind on your stories at FP.)

Shorter doesn't seem to be all that easy for me. I wouldn't mind if there were more substance, but my stories tend to be not very "dense".

I'm copy-pasting directly from OpenOffice, not Word, but it's probably the same idea. I get a lot of HTML to format it more or less as it is in the word processor. It's a mixed blessing, and I'm not sure if getting rid of it is worth the trouble. The only real problem in this case was that the breaks between posts didn't come in natural places.

[qui_te]

I read it! I loved it! it's wonderful. I loved the tea, and Kit talking to the vulture, and really just the whole thing.

If short is a problem for you, I'm sure no one would mind long (I know I wouldn't)

I've written like sixteen slashed fairy tales just since this summer (they're over 70000 words collectively, which makes them the second-longest thing I've ever written)....good luck catching up.

When I get fed up with the ghost-text I just upload everything to fictionpress first, and then copy it from there, which leaves breaks between the lines but gets rid of everything that isn't the actual story (plus then I remember to post it there). It's far less frustrating.

[lytrigian]

I'm glad you enjoyed it! I probably should have cut that introductory bit with the tea, but I had too much fun with it for that, and I thought it would be good to show Kit's reaction to the place.

I've been getting the notices whenever you update on FP, so I know what you've been up to and how much of it there is. 70k words is quite a bit, but it's not exactly Gone With the Wind or War and Peace. I should be able to cope.

Trouble with posting to FP first is that I can't post anything explicit there. LJ is the only place I post where I don't have to censor myself. I also post at y!Gallery -- where scenes involving women are always questionable -- and deviantArt, which has content restrictions similar to FP. In each place there are different issues, and I'm resigned to dealing with them. I might be able to come up with something more sensible for posting here though.

[qui_te]

It's also a bunch of unrelated stories, so it won't be that hard to catch up on, I suppose. Although there's hopefully going to be more often...

You don't have to post the stuff you upload to FP, and no one really listens to the restrictions anyway (I've read TONS of explicit stuff on that site...), but it is an extra step to deal with, and if you don't want to, you don't want to.

Happy reading/writing!

[lytrigian]

I found that pasting from LJ into Notepad did the same thing. Trouble is that it doesn't preserve formatting (of course) and saving myself the trouble of adding tags is one of the advantages of doing it how I do. Elsewhere I have to add tags. (BBCode style for Y!G, HTML for dA.)

[ravynrants]

Fantastic. Very excited to see what happens on the caravan!!

And let me just say, I don't have any complaints about your stories or chapters being too long. Honestly! If anything, I wish they were longer.