Writing woes :p
You know, I was hoping to have some ficcy inspiration for tactile_contact's artistic endeavors here, but... I don't know what my problem is. Lately, it seems that I just can't write for crap. Especially, I can't write PJ for crap, which is really, really, REALLY frustrating. Especially because I don't know why I can't write them. It's really starting to worry me, and it's certainly already driven me nuts. I've been sort of working on this PJ chapter of "Redemption" for two weekends now, and it's just not coming to me. I've got 1.5 pages of continuous stuff written (and it isn't all that good) and then random bits here and there which aren't really good, either. *sigh* I just keep getting distracted. I can't focus. I keep getting the graphic bug instead...which I'll get to in a moment.
Worse than that, over the past several months I've been feeling like I've lost my writing touch in general. It used to be that I could sit down and zap out a fic easily, in just a day or so. Just pick a character and write, write, write. But apparently it just doesn't work that way anymore. I think I've got too much in my life now. Not that that's a bad thing, but if I want to keep writing, I guess I need to put a priority on it. Or something. Trouble is, I've got about four different things that I'd like to put at the top of the priority list, except that you can't have four things at the top of your priority list. You can only have one, and I don't know what I would really like to have in that top spot right now. I just wish it didn't have to be earning a paycheck. *sigh*
...Well, anyway, I do know what one problem with this "Redemption" chapter is. It just isn't really interesting me. I haven't hooked into the emotions of it, so it just feels flat and talky and...blah, no matter what I do. Compounding that, there's another story about them that, at the moment, is far, far more enticing to me. I'm in a "backstory" kind of mood, you see, and this chapter is far from backstory. Instead, this "Redemption" chapter is just...talky. Of course, so is the rest of the story and, in a sense, it's supposed to be that way. Most of action takes place "off-screen," so to speak; the story is, essentially, simply various characters' reactions to those events. In other words, it's one giant "tag" fic. But I'm trying to think of some way to make this particular chapter a little more interesting, a little less plain old talky...and it's just not coming to me. Maybe I need to go take a shower; good ideas always seem to come to me in the shower. Don't ask me why. Then again, knowing me, I'll probably just start thinking of this other (and far goopier) story that I really want to write instead of this thing. *sigh* If I was writing this on paper, I'd have a wastebasket full of wadded-up pieces of scribbled-on paper by now. :P
*sigh* Don't mind me. I guess I'm just channelling my inner Gears or something. :p
Anyway, in an attempt to inspire myself, I went and put a TF DVD into the DVD drive of the ol' laptop here and put on "Dinobot Island" so that I could watch that one scene wherein Prowl looks so very...very...droolworthy. The one where he says, "OK, let's straighten out this mess." Yum. It's one of my favorite scenes, and there's one shot in it that I absolutely love. Since I only have a crappy copy of that screen cap, I took a new one of it off the DVD. And then, since story stuff wasn't coming to me, I popped it into Photoshop and messed around with it a bit.
This is the result. Beware, as it's a fairly large image. Who knows, maybe that will inspire Tact. Because, sadly, I haven't got anything else remotely inspiring to show for my weekend. *sigh* I suck, yes. :p
Post-Shower Edit: Ahhhhh, sometimes showers are just the thing to get the juices flowing. I think I have figured out what this scene needs. Now to find the time to write it... *sigh*
Anyway, in celebration of my ablutive ephiphany, I give you...crap!
There are many people who will tell you that I can’t sit still for more than five minutes at a time. And, admittedly, those people are generally right. I like to keep moving, you see. Sitting still means that the world is moving and I am not, and for some reason that just strikes me as all kinds of wrong.
But there are one or two exceptions to the general Jazz-just-can’t-sit-still-for-the-life-of-him rule. One is those rare occasions is when I manage to find something that completely absorbs my attention so that I don’t realize that time is passing while I’m sitting still. A rare, really good movie, for instance, will sometimes fill the bill. Or there’s always listening to some new, interesting music that I haven’t heard a dozen times already. The other…
The other would be that, without fail, I can lose myself in just watching Prowl. It doesn’t matter what he’s doing, really. In fact, he doesn’t have to be doing anything at all. He can be walking across a room. He can be sitting somewhere, just thinking. Which he does a lot, of course. Or he can be - as he was doing now - simply recharging. Whatever he’s doing or not doing, for some reason I just never get tired of looking at him, of thanking Primus or any other deity that might care that he’s mine. All mine.
Whatever the case, I had made it something of a hobby to watch Prowl specifically when he was asleep. I wasn’t quite sure why. Maybe it was because he was such an unfailingly intense person when he was awake that I enjoyed seeing him at a time when he couldn’t be intense even if he wanted to be. I liked watching him when he was at rest, at peace, probably because he was rarely either of those things at any other time. And when he was peaceful, I found that I could peaceful, too, that I could sit and just watch him for hours on end, if I was given the chance to do so.
So I found myself once again standing in the doorway of the small anteroom that housed our recharge berths, one shoulder leaning against the doorjamb, my arms folded across my chest, just staring at Prowl. This time, though, his rest wasn’t exactly…well, restful. Every once in a while some part or another or his body-a finger, a leg, his entire torso-would twitch, or a troubled look would cross his slumbering face. I wondered, as I often did, what he was seeing as he slept, what images were passing through his mind, what could possibly be bothering him so much that even the temporary oblivion of recharge couldn’t ease his mind…
But then, when I thought about it for a moment, I knew the answer to that. I knew that the past few days hadn’t been easy for Prowl, what with me being kidnapped and held captive by Starscream and his new Combaticons and all. Reliable sources-namely Bluestreak, the ultimate gossip source for the discriminating newshound-had told me that he’d never seen Prowl so wigged out as he’d been during the four days that I’d been Starscream’s unwilling guest, that Optimus Prime had practically had to chain him to Headquarters to prevent him from going off and trying to rescue me all by himself, more logical tactics be damned.
And, when I thought about it, I could see why that was so, on several different levels. For one thing, we’d simply never voluntarily been apart for so long, not since we’d bonded. And this separation, of course, hadn’t been at all voluntary. But much more importantly than that, Prowl knew-because Skyfire had told me and I had, in turn, told Prowl-that Starscream, my captor, was becoming more and more mentally unstable, and so he was exceedingly unpredictable. And the fact that he had apparently been gunning for Megatron…Well, that had all sorts of dark and scary implications of which only Prowl, of all the Autobots, would have been aware. So I was sure that he’d had himself worked into a tizzy, could just imagine what he’d been acting like while I was gone, as all sorts of horrible possible scenarios and fates ran through his calculating, tactically-focused mind. And on top of that, nothing was more apt to throw Prowl for a loop than when someone he cared about was in danger, especially if he could do nothing to help that person. He’d been so worked up over my abduction and absence that I’d been told that he’d refused to recharge while I was gone and, even after I’d returned, he’d still refused to rest until after I had done so. He could be so single-minded sometimes. Oddly, that was one of the things that I loved most about him…
But, finally, I’d managed to convince Prowl that I was perfectly all right, that I was recovered from my little unexpected adventure, and so he’d finally, grudgingly, toddled off to bed like a good little boy. Now, twelve hours later, he was nearing the end of his recharge cycle, and I’d decided that I was going to be there when he awoke. I knew, after all, that we needed to talk. About many things. And as far as I was concerned, the sooner we talked about them, the better.
As if my thoughts served as some kind of alarm clock or something, Prowl suddenly awakened, jerking fully upright with an alarmed gasp. His gaze jerked frantically around the room for a few seconds before it finally settled on my silhouette in the doorway.
I quirked a smile at him that he probably couldn’t see, given that I was backlit, and murmured a soft ,“Hi,” at him.
That one simple word seemed to calm him a little. At least, his posture became a little less rigid, which was a start.
“Hi,” he said back to me, and I noticed that his voice was a little shaky, a little distracted.
Concerned, I fully entered the room, instructing the computer to raise the lights to half-intensity as I did so. I approached the recharge berth and sat down on the edge of it, getting my first real look at Prowl. What I saw wasn’t all that encouraging. He’d just woken up from twelve straight hours of recharge, but he still looked as if he hadn’t slept in weeks. I reached out to him, cupped his chin in one hand, raising his eyes to mine. Although I figured that I wouldn’t get a straight answer out of him, I asked him the question that was uppermost in my mind, anyway.
“You OK?”
I expected him to say that he was fine because that was what he always said in situations like this. So I was surprised when, instead, Prowl looked me straight in the eye and said, “I’m…rattled.”
See? Told you it was crap. Fortunately, I now have a far better idea... :)
Worse than that, over the past several months I've been feeling like I've lost my writing touch in general. It used to be that I could sit down and zap out a fic easily, in just a day or so. Just pick a character and write, write, write. But apparently it just doesn't work that way anymore. I think I've got too much in my life now. Not that that's a bad thing, but if I want to keep writing, I guess I need to put a priority on it. Or something. Trouble is, I've got about four different things that I'd like to put at the top of the priority list, except that you can't have four things at the top of your priority list. You can only have one, and I don't know what I would really like to have in that top spot right now. I just wish it didn't have to be earning a paycheck. *sigh*
...Well, anyway, I do know what one problem with this "Redemption" chapter is. It just isn't really interesting me. I haven't hooked into the emotions of it, so it just feels flat and talky and...blah, no matter what I do. Compounding that, there's another story about them that, at the moment, is far, far more enticing to me. I'm in a "backstory" kind of mood, you see, and this chapter is far from backstory. Instead, this "Redemption" chapter is just...talky. Of course, so is the rest of the story and, in a sense, it's supposed to be that way. Most of action takes place "off-screen," so to speak; the story is, essentially, simply various characters' reactions to those events. In other words, it's one giant "tag" fic. But I'm trying to think of some way to make this particular chapter a little more interesting, a little less plain old talky...and it's just not coming to me. Maybe I need to go take a shower; good ideas always seem to come to me in the shower. Don't ask me why. Then again, knowing me, I'll probably just start thinking of this other (and far goopier) story that I really want to write instead of this thing. *sigh* If I was writing this on paper, I'd have a wastebasket full of wadded-up pieces of scribbled-on paper by now. :P
*sigh* Don't mind me. I guess I'm just channelling my inner Gears or something. :p
Anyway, in an attempt to inspire myself, I went and put a TF DVD into the DVD drive of the ol' laptop here and put on "Dinobot Island" so that I could watch that one scene wherein Prowl looks so very...very...droolworthy. The one where he says, "OK, let's straighten out this mess." Yum. It's one of my favorite scenes, and there's one shot in it that I absolutely love. Since I only have a crappy copy of that screen cap, I took a new one of it off the DVD. And then, since story stuff wasn't coming to me, I popped it into Photoshop and messed around with it a bit.
This is the result. Beware, as it's a fairly large image. Who knows, maybe that will inspire Tact. Because, sadly, I haven't got anything else remotely inspiring to show for my weekend. *sigh* I suck, yes. :p
Post-Shower Edit: Ahhhhh, sometimes showers are just the thing to get the juices flowing. I think I have figured out what this scene needs. Now to find the time to write it... *sigh*
Anyway, in celebration of my ablutive ephiphany, I give you...crap!
There are many people who will tell you that I can’t sit still for more than five minutes at a time. And, admittedly, those people are generally right. I like to keep moving, you see. Sitting still means that the world is moving and I am not, and for some reason that just strikes me as all kinds of wrong.
But there are one or two exceptions to the general Jazz-just-can’t-sit-still-for-the-life-of-him rule. One is those rare occasions is when I manage to find something that completely absorbs my attention so that I don’t realize that time is passing while I’m sitting still. A rare, really good movie, for instance, will sometimes fill the bill. Or there’s always listening to some new, interesting music that I haven’t heard a dozen times already. The other…
The other would be that, without fail, I can lose myself in just watching Prowl. It doesn’t matter what he’s doing, really. In fact, he doesn’t have to be doing anything at all. He can be walking across a room. He can be sitting somewhere, just thinking. Which he does a lot, of course. Or he can be - as he was doing now - simply recharging. Whatever he’s doing or not doing, for some reason I just never get tired of looking at him, of thanking Primus or any other deity that might care that he’s mine. All mine.
Whatever the case, I had made it something of a hobby to watch Prowl specifically when he was asleep. I wasn’t quite sure why. Maybe it was because he was such an unfailingly intense person when he was awake that I enjoyed seeing him at a time when he couldn’t be intense even if he wanted to be. I liked watching him when he was at rest, at peace, probably because he was rarely either of those things at any other time. And when he was peaceful, I found that I could peaceful, too, that I could sit and just watch him for hours on end, if I was given the chance to do so.
So I found myself once again standing in the doorway of the small anteroom that housed our recharge berths, one shoulder leaning against the doorjamb, my arms folded across my chest, just staring at Prowl. This time, though, his rest wasn’t exactly…well, restful. Every once in a while some part or another or his body-a finger, a leg, his entire torso-would twitch, or a troubled look would cross his slumbering face. I wondered, as I often did, what he was seeing as he slept, what images were passing through his mind, what could possibly be bothering him so much that even the temporary oblivion of recharge couldn’t ease his mind…
But then, when I thought about it for a moment, I knew the answer to that. I knew that the past few days hadn’t been easy for Prowl, what with me being kidnapped and held captive by Starscream and his new Combaticons and all. Reliable sources-namely Bluestreak, the ultimate gossip source for the discriminating newshound-had told me that he’d never seen Prowl so wigged out as he’d been during the four days that I’d been Starscream’s unwilling guest, that Optimus Prime had practically had to chain him to Headquarters to prevent him from going off and trying to rescue me all by himself, more logical tactics be damned.
And, when I thought about it, I could see why that was so, on several different levels. For one thing, we’d simply never voluntarily been apart for so long, not since we’d bonded. And this separation, of course, hadn’t been at all voluntary. But much more importantly than that, Prowl knew-because Skyfire had told me and I had, in turn, told Prowl-that Starscream, my captor, was becoming more and more mentally unstable, and so he was exceedingly unpredictable. And the fact that he had apparently been gunning for Megatron…Well, that had all sorts of dark and scary implications of which only Prowl, of all the Autobots, would have been aware. So I was sure that he’d had himself worked into a tizzy, could just imagine what he’d been acting like while I was gone, as all sorts of horrible possible scenarios and fates ran through his calculating, tactically-focused mind. And on top of that, nothing was more apt to throw Prowl for a loop than when someone he cared about was in danger, especially if he could do nothing to help that person. He’d been so worked up over my abduction and absence that I’d been told that he’d refused to recharge while I was gone and, even after I’d returned, he’d still refused to rest until after I had done so. He could be so single-minded sometimes. Oddly, that was one of the things that I loved most about him…
But, finally, I’d managed to convince Prowl that I was perfectly all right, that I was recovered from my little unexpected adventure, and so he’d finally, grudgingly, toddled off to bed like a good little boy. Now, twelve hours later, he was nearing the end of his recharge cycle, and I’d decided that I was going to be there when he awoke. I knew, after all, that we needed to talk. About many things. And as far as I was concerned, the sooner we talked about them, the better.
As if my thoughts served as some kind of alarm clock or something, Prowl suddenly awakened, jerking fully upright with an alarmed gasp. His gaze jerked frantically around the room for a few seconds before it finally settled on my silhouette in the doorway.
I quirked a smile at him that he probably couldn’t see, given that I was backlit, and murmured a soft ,“Hi,” at him.
That one simple word seemed to calm him a little. At least, his posture became a little less rigid, which was a start.
“Hi,” he said back to me, and I noticed that his voice was a little shaky, a little distracted.
Concerned, I fully entered the room, instructing the computer to raise the lights to half-intensity as I did so. I approached the recharge berth and sat down on the edge of it, getting my first real look at Prowl. What I saw wasn’t all that encouraging. He’d just woken up from twelve straight hours of recharge, but he still looked as if he hadn’t slept in weeks. I reached out to him, cupped his chin in one hand, raising his eyes to mine. Although I figured that I wouldn’t get a straight answer out of him, I asked him the question that was uppermost in my mind, anyway.
“You OK?”
I expected him to say that he was fine because that was what he always said in situations like this. So I was surprised when, instead, Prowl looked me straight in the eye and said, “I’m…rattled.”
See? Told you it was crap. Fortunately, I now have a far better idea... :)