Who am I, anyway?

[sitrep_log]

Okay, okay....I suppose I need to make some kind of entry post.  My original plan was to simply use this as a reading journal and subscribe only to communities, but as I dig deeper into the fandom I suspect that I may wind up friending individuals as well.  If I do, I guess that a little reassurance that I'm not a bot or some kind of crazed stalker

Comments

[proseac1]

Great!

Thought you might like a bit of background on the drabbles...the main impetus for the project was that I came to the NCIS fandom late in the 6th season (I think I caught Semper Fidelis and Aliyah, the last two eps of that season, and then had to wait all summer for new episodes, which was frustrating!). One of our 'boutique' networks here in Canada was showing repeats late at night, which is how I stumbled on it in the first place, but they weren't showing them in any particular order, for some unknown reason. In fact, they were jumping around from one season to another too, which was incredibly confusing.

I started writing in the fandom, and after a couple of months I signed on for a Survivor-like writing challenge on LJ called "Last Fiction-Writer Standing". I made it three or four rounds, then got knocked out. The main criticism of my stuff, every single round, was that I was writing the characters 'out of character'. I didn't understand why people thought that, but suspected it might have something to do with not having seen the normal character progression through the previous seasons. There were big gaps in my viewing of the older episodes, and those I HAD seen were all jumbled in my head in terms of when they occurred.

I decided it was time to figure this thing out, and the daily drabble project seemed like an ideal solution. I went out and bought the DVDs (two seasons every pay day!) until I had 1 through 6, and then I started. A friend sent me a link to the JAG episodes (I wasn't going to buy a whole season of JAG just to pick those up!), and I was off.

My beta, karaokegal, had herself done two years' worth of daily drabbles (although she didn't restrict herself to just one fandom) and I really admired her writing, so I approached her to see if she'd be willing to beta for me, and she readily agreed. We have a great partnership - she's tough on me, and I appreciate that. As the project progressed, I found she had fewer criticisms/suggested changes, and now, about 50% of the time she makes no changes at all. The rest of the time it's usually just one line that doesn't ring true for her, and that's an easy fix. She's in California, three hours behind me, which gives me time to fix things before she needs to hit the sack.

This is one of the few times I've actually managed to carry through on a commitment of this scope, and I'm very proud of the collection. I just thought you might be interested to know what spawned it (since I've given this explanation to my regular readers in earlier posts in my journal).

Enjoy!

[sitrep_log]

Oh, thank you! I'm glad you shared the background that prompted your project: I'll appreciate your work all the more for knowing it.

And I can surely agree with you: a great beta-reader who keeps you honest is beyond price.