Writing into the Abyss, Part II
May. 12th, 2013 08:24 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
scribblemynameI did know what froze me up on writing my chaptered fanfics after a while, and it's weird to admit this, but here it is: they were too long.
When I realized it was going to take more than 100 chapters to wrap up some of those stories, my brain and muse froze up and it suddenly became very, very hard to keep writing. It was easier when I didn't realize that and could just scribble into the abyss, not knowing, not caring how many words it would take me to reach the end. I cannot tell you how liberating it is to not know.
And you know what? I think that's what happened to the Story from Inferno as well. I realized how much work and words were involved and almost got over it before my brain went too much, too much, too much—I'm scared.
Some writers write scared. It drives them, keeps them writing. I don't. Never have. Never have been able. Scared freezes up my brainpower and even if I know exactly what should come next, I don't write it. If I don't know what comes next, that suddenly becomes an ultra-handy excuse to let it go and hack away at something else while nibbling every now and then on the overwhelming, too long story. And I wonder why I've only ever finished one satisfactory novel. :shakes head ruefully at self:
There is no commitment to the abyss. It is like life, only visible one step at a time, and with infinite possibilities for continuing or coming to a satisfactory end. We live by moving forward. There is commitment once a story rears itself out of the abyss and shows its overall shape. Suddenly, I feel obliged to make the story fit that shape, reach that end satisfactorily. There's pressure.
I've been thinking about how to take that pressure back off. Cross your fingers for me or share your tips if you have any. It's time to throw a few stories back into the abyss.
Originally published at Liana Mir. You can comment here or there.
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no subject
Date: 2013-05-12 06:56 pm (UTC)So... no advice on that end. Let's see...
I get scared as a writer a lot. I used to be scared to share anything, and I'm not now (fanfiction got me over that) and there's at least one point in just about every story where I think I've gotten the whole thing wrong and it won't work. That's when I ask people about it. My current fear is that I've lost the people who were my readers since the latest emails have been unanswered, and I'm a bit concerned about what I'll do without them to ask when these moments hit.
I am one of the ones that keeps writing when scared, though, because writing is a compulsion/need/obsession for me. I try to keep to the same story if possible, maybe by writing a part I really want to do or a part that I don't think will work but I want to do anyway or some random part of the backstory that probably doesn't fit.
I don't like writing scared. It doesn't motivate me. It's something I have to maneuver around because I need writing so much. It's part of why I am such a nutcase: I'm terrified that the stories don't work, I can't stop writing them, and even when someone tells me they do, I've got doubts.
I think, though, continuing when the writing scares a person, even if it's to shift gears/stories, is a victory in of itself, so that's something to keep doing.
As for the pressure...
Well, one can try bribery: getting something else after continuing past the point where one wants to stop. Sometimes that's a new story, sometimes a new trinket (as I have been broke most of the past three years, it was always a story for me.)
One can do the fun bits. The part that is the key to the story, to the romance, or just some random fun with the characters and the world. I try to keep that as a goal to write toward, but when I'm struggling, that's the one I sit down and write because I need it to keep going. Sometimes that allows me to find another moment that I can use or it just makes the rest of it clear. The downside to this is that sometimes that was all I wanted and I don't want to write the rest of the story.
One can take the characters and place them in a new world or setting or alter and see what happens. Less pressure, doesn't have to be the story that's being troublesome, not at all.
What might work for you is treating the scenes you need or parts of them as ficlets or shorts, maybe even trying to get prompts for them. I've been considering that myself to get The Drought done, since I kind of know what's going on and yet I don't there. I even thought of doing that for Dimestore to get me back writing it.
I can feed you some prompts if you'd like.
no subject
Date: 2013-05-12 08:00 pm (UTC)I used to think that—until I got a truly unwieldy number of WIP stories.
I usually have to find some way to shake off my expectations to remove pressure. That's the hardest bit. First to admit I have expectations, then to get rid of them and just write. Ah well. I'm looking forward to the process.
no subject
Date: 2013-05-12 08:43 pm (UTC)I have been rotating through four or five ongoing projects lately, and that's plenty, but if I went back through all the things that I have not finished... Well, that would be so depressing/overwhelming that I'd cry if not do something much worse. I'm going to do a post on the organization stuff I found, and you can see my disaster of old WIPs that I won't be finishing any time soon. (Um... I just realized the way that sounded. I was going to do a post for Kabobbles on Kabobbles anyway, I wasn't trying to suggest that you actually wanted to see my mess, just that it would be there eventually. Oops.)
For overcoming expectations, I almost said, "grab your worst piece of writing, read it and know it can't get worse than that." Or to lower the expectations and then it would in theory be easy.
Yeah, sure... :P
no subject
Date: 2013-05-13 02:01 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-05-13 02:15 am (UTC)Well, these won't help with Dowse and Bleed, but they're a few things I've thought about lately. Drew a blank on quotes, but I've got some lyrics and pictures.
Some random lyrics:
Your everlasting summer
You can see it fading fast
So you grab a piece of something
That you think is gonna last
You wouldn't know a diamond
If you held it in your hand
The things you think are precious
I can't understand
~ Steely Dan, Reeling in the Years
He waits by the window
And wonders
At the empty place inside
Heartlessly helping himself to her bad dreams
He worries ~ CSN - Helplessly Hoping
Don't let the past remind us of what we are not now
~ CSN - Suite: Judy Blue Eyes
A few pictures:
http://www.123rf.com/photo_11092703_this-is-a-view-of-local-park-in-the-fog-at-night.html
http://i277.photobucket.com/albums/kk78/pygmymuse/other%20stuff/FantasyArtWallpapersHQ16_zps2e31a41d.jpg
http://fc03.deviantart.net/fs50/i/2009/286/3/1/La_musica_del_silencio_by_ELENADUDINA.jpg
Kingdoms and Thorn: Abyss Looking Back [1/2]
Date: 2013-05-20 03:45 am (UTC)Heartlessly helping himself to her bad dreams / He worries
~ CSN - Helplessly Hoping ~
Morning light broke gently through the glass wall of her apartment, the one she liked to call a window overlooking her city. Justus watched the play of dawn's rays over her face. Even in sleep, she seemed weary and drawn. He kept his fingers from clenching—the pressure wouldn't help her—but he knew she had been fighting her own body too long.
The girl of a hundred names and special human abilities: the Database, Cypher, Battery Acid, Rachelle Winslow, Guardian. He had named her that last, but he never knew what to call her when she got like this, when the world finally overwhelmed this woman who managed to snap back invulnerable at her own body hurting her. He knew that he held her lightly, touched her with his eyes instead of his hands, felt more for her then than when she was so strong.
She would wake up soon. Justus could feel it through the way her body rested against his on her living room couch. One wrong breath and all that tension would trigger instincts she had been trained in from childhood. And what would he call her then?
The light spread from rays into weak ambience, then brightened further and he watched her eyelids flutter open. Her eyes were brown, alive and expressive. Right now, they expressed pain. She grimaced as she sat up.
Justus just watched, not helping, not wanting to touch her more than necessary when any and all pressure against her skin would hurt. The Database was one of about eleven hundred survivors of the Thorn Republic's genetic experimentation to create military operatives who could serve as living weapons. They were called special type humans. Her special ability was a unique vascular system able to process genetic data and replicate it inside her own body. It allowed her to mimic other specials for a few seconds at a time and allowed her to read DNA more easily than Justus could read a book. The problem was that her vessels could only hold so much information, so much fluid, so much genetic material before breaking, and her space was running out.
"Stop looking at me like that," she snapped over her shoulder, heading for the kitchen. "I won't break."
A part of her did break, regularly, but that part was under her skin and Justus sat up with a sigh, knowing he wasn't the one person she had ever let under it. "You'd think I wasn't your teammate."
"Shut up." The words were delivered amicably though they would not have sounded amicable to an outsider. She put on coffee, as he expected, and winced as she poked at the skin on her arm under the medical star she had put on last night to give her vessels a little more room for archiving data.
With that, he could name her again, and it was with relief that he called her, "Database," with some exasperation.
The Database ignored him. She stirred her steaming mug and lifted it with both hands to test it with the tip of her tongue. "I didn't ask you to come," she retorted, this time with some heat, perhaps a little bitterness.
Justus looked at her silently. Ilsa Killinger had called him, told her a healer was pouring life into her broken vascular system, and that he was the emergency contact listed for such an event. The Database had been patched up well enough but there was no way in heaven or earth he would have let her drive herself home.
Her shoulders tensed. She shrugged jerkily, a resigned sort of truce. He wondered briefly if she'd read his mind with some borrowed gift or just known what he was thinking. They had known each other for years now, long enough to become involved in their own weird way and long enough for him to fall in love with her, much to her chagrin.
Rachelle Winslow, the Database, Guardian, Battery Acid was not the marrying type.
Re: Kingdoms and Thorn: Abyss Looking Back [2/2]
Date: 2013-05-20 03:45 am (UTC)A seething hiss between her teeth. She downed the rest of her coffee and he knew it scalded but she didn't care.
She used to go a couple quarters between cycles, when she forced her body to assimilate and archive all the flotsam and jetsam of genetic data running through her system. When they had first made her, she said she could go a few years before bothering with it. Working files, she called them. Cached DNA-prints, accessible and readable enough before she made them a part of her own genome, though she could only use them afterward.
It counted. Time was running down and three months ago, she'd stopped speaking to him because she figured out he'd been fool enough to love her. His words reminded her of two things she didn't want to think about. But she didn't talk about it. She rinsed her mug and stuck it in the sanitizer.
"I'm going to change," she commented as if they had said nothing else. They had fallen asleep on the couch in their clothes from yesterday. It was a reasonable enough excuse.
He didn't talk about it. He looked out the window wall of apartment glass out onto the city—her city—golden Kishet with its skyscraper buildings and tangled quarters and districts and kingdoms. He looked out as he heard her shoes on the tile leading into the bedroom area, the shower water begin to run, and looked at the rush of nameless faces and soundless cars running below. He wondered how she kept moving forward with her bad dreams of a future where her body betrayed her and killed her at last with nothing inside to warm or comfort her. He wondered if all those nameless faces made her feel less lonely that she was one of them.
Re: Kingdoms and Thorn: Abyss Looking Back [2/2]
Date: 2013-05-20 04:05 am (UTC)The way he cares about her is beautiful. Sad, but beautiful. The way he worries, the way helps her in whatever small way she'll let him...
Re: Kingdoms and Thorn: Abyss Looking Back [2/2]
Date: 2013-05-21 05:50 pm (UTC)Re: Kingdoms and Thorn: Abyss Looking Back [2/2]
Date: 2013-05-21 11:52 pm (UTC)Well, okay, I'd like to see where he gets past her stubbornness or she lets him really help her, but yeah, more would be good.
Re: Kingdoms and Thorn: Abyss Looking Back [2/2]
Date: 2013-05-21 11:59 pm (UTC)And I have not forgotten your Seven Days either. They're back in the percolator again, one first-drafted, the other just being... stubborn.
Re: Kingdoms and Thorn: Abyss Looking Back [2/2]
Date: 2013-05-22 12:12 am (UTC)Well, I suppose the most important one is... Is she really going to die because of her abilities? It kind of sounded like that was what was ahead of her because she was filling up/running out of space, so... yeah... um... does she?
I'm a bit ashamed to admit that I'd forgotten. I can't remember what I asked for now.
(Oh, I mentioned your piece on the post I did about the song I prompted you with, here: http://kabobbles.com/helplessly-hoping/)
Re: Kingdoms and Thorn: Abyss Looking Back [2/2]
Date: 2013-05-22 12:16 am (UTC)http://lianamir.com/seven-days To the left of the page.
Thanks for the mention!
Re: Kingdoms and Thorn: Abyss Looking Back [2/2]
Date: 2013-05-22 12:23 am (UTC)Right. Those prompts. I shouldn't have forgotten.
You're welcome. It wasn't a very big one, but I couldn't talk about the song without mentioning what you'd written.
Re: Kingdoms and Thorn: Abyss Looking Back [2/2]
Date: 2013-05-22 12:52 am (UTC)Re: Kingdoms and Thorn: Abyss Looking Back [2/2]
Date: 2013-05-22 12:59 am (UTC)Yeah, I'm not big on killing off mine, either. I've done it a few times, threatened to a lot, but I don't usually do it. It's hard to picture the death of someone that you know as well as a character, someone who is in a way a friend, though I admit sometimes death would be kinder than at least part of their backstory in some cases.
Collateral Damage
Date: 2013-05-22 01:19 am (UTC)Shift. The winds seemed to change with her moods.
She gave him a slight nod and dropped her empty coffee cup to the table. Her apron signified she worked there, but it was her absolute ruling demeanor that let him know he was on her territory, the real place she called her own. Even the top-ranked operative in the Department knew to tread with caution.
"Power outage?" she asked casually, a throwaway line, referencing last night's chance encounter at his girlfriend Mira's apartment. The question was direct and pointed: why are you here? how's my girl? is she hurting? what do you know? Dark eyes snapped back up to meet his.
Andre looked at Shift calmly. He sat down across from her. "Communications," he corrected evenly.
A long measured gaze, then another slight nod. "Always a lot of collateral damage when the Database goes down."
She shrugged and to an outsider—as he wasn't—it sounded like they were discussing the legendary law enforcement surveillance and tracking system several cities were known to make use of. To an insider—as he was—it was a bitter worry voiced that the special type human girl able to absorb another person's DNA was hurting and out of control.
Special type humans were dangerous when they lost control. A telekinetic could shred a skyscraper with a few thoughts, a few moments. A healer could melt down the genome of any organism they touched—or lose their life to another in an instant. A processor, like the Database, could cause untold damage by utilizing multiple powers all at once, and Shift had told him there was a reason for this collateral damage, a greater reason to worry.
"Will she die?" he asked quietly, with a shared history of understanding between them. How long ago had she asked him, “You lost everything you ever cared about?” Almost everything. He had lost his son.
Shift didn't move, but he knew his question shifted something inside of her as the space between them tensed and his instincts warned him she had gone predator. Her eyes looked up, the rest of her unmoved, and the fierceness in those eyes dared him to challenge her. "I never lose one of my own."
Watcher's words. Andre had to draw in a breath at that. He had known that quietly deadly one-time child soldier had essentially raised Shift, but he never imagined she had passed on her ruthless, brutal willingness to sacrifice anything, anything at all, for someone she loved. He had never imagined that Watcher would make a monster of a girl she had once protected.
"There will be a price to save her life, won't there?" he asked, voice still even, not betraying his sharp recoil. He was an operative. She was an operative. They were both the best of their kind.
Shift tilted her head and shrugged casually, all the tension gone with that flicker of casual slide into her Jennifer Haller role as she stood and straightened her apron. "Break's over," she replied flippantly. As if she had ever taken a break.
Andre stood, wondering what it was she would want of him, why she had brought this problem to his attention at all if she didn't want his help. Queen of the double entendre, he knew she meant her reprieve from her bloody work was at an end, and yet he wondered what price could save a woman whose very genes had turned against her. He had never known fear, but even he could almost feel it when he realized that no price was too high in Shift's eyes.
Re: Collateral Damage
Date: 2013-05-22 01:31 am (UTC)I'm with Andre, scared of what Shift is willing to do.
Re: Collateral Damage
Date: 2013-05-22 01:36 am (UTC)Re: Collateral Damage
Date: 2013-05-22 01:38 am (UTC)Re: Collateral Damage
Date: 2013-05-22 01:50 am (UTC)I'm not sure yet which approach I'm going to have to settle on for getting Rachelle patched up, so I'm not sure what the price is, but let me put it this way:
Watcher promoted Shift from 3rd rank to 1st when she left the team because she knew that Kilter wouldn't have been able to keep Shift from single-handedly destroying the Department. She let responsibility to take care of the team members do that.
The reason the teams finally rebelled as one against the Department and wrenched control of half the continent away from the Thorn Republic is because the Department was going to pull a 48 on Red Wolf and send an operative to kill him when he hadn't earned it even by their harshest standards. Whisper called in a favor Shift owed her.
Shift was the one that raised the rebellion, ran it, and cut such a swath of casualties into the Thorn Republic that they were willing to finally cut a deal.
So yeah. When Andre realized that someone who had successfully completed hundreds of missions that included almost every atrocity the Department could require of a person considered no cost too high, he was worried. And that too boils back to the same thing, though he never put two and two together.
All the operatives on Watcher's team got one exception, something they could say no to. Shift took her daughter. In exchange for the Department leaving her baby completely and totally alone forever, Shift had to do literally anything they asked of her. Let's just say that Shift is the most hated and respected operative ever. Those that really know why she is that way though often love her, even if they disagree emphatically with her methods.
Re: Collateral Damage
Date: 2013-05-22 01:58 am (UTC)(for some reason, I kind of want to see where Whisper calls in that favor. Not sure why, but... um, we'll blame my mood)
Re: Collateral Damage
Date: 2013-05-22 02:25 am (UTC)Re: Collateral Damage
Date: 2013-05-22 02:45 am (UTC)You don't have to write it.
Re: Collateral Damage
Date: 2013-05-22 03:10 am (UTC)Re: Collateral Damage
Date: 2013-05-22 03:18 am (UTC)Re: Collateral Damage
Date: 2013-07-09 07:41 pm (UTC)