Whispers

Well, in a word, busy. Playing catch-up. Working, reading, writing, editing (thanks again, in_the_blue!), submitting, etc.

Honestly, I'm still on the fence with what I'm going to do with my WIP fanfics and how I want to publish my original fiction. Submitting is great, but it locks up my stories for a long time. Some I'd rather just collect and publish independently, but at the same time, if the periodicals did buy them, I'd get a whole lot better cash flow.

:thinking:

Read some great stuff today: to all mutual friends of lithiumlaughter, hie thee over and read her original short story; it's amazing.

Also, sending hugs and blessings to those on my f-list I haven't said anything to recently (that whole where in the world have I been bit): trovia, stormkpr, xenokattz, mwffj, whipsy, ashmanda, alexmonalisa, lilacsigil, pygmymuse, rogue437, etc. Have fun and be blessed!

:salutes:

I've been excited to see all the Nano folks on my f-list. Love you all. Well wishes. Hoping not to lurk so badly after this meeting is over. (It's tonight and we're hitting production on a movie. A movie!) No promises. I also don't want so much pressure on myself, so...

Track all exact word counts of newly written material. Throw up all as scribbles on this journal. Exclude meta. See what happens.

All will be untimed scribbles. There will be no discrimination provided to fandom or original work or pen name.

And I've got a new one! Pearl Wise. Story on sub. Think good thoughts.

Here goes!

Scribbled a bunch of stuff in longhand for By Any Other Name, a prompt for rubynye, Token, To Be Wild, and some other stuff. Will try to get it posted shortly and update Let Us Reason Together. Tendonitis acting up. Will type more when I can.

So my backup piece is out to beta, entitled: "What's in a Name?" I'm just so glad it's done.

Writer Seeking Beta
I'm looking for a shredder: someone that will shred my work apart on a functional, grammatical/spelling, structural, character, world-building, and canon-building level. I have clarity issues. Big ones. Knowledge of X-Men fandoms and possibly Roswell preferred. Also, occasional brainstorming when I can't make my threads work.

I blame lithiumlaughter and xenokattz. They've converted me and I'm considering a crossover. :headdesk:

Also, I've simply decided I don't want to do nonbeta work much more. Most of my writing has gone unbeta'ed and I have a huge amount of X-Men movieverse backlog. I had a queen beta that knew the 'verse and English language awesomely well, but she's AWOL. I have a queen beta that knows 'verse and characters but doesn't shred for me.

So, either/or/both:

• X-Men: movieverse extraordinaire (shredder/brainstorm/language & canon genius) - please good knowledge of other X 'verses, particularly comic canon.
• X-Men/Roswell geek (same as above, but only asking conversant vs. fluent knowledge of Roswell TV shoe)

LJ Notifications
Some reason, LJ, you can't send notifications to my LJ inbox anymore?!? My new email addy is a pain to log in and out of and it's not telling me when friends update. I'll do my best, y'all, to keep up anyway. :growls unhappily:


FicSpam
So I'm up to about twenty chapters of Whispers, four of Humanity, and two of Moments. Can you tell I'm starting on the drabbles? After I get Whispers and Moments taken care of (seeing as they're FINISHED and 100 chapters each, then I'll move on to the others like Pedestal and Like Day Follows Night, etc.


A Map in the Rain
Extending this story to second chapter. It's been in my head for a while, but I'm just now thinking I'll actually write it. :shakes head at self:


Journal Spamming
I love my LJ friends/fam. Please let me know if you ever do feel spammed with my posts or there's ever something you'd rather not read about. Walking that teetering line between transparency and TMI is...tougher than I thought. We'll leave it at that.


Summers Sister
Would anyone mind a story with an OC Summers sister? She showed up several years back in my brain as a possible lab creation of Sinister's but well aware of her relationship to Scott and frankly, one ruthless gal (but for good reasons). But she didn't spring from canon and I hate a poorly devised OC when perfectly good canon characters are available.


X-Men First Class
Anyone know who's in the first class per Marvel movies? I'm writing a fic where that would be good to know.


Reading Habits

Read a book I love, 'cause of the character. More on that later. :winks:

Just to admit to the world that I have not dropped off the face of the earth, Merry Christmas!

The season is here and I'm in love all over again. This year, lights did not start too early, but they are gorgeous where they have come. Our neighborhood is bedecked and so is upstairs in the living room (my job, which involves figuring out how the garland over the mantle got upside down and how to get it un-upside down again, in addition to glossing over the fact that one poinsetta has fifty lights and the other has an excessive one hundred!), which brings me to the reason for this post (or one of them anyway).

arliddian just posted about graduation and holidays and Jesus and it reminded me of my own drawing nearer to God right now. I think I've been on an outward arc that arced a little too far away. Right now, I'm in a serious leap of faith situation where I feel God is calling me out of the job I'm in and into some work that means a much less reliable income for the time being and a lot of original writing and no fanfiction (can't make money on the latter), and it's the scariest, awesomest (yes, I'm quite aware that isn't a word) feeling to experience.

Been studying up on Dean Wesley Smith and some of his excellent posts on this writing as business thing. His wife's site too. Been applying to Focus Forward and starting in on the intense training with Transam to turn me from a dental claims processor to a work-at-home medical transcriptionist. Been working overtime to wrap up year-end projects for the family nonprofit job. And now, I had to sit down and ask myself:

Why do I want to write?

(Here's where the fanfic goes by the wayside for the time being. That is because I love the community and the characters and the practice.)

I want to write because I want to fall in love with God.

I've been there. I've been in love, but I'm really not where I want to be anymore and that always expressed in my original writing. So here I am, kinda in shock that this is the answer my subconscious produced, but one peek at the work I've been doing proves this theme has started to show up. None of my stories are preachy. I rarely manage to include more than background references to God directly anyway. But the theme itself is still there. Surprised me, but not in a bad way. Not at all.

:sits bewildered at her desk:

I'm kind of hoping this all goes down better than it could.

Updates

Two wallpapers in added. Added a new icon in LJ and FF sections. 09.05.10

Diable, chapters one and two, finalized. Moments, chapter 73 posted. 09.05.10

Pedestal, chapter 15. Like Day Follows Night, chapter 7. Moments, chapter 72. 09.03.10

Added two fansites to Inspiration & Community. 09.02.10

Working on Image Galleries to get it fully transferred over. 09.02.10

Moments, chapter 69, 70, and 71. 09.02.10

New images in the X-Men Comics section of Image Gallery. This section now defunct and transferred. New resources for "Old New England Saw" in Canon and Resources under Gambit. 08.30.10

Additions

Other Stories: This is the home of all my fanfics not granted their own story arc. 09.02.10

On the Oddness of Being Sick and Being Well and Incoherency
Or the tale of what I'm writing, what I'm not, and why.

So it all started out with this grand hunt for the fanart I love, per a reader request, to add to the website. But that gets tricky. Permissions, links, choosing...

But it was quite enough to derail my writerly inspiration until I got sick (very). When I was sick, the stories got pretty twisted up in my head, so I didn't write as much at all.

Today, I'm feeling better and finally writing. I wanted to write everything all at once (Carnal, Whisper, Going Omega, etc.), but finally settled on The Way of the Rogue. I'm actually almost done with the chapter, but I'm running into too little information on Archie Corrigan, a character that would be perfectly useful if I thought I could write him decently. Which I obviously did. Last chapter. Right.

Have I mentioned recently, I'm a little nuts?

On the Rapid and Cheerful Digestion of Large Tomes
Or my reading binge while I was under the weather.

RoswellianMisha

So, somebody, I forget who, was favoriting one of my stories, and their review intrigued me, so I went and visited their profile and discovered this gem in their favorites. Being a huge Roswell fan myself, I fell head over heels in love with Unknown and The Offer. Now, that I've read all whopping huge 400,000+ words of them, I'm stuck in agonizing waiting for an update. But these are gorgeous!

Yes, I'm big on English. Yes, English is clearly the writer's second language. No, it doesn't actually break up the reader's enjoyment at all. The characters and stories are so well drawn, I don't even care that there are original characters. Every word pulls weight.

Love.

Well, I didn't mean to abandon you all. I did post up about my hiatus and all that, but here goes:

I'm officially taking a break from all things fanfic (except this rapidly growing, going to be gigantic website that I seriously should not be doing at http://whispersandstories.weebly.com. Check it out. :grins shamelessly:) in order to survive a major project at my day job (www.wellpoint.com) and my  other job as Corp. Sec. at a nonprofit and then my new side thing (www.lifevantage.com/122569) which is doing awesome things for me and my family's health and most of all, my own original writing (http://writing.smeganpayne.com —NEVER mention fanfiction there if you go).

In fact, I'm now doing a weekly drabble over there to boot.

Told you I'm crazy.

Occasional postings of new chapters bound to happen as this website that I absolutely should not be doing has a tendency to inspire me, thus two new chapters and two new icons/avatars. Go figure.

Well, see y'all soon!