insert life here
Nov. 30th, 2011 08:22 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kaydeefalls
So, November, really not my month. I shall not miss it. My show closes Sunday, which is such a relief, you don't even know. I am counting down the days, guys. FREE TIME AND WEEKENDS. THEY SHALL BE MINE. (I love working in theater, really. Except when I kind of hate it.)
And my new!roommate moved in Monday. She's very nice, but still, the adjustment period is very weird. I am sharing my apartment with a complete stranger. So weird.
Today I finally finished the draft of the next Queen's Gambit chapter and sent it off to beta, thank fucking god. I got stuck on this one dratted scene for yonks and yonks, it was very frustrating. But! Draft done now! All 11k words of it. *headdesk* (Seriously, when people post "chapters" on AO3 that are like 1k words apiece, I get really confused and kind of annoyed. Short fics are awesome, and posting in pocket-sized bursts on a kinkmeme makes total sense because, y'know, comment limits, but if you're claiming to write a multichaptered epic? 1k words isn't a chapter, it's a fucking SCENE. Just own it.) And I'm pretty sure this one is going to end up longer than Boden's Mate, which, are you fucking kidding me, why. I mean, I know why. For all the big ensemble cast and multiple POVs and plot twists, Boden's Mate had one very simple storyline (Erik's revenge on Shaw). Everything else was peripheral to that -- Charles rescuing himself, Raven finding family, etc. This one, on the other hand...well, overall it's sort of Raven's revenge on Cain, but the real point of it all is Raven and Alex coming into their own. There's Raven's plotline, and then there's Alex's plotline, and the two obviously overlap a lot since they're working together, but they're still essentially two separate, parallel stories, which each have their own peripheral subplots, and that all just gets...complicated. Maybe I should've split it up into two completely separate fics -- a Cain job for Raven and a Stryker job for Alex -- but on the other hand, part of what I love in storytelling IS that messiness, all those intertwined stories and overlaps and parallels and history repeating itself and coming of age narratives and...yeah. Life is complicated and doesn't necessarily follow a linear narrative. And that's cool.
Though, christ, I set out to write a wacky heist fic and suddenly it's all about, like, people with PTSD working their shit out in really messy ways. Oh, X-Men. I ♥ this deeply fucked up dysfunctional found family SO MUCH, ugh. (Also, I am kicking myself so hard for following First Class canon and killing off Darwin before the events of Boden's Mate. Damn it. Darwin would make everything easier. Well, this is part of why I'm also poking at a prequel.)
AND THEN SEASONAL CHALLENGES ARE UPON US. Memo to self: no, seriously, you need to work on these. For my own reference:
1. Yuletide - deadline Dec 22
status: happy with assignment, need to revisit source, have vague scenario in mind but no real plot to speak of
2. Secret Mutant - deadline Dec 22
status: vague potential maybe idea? memo to self: fic does not need to be a fucking epic. The minimum is 500 words. That's like maybe an hour of writing. THIS IS NOT HARD.
3. Festivids - deadline Jan 7
status: song chosen, 1min of vid complete, just keep swimming
4. White Lotus - deadline ?
status: assignments not yet sent out, definitely not worth worrying about
And hopefully get another chapter of Queen's Gambit in there somewhere, maybe. Or the theater AU. It's a good thing I'm not starting another show until the end of January, let me tell you.
< / boring blather >
And my new!roommate moved in Monday. She's very nice, but still, the adjustment period is very weird. I am sharing my apartment with a complete stranger. So weird.
Today I finally finished the draft of the next Queen's Gambit chapter and sent it off to beta, thank fucking god. I got stuck on this one dratted scene for yonks and yonks, it was very frustrating. But! Draft done now! All 11k words of it. *headdesk* (Seriously, when people post "chapters" on AO3 that are like 1k words apiece, I get really confused and kind of annoyed. Short fics are awesome, and posting in pocket-sized bursts on a kinkmeme makes total sense because, y'know, comment limits, but if you're claiming to write a multichaptered epic? 1k words isn't a chapter, it's a fucking SCENE. Just own it.) And I'm pretty sure this one is going to end up longer than Boden's Mate, which, are you fucking kidding me, why. I mean, I know why. For all the big ensemble cast and multiple POVs and plot twists, Boden's Mate had one very simple storyline (Erik's revenge on Shaw). Everything else was peripheral to that -- Charles rescuing himself, Raven finding family, etc. This one, on the other hand...well, overall it's sort of Raven's revenge on Cain, but the real point of it all is Raven and Alex coming into their own. There's Raven's plotline, and then there's Alex's plotline, and the two obviously overlap a lot since they're working together, but they're still essentially two separate, parallel stories, which each have their own peripheral subplots, and that all just gets...complicated. Maybe I should've split it up into two completely separate fics -- a Cain job for Raven and a Stryker job for Alex -- but on the other hand, part of what I love in storytelling IS that messiness, all those intertwined stories and overlaps and parallels and history repeating itself and coming of age narratives and...yeah. Life is complicated and doesn't necessarily follow a linear narrative. And that's cool.
Though, christ, I set out to write a wacky heist fic and suddenly it's all about, like, people with PTSD working their shit out in really messy ways. Oh, X-Men. I ♥ this deeply fucked up dysfunctional found family SO MUCH, ugh. (Also, I am kicking myself so hard for following First Class canon and killing off Darwin before the events of Boden's Mate. Damn it. Darwin would make everything easier. Well, this is part of why I'm also poking at a prequel.)
AND THEN SEASONAL CHALLENGES ARE UPON US. Memo to self: no, seriously, you need to work on these. For my own reference:
1. Yuletide - deadline Dec 22
status: happy with assignment, need to revisit source, have vague scenario in mind but no real plot to speak of
2. Secret Mutant - deadline Dec 22
status: vague potential maybe idea? memo to self: fic does not need to be a fucking epic. The minimum is 500 words. That's like maybe an hour of writing. THIS IS NOT HARD.
3. Festivids - deadline Jan 7
status: song chosen, 1min of vid complete, just keep swimming
4. White Lotus - deadline ?
status: assignments not yet sent out, definitely not worth worrying about
And hopefully get another chapter of Queen's Gambit in there somewhere, maybe. Or the theater AU. It's a good thing I'm not starting another show until the end of January, let me tell you.
< / boring blather >
