Pen's Nest

I enjoyed doing the Snowflake Challenge earlier this month, and I wonder whether anyone might be interested in doing the post-a-day thing for February. Popslash preferred, but maybe you'll have a go at doing this for another fandom.

I like rec posts, so what I've done is to suggest a different rec theme for every day. And if you want to put more than one story into any of the categories, please do! Here's the list, so that you have time to think about it and don't end up with, Oh, drat, I wanted that fic for *this* category syndrome. The list is somewhat cribbed from a list I found, er, somewhere. Feel free to amend it for personal use if you want to.

( Day by day )

I'll post daily reminders as a nudge to get you reccing. Hope to see some interesting responses!

I went to Fibre East at the weekend, which sounds odd but was in fact a yarn show on a farm not far north of Bedford. Very nice event, in fact - two marquees full of stalls, lots of absolutely gorgeous yarns for sale, a lot of emphasis on spinning, which is plainly the new big thing, and pretty buttons and beads and lace for me to replenish my already groaning craft supplies, heh. I found a luscious merino in dark greens for Bun's project (she wants me to knit her a cardigan/jacket, gibber) and a bunch of irresistible sock yarns. I did manage to resist buying ALL the silks and ALL the variegateds, and really I think I did very well because PRETTY.

There were several handsome sheep waiting to be shorn at intervals, and a decent refreshment tent, and a couple of specialist tents. Also a nice farm shop, where I bought raspberry beer (as yet untasted) and chilli jam (very good). It was a nice size, with plenty to see and be tempted by, but not so much that you forgot where you'd seen stuff, and not so full that you couldn't move. And of course, being a knitting (etc) event there were lots of ladies wearing shawls and cardis they had obviously made for themselves. It's nice.

Anyway. ( I forgot to post a meme thingy yesterday, so here are the last two. )

Day 27: Where is your favorite place to write, and do you write by hand or on the computer?

At my computer, and I very rarely write by hand these days. Only when I've turned everything off and gone to bed and am struck with something I must write. I have an idea "The First Step" may have been generated that way.


My Boy and I were talking earlier today about fantasy novels, which he has been devouring at a great rate lately. I didn't have much to contribute, being as how I have not been reading published fiction in any meaningful way for ages. But I was very interested that he noted most of the books he's read lately have female heroes - protagonists, perhaps I should say. And, that the one he'd read most recently with a male protagonist was so boring he could hardly get through it. (I don't know what proportion of his reading has been female authors, but that could well be relevant.)

I muttered something about how women characters could be more interesting than men in the same circumstances, but I didn't have a lot to go on as I don't know what he's been reading. But have any of you noticed this?

For a bonus, anyone got any recs for him?

I know we had a very dry April, but July is making up for it in buckets. Dear me, so much rain. We're going to Ian's graduation ceremony tomorrow, I hope it doesn't pour. (He got a 2:1, which he was a bit disappointed with.)

Day 26: What is the oddest (or funnest) thing you've had to research for a fic?

Perhaps the oddest thing I looked for was Japanese rollercoasters named after dragons. No puma penises for me!

Day 24: Betaing – How many betas do you like to use to make sure there aren't any major flaws in your fic? Do you have a Beta horror story or dream story?

I don't always use a beta. Yes, yes, I know, but sometimes the story isn't something big and complicated, and these days I'm reasonably confident about writing in American English, and I can construct a sentence reasonably without help.

When I'm writing an Important Story, ie a long one and/or something that's for a particular challenge or a gift, I will get at least one beta. Nopseud is a great story doctor, who is very good at poking me to make me write the scenes I've tried to tell instead of show, and who knows when the shape of the story is wrong. I've had a lot of help from several different and splendid people with different stories, with the full beta deal and also with Brit-picking, but on special occasions for canon stuff, eg Withdiamonds for knowledge of Pittsburgh when I wrote Show you the Shape of my What? and Phaballa for Adam Lambert canon when I was writing Bouquet. I remember Ninjetti gave me a very good "this is not American usage" tutorial when I wrote the story about JC being in love with a Swan.

I've no beta horror stories, though there was one little thing that amused/irritated me when I beta'd for someone in my Harry Potter days—she commented on my single HP fic, over at fanfiction.net, and made it plain she had no clue how to deal with it. I'd have thought she might have had the sense either to put a compliment or keep well away from the review button!

My poor hips! This morning's Body Balance instructor was so gentle-voiced that everything seemed as though it ought to be easy (except being in Swan pose and grabbing my back foot, which I cannot do). And now my hips are grumbling like the old-lady hips they are. I spose if I hadn't been going to these classes they'd just have seized up completely by now. Or something. Meh.


Day 22: Have you ever participated in a fest or a Big Bang? If so, write about your favorite experience in relation to one. If not, are there any you've thought about doing? And if not, why not?

My first Big Bang was the popslash bittybang challenge; it was the first time I'd set out to write something over 20,000 words and I was quite a lot daunted. I wrote a popslash/The Full Monty crossover, because I knew that way there would be enough plot to get me through, and I'm very pleased with the resulting Show You the Shape of my What?, and am still completely besotted with the trailer bubbleforest made for it. Just goes to show, keeping lots of canon references is a *good* idea!

I made a lot of serendipitous discoveries on the way - I had originally thought that the musical was set in Pittsburgh, PA, because that to me says 'steel city' but in fact it was Buffalo, NY. I moved the story to Pittsburgh, though, because my wonderful beta withdiamonds could and did give me all kinds of useful advice on the localities, which peering at Google maps just wasn't doing for me. And there is, there really is, a Hot Metal Bridge in Pittsburgh! Since in the film (dunno about the musical) the guys call themselves Hot Metal, this made me very happy.

Then I wrote Bouquet for the RPF big bang that was around at the time, and found it ended up as easily the longest story I've written to date. Which is what happens when Nopseud is your beta, of course. *wuvs nopseud* Actually, Feast, or what every gay Jewish boy wants for Christmas, the latest instalment in that series, was written for the Cockbert big bang, although I'm not sure that 5,000 words is really a…. well. Never mind. Don't help, Kevin.

So,Justin, it was jolly fun of you to tell your co-star she had to go on a date with some random bloke who fancies her, just because he was a Marine who asked her on YouTube. The Marine in question seems pretty chuffed about it. But how does your co-star feel? Did you bother to ask her whether she wanted to spend an entire evening with a bloke she'd never met? With a bloke who would regard her as a Prize He Had Won? Does she expect to have a good time?

I hope you go on the date with the Martial Arts Center woman. She should be able to keep you in line.

Not, in fact, nearly as cool as you think.


Day 19: When you have bunnies, do you sit down and start writing right away, or do you write down the idea for further use?

Mostly I let them laze about in the meadow getting fat for a while, and don't write them out until I can't bear not —or until I have a looming deadline. Very occasionally, though, something just *has* to be written right now. The First Step was kinda like that, as was Six Words.

Day 17: Titles Are they the bane of your existence, or the easiest part of the fic? Also, if you do chaptered fic, do you give each chapter a title, or not?

Firstly, I kinda despise chaptered fic (with a few special exceptions)—besides which, I don't write long enough stories to justify breaking them up like that. The nearest I've done is my 'episodic' series, The Chronicles of Lancyn and Ser Chrisfer, but each piece is actually a separate story and therefore titled as such.

As for titles—they vary. Sometimes I get the title first, eg The Christmas Tree Conspiracy and Bouquet, and that tells me what kind of story I'm going to write. More usually, the title emerges as obvious while I'm writing the fic; sometimes these titles are fun (eg The Pussycat and the Porcupine), sometimes they're a bit more workmanlike (eg Prone; A Hogwarts Christmas; It Pays to Advertise). Sometimes I have to find a title once the fic is done, and oddly, this can lead to something prosaic or something good, there doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason for it. If You Want To Fly was the trickiest title I can remember, I quite literally thought of it as I was posting the dragon challenge stories, and yet it is so patently obvious for that story, I can't think why it didn't come to me sooner.

So, titles. Who knows?!

Gah. I tried, quite hard, to learn the words for the audition speeches, but failed and had to do the auditions* with script in hand. Still, I think I did okay. We shall see.

Day 15: Warnings – What do you feel it most important to warn for, and what's the strangest thing you've warned for in a fic?

Death and non-con are the important things to warn for. And Lava Lamps**. However, I don't actually warn for Lampfic, because no. Caveat lector.



* For The Winter's Tale. Shakespeare's blank verse is extraordinarily loose and flexible in this one, which makes it a lot harder to learn than, say, Henry V.
** If you have to ask, you don't want to know.

Day 13: Do you prefer canon or fanon when you write? Has writing fanfic for a fandom changed the way you see some or even all of the original source material?

For my ST:TNG stories, the highest compliment I usually wanted was that it felt as if it could have been an episode (possibly with 'if you were allowed to show that on television' as a corollary). I did my best to stick close to canon, because I wanted *those* characters in my stories, not those characters twice removed.

I'm not altogether sure what was fanon instead of canon in the ST:TNG universe anyway.

For popslash… well, hmm. Difficult.

I do think RPF canon is generally much more usable than FPF canon. With ST:TNG, it was entirely possible to be familiar with *all* the canon, although one tended to have to make choices, as there were plenty of contradictions. (My story The Things that Julianna Didn't Say was an attempt to reconcile the disparities between the Lore, Soong and Julianna episodes.) Also, fictional canon doesn't always hold up. Star Trek canon certainly doesn't. RPF canon, by contrast, works because it's true. The universe holds up - we don't *know* what it's like to be a millionaire popstar, but we know it's possible. We can check how long it takes to get from A to B - try doing that with warp speed!

At the same time, we cannot possibly know all the canon, because that's every minute of a person's life, or, every possible sighting and appearance, every interview, every paparazzi moment... each fan has her own personal experience of RPF canon, so our gaps are all slightly different. And, instead of having canon revealed in the order the creators came up with it, we can find out stuff randomly, sometimes years after the event, which change our viewpoint on who these people are and what they've done.

I prefer, on the whole, canon-based stories to outright AUs (although there are some awesome AUs around, and I've written some of which I'm very fond). But canon-based means basically "They're popstars", and can include genderswap, telepathy, random unicorns, all kinds of stuff that is not 'canon' at all. Also, it's sometimes hard to distinguish between fictional content and the real thing—I remember reading a story which referenced a Much Music appearance, and assuming it was made up, only to happen upon the actual interview years later!

I have discovered the joys of writing AUs, but if I possibly can I like to include canon references—eg in It Pays To Advertise Lou Pearlman was the agency owner who went to prison for embezzling. There were references in If You Want To Fly that someone unfamiliar with our canon would miss—any popslash fan would instantly identify the dragons, for instance, and although a non-fan could enjoy those dragons, they'd be missing out on a layer of the story. I don't see the point in writing a fan story that could perfectly well be original fic, because somewhere in there, it ceases to be fanfic and becomes a story where we know what the protagonists look like, which isn't the same thing.