Pen's Nest

I spotted another writing meme going around, and it's that one where you post the first sentence of your 20 most recent fics and see if you can spot trends.

I thought I'd arrange them into things that *might* make sense as intros to other stories. They are in correct reverse order, except that I didn't repeat the intro for Wanna Tell Me About It?. (My stuff is on AO3, but is chronologically arranged here.)

So.

It wasn't much of a dressing room, but at least there was a good-sized mirror over the cluttered table, and enough light to check out his makeup. If he had wanted to spend his time digging, Joshua thought, he could have stayed with his family and worked on the farm.

"You, my friend, are going to have to be on your toes," Chris announced. Chris wasn't a planner.

*

The train rattled its way from Waterloo to Portsmouth Harbour. It was a fine, sunny day, and Lance was enjoying himself.

*

Lance was suddenly wide awake.

"I’m sorry, Brian."

“Did we eat all the popcorn?”

*

The morning after the concert, the first thing Nick did was shave his mustache. Brian was on a mission. "Good mor—good grief!"

*

"Going dragon-hunting this weekend, Bass?"

*

JC was a born tease, Joey thought, as he watched JC cut up his pancakes and bacon and slowly savor each mouthful. "I'm feeling very warm and loving towards Justin right now."

"Hi!"

Hey, JC.

"It's great to be back on a bus," JC said. Our eyes meet, and he makes me gasp, so full of love and lust and everything I want him to be. "I'm—we're not doing anything."


As for trends, well, there are a lot of spoken lines starting my stories. Erm. I quite like to get a snappy first line, if I can (see, Anybody who thinks they have a hard life should try shovelling dragon shit for a living.).

In other news... I could not help myself. The backlog of projects mounts, for I have just received two sumptuous skeins of merino/silk/cashmere in a medley of browns and russets like October trees. I win! Oh, what can I make with these? *SO* nice.

Only three panels and a floor now remain of the Lion's Cage, at least in this part of the county. The rest has gone to its new home.
*
Old school time! A meme, found on adelate's journal.

List the first lines of your last 20 stories (or however many you have altogether).
See if there are any patterns.
Then, tag your favorite authors.
( Read more... )
I contemplated posting the last lines as a companion meme—interestingly, they make a plausible story (more coherent than the Camp Sparkle Add Five Words story, at any rate, admittedly that is not a high bar to clear). But this post is quite long and self-indulgent enough for now.

Thank you to turps and chalcopyrite for the cards!

My Brats got home yesterday—how very handy it is that one, at least, can drive. Bun came to the gym with us this morning and even joined the Body Balance class, which she managed very well. We baked cookies this afternoon. How very American that sounds! In fact, yes, the recipes were American ones found online, and I still don't think measuring butter in 'cups' is even slightly practical. However, caramel apple cookies have been baked, iced and partially consumed, and there are some cinnamon rolls to be continued. They are much better than any mince pies that weren't baked by my grandmother, whose pastry was ambrosial.

The writing meme I spotted somewhere... sperrywink's journal, I think.

( Read more... )

I have an intimidating pile of things I ought to be doing, so I am procrastinating.

( The writing meme I do every December. )

My Beast has few wants, and most of them are "bigger, faster computer", which he supplies for himself. It is consequently quite difficult to buy him Christmas presents, and I ended up in HMV selecting a bunch of fairly random DVDs (for those rare evenings when he is not raiding, grrr).

One of the purchases was the complete Jeeves and Wooster series with Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie (who must have been, what, twelve, at the time?). We watched one yesterday as we had lunch. It was *adorable*. I cannot imagine more perfect casting, and Bertie's transformation from drunk-and-hungover to functional was *so* brilliant, I cannot tell you how much I squeed. I love them already.

For no particularly good reason,( the Fanfic Tropes meme, snagged from, er, somewhere on my friends list. )

I've managed to do a round-up of the year's writing every December so far, probably because every December I've been trying to find ways not to write my SeSa story, so here is this year's edition.

Looking back, did you write more fic than you thought you would this year, less, or about what you'd predicted?

Less, definitely. I'll start with last year's SeSa fic, Collaboration, which obviously couldn't be included in the December '08 edition of this meme; after that there was only one little snippet, a follow up to the long-ago Justin Junior, until I got to my Dragon Challenge story for this year, in June—and even that was hard work as inspiration was a long time coming. After which, things seemed to pick up a bit and I produced a Remix story, a couple of Trickyfish vampire fics, an Epic Poem and some shortish bits of fun at the end of the year. The substantial exception was my rpf_big_bang story which clocked in at just under 34,000 words, almost exactly half the year's output of some 66,000 words, well down on 2008. I remember being extremely frustrated at the beginning of the year that I just could not seem to write anything. So many times I went through the prompts on fic_requests and realised I had no inspiration. Gah. At least I managed to fill a couple towards the end of the year.


What pairing/genre/fandom did you write that you would never have predicted in January 2008?
Lance Bass/Adam Lambert!


What's your favorite story of the year? Not the most popular, but the one that makes you happiest?
Has to be Bouquet. I really fell in love with this pairing as I was writing the story, and there will be more of it. Also, I have been very lucky with my artists for big bang fics, and got a gorgeous illustration by samibee for this one.


Did you take any writing risks this year? What did you learn from them?
Risks, no, I don't think so.


From my past year of writing, what was...

Best story
Bouquet.

Story Most Underappreciated by the Universe
Jolly Hockey Sticks, my poor little unloved Girls Boarding School AU with Adventure and Stuff. Written for the Poptober Challenge, and pretty much unread, I think. *haz woe*

Most fun
Oh. Probably the Outtakes from Bouquet, which were trouble-free to write as they were so much fun they just flowed out; although The Song of Chris Kirkpatrick was also a lot of fun to do.


Most disappointing
I... don't think I was particularly disappointed in any of my stories this year. Possibly I wasn't being very ambitious. A bit disappointed in the participation in the Dragon Challenge, though—half that of the previous year, and as far as I could tell, not a lot of feedback from readers. Bad readers!


Most sexy
Possibly Bite, even though the actual sex in the story gets short shrift!


Story With a Single Sexy Moment
Erm. Don't think I really did this.


Hardest to Write
Bouquet, I expect, because I *really* wanted it to be right, and the rewriting was a bit harrowing.


"Holy crap, that's wrong, even for you" story:
Madame Louella Pearlman's Academy for Young Ladies, probably! Though I wouldn't ever have expected myself to write, deliberately, a sexy vampire bite story.


Most Unintentionally Telling
Um.... nah.


Do you have any fanfic or profic goals for the New Year?

I *still* have two more parts of the Chronicles to finish. I'm procrastinating with them because they're likely to take a while.

I'm really quite close to finishing my fanfic100 challenge, only perhaps ten stories left to be written.

I would definitely like to dispose of a bunch of prompts from fic_requests, it seems such a shame to let the community drift but I have found it difficult to work on these this year. For some reason I seem to be finding it harder to write short fics than I did when I started writing popslash.

My dragon challenge story, therefore, was Snufflekisses. After a long, barren period where I could think of *nothing* to write, I came up with the idea of an alternate reality in which Busta and Dirk were small dragons. Busta became a 'stubbie', and Dirk was, obviously, the perfect shape to be a Chinese dragon, complete with a new name (thanks, letterboys that means 'little blade'. I love the way Chris has a pet he can take care of, and Lance has a pet he can play with.

Thanks also to bun18 who suggested that Busta should disgrace himself in Lou's office (which turned out to be, Lou's limo), and who giggled gratifyingly when she read it. Any American language-picking would be appreciated, because I didn't have time to get anyone to beta the story for me.

So now I have a Remix story to write, and again, no inspiration. Therefore, I meme.

Back in 2007 I joined in an insane little meme that goes as follows: Name three fics you think I will never, ever, ever write. In return, I will attempt to write a snippet of one of them. So go on, challenge me. Anything popslashy.

If you want to see the results from that first time, go here.

I have no immediate deadlines, therefore, I meme.

First, one gacked from phaballa: I post the last lines of a bunch of fics, and you write a ficlet starting from that last line, and comment here with it. The new ficlet should be its own thing, unrelated to the fic it originally came from. (Well, phaballa's version said 'drabble' not 'ficlet' but drabbles are harder, so. Feel free to write a drabble if you wish!)

I'm not sure how fertile my last lines are, but perhaps something will inspire you. I've just picked the ends of stories written in 2008, otherwise the list would go on for *ever*. I love my muses.( Here they are: )

And now, randomly, a couple of quotes for you which I happen to like.

Somebody said that writers are like otters. And otters are really hard to train. Dolphins are easy to train. They do a trick, you give them a fish, they do the trick again, you give them a fish. They will keep doing that trick until the end of time. Otters, if they do a trick and you give them a fish, the next time they'll do a better trick or a different trick because they'd already done that one. And writers tend to be otters. Most of us get pretty bored doing the same trick. We've done it, so let's do something different.

Lincoln Six-Echo: "What's 'God'?"
McCord: "Well, you know when you want something really really bad and you close your eyes and you wish for it? God's the guy who ignores you."


Finally, another meme, one I remember Being Really Good At last time around (ah, hubris!). Quote me a sentence or so from one of my stories, and I'll tell you which story it's from.

And feel free to comment on the fact that I have arbitrarily chosen to post with a Brian icon, because it is adorable.

Found this on turps33's LJ.

( Some questions on writing )

All right, I admit it: turps33 is a goddess who must be obeyed. Hence, a writing meme.

Writer's Meme: Sometimes it's ok to pimp yourself out. Post a list of your top five fics favourite you've written, regardless of fandom or the reason you love them. This isn't about the BEST things you've written, but what you LOVE most. Then tag five other people to do the same.
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