The Writer's Progress

[tiggymalvern]

The weekend was productive. On Saturday I finished the first draft of my story for the next Murder Husbands Big Bang, which won't be published until November, but I had to start writing it to be sure it would all hang together, and once I'd started, it was easier to carry on and finish it. Plenty of time to edit then!

On Sunday I finished the first chapter of my Mizumono spin-off Murder Family fic, which has been hanging around as a dialogue skeleton for about two years now. That chapter's only 2000 words shorter than the Big Bang fic and all I've done is establish the premise, which is one of the reasons I've kept putting it aside to write shorter stories (and ones with actual deadlines). This thing is going to be loooooong. But I dragged together the first scene of chapter two this morning as well, so maybe this time there's hope it won't stall again so badly.

Every now and then I go back through my folder of old abandoned WIPs and read through what I have, and I did a bit of that again last week. Each time I do that, the one that haunts me the most is the Gundam Wing fic I started writing close to twenty years ago now before I got distracted by other fandoms. (The Anime Writers' List on Yahoo Groups was still an active place when I was writing that fic, that gives some idea of the era...) I still really like what I had for that, and I think it was about half done, and maybe I should go back and actually finish it?

Of course I'm pretty sure nobody's reading Gundam Wing any more (although I still get comments and kudos on my Trigun fics from teens who were babies when it came out and have just discovered it) and I'd have to go back and actually rewatch Gundam Wing to remind myself of what happend. I remember enough to know that the plot was never what you'd call entirely coherent. (One of the benefits of writing Duo Maxwell POV there is that Duo's not really interested in the finer points of the politics anyway, so the holes there can be cheerfully brushed over.) But there have only ever been two characters who have made me write in first person, both of them guys who seem to have a constantly running inner monologue of dry observations on absolutely everything around them, including themselves, and one was Duo and the other was DS9's Garak. Sarcastic is so much fun to write!



Have a bed full of void cats :-)


Thirty seconds earlier, Kuro was also a part of this cat pile, but of course when I went to get the camera, he jumped off the bed and followed me. Grrrr. Another attempt to photograph all three of them together is foiled!

Comments

[anirrationalseason]

Ahh, I still have an old abandoned Vash/Wolfwood WIP from like 2011 sitting in a folder somewhere... I'd love to return to it, if I could ever get back to that headspace. It was quite dark.

It's surprising how "old" fandoms are still being rediscovered every day, so I'm sure you'd get some readers if you resurrected your story!

Cute (and elusive) kitties. Someday you'll get that shot!

[tiggymalvern]

I have one abandoned Trigun fic, and it was the only anime-based (as opposed to manga-based) fic I ever tried to write. It was an AU spin-off of the last few episodes and Wolfwood didn't die, and I really liked what I wrote for it. The problem was that I hit a brick wall with Knives. The writers of the anime wrote a terrible ending because Vash couldn't beat Knives, but also Knives couldn't win, so Knives had to agree to turn good, and that wasn't remotely in character. But I couldn't come up with a convincing ending that was consistent with all the established facts either, so that's why it remained a WIP. The Knives problem is pretty much insoluble!

(Actually, no, I just remembered I have another manga-based Trigun fic I started, but while I thought it was a neat idea, my heart wasn't really in the writing of it and it was going to be Dark As Hell with Angry!Vash set after Wolfwood's death, so it never got further than a few dialogue exchanges.)

The cats are very cute, but rarely cooperative. Every time I start to point a camera at them, they stop what they were doing and become more interested in me and the camera.

[anirrationalseason]

The Knives Problem, indeed. Post-anime was so hard to write for Knives, I just ended up never trying (although I definitely had ideas...). I can tell I already love your fic though because Wolfwood lives, haha.

[bymyverytoes]

Good for you for being productive. I have one WIP - I never keep them hanging around - which I just. can't. motivate. myself on. I hate not finishing things but I am so not in the headspace I need to be to write it.

Lovely the little white belly hairs on your two. Shula is all black but has about half a dozen random white hairs scattered all over her, which come and go.

I'm sure you'll catch the three of them one day :)

[tiggymalvern]

I'm incapabale of ever throwing anything away. There's a box somewhere in the house with a Blake's 7 fic I started before I owned a computer and it's written on sheets of A4... (Yes, there are a LOT of boxes of stuff in cupboards in my house...)

They both have little white patches on their undercarriage. Neko's is slightly larger, and Neko also has a few stray white hairs one one shoulder and one hip, while Yami is pure black on top. The SO still confuses them unreasonably often!

[solo]

Lovely voids!

If you finish that GW fic, I won't just read it, I offer a beta. :)

[tiggymalvern]

If I do, I might have to take you up on that. I'm not sure where else I'd find someone who knows GW and cares enough at this point!

[tameiki]

Aw...that's so cute! I want to skritch those little white spots on their bellies and probably get scratched for my audacity. :)

[tiggymalvern]

The voids are very well mannered creatures and never scratch. Neko might decide you're play fighting and grab you very lightly with his teeth, but he won't even dent your skin :-)

[tameiki]

I should be so lucky with my two heathens :)

[jo_lasalle]

Wow, you are well prepared having a draft for a bang in November! Impressive!

Old half-finished stories are... yeah. It's difficult, and having "about half" is maybe the trickiest spot...

That's an adorable picture. :)

[tiggymalvern]

I'm not stupid brave enough to sign up for a Bang without knowing what I'm going to write for it, and since the sign ups come so early, the idea has to as well. And then not every idea that sounbds good works on paper, so I need to have started the story too.

If it's a long fic, I can rough out the start, the end and a couple of key turning points in the middle so that I know for sure it's going to get finished. With a shorter fic, once I've got that far, it's easier to go with the flow rather than stop and pick it up again later. So yeah, I've got another fic for a Bang that's published next month that I think I finished last September. That's the annoying part, sitting on a finished story for so long!