Daylight's Haven

Pyjama Fic: Not you might suppose a fic about the characters hanging out in their pyjamas (although I do love those) but a fic written on a lazy day off without you ever actually changing out of your pyjamas.

I just started and finished a 3400 word fic in one day. This has never happened before. It is now four o'clock in the afternoon. I think I'll do some stretches, and then maybe I'll finally put some clothes on.

Neil Gaiman talking about the author Harlan Ellison

"He said he wanted to demythologize the process of writing. He wanted to show people it was a craft like building a chair and mostly it was done by sitting there and staring at a blank piece of paper and hating everything."

If you haven't heard yet, the author Neil Gaiman is doing this project called a Calender of Tales in which he posed 12 questions on twitter and then wrote 12 stories based on the answers he got. Now he's posted the stories and is asking people to create art based on them which will then be made up into a calender. This process of asking for prompts and having other people create art based on your writing is very familiar, and it suddenly struck me that this world-renowned, best selling author is doing what we fanfiction writers have been doing for years.

"There's lots of artists in the world, but there's only one you, and the only person who has your point of view is you. If you decide not to make things, all you've done is deprived the world of all the stuff only you could have brought to it ... The best part of actually writing is that sudden magical moment where there is something coming out of your pen that wasn't even there a second ago. Everything you've be writing up until that point suddenly magically comes together, and you, you're flying." ~ Neil Gaiman

So my Yuletide fic is done and submitted this morning thank goodness. I was a bit worried there for a bit and spent way too much time stressing out about it. I was sick a good portion of last week so I wasn't able to do much and got behind on everything. Not sure if the fic is my best work and I'm a little nervous about the subject matter, but it was fun to write. The fic is also almost 4000 words long. What happened to the days when I only wrote short stuff? Now everything I write wants to be long. Looking at the other Yuletide prompts and I'd love to write some treats but doubt I'll have the energy to write anything in time.

Snow! We have snow. It snowed all yesterday while I was at work and then when I was coming home it was all melting so I walked home through lakes and rivers of melted snow in hiking boots which were completely filled with water before I was even a quarter of the way home.

Also, it's possible I'm being haunted by pig sock puppets. I had two random occurrences of pig sock puppets two days in a row and I'm waiting for a third to see if it's true.

I think my writing process is getting weirder or maybe just messier and more picky.

I wrote 2500 words of a tag to Supernatural 7x17, got stuck, cut out a 1000 words, and started the whole story from a different point. Then I wrote another 1000 words of the story, got a bit stuck again, and started hating it. So I cut the story in two, cut out about 500 words, and added 750 words to one of the parts. Now, I have the drafts of two different tags to 7x17 (one of which I think is technically already an AU) Hopefully, I can polish these off and post them before I get in the mood to start cutting things up again.

So there's only a couple hours left and despite the giant sprint forward of the past week, I'm obviously not going to get out the 15,000 more words I need to win, but I'm currently looking at it this way: 35,000 is much better than the 2,500 words I wrote last year which was much better than the year before that when I signed up but wrote nothing which was better than the year before that when I did nothing at all. At this rate hopefully, I'll win next year.

Congratulations to everyone who did win. You are awesome and amazing!!

( Things I learned from doing NaNoWriMo )
The story I wrote is actually almost done. I still alternate between thinking its crap and thinking it's pretty good so I don't know if I'll get around to posting it or not. I'd still need to finish it off and then do some editing (I have a list of things that I need to go back and change). Unfortunately, my brain was taken over by another rabid plot bunny yesterday, so I just spent the past couple hours writing 1000 words of something completely different.

I have over 10,000 words! I'm supposed to be at 15,000, but I don't care. My story suddenly has a horse in it and Balthazar called Uriel a pigheaded oxbutt.

After much debate, I've decided at the last minute that I will attempt NaNo again this year. I wasn't sure after what happened last year, but I had this idea a few weeks ago that I thought would be good for NaNo and I spent much of today at work thinking about it and before I knew it I had the second part of the plot and a possible title. It's unsurprisingly a Supernatural fanfic and I probably should have done some research ahead of time but it's a little late now.

So, I am HERE for anyone who wants to be buddies.

My supernatural fanfic muse finally returned last night, at one in the morning just as I was about to get into bed. I managed to write 700 words before I couldn't keep my eyes open any longer. Should be fairly short fic so I might have it done and posted in a day or two. Now if only my muse would help me with all of my other unfinished fics.

Every year, I plan to do Nanowrimo and then back out at the last minute with the excuse that I have too many half-finished fics that need completing but this year I'm actually going to do it! (Or at least, attempt to) Mostly, this is so I'll actually start working on the sequel to Practically Human and stop being distracted by every errant plot bunny demanding to be written.

So I'm under Daylight Darknight and will hopefully get around to friending (or buddying?) people if I ever stop sneezing. Busy feeling rather crappy at the moment.