loaded_march | Entries tagged with work in progress

For accountability on the LM-reboot, I can claim to have Done Words, to the effect that I am now in the low 60ks with a healthy ways yet to go before the end of the first of what I expect will be anywhere from a 3 to 5 book series.

To explain the Arthur Pendragon pout of my icon is that, just as I've reached a heart-in-throat scene, as of tomorrow I will be 10 days without a computer.

The hiccup is anticipated, but so fucking awkward, because the timing couldn't be worse. I just want to write, damn it. I'll have pens and a notebook -- I wouldn't cut myself off cold turkey, that's just cruel -- but it's not the same thing.

*sob*

On the bright side, those 10 days without a computer are the fuck-it days on holiday, which should reset my work-irritation levels, but really will be the only holiday I'll be able to have until mid October, at the earliest, because I've gotten word of Too Much Work with a throttling deadline that will be hitting me over the summer. So, may as well get the sunshine while I can, yeah?

I've been asked How do you research before, in particular for when I do writing research, and since, well, right now I'm getting distracted every three sentences with the need to research something else, I thought I'd give an example of what I research and what comes out of it. If it interests people enough, I might make it a semi-regular thing.

But since they might be spoilery for anything I might be writing, or too long for people to scroll through, I'm going to put them behind cuts.

First up would be my maybe-ACBB sign-up, assuming I hammer it down properly first.

( ACBB Search )

.

I guess I got myself un-stuck from the proverbial Writer's Block -- but I'm sure everyone knows by now that when I get blocked, I just end up writing something else in the meantime.

So along with the 2,000-some words that I did today for LM#12, I have some 3,500 words of a Teen Wolf fic behind the cut (very definitely an AU, very much a Sterek).

But first: metrics.

63000 / 70000 (90.00%)

( 3,500 words of TW )

I *smish* you! I got pumpkin cookies! Thank you! Happy Halloween, everyone!

I have good news and bad news. I'll start with the bad news.

The bad news is, life is conspiring against me. I'm being run ragged, and when I come home, I have just enough energy to load the document I was working on, stare at it for a long time, and wander off, because my brain is in desperate need of an overhaul. To give you an example of why: I went to work early today -- if 5:30 AM can be considered merely "early" and not "what the fuck is wrong with you" -- because, for some reason, there just isn't enough time in my regular workday to finish everything that needs doing.

I've pretty much worked straight through from 5:30 AM all the way to just after 5 PM, when I crawled home and waved a white flag. I didn't take any breaks, I didn't stop for lunch, I did not pass 'GO' and, erm, head to the bathroom until the situation became embarrassingly dire and I had to cut someone off in mid-sentence with a hurried "HoldthatthoughtI'llberightback" while I did an awkward runshuffle down the hall.

That's been something of how my week has been, and you'd think that by Hump Day, things would settle down, but I don't see any sign of it easing up until late on Thursday, maybe early Friday. Apparently, I had the nerve to start on some of my own work while the rest of the workplace went and had a crisis, and no one believed me when I tried to explain that there are other, perfectly competent people who could help out with the problem, so please go away, because my time critical stuff trumps their time critical stuff. That netted me a hearty laugh ("Seriously, dude, I wasn't making a joke") before someone grabbed my elbow and hauled me down the hall to their office ("If you don't let me go right now so that I can stop this chemical reaction, I am not helping you file the paperwork to buy a new fumehood").

Anyway, what that means is that I'm doing my time critical work with their time critical work and not remembering that today was Halloween until someone scared the shit out of me by jumping out of a doorway while wearing a fairy-slash-vampire costume.

No, really. A fairy-slash-vampire costume. With pink-and-green wings over an emo black turtleneck and scandalous miniskirt and purple balls bobbing over her head on sproingy springs glued to a headband. There was black eyeliner and black eyeshadow and Day Of The Dead facewhite paint and black lipstick and a dribble of red goo down one corner of her mouth and neon green Dracula teeth that came flying out at me like something from the Addams Family when she shouted, "BOOOO!"

Yes. Well.

Now that I've decontaminated myself from the fairy-slash-vampire saliva, I will apologize for burying the good news so far down in this email that you've probably totally skipped over it.

The good news that, even though it took me 2.5 days to get there, I have 3,000 words to Part 11 of Loaded March.

^*Translation: The more things change, the more things stay the same. Or, as a corollary, the more shit you shovel uphill, the more you slip on the slop and fall face-first in steaming cow-pie.

(apparently I used that subject line already, but, well, whatever)

(also, you want to read through to #3, because there's free fic for you down there!)

First off, I've been remiss in announcing the

summerpornathon voting, having completely forgotten to mention #4, and nearly forgetting about #5, which is this week. Voting ends tomorrow! The challenge this week is myths and legends. There are amazing entries this week!

Second, this week's

summerpornathon Bonus Challenge was awesome -- it was to take a text from Texts From Last Night and to write either a fic or post images based on those. You should check out the entries for the bonus challenge, because they are everything from hilarious to hot. I've put mine beneath the cut.

( Texts From Last Night Challenge )

Third, I wedged in some time to finish off the long version of my Challenge #2 entry, which was Fuck Or Die/Post-Apocalypse. Both the original (short) version and the longer (3,000-ish words) version are posted on AO3 under my drabbles tag. Part 2 of the drables is entitled The Bringer of the End, which, yes, I know, is a horrible title, but, eh, it's late, and everyone knows I SUCK at titles.

Oi! So does any of you remember the long-version of the

summerpornathon challenge #1 entry I wrote?

Well, this week's bonus challenge is to do a fanmix based on a character or a scene or anyone's entry thus far. I decided to do it based on a scene I had in my head for what happened after Still Waters Run.

Since the direct post to the current bonus challenge is video-heavy, I'm linking directly to my comment, but I'm also putting it behind the cut in case you don't want to head over there.

Special thanks to

hms_seth for helping me pick the songs!!

( Still Waters Run... and run )

I am calling it a monstrous, horribly bad Draft Zero, and I feel horrible for my betas and my artist, because they're going to have to read it in this condition, but I am sick, sick, sick of the BB fic right now, and I need a break from it.

The Draft Zero wordcount? 133,654.

Dear Diary. Today I have achieved something short of a miracle. I have resisted signing up to

reel_merlin despite realizing that not only are the two movies I'd love to Merlin-ify not taken as prompts, and Constantine hasn't been snapped up. You see, despite knowing just how kind of bad Constantine was, I always loved it, and... well. Yes. Anyway, I feel my resolve remaining firm, even though people are complete and utter traitors and encouraging me instead of stopping me when they aren't just shaking their heads at me. I will now go and bang my head against the wall some more in an attempt to knock this idea out of my head. Or at least make the plot bunnies forget that they're after me.

Anyway.

Just to give an idea of the fics I started, but haven't finished writing, I will list them below the cut along with tiny synopses.

( Cut to save spoilers in case you don't want to read summaries )

Before I get to the actual content of the post, here's a brief Public Service Announcement:
Spilling the contents of a quiche into a hot oven is probably not a good thing. I'm just saying.

Anyway!

I'm embarrassed to admit that I haven't touched the prompts for the Loaded March Extras like I said I would while on my self-imposed forced break so that I could plot out part 10 properly and get a start on the Big Bang fic.

Well, I did do some thinky-thoughts on part 10 (a couple of aspects of the plot are refusing to be hammeredout yet), and get a good start on the BB fic. I also started another fic yesterday with every intention of getting the images out of my head for now, with every intention of returning to it later, but it likes being written, so, um. Yes.

*cough*

I've collected the outstanding prompts for the LM Extras in one post, but I think I missed a few that may have been requested on AO3, and I know I definitely failed in recording the AO3 aliases anywhere so that I can gift them to the right person. If I've missed an existing prompt that has already been requested, or if you have an AO3 nick, let me know! (For the record, I'm not asking for new ones until I'm caught up on these, but if you don't want to forget the one you thought up, by all means, leave it in a comment).

I sorted the prompts according to the era that they belong in, so they're not in any particular order. The ones I've already written have been removed from the list. The Extras have been written out as inspiration strikes, but having them in a visual spot will help with the, uh. Inspiration. Yes.

( Cut to save your reading list )

Random work in progress snippet (okay, just a line of dialogue, because it amuses me) to something that is:

a) Part 10 of Loaded March

b) An Extra to Loaded March

c) The Big Bang fic

d) Something that is none of the above and that I shouldn't be working on

( If you picked (d), read on )