The Battle Begins

I've had the first two chapters of The Battle written for a while now. Okay, not a LONG while, but the first chapter, the prologue, I initially wrote as a prologue to The Shift, and Chapter 1 is, you will see, the same as Chapter 13 of The Shift, but told from a different point of view. I wrote those two chapters at the same time (like literally two documents splitting my screen and typing each paragraph by paragraph!) so I don't exactly count that as beginning the second story in my mind.

Well, I started properly writing The Battle about a week ago. I haven't got much other than a few scenes during bus and train rides, and it's not quite complete yet, but I thought I would share this moment with you all to celebrate!

I've outlined the story (thanks to a very demanding beta and an afternoon in Starbucks) and while I haven't by any stretch of the imagination finished editing The Shift, I am very excited to finally be moving forward with the story. I've been putting a lot of pressure on myself to get this second story right, and so finally beginning to write has already begun to ease my mind!

Looking forward to posting!

Betas!

Bonjour, blogosphere!

At the moment, I am currently studying in Oxford for a few weeks, so the blogging may be a little slower (not that it's ever been particularly fast!) and the posts a little bit more spacey on my part (I am taking two pretty intense English classes here and I hope that I can devote some brain power to other things, like tourism while I'm here!)

But the good news is that my dear beta, Siobhan, now has my entire story in her grubby paws, both in digital and hard copy, so whenever she gives it back to me I can begin posting! I am hoping that I will be able to post on a weekly basis, but Siobhan is the decision-maker on that front, really. So go harass her if you don't hear from me! ;)

See y'all soon, and I hope you do enjoy what I've been working on for the last two and a half years!

Second Drafts!

Bonjour, blogosphere!

Yesterday, due to what I am now calling the "Great Tire Debacle of 2011", I found myself presented with two screws in my tire, an incompetent AAA dispatch, and about 5 hours of free time waiting around for my tire to be fixed. Although I had not intended to spend the day waiting around for the tire, I had intended to do a lot of waiting around for other reasons, and so I found myself with my laptop, my first draft of The Shift and a whole lot of waiting at the Costco.

Now, Costco doesn't have wifi, so I set to finishing implementing the edits into the digital copy. It took well over three hours, but I eventually did finish! Hooray!

What does this mean for you, dear friends and readers? It means you are one step closer to seeing my story posted and published! Siobhan and I are going to attack the manuscript with a vigor none have ever seen before, and I think, god willing, that I'll be able to begin the posting soon.

The Battle, its sequel, is well into the planning stages and, while I can't make any promises, I fully intend to begin writing it as soon as I begin posting The Shift!

More soon. :)

Gripes about edits

It occurs to me that, as much as I love writing and as much as I love editing, I'm not as much of a fan of actually implementing my own edits into my works.

It's not to say that I don't love to EDIT my own stuff, because I do. I wouldn't have printed out my manuscript if I hadn't (and I did - all 100 pages of it). There is something to say about the track changes feature in Microsoft Word: you edit, it shows what you edit, you accept the changes without having to think twice about them. It's easy, it's breezy, (it's Covergirl!) it's efficient. But I certainly wouldn't have worked as hard as I did on my edits if I had only done them on the computer. Putting them down on the page, the kinesthetic aspect of the project makes me happy and makes me consider my words more. I have heard that the brain functions differently when looking at the screen vs. looking at the page, and while I can't provide evidence of that, I can certainly vouch that I am a better editor when faced with the printed page.

But it certainly frustrates me that there is no "easy" button when it comes to transferring my edits from the printed page to the digital one. It is slow going, and already all of the work is done for me! It is silly, but I would love to hand this over to someone else to do it for me. However, this kind of grunt work is something I will be doing and so should be doing on my own.

So here I am, sitting in a coffee shop with my brother while he fills out job applications (and complains about it every five minutes), editing my story.

My current goal is to finish this before I go to Oxford in two weeks. Well, 17 days. Back to the edits I go!

Finished Edits

Today, (after much distraction,) I finally finished my initial edits of The Shift! I am so excited, I am going to begin typing them up later today, and hopefully I'll be able to get them off to Siobhan in good time to begin posting toward the end of the summer!

Just thought I would keep you guys posted!

Best threat ever

I finally returned a chapter to one of my writers (after holding onto it for about a month, whoops!), and her response was this:

Thank you so much. And tomorrow I send you more (A red eyed Canon Edward in his vigilante phase will patrol you house, so that you don't stray).

Teehee. I will be sure to lock my door.

The Shift: Complete!

Well, the first DRAFT is complete.

CHECK IT.

"That's some pretty binder cover!" You say.

"Yeah, thanks," I reply. "I did it myself. It took like an hour."

"An hour?!" you exclaim. "Why on earth would you do that?"

I hug the binder full of 100 pages of manuscript, and shrug.

"Well, the story took me two years."

To the edits I go!

Nominated for Best Beta

I wrote a blog at my other blog, which I will link to here instead of reposting entirely.

I've been nominated as "Best Beta", which I am BEYOND ecstatic about! Please do go vote. I love you all.

http://pentothepaper18.blogspot.com/2011/05/nominated-for-best-beta.html

Mary Sues...

After recommending the Mary Sue Litmus Test to that girl I blogged about last night, I figured I'd take it for Lin, with whom the words "Mary Sue" had never crossed my mind. The test is long, and I scored a 28 on it - which is borderline Mary Sue. "Suish tendencies" it says.

Now, I'm not going to freak out about it because that would be so dumb, but it's given me a good idea of how I could perhaps counter this, things that I hadn't considered for my first draft.

I decided last night I kind of want to print it all out at Kinko's or somewhere and edit this one by hand. It's less than 70 pages right now (that will change soon) and I believe it would be reasonably inexpensive to do this. Yay!

Beta requests, and still a little stuck

So tonight I'm up late researching and outlining an essay I really must write for tomorrow, and I get an email from someone.

She wanted me to edit her story, but included very few details about the actual story itself, so I emailed back and asked for more information. She returned with this rather long email (with an excerpt of the story) that was, quite frankly, a disaster. The story (apparently movie-verse) was a wreck, not even close to resembling something that might be a twisted version of canon, the main character was a blatant Mary Sue, and the facts were all jumbled. It was clear that this author (who shall remain nameless) had no idea what she was doing. It was her first story - so I could not expect anything different.

And so I responded, giving her a lot of advice and trying to steer her in the general direction of "the light". I encouraged her to read the books, watch the movies some more, do some research and really dig her hands into the fandom. I gave her a bunch of good stories to read and I sent her on her merry way.

I don't know why, but I am suddenly, about twelve hours later, deeply involved in helping this girl take her first steps into the fandom. I really want her to succeed. She's obviously on the right path, having sought the aid of a beta before she even began to write her first story (beyond a chapter or so) and she's got some raw talent. I could see it in her writing. She just needs guidance and help from a more seasoned veteran of the site. One such as me, I suppose, and I am more than willing to give it to her. I don't know why I am so attached to her already. I think it is because she reminds me so much of me when I first began to write stories.

I want her to succeed and write, I want her to reply to me in a few months' time having begun writing something truly wonderful. I have absolutely no right to tell her what she can and cannot write, but I can encourage her to write something which she will remain proud of.

I am proud of my own story, which still hovers around chapter 12. It is the last crucial chapter I must write, and there are a few scenes which I still haven't figured out what they need to be yet. I know it will pretty much end with the Battle of Five Armies, and I know that it will make use of several shorter scenes about Legolas' general idiocy, but I need this chapter to be a bit more optimistic about his behavior than the last few. There has to be a light at the end of the tunnel, or, rather, story. At least before it gets bad again.

What I want for this is to be something I am proud of, just like I want the new author to be proud of what she writes.

Well, I am going to finish my outline and then I am going to go to bed so I can wake up early and write a lot. Of my essay, unfortunately, not my story. I will get to the story later this week when my fingers are not so preoccupied with classwork. Luckily, it is the last week of classes, so hey. Plenty of time during the summer to write, yes?

I just had to get this off of my chest. Plus I haven't updated this yet this week and I felt obligated.

Chapter 13 vs Chapter 1

I've just done a little skipping ahead, and have written the last chapter of The Shift and the first chapter of The Battle. I have had it planned this way since the beginning of this project, and so ages ago (last July?), I scripted the confrontation scene (primarily the dialogue) between Lin and Legolas. It's a crucial scene, and it is important for the reader to witness both points of view.

I hope they are different enough, and as there should be quite a gap between posting the two chapters, I hope readers don't get bored or anything. Tomorrow I think I will share it with someone and see their reaction.

Although it might be clear in my head, here are two excerpts from the chapter, just so y'all know what I am talking about!

From Chapter 13 of The Shift:

“What are you doing?” I asked, knowing that a confrontation was coming. There had been several of them over the years, but I had to be clear to him that this was the last warning I would give. I did not think I had anything else left in me to fight for him after this.

From Chapter 1 of The Battle:

“What are you doing?” she asked, and I could hear the weariness in her voice. It was the same question she had asked over and over, thousands if not millions of times throughout my lifetime.

I am so happy with the way that this scene came out! It was exactly how I wanted it to be, and while it's not the exact vision of what I had in the beginning (some three odd years ago) they never turn out to be exactly what I first envisioned.

I finished chapter 11 (I think? It's kind of short. We shall see) and I don't yet know how to tackle chapter 12, so that is why I wrote chapter 13 tonight. That said, it is now 1am and I am le tired! More tomorrow, I suppose?

April Challenges, an Update

I have posted TWO of April's five challenge fics up right now! Here are the links!

The Right Words

A Letter to Arwen, Love, the Fellowship

AND, Ally and I have been writing a completely ridiculously (hilarious) collab story together under our joint account, Shrewspeare. It is called The Remedial Fanfiction Academy, and hopefully it will be a beautiful thing when all is said and done! Here is the linky to that!

The Remedial Fanfiction Academy

Do hop over, review, and love on the stories.

I have found myself at a bit of a standstill with chapter 11, BUT, I have found a great deal of inspiration for the beginnings of the next story, which I should start soon. The only problem is, I have to finish this one first!

Recovering

Hoo boy, wow. Last night, I typed up the rest of chapter 9 and all of chapter 10, as well as a one-shot for the April challenge thing that Ally and I are doing, AND I rewrote something which I definitely want to include somewhere in the story, but was originally the prologue for my first draft. 6514 words went down last night. (I finally passed out around 2am.) Who knew typing things was so exhausting?

I think it had something to do with the editing I was doing simultaneously. Of course, the first draft of anything is never the best, so I was rearranging, rewriting, and striking things while I was typing... It requires a lot of brain power, I guess.

A goal of mine for this story is to write chapters that are somewhere around 5 pages long (around 2500 words). I've been going through a brief spat of writing much shorter chapters the last few years (Never Realizing and Upon Earth's Opening averaged 1100 and 1300 words per chapter, respectively).

I feel like 5 pages is a solid chapter, without been too short or too long. Siobhan would disagree with me, as she will throw chapters at me that are roughly the same length as some one shots I've done. (15-20 pages). When the time comes to edit her monster of a story (soon? Hopefully soon?) I will need to really buckle down and devote hours to it.

Chapter 10 is 9 pages long. I have no idea how it happened, it all just fell out of me over the last three weeks. It's 3700 words long right now, before Siobhan even gets to attack it with any of her various and sundry revisions, and so I am thinking of breaking it into two. There is a good mid-point to the chapter, in any case.

That is enough for tonight's update, I think. I have come to a little bit of a stump in the next chapter (11? 12?) and I'm not entirely sure how to get over it yet. We shall see...

The end is nigh!

The end! The end is near! Ahhhhh!

Not like THAT, you know, but like, the end of The Shift. It's, like, SOON. And it's like, WITHIN SIGHT.

In the last month I've written chapter 8, 9, and 10 and begun writing 11. And that's, like, WAY MORE than I've done in the last six months. Or, so it seems. I always get this way when I get to the end of the story. I furiously write and write and write until I literally burn out all of my little writing wheels in my head. I've written something between 11,000-12,000 words in less than 30 days. Which, while 50,000 words is my personal record (thanks, NaNoWriMo!) It's certainly a new level of normal productivity for me.

According to my own personal goal of finishing writing this story by the time summer starts, I have another 3 or 4 weeks to write another 2 or 3 chapters. And one of the chapter's dialogue is already entirely written and I'm thinking of making the penultimate chapter one that I've already finished writing, but will edit extensively to fit better into the story that I've actually written.

The most recent chapters have been an exercise in "See Stefanie highlight important shit!" and "See Stefanie skip centuries in each chapter!" I hope people don't get too lost!

I'm off to type up more of chapter 9, which I think I am almost finished with. Chapter 10, I realized rather late, is about 7000 words long! I have my work cut out for me.

April Challenges bring May... Productivity?

My good friend Ally and I are doing a series of challenges this month! So hopefully I will be writing a little bit more. We're requiring each other to post at least three of the stories. Possibly 5. And a sixth, if we're super productive. They'll be one-shots, 500 words or less.

More on that later, I suppose!

In other news, I'm almost finished with chapter 10! I'm loving the way it's turning out... and I can see the end in sight! (Of the story as well as the chapter...)

Thoughts on (being almost finished with) The Shift

Tonight, I sat on my friend Ally's (CSG4ME) couch and talked about fanfiction for probably four hours. Yeah. We drank beer, too, if that makes us sound cooler or something. We swapped favorites, talked plots, and generally enjoyed dorking around. Also, I shared some of the things I'd written lately - including a one shot I have fondly dubbed "Delusions, and Other Matters of the Heart". I'll let y'all simmer in the sheer glory of that title for a moment. ;)

I have a goal. I do not know whether or not this is an achievable goal or not, but it is a goal. My goal is to have The Shift finished (not edited) by the time school ends, or around then, so that I can start posting during the summer and writing the second fic, The Battle. Realistically, I have only a good three chapters in me for this story, and I'm progressing rather well at the speed I'm going. My new notebook is filling up, almost a third full, and I have some really fun ideas in store.

Writing this first story has been a little bit of a struggle for me, just because although I know exactly what I want to happen doesn't mean I know how to write it right. So much of what I establish in this story will be crucial to the next two and the balancing act is drives me a little crazy at times. It needs to be there, it cannot be subtle, but I cannot beat my readers over the head with it like a ton of bricks.

Legolas' story is really what I thought of when I first got the idea for this probably three or so years ago, and so it is really important to me that I get this right, so I can do it justice. His particular journey through the War of the Ring is unlike any other story I've read, and I hope that everyone will like it. I hope that it will be a new take on something many people have written about.

Anyway, I typed up chapter 8, and I am working on typing chapter 9 while I write chapter 10. Legolas grows from an infant to an adult in probably thirteen chapters in this story, so I apologize in advance for the number of ridiculous jumps in the timeline. (Don't worry - I clearly mark what year scenes take place!)

Spring Cleaning

Similarly to how some people go through a fit of "Spring Cleaning" I've been hit rather violently with a fit of Spring (Break) Writing.

I bought myself a new journal at Target the other day and decided to buy it. (It was cheap, it was on recycled paper... you know. Just doing good!)

Having given myself a deadline (and then totally failed at keeping it) I know I just needed to give myself a good kick and it would all come pouring out of me. There are, of course, no guarantees that it will be any good, but I needed to at least try and push the story along.

Because Legolas' character in The Shift grows from an infant to an adult throughout the story, I sometimes find that he gets stuck at a certain age and I have to force him to grow a little. It's hard to make him grow too fast and develop in the way I need him to (for purposes that will be explained in The Battle, the story from his POV).

So while I've been writing, I've been trying to get as much of this done soon. My goal is to begin posting by the time I go to England this summer in July. I have another few chapters to go, so I think that's reasonable! (This also hinges on Siobhan being a good and timely editor!)

Another thing I wrote this week (in addition to the two chapters, chapter 8 and 9) was a one-shot I'm (perhaps temporarily) calling "Love, Delusions, and Other Matters". I am overly fond of this title, but it is not quite as succinct as it could be. It is from Legolas' point of view and accompanies chapter 8.

So I'm going to go type up these chapters and perhaps do some preliminary editing. I have something like 6000 or 7000 words (I think) to type up. We shall see. I will update later?

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Some other matters! You see up in the corner there is a lovely "Subscribe" box in which you can enter your email address and receive these updates, few and far between though they are!

Also shiny and new is my official The Hobbit Ivy twitter account! This is so that you can see what I am working on as I am working on it! I will endeavor to tweet this as it happens. Linked on the side will be my personal twitter, which deals with matters mostly non-fanfictiony.