Ooh Happy Daay!

[shapinglight]

Hoorah! I think I may have just had a breakthrough in my (so far) hopeless quest to get that half-written Spike/Angel fic that's been sitting on my hard drive since 2008 finished.

I have a few other fic ideas for which I'd written a couple of pages and scribbled a few notes, most (all) of which I'm pretty sure will never be written, but this one I'd already written about 13,000 words of before I abandoned it (due to having to write something else for a deadline).

Yesterday, I re-read what I'd written so far for the umpteenth time, trying to work out how to get from where the story's got so far to the end I'd imagined for it. Still nothing. Today, I thought, okay, I'll try to write 1000 words of the next section and see what happens, and I think I may have finally cracked it. Now, all I have to do is find the mental energy to write the damn thing. ;)

Well, we'll see, I suppose. Link to the only fragment of this fic I've ever posted. Would be nice to finish it.

ETA: I should probably mention that I'm also in the process of revising Family Reunion so I can post it on A03.

Comments

[sueworld2003.livejournal.com]

Excellent news:D

[shapinglight]

Now, I just have to make myself sit down and write it. ;)

[yourlibrarian]

Yay for writing breakthroughs and more AO3 content :) The pieces I've seen of yours this year have been such good reads.

Also, such pretty flowers in your icon.

[kazzy-cee.livejournal.com]

Yay! \0/

[rbfvid.livejournal.com]

Hoorah for the spangel (I just read that fragment and absolutely love it), and hoorah again for "Family Reunion" upload, I'll love to re-read it!

[double_dutchess]

Yes! Looking forward to reading the finished fic.

[chasingdemons.livejournal.com]

Happy day indeed! I look forward to reading the finished product!

[rebcake.livejournal.com]

Heh. "Cracked it." Heh.

Fantastic that your mojo is rising, or whatever the kids are calling it these days!

I still think that "Family Reunion" is A+++ as is, though.

[shapinglight]

The pieces I've seen of yours this year have been such good reads.

Thank you. It doesn't escape me, though, that the two longer things I've managed to write so far this year, Casablanca and Lies My Lover Told Me, basically had the same plot. Two characters meet in a bar/diner. They talk. There's a fight of some sort. They leave together/separately. ;)

This story is a long, plotty fic. I haven't written anything like that since 2013. I hope I can still do it.

[shapinglight]

:)

[shapinglight]

I hope it won't take me too much longer to revise it. It's mostly to do with getting rid of overly long, clause-ridden sentences.

My writing style has changed a bit since then and I try not to pile on the clauses these days.

[shapinglight]

I hope I manage to finish it, then. :)

[shapinglight]

Thanks, love. I hope I manage to finish it. Preferably this year.

[yourlibrarian]

I expect you will :) And lots of stories have similar plots -- heck fanfic has tons of tropes and genres for that very reason. It's all about what you do with them!

[shapinglight]

Fantastic that your mojo is rising, or whatever the kids are calling it these days!

;) While you're here, would you mind telling me whether it's likely that the Los Angeles Daily News would report on something that happened in, say, Clovis, or Visalia?

I still think that "Family Reunion" is A+++ as is, though.

I'm mostly tidying it up for language, like I did Vampire Winter. Too many long, clause-ridden sentences. There are a few other things, though. I'll tell you what they are when I answer your PM.

[shapinglight]

This is true. I'm not saying I'm not pleased with those stories. I am. They both turned out better than I expected.

[sibilant.livejournal.com]

Great news. It's no wonder writing has been more difficult though, given everything that's happened in the last couple of years.

Like others, I've enjoyed all the spuffy (and the rest) you've produced while you've been in your dry spell. If that's a dry spell, I wish I had a bit of it! Despite the fact I write for a living, I wouldn't know where to begin ..

I shall look forward to reading the finished story.

[rebcake.livejournal.com]

I must admit, I didn't even know there was an LA Daily News. The LA Times is a venerable rag, though. They definitely have coverage of Central Valley stuff occasionally. Usually agriculture or water-related, though other things might come up. They have regional editions, to boot, which is handy. MiMama gets the "Inland Empire" edition these days, and used to get the Santa Barbara one.

One thing that is odd is that there is often a big story in LA that will never be mentioned in the San Francisco papers. Apparently there is a rivalry going on of which LA is largely unaware. Except when it comes to baseball.

[shapinglight]

I must admit, I didn't even know there was an LA Daily News. The LA Times is a venerable rag, though.

Yes, I've probably got that title wrong. ;) Either that, or there is an LA Daily News but it's online only.

Would the LA Times report a murder in, say, Clovis, if the circumstances were somewhat mysterious?

[shapinglight]

It's no wonder writing has been more difficult though, given everything that's happened in the last couple of years.

I did pretty well in 2013, especially towards the end of the year, despite the accident. Last year, I hardly wrote anything.

I would like to finish this story, though, simply because I'd already written so much of it before I gave up. And I didn't give up because I thought it was no good, but because I'd been writing it for a community, realised I wouldn't finish in time, so put it aside and wrote something else quickly, then got involved in writing something else, etc, etc. It kept getting put aside, and before I realised it, it was almost ten years later.

Despite the fact I write for a living,

You do? What do you write? Er...please feel free to tell me to mind my own business if you don't want to say.

[rebcake.livejournal.com]

Maaaaaybe. More likely if it was part of a string of mysterious murders. Or if it involved somebody from LA or a public-figure, like an elected official. Mayor or Superintendent of Schools or similar.

[shapinglight]

Ah, okay. I'll bear that in mind. It might mean I need to move a particular scene to a later point in the story.

ETA: It may (or may not) amuse you to know that I spent a while yesterday afternoon being driven around Downtown Los Angeles by someone on You Tube, who obviously had nothing better to do. There was some guy with a heavy eastern european accent who'd filmed himself doing so for a whole hour.

I didn't stick it out that long. Especially not when I discovered that the Wolfram & Hart building is actually somewhere else (even if it's - I suppose?- meant to be in Downtown LA).

[feliciacraft.livejournal.com]

Great news!

I'm in favor of having allll writer's blocks removed. :)

Looking forward to hearing more about it!

[shapinglight]

Thank you. Needless to say, since I wrote this, I haven't got much further.