Yep, they do make perfect sense! I know Star Trek fanfic published in fanzines was a major thing in the history of fanfic. I'm not a Trekkie, but it's cool to see some of them archived online.
I do remember the name Carrie/Kikiduck. I'm not sure I ever actually read any of her stories, but I know she was around in the early days.
I think it's awesome that some of those writers are archiving their fanzine works online as well! What a fun nod to some of the earliest fanfics! At least in the sense of the modern definition of "fanfic," transformative works have been around probably about as long as stories themselves.
I wonder when she started putting them on AO3. Obviously they're backdated, but I wonder if it was more recently or a while ago. When did you all start putting your stuff on AO3?
I agree, the comfort part is important too. I don't know if mine are always equally balanced, but my "whumpiest" stories are usually the ones with the earned happy endings.
Despite being Team Dark, I think you have to. A story that goes from bad to worse to horrifying just makes me sad. I'd still read it, but I would need to go something really happy afterward like bury myself in a pile of puppies. It's easier when they end happy, lol.
Oh good! It's nice to catch up with friends. I don't always want to go be social (especially on a day when I was looking forward to writing), but I'm always glad I did.
It was absolutely perfect weather here today - sunny and upper 60s/lower 70s - so it was a good day to mow the lawn and hang outside. I hate yard work, but it's most tolerable on days like this.
I was hoping the 21 word sentence I wrote in one minute would improve my 3 words per minute average on Nano, but alas, it did not. Oh well. At least the streak is alive, and my next chapter is technically started. I probably won't continue it until morning when I am more clear-headed LOL.
I'm glad you found the quote you were looking for and can move on! And hooray for Death by Snail!
I didn't write as much as I wanted to yesterday, but it was a well-deserved break and a good day overall, so in the gran scheme of things, missing out on a productive writing day was fine. I still kept the streak alive, though, and that's what matters!
That is perfect whether for yard work, not too hot but still nice. And now you don't have to do it today and can have a perfect writing day instead!
How do you track your writing times? I'm pretty meticulous about tracking and will note when I start writing, then if I go a long time (ten minutes or more) without writing, I'll adjust my start time by that amount. Especially if what I was doing was not writing related. If it's research, I might let it go for fifteen minutes befor I decided to adjust my start time. Doing that might help get your word count up. But a 21 word sentence in a minute is impressive!
Yeah, it's always annoying because there's usually some options depending on exactly the emotion I want to play into with the remember quote. I tested out two of them for a little bit, then decided on one eventually.
As someone who hates most romantic comedies and loves a good romantic tearjerker, I would argue that downer romances are way more fun! But that's just me. I do think stories with all the Boys are more fun than stories with just one of them, though, but that's harder with romance, where the focus usually is on one of them and a romantic partner. That's the beauty of slash - you can focus on at least two of them that way.
Aww, good for you for putting up a fight, PBox Nick! I don't think I've ever pardoned one of the Boys once I made the decision to kill him... I am merciless LOL. Or maybe I'm just more uncompromising when it comes to changing my planned ending.
I love a good romantic comedy, but I was deep into dark and brooding PBox territory, so I didn't think to come up with stories that would have happy endings, lol. Realistically, I should have just stuck with PBox. A downer story with a fluffy romance and all five Boys getting time to shine, lol. I feel like eventually we should all just move on to OT5s, then we can write romance and include all of them!
Yeah, he was adamant about living no matter what I threw at him. So I eventually said, "Fine, you get to live, but it is going to suck a lot for you." And indeed it did suck a lot, but he also insisted on keeping Kevin, so I let him have that concession... kind of. I figure it ended up better in the long run, so I've just let Nick drive the bus. He hasn't crashed it yet! Although right now he's upset I let him have his way as he slowly realizes that he changed his mind. Muahaha. Too bad the story is almost over now, Nick.
I think it's probably harder to pardon with a full outline, even if it's fluid. The stuff in between where Nick decided to live and the planned ending was kind of fuzzy anyway, so I decided to try out his way and ended up enjoying it. It may have gone differently if I'd had a clear vision for that portion of the story outside of "they go to Rubiihoppou to find AJ and eventually end up in this horrifying castle," lol.
I do think that's a big part of it. I never did feel very connected to it. It was a story I started posting on a whim after a really productive writing weekend and then struggled to update consistently for over three years until I finally forced myself to finish it. I really do like the story and am happy with the finished product, but it's not one I particularly enjoyed writing. It was always more of a side project until I made it be my main project for one summer and finished it. The downer ending was planned all along; I had the whole thing outlined chapter by chapter from the beginning and didn't stay from my outline except to condense it a little. The fact that I forced myself to finish it does give me some hope that the same thing could happen with Guilty Roads someday.
That's always frustrating when you have a really productive writing session (or a few) and get something started, but then none of the rest of it is fun or easy. I think that's a lot of my unfinished things. They started out well and then didn't. I think it's great that you did reach an ending even if you had to slough your way there! That's true dedication to your craft!
I have hope for Guilty Roads too! Really, I'm just trying to keep it in the back of your mind while you work, haha.
Yes, I agree. I'm glad social media wasn't a big thing yet during most of that time in his life, so most of the bad behavior he's since copped to wasn't caught on video or widely publicized. There was enough to know he was not in the best place in his life, but so much more came out after the fact when he did that People interview and then wrote his memoir. I'm glad I did not know all those details at the time LOL.
YES! Exactly all of this. It's nice having more access to them now, but I think it would have been harder seeing everything in real time back then. We may not have lovingly dubbed him Hot Mess Nick, we may have just given up on him. Glad we didn't!
I looked it up, and yep, it was May 2001. The Bauhaus is still online, just no longer being updated. http://backstreet-bauhaus.net/ So it must have been a different site. I read my first fanfic in the summer of 1999 and started writing it sometime in the winter... either the end of 99 or very beginning of 2000. I had finished my first "novel" (all 9,106 words of it LMAO) by February 2000 when I got it hosted on a site called Escape from Reality, which is also still online but no longer being updated. God bless Angelfire LOL. https://www.angelfire.com/ca2/theyvegotitgoinon/ This damn site stopped updating partway through posting my story, so it's not complete on the site. That kind of crap was a big motivator for me to figure out how to make my own site so I could be in control.
I was about the same. The Orlando Story was one of my first pieces and I'm laughing that it's 13 chapters available, but only about 4500 words. They clearly felt like different enough scenes to be new chapters, but that's like a chapter of work for me now, lol.
I miss Angelfire. I'm pretty sure I had an Angelfire site of some sort at some point, but I couldn't tell you what it was now. I'm surprised that the site stopped updating in 2000! That was BSB heyday!
My story was not written for the challenge. I had already started it before Mare issued the challenge and knew it was going to be more than one chapter and have a banner, so I didn't even bother submitting it for that. But yeah - this is why I don't do most challenges; I hate having rules to follow LOL.
Funny story - I flew out to Vegas to go to an IAWLT show with Rose and another friend in 2013, and we made shirts with the pandaskunk on the front. We did VIP, and the Boys liked our shirts. We had a nice little conversation with them about that video and asked if Nick was the one who came up with the pandaskunk or overall concept. They said no, it was just designed by whatever animation company did the video. We were disappointed there was no good back story behind it, but oh well. At least we got a fun interaction out of it. We wore those same shirts on one of the cruises, and Brian noticed us in the crowd (because they are bright red), so now it's become our thing. We make new pandaskunk shirts in different colors for every tour.
You're such a rebel! But great minds think alike I suppose.
LMAO! That is a funny story, but I am disappointed that they had nothing to do with the video. Also, I did not care for the pajama things' love story. I wanted more shots of the Boys ice skating and falling over instead, lol. Or the Boys riding the pandaskunks! Do you have any shirts like that? Because I would totally offer my services, lol. It would be like riding Falcor in the Neverending Story.
That's good to know. I do think Broken would have worked well with Nick as a high schooler, but the older and further removed from high school I get, the harder it seems to write that character and setting realistically. Which is funny because when I was writing Broken, I was in high school and constantly questioning if my Nick seemed too immature because I was only 18 and didn't know what it was like to be 23 LOL.
I love this dichotomy of feeling like you were too young to write older Nick and now too old to write a high school Nick. I do feel like people our age write YA novels all the time, so I don't think it matters if you're far removed from high school. I do think the bigger roadblock for you might be that you've moved on from Broken at this moment and have other things to focus on and that is okay! Maybe someday you'll want to go back to high school basketball playing Nick or something completely different for OF.
Also, I've said it before, but I always felt like PBox Nick read 18 anyway. I don't know if it matters unless we were trying to write 40-year-old Nick when we were 15; we would have likely failed at that.
It feels good! I did some research on this last year and discovered there is a sleep disorder called Delayed Sleep Phase Syndrome. It's where your natural circadian rhythm is off by at least two hours beyond what is considered "normal" sleeping and waking times, which makes it hard to fall asleep and wake up at normal times. I think I may have a mild case of it. It doesn't affect my day to day life because I don't let it - I drug myself with melatonin or Benadryl so I can sleep at night and wake up in the morning with multiple alarms - but it would explain why I fall into this nocturnal sleep pattern whenever I have an extended break from my normal work schedule. I have done this every summer since I started teaching and no longer had a summer job, but never on purpose - it just gradually happens. I also think it probably has a lot to do with my introverted personality and writing. I like being up at night because it's quiet and no one bugs me, so there are fewer distractions. I can focus better and be more productive. There's no pressure to run errands or be social or do yard work in the middle of the night, so I can write or do whatever I want guilt-free.
Interesting! This reminds me of when I learned that sleeping through the night didn't really used to be a thing until the advent of electric lighting, especially in winter. People would go to bed when it got dark, wake up in the middle of the night and do some things, go back to sleep, then wake up with the sun in the morning.
I'm not really sure what mine is. Probably somewhere in the 11pm to 1am and wake up closer to 9am or 10am range. Unfortunately, gotta be places in the morning. I can usually function pretty well with alarm wakeups as long as I try to fall asleep by 11/11:30. It gets dicey after that. Thank goodness for coffee!
I think writing in the wee hours of the night is way less suspicious to other people than doing yard work in the wee hours of the night, lol!
Another good point about the "Chapter One" vs. "Chapter 1." AC is definitely better.
Yeah, I started out just posting the prologue as "Chapter 1" and the actual Chapter 1 as "Chapter 2," but I realized I would probably get confused by that down the road and leave out a chapter or something. So I just posted the prologue and Chapter 1 together and am now back on track.
I guess AC does have the "1. Chapter One: Chapter Title," but that just feels way less annoying compared to AO3's "Chapter 1: Chapter One: Chapter Title." It's barely noticeable on AC too, because it goes into the little drop-down box, but AO3's is at the top of every chapter.
I would hate that if I left out a chapter because the numbering was off. Glad you got it back on track for yourself.
Author
Topic: The Writing Thread: Orlando Passaggio (aka The Writing Thread 3) (Read 135289 times)