Post Pico December check in #3

[elmey.livejournal.com]

One more week has passed! Have you been writing, editing, hitting the panic button on your holiday stories?

Here's the post for your snippets, comments thoughts.

Check in any time during this week of busy schedules.

Comments

[candidlily.livejournal.com]

I'm happy to report that life slowed down enough today that I was able to finish my holiday story! I've been posting a chapter a day (December 1 in the fic on December 1 irl), so I was running out of runway for the past few days. :P It's all done now, though, so it's just a matter of editing before posting!

Word count-wise, I wrote 3266 words in the past week. I'm so relieved to have this done! Now I can focus on editing and posting my one other long-ish fic before the end of the year. \o/

[julesjones]

No actual writing done, in part owing to Return Of The Migraine Aura (very mild, but it always makes me very tired). Some news, in that I received a form rejection on the 20k story I wrote last year, from the publisher I'd submitted it to 10 months ago. Which yes, rejection; but at least I now have some idea of how long their response time is, and have added that to the Absolute Write thread, which had basically no data.

[nineveh-uk.livejournal.com]

This is just to say that I am reading Pico FROM THE TRAIN! I am not writing this section, because I have to change trains in 20 minutes, but then let the creation commence!

[nineveh-uk.livejournal.com]

Congratulations on getting your story finished, and enjoy the rest of the editing and posting! That's an impressive weekly total.

[nineveh-uk.livejournal.com]

Oh dear, I am sorry about the migraine. I hope that it goes away/can be got rid of soon.

Frustrating about the rejection letter, but at least you're not in limbo any more.

[ylla.livejournal.com]

I wrote about 1200 words of Yuletide fic, mostly in a mad rush on Saturday. Tonight I need to bravely look at it again and see if it makes sense!

[wiseheart.livejournal.com]

Yay for trains! :)

Switching to Magic Mirror

[wiseheart.livejournal.com]

I had a turbulent yet effective week. After having survived our annual Christmas concert with its hectic extra rehearsals and stuff, I've finally got my lazy rear in gear and finished Chapter 4 of Magic Mirror, my BBC Merlin/Camelot crossover. I also re-watched the final episode of Camelot for fact-checking, which cost me all morning today, but now I can attack Chapter 5 with good conscience. *g*

You can read the finished chapter here (https://www.fanfiction.net/s/11583621/4/Magic-Mirror); below is a small snippet for those who don't have enough time.

Excerpt:

“Do I seem dead to you?” the presumably mad King asks with a thin, unpleasant smile.

Merlin withstands the urge to shrug. “No, of course not, my lord, but I was not speaking of you…”

“You were speaking of King Uther,” the King interrupts. “I am Uther Pendragon, King of Camelot; and as you can see with your own eyes, I’m very much alive.”

[espresso-addict.livejournal.com]

~950 words. Spent most of the time editing my main Yuletide story, though it didn't change in more than detail. I did add a little bit in an attempt to fix a red herring that got left to stink and I also improved one key passage a bit, but mainly it was a lot of very minor style/grammar/punctuation choices trying to improve the pastiche that took ages & ages, and won't really be noticeable. It's up now, but I might have another read and play with the commas before the reveal...

Then I forced myself to finish the treat. I took people's advice and did a jump to the bit that interested me, and it worked! I actually got it finished in fewer words than I'd anticipated. That's in too.

I had yesterday off, and now I'm trying to decide what to do next. Jade Dragon's the obvious answer, but I really need to decide with that whether I'm going to try to repurpose it as an original novel or finish it as Earthsea fanfiction. I'm leaning towards the latter, and considering subsequently writing an original novel perhaps with Harebell (the female sidekick) as the protagonist. It feels a bit unending -- it's about 50k now and not halfway through, and I've been working on it on & off since 2011 -- but if I can write 15k words a month, which is doable, I could have it finished in under 6 months.

Re: Switching to Magic Mirror

[espresso-addict.livejournal.com]

Kudos on being so energetic and creative in the midst of such turmoil! Merlin is obviously in deep shit here!

[espresso-addict.livejournal.com]

Kudos! That's a lot of words in a short space! I am so looking forward to the Yuletide collection opening :)

[espresso-addict.livejournal.com]

Wishing you all the train magic that you need, and hoping to see the results later :)

[espresso-addict.livejournal.com]

Sympathies on the migraine, and on the ever-so-slow rejection. As Nineveh_uk writes, at least you are no longer in limbo & can submit it somewhere else.

[espresso-addict.livejournal.com]

That's an excellent word count; kudos on keeping up writing! It sounds like you've had a very productive run this end year.

[elmey.livejournal.com]

I don't want to talk about it.

Suffice it to say there'll be a story going live on the 25th. At the moment I hate everything about it. Which is what happens every year. At some point, hopefully within the next three days, I'll hear that elusive click. I think I've written at least 3000 new words, most of which I erased again. I'm still blaming the prompts :D

OK, so I talked about it. Luckily my shopping is done and I'm not working this week so I can sit and stare at the computer for hours on end! I'll let you know the final verdict next Monday.

Happy Holidays everyone!

[elmey.livejournal.com]

Done with the holiday story, congrats! You really put a lot of work into it. Finishing another before the end of the year is very ambitious, good for you :)

[ylla.livejournal.com]

It really is for me - I know there are people who can happily churn out thousands of words in a day, but I've only once before written a story of 1000+ words!

It's been a hectic week, too - on Monday I finally came up with a fic idea, on Tuesday my uncle was rushed into emergency surgery and they weren't sure he would pull through, by Friday he was well enough to drink tea, but on Saturday morning our household started going down with a sickness bug at the rate of one a day (I'm tomorrow's, so we shall see...). Plus crazy work and other commitments through the week and 6 hours in a library that has stuff I'm researching on Saturday - I'm quite impressed the story got done at all, but no wonder I'm tired!

I'm definitely excited, and still in love with my requests, but I am a bit nervous about all sorts of people possibly reading my fic. Or not reading it... which is worse? :)

[elmey.livejournal.com]

Ten months! that seems like a long time. I'll echo everyone else, at least you can put it back into circulation now.
I hope the migraine improves and doesn't spoil the holidays.

[elmey.livejournal.com]

Train yes!! Though I think you've arrived by now :) I hope it was a fruitful trip.

[ylla.livejournal.com]

Ooh, I have never thought of reading Earthsea fic, and I wonder why not... although I don't have time to start now!

Well done with the Yuletide fics - I love it when things untangle themselves more easily than expected :)

[elmey.livejournal.com]

You did it! Finishing is always satisfying. And you've given yourself time to edit too, you're in great shape :)

[ylla.livejournal.com]

Trains are lovely places for getting things done, because they have pretty things going past as if you were walking, but you can write, and there's usually not enough wifi to distract you. Being online from one has stopped making me feel like I'm living in the future, though!

RE: Switching to Magic Mirror

[elmey.livejournal.com]

I hope the concert was a raging success! You really have a lot of discipline, you get so much writing done in between your commitments.

Merlin is in for a mighty surprise :)

[elmey.livejournal.com]

Long story and satisfying treat, you did good :)

You seem to be in a writing groove at the moment, but you were having so much trouble with Jade Dragon--do you think you can go back to it and avoid the same frustrations? Of course I'd be happy to read the results...

[espresso-addict.livejournal.com]

Thank you! I'm a huge advocate of Earthsea fic -- I've written quite a bit of it myself, and I have a big recs list (http://www.tavia.co.uk/recs4.asp?pm=recs&Fandom=esea&Sort=F_T&New=N) if I can tempt you that way -- after you've finished your story, of course :)