picowrimo | March 2021

No actual writing for me today (too many chores), but I've been playing various scenarios in my head concerning "Sea Flower". One of them being a dance done by Zirán, a slave woman from Khambaluk (one of the farthest and largest Haradric realms in my little corner of the Tolkienverse that has certain similarities with medieval India). The dancer was inspired by Indira Varma as she appeared in the Kama Sutra film and is the concubine of the leading male character, a nobleman in Umbar.

The other one is a bull game, based on the one they do in Camargue, France. The peculiarity of this game is that they don't harm the bulls in any way; the animals have some kind of brooch fastened to their foreheads, and the participants have to snatch the thing without being impaled by the bull. Basically, it is a game of speed and skill, as the men participating are not armed in any way. I need to get certain characters sent to participate in the game, so that they can meet by accident, as it would be important for the plot.

For those not in the known: the story take place a few decades before the events described in The Lord of the Rings, featuring a very minor canon character who's only mentioned in the genealogy of the Princes of Dol Amroth. Aragorn, Imrahil and Denethor also make appearances, and so does Finduilas, the mother of Boromir and Faramir.

Sorry for being so verbose. I'm actually trying to inspire discussions about the works themselves, not only pats on the shoulder for the word count. (Which I don't even have today...)

Edited 2021-03-01 19:44 (UTC)

Just dropping by quickly today because I have actually been doing some of the things I was hoping to do:

Pros BB — not written anything more (and can't speak much about what I have written because the rules require I keep the plot under wraps) — but found a useful poem from an unexpected source that chimes with one of my minor plot points.

Move story — working on this right now, fourth chapter in. I'm giving it a light re-edit as I go to improve the use of punctuation. I was actually looking for a poem to illustrate this story when I ran across the useful BB poem. Still not found quite the right one for this story, so may give up...

MFU WIP — so, I don't want to give too much away because spoilers — but this is one of a few stories I've written without direct speech — I think this will be by far the longest. Be interesting to see how it goes down when I post, which I'm very much hoping I will have done, or be very close to doing, at the end of this Pico.

Thank you for driving the bus! With everything you've got going on, my hat's off to you for taking this on! Deeply grateful to you!

Day 1:
I worked on my Easter story for an hour. Transcribed some notes and some html I had experimented with on AO3 to embed a link to a surprise mini-story within an image.
Then I went to check on my recipient's request on MFUWSS, to see if she wanted something fluffy or angsty, because my drafty notes for three scenes are a hodge-podge, and I thought I'd better look before I leaped into angst if she wants fluff...

And I was shocked to find a Weekly Reader had posted to MFUWSS this morning! I have been ill, and haven't done the Weekly Reader yet!!
So I got sidetracked on what had happened. In the end, I decided I had to have made an error on the scheduled entry date.

And now I am grouchy and am going for a walk.

Congratulations to having work done and good luck with the WIP!

What is the MFUWSS?

I always cheat with AO3: I post my stuff to LJ first, with links and images and whatnot, then copy and paste everything to AO3. That way I have everything ready-made.

As Murphy's Law says: Do you have a difficult task? Assign it to a lazy person. They'll find the simplest solution. *g*

I got a few sentences written for my essay.

Just in case

akane42me doesn't have time to check back (I'm only back because I can't sleep),

mfuwss is a Man from U.N.C.L.E. community — its named is inspired by an ep — mfu = Man from U.N.C.L.E. + wss = writers' survival school.

I think you will have a good deal of fun figuring out how to get your characters to participate in the bull game. And the game itself sounds like a grand lot of choreography for you to work out, too. Do you plan to have Aragorn, Imrahil and Denethor play the bull game? Sounds very lively!

You have a good many irons in the fire. When does the Pros BB explode? I haven't ever seen the show, but I have meant to do so for years. I should see if it's streaming somewhere.

Move story — not sure at all what a Move story is.

MFU WIP — this is the only fandom I've written for, so I am particularly interested in this:) How long of a story are you thinking it will be? I do look forward to seeing it, and how it works without direct speech.

I just got done with dinner clean-up — and I see fiorenza_a has answered your query about MFUWSS.
This is one of the Man from U.N.C.L.E. communities, and it originated as a comm for sharing writing Man from U.N.C.L.E. fanfic, and sharing ideas about the writing craft.

This is the comm that hosts an annual story challenge for Easter — the Easter Eggs you may hear mentioned during pico from the MFU writers. The stories are supposed to be around 500 words but can be any length, if the writer is inspired to write a longer one!
People request Eggs (stories), and provide a few prompts. Then writers anonymously claim them, and then post them around Easter.

As for the Weekly Reader I talked about: Each week on MFUWSS I make a list of links to mfu stories that were recommended daily on

mfu_shortstorie and on another comm, section7mfu, where on Saturdays, writers rec their own work or that of other authors.

I love your solution to AO3 — of posting to LJ first. The editor on AO3 is much harder to work with! I did it backwards... my AO3 draft is going to be automatically deleted on March 23, and I was fretting about losing my work, and copied it to my LJ and set its security to private, as a back-up! *smacks forehead* I should have thought of that! Why did I plunge directly to AO3? It's too early to post even a draft there for the Easter Egg exchange.. I have been suffering a good deal of fatigue and foggy brain since last week, and I suspect that may be why.

What is your essay topic? Good luck with it.

Thank you for the explanation of MFUWSS:) Greatly appreciated!

This one is well child checks ages 13-15.

I need to get my rumpus in gear and moving!
:^)

Spent a good part of the day trying to get an appointment for the covid vaccine; the process is ridiculous and includes checking multiple websites, trying to figure out who's getting a few deliveries this week (local pharmacies tend to get 100 or so at a time), who has an active waiting list etc. And this is for a county of 330,000 people, mind you, not a rural area. Won't bore you with the details, but got a whiff of a few slots going on line at 4 PM at our Dept of Health, kept an eagle eye on the clock, and was ready to click like a clicking fool at 4:00:01.
I got lucky!!!!
Have an appointment on Friday at 3 PM. So relieved. It should not be this hard though. They had 558 slots available. Sign ups closed by 4:03.

So with regard to my story, did little writing bur mostly brainstorming on and off during the day. Have the germ of an idea and will wrestle with it in peace tomorrow :)

I'm one of those people who never made it through Lord of the Rings, so will be useless for this discussion :( But I like the way you investigate the nooks and crannies of Tolkien's world, carving out areas you can populate with your own characters. I also like a sport where the Bulls aren't killed!

I love

mfuwss Easter Eggs — it's such a nice idea. Fandom is all about sharing, and I notice at least one 'anonymous' this year has offered to do fanart instead.

Really looking forward to seeing all the Easter Eggs pop up 😊

Yes, I keep a back up of my work as AO3 suggest, and after losing a carefully honed draft because the month clicked over when I was distracted by RL — I now keep a back up of my html coding on a word doc until I've posted as well.

That's one of the reasons the story I keep meaning to move to AO3 from FF.net has been stuck for so long, it's got eleven chapters, and I keep getting so far and then losing my draft. Determined to get it done this time though. Then I can stop worrying about it.

I've not been feeling too good recently either. Hope we both come out of this Pico feeling a bit more 'with it' 😚

Pross BB explodes in October — it's an annual event (as you'd probably supposed). The 'half way' point is 1st July when you have to submit a draft of what you have so far — the MODs like to see evidence of progress! — and an idea of where your story is going. You then get matched with an artist, and after that you work together to bring the whole thing home by 23rd September when you are given your October posting date.

There's two really good places to hang out for The Professionals (apart from my journal!), but seriously — the Lj community

teaandswissroll, which I've never found to be less than friendly and Dave Matthews Authorised Guide (http://www.mark-1.co.uk/Professionals/)

As well as the usual suspects the CI5 Circuit Archive (https://www.thecircuitarchive.com/), a creaky but belovèd site, is full of stories — and the

crack_van has vids as well

It's a late seventies/early eighties show — loads of eps on YouTube (https://www.google.com/search?biw=1536&bih=722&tbm=vid&ei=KPM9YPi9EJKV1fAPlte2gAU&q=the+professionals+episodes&oq=the+professionals+epsi&gs_l=psy-ab.1.0.0i13k1l10.22018.23416.0.25921.5.5.0.0.0.0.142.487.3j2.5.0....0...1c.1.64.psy-ab..0.5.484...0j0i67k1j0i13i30k1j0i8i13i30k1.0.fcy_JevXG7o) — it ran to 57 all told — it's often cited as an unintentional time capsule as it caught the UK just on the cusp of major changes. Clearly it's a show dear to my heart, but if you like sash, it's also famous for some of the best slash stories in fandom. Those of us who write Gen (as well as slash or exclusively) are ploughing a lonelier furrow, but we do exist!

'Hunter Hunted' is often cited as one of the best intro eps — 'The Gun' is not its finest hour. Although I have written in defence of it!

'Move story' is from my first comment this Pico (see prev post) — I have been trying for ages to move an eleven chapter story from FF.net (for which it is too explicit) to AO3.

MFU WIP — good question! I hadn't counted, so now I have — it's around 9.5k at the moment, and it's nearly finished, so I expect it will come in at 10 to 12k.

I have a number of other MFU WIP in the offing (I do a 'Kapusta' post to my journal periodically saying where I'm at with things — 'Mr Kapusta' is an Lj character — one of my end of year Lj 'round up' messages featured a quote from Mr Kapusta). So next Pico, I may be writing about one of them!

Hope your Covid jab goes well, we're ploughing through millions every month, so I expect I will have been jabbed by summer 😊

I've been doing a first-year writing elective for my online university course over summer, and I just got back the final assignment, which was to write 1350 words on 'Place and Encounter' (an encounter between two characters, with an emphasis on making the place it was in an integral part of the writing).

Being me and devoted to making my own life harder, I decided to do a 'discussion' in a cemetery between a ghost and a cat (really a monologue since the cat didn't even miaow :) so the rather less than spooky ghost had to do all the talking (and I suspect sounded a lot like what I would were I dead).

Be that as it may... I got a high distinction!!! Given the course is for fun, not employment, that is way more than I was hoping for :) My tutor suggested I keep working in it to expand into a full story, I may put it aside to think about and do just that.

Those ideas sound really promising! I like the bull one, where the animal isn't hurt...

That all sounds like progress - even if words as such didn't get done, you've cleared the way for it.

I hope the grouchies go away?

March 2021 - Day 1

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