silver

I should probably do a promo for my own comm. Really late, but inkingitout is a writing support/encouragement comm. Minimum word count is 75,000 words.



Signups close on the 31st; you must sign up on the post and then request membership, as all check-in posts are locked to the comm's members.

The exchange at fic corner has opened!

I will own that I yelped when I refreshed and saw all the "mystery works" magically turn to fics. It's like staring at the Christmas tree, blinking, and then suddenly having the tree buried in presents.

First, my gift! I requested all sorts of things in the Old Kingdom fandom, and Burning_Nightingale totally came through for me. It's a terrific exploration of how Sanar and Ryelle--the twins from the Clayr that Sabriel first meets outside of Belisaere--grew up. It also addresses some other questions I hadn't even though of; what happens when the Clayr have male children? They likely won't have the Sight, what will they do?

Spread Your (Paper)Wings (3443 words) by Burning_Nightingale
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Old Kingdom - Garth Nix
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: n/a
Characters: Sanar (Old Kingdom), Ryelle (Old Kingdom)
Additional Tags: OC, Worldbuilding, Backstory, Friendship, Best Friends
Summary:

A story told with the voice of a forgotten minority; this is the tale of Errigan, a male Clayr.

--

I wrote a fic in the same fandom. (That's the second time now!) It's about Sabriel and her post-Sabriel (the book) duties. This is the first fic I've written in a long time that I like. I think it's because it's--at a tiny four thousand words--long enough and has a plot. Writing it was still piecemeal in chunks, but I like how it came out.

By breakwater and river (4150 words) by ivy
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Old Kingdom - Garth Nix
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Sabriel (Old Kingdom), Elder (Old Kingdom), Touchstone (Old Kingdom), Original Characters
Additional Tags: Action/Adventure, Fights, Work, Missing Scene, Between Novels, Canon Compliant, Magic, Blood
Summary:

Before leaving Nestowe, Sabriel promised that she would come back and help them, and she keeps her promises. Fighting the Dead is what the Abhorsen is meant to do, after all.

I just got home, so I haven't had time to read anything else, but there's a good hundred fic in the collection about children/YA literature, so I definitely encourage you to take a gander!

(On LJ, this is my thousandth post!)

I went back using tags on my LJ to see if I had recorded names (my physical journals are still boxed and inaccessible) and ended up reading through some of my entries. I usually avoid this. Someday I will write things and not be embarrassed to look at them again - fiction is especially bad. My old fic is still available, it even gets comments once in a blue moon, but I can't look. Even though I probably should remove some of the notes on it, and maybe see if the site has messed up my formatting - nope. I can't do it.

My journal entries of two years ago were okay, even if they were publicly posted and I usually get embarrassment squick from public entries more than anything. If I wrote about CLACSTC's flight line today, I'd probably borrow some of that phrasing.

I really miss my physical journals, actually, especially the entries I made of exceptional events (that is to say, not the entries written during say school, or routine events.) When I went to summer camp for the first time, I wrote nothing. The second time, I wrote one page about arriving, and the chaos of it all; looking back later, I was incredibly frustrated, because a lot of things happened in three weeks and I had recorded nothing. The one entry about arriving was tantalizing but there was no follow up. Time was a problem - I was doing things with the flight all day, then doing homework or working on my uniform during my off-hours, and then lights out was pretty early - but I was bitterly disappointed nothing had been properly recorded.

The third time I went to summer camp, I brought my new, nice journal and was determined to write things down. And I did. I had to sit in the bathroom (they were ensuite) most nights, because the patrolling staff could see the lights in the room, but not the lights in the bathroom, after lights-out. I would write really fast because lights-out was eleven, but we had to get up at five or five-thirty just to get ready, despite our regulated wake-up timing being six o'clock*. I do have records for those six weeks, but, as I said - they're still in boxes, and I hope they aren't mildewed yet.

I keep straying from the point. I'm not sure that journal writing is cathartic or anything for me, but it leaves a trail behind me, which is what I want. My parents made me write a journal from the age of five or six, and they're full of strange things I haven't thought about in a long time. In the beginning, when I was in French immersion they had things like "elle regarde l'oiseau" and then English printed below it, with illustrations. Other parts are repetitive and "I went swimming today" repeated on different days, because I went swimming that day and evidently couldn't think of anything else to say. They are very tame because they were read, but it's fascinating to go back and immerse myself in who-I-was. At some point I got tired of trying to find things to say and started a serialized story about my stuffed animals.

I give up. Despite wanting this to have a cohesive point, I've managed to go off on tangents anyway. *posts*

*(I see waking up at five-thirty as a blessing, because technically we were not allowed to get up before six - the boys, quartered in the barracks, weren't allowed out of their beds til six exactly - but the amount of things we had to do in the morning was ridiculous. I mean, be outside in C-4 with room tidied and bed made within 20 minutes? Scratch that, ten minutes, because we had to be early by ten minutes? Are you kidding me?

To be fair, I think they were mandated to have us sleep for seven hours minimum, but it was still ridiculous.)

Earthquake happened, and it is so far out of my experience that I thought it might be people on the roof, doing construction. Or something. I just never expected to be in the midst of one, and so it was so very weird.

Haven't anything else to say, except that I'm still on track with writing (omg, \o/), and at 13,500 words.

I keep trying to read the book The Court of the Air (Stephen Hunt): it's a steampunk sci-fi, I suppose you could say, and I keep putting it down. This is because it reminds me frequently of my own book - the settings are entirely different, and the characters, too - but it has that first draft feel, and the dialogue is dead. The author dumps information on you. One of the main characters shows up in the first chapter and then is absent for the next half-dozen. It skips from what should be a horrifying act (someone just got killed in front of her, hello?) and goes to somewhere else entirely.

I find myself comparing it always to the books I've just read - in this case, The Ladies of Grace Adieu (by the incomparable Susanna Clarke, who wrote Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell) and Sherlock Holmes's last few chronicles. The distance between those two works and The Court of Air is enormous. In Clarke and Doyle's books you don't have the sound of the author's voice ringing in your head - Hunt's work feels as though I know what he's thinking as he writes it, adds a bit of dialogue-tag to round it off; in contrast, Clarke and Doyle's writing is confident, and it sounds like the narrator. Watson, as the narrator, sounds like a separate entity - even with the random intrusion of footnotes (I've got an annotated copy), it is always Watson speaking, not Doyle. I want to like it, and I like the premise very much; I can't get past the prose.

(This is sort of like reading Star Wars: Shatterpoint (Matthew Stover, he of the admired Episode III: Revenge of the Sith book adaptation; I deeply admire his ability to use new lines and punch you with the formatting of his prose), and something like Terry Brook's Episode I adaptation, which, frankly, was pretty much the movie narrated in a flat voice with a few extra scenes. (I read it, and if it hadn't when I was a week without internet and the first day I got books, it would not have been read.) The first one has vitality and movement (Shatterpoint evokes the Vietnam War, from what I understand of the conflict, very strongly). The second is just a retelling, and the movie, as much as it was criticized, was probably better.

*

So deeply behind on reviews I cannot even say. And I owe denise a thousand apologies because I still haven't finished those FAQ-revisions - they're almost done, and they keep getting pushed off *blushes really badly*

taking the royal purple: porphyra I found it. After arduous googling :D My mind goes around the phrase "taking the purple" to represent ascending the throne, but perhaps it's from a semi-AU novel that revolves around the Roman Empire. Anyone recognize it?

I have also just gone through and invited a few people to silverfic where I'm putting writing stuff into. I keep forgetting to do so, and as the community is on Dreamwidth - if you have not been invited and you want to have access, PM me or whatever, and I'll add you (I have gone through and added people who I have met through writing comms only). If you only are on LiveJournal and want access, you'll have to have an OpenID account - all you have to do is comment on this entry with your LiveJournal credentials so that it exists on Dreamwidth and I can enter it into the invitations column (use the OpenID option and enter your LiveJournal address, http://username.livejournal.com *, and allow Dreamwidth to verify.)

*replace with appropriate name ;)

( I would like to buy seventeen weekends in a row, or just time, if you've got any in stock. Sleep-time. )

eta: and now I wonder if there's a bug [prev open, post to prev, backbutton works, etc: GET/POST error; replication tomorrow]

Currently quite frustrated with myself, because I have got ideas and ideas for stories (I feel like the quintessential kid in the candy store; also, the idea of having bilingual stories is really, really appealing) but I'm not writing. Which is no-one's fault but mine, but aggravating.

It's snowing gorgeously outside. I mean the lightest snow, that covers up everything and makes the world sparkle under the streetlamps. The kind of snow where you can see every individual snowflake.

(I always get poetic about weather. I do not know why.)

I've discovered, by accident and then by Google searching, about the wonderful, wonderful shortcuts for Microsoft 2007's equation editor. It's amazing how much faster I can input equations now that I don't have to hunt and click around for formatting options and operators and Greek letters; typing is so much quicker. Microsoft, your documentation for this is terrible. The help files were no use at all.

Lastly: I will do my utmost to avoid a job that requires customer service.

*blinks* Now I know what they mean by plot bunnies. I have been viciously bitten by several now. Yuletide, OMG...I want to write so many! There is no time!

Obligatory Yuletide squee post.

OH MY GOD I HAVE MY ASSIGNMENT and IT IS SET IN A WORK I LOVE. *\o/*

Aaaah! So many things to write! So exciting! *must hunt up book*