who lives, who dies, who tells your story?

Annotated The Exhaustion of Dawn, my fic for NFE!

Originally, I thought I'd just do some reflective character-based 1000-word thing in about two hours, easy peasy. So what with the traveling to Canada and working like a one-armed paperhanger, I didn't even think about starting to write my NFE until about a week before deadline, whereupon I discovered that everything I could do had about a novels' worth of plot to it.

OOPS.

And that, my dear patient mods, in addition to a shitload of work and a handful of health problems, is why I blew right through the deadline, the extended deadline, and the no-really-we're-serious-this-time deadline, wrote about six thousand more words than I meant to, and would have written a novella if I hadn't run out of time and they would have given my prompt to andi_horton since she signed up for pinch-hitting, and she was in the middle of moving, and so that's why I have ideas to write all this as an original novel.

( But it all makes me kind of want to write an original novel. )
( And in case you were wondering about the references.... )

( But the big question: SEX????? )


Well, I think that covers all the bases.

Plan for Friday night: write/finish something for andi_horton , finish writing Doctor/Rose fic for then_theres_us , defeat the lingering inability to finish any fics at all lately, then reward self with eps of something/episode of Slings and Arrows/finish reading Have His Carcase because Peter and Harriet are teh bestest.

Actual Friday night: have mild headache, stare at two fics for five hours, write literally three sentences between them, post Craigslist ad for a room in my apartment, fail to write emails I need to for work, fail to watch anything entertaining, fail to finish fics, fail to participate in then_theres_us , fail to even wash my fucking teapot out.

I wish I could remember how to write. Fuck it, I guess it's time for bed.

I downloaded the Richard Feynman lectures on physics from the Six Easy Pieces selections (and several others, it was a giant folder, I don't remember everything, if you want them I can upload) and was listening to the first one on atoms and their movement on the drive to and from work today (I've got an hour commute each way, I have to make it productive somehow.)

I've always loved physics, and the weirder it gets, the better. But even the physics of the everyday is so simple and fascinating; I was working on my car tonight, and just knowing how a lever and circular motion can be used to lift an entire car with a minimum of effort is really quite amazing. Or knowing the chemical reactions that cause an engine to be more than a lump of metal. Or knowing about how hydraulic pressure controls a brake line.  It's all cool, all stuff I like to know about.

Feynman was talking in the lecture about how physicists discover laws in a way that's different from chemists or biologists... they have to come up with ideas first, about how things work, and those ideas, if they are good, are shown to be accurate through the observation of phenomena in repeated examples. It's not a theory or science without those experiments, but that idea, the imagination of it comes first. Feynman gave the example of hypothesizing about the structure of molecules and how those ideas could be proven by chemical experiments, and later by electron microscopes.

I was thinking more of how Einstein discovered all the things he did- it all started with thought experiments, with a giant WHAT IF. What if you were moving at the speed of light... and you looked in a mirror. What if you were moving upwards in an elevator really fast and somebody shone a light in one side. What if you were moving at 99% of the speed of light and your fellow traveler was moving at 95%, how would you each experience time?

And it occurred to me that in some ways, physicists and fic writers aren't that different. When you write fanfiction, you look at that world you're writing about, and you say... what if? What if we saw what Rose did after she was left in the other universe? What if Donna somehow met Gene Hunt? What if Susan used the skills she learned while ruling Narnia in this world, during the war? And so we write out these situations, seeing if they stand up to the way the characters really behave, and if they account for the laws that govern the internal logic of these worlds.

Sometimes they're bad ideas. Sometimes the way we've imagined them doesn't work, the characters just don't fit into those situations and so the fic falls apart, or maybe we just get no reviews or everybody goes "eh, that wasn't plausible". But sometimes they're great ideas. When people read the fics, they get a better idea of the motivations guiding that character, they find it consistent: a theory of behavior has been set forth and the situational evidence observed confirms that the original idea is more than just imagination, it's a legitimate predictor of further behaviors. The theory settles in people's heads and becomes something that guides their understanding of how the world works, whether that be how an atom is going to jiggle (Feynman's technical term!) or how Amy sees Rory.

I think that, in the end, that need to go "hey, what if..." is what really defines my interest in probably everything, making it a little less odd that I love literature and fandom and also physics, interests which have greatly confused people who think those can't go together (or, alternatively, have made people pretty much fall in love with me, which is a bit odder).

So that is how a raven is like a writing desk a fic-writer is like a physicist.

Because I was bored and not focusing on editing the True Blood article like I should have been today, I spammed andi_horton with crack!fic first lines that I'll never write.

• "The worst part about regeneration, the Doctor decided right then, was that if he did die while being passed out the large intestine of this Giant Venusian Mammoth, Donna would never, ever, ever let him hear the end of it."

• "The first sign that something was wrong with the TARDIS was the sudden and terrible lack of hot water in Rose's shower. Her resulting scream, which was a sound usually guaranteed to bring the Doctor running, did not, so she screamed again. And then she wrapped her hair in a towel, tied on her dressing gown, and went to investigate the console room."

• "When Katie and Sark accidentally stole the TARDIS, they originally had no intent to become intergalactic con artists. Well, she hadn't, anyway. What Sark had intended in locking them in a dimensionally improbable phone box was anyone's guess."

• "While Rose knew in theory that the metacrisis had meant that the Doctor who had followed her home like an abandoned puppy was also half Donna, she was unprepared to discover that, as a result, her husband also seemed to be a bisexual transvestite and slightly schizophrenic. While this didn't make as much of a difference in his personality and behavior as might be expected, it was slightly unsettling when she found him in the dressing room at H&M, wearing a wrap dress and scowling at his complete lack of curves."

• "The Doctor knew about literature and he knew about pocket dimensions, but somehow it wouldn't have automatically occurred to him that, in her post-metacrisis post-amnesia state, Donna might take a vacation in a Wordsworth poem. Yet there she was, wandering lonely as a cloud. There were a truly frightening number of daffodils, too."

• "Many people have gone over Niagara Falls in barrels. However, just because one or two people can fit inside a small wooden structure and tumble over the falls and maybe possibly not die doesn't mean they should, and Rose informs the Doctor of this, wringing out her shirt and pouring riverwater out of the teapot she had previously left on the next to the time rotor on the console."

YEAH I DON'T EVEN KNOW

Snagged from shinyopals since it was, um, shiny.

Post a single sentence from each WIP you have (or as many as you want to pick). No context, no explanations. (Since I tend to bend rules to my whims and fancies it is actually a shortish passage instead of just a single sentence. Pfffbbbt.)

( angels in the abattoir, junking up a good guitar. )

Ugh, don't you hate it when fic possibilities are bumping all around in your head, and all the stuff you've started and haven't finished, and its just not getting anywhere? And in the meantime iTunes completely shuts down and demands a reinstall but when you try your anti-virus demands its a trojan?

Yeah, me too.

I'm starting yet AGAIN on this Barty Crouch Jr/Bellatrix Lestrange fic that I've attempted to write no less than four times over the past year and a half. This is all the fault of that song "Barricade" by Stars (lyrics here) because it is so crazily destructively them, sorting through the pieces of their former and current lives in London.

That Gene/Donna fic? Yes, I haven't worked on that any more since I last posted about it. They're stuck on the roof staring at me forlornly. I think they've run out of whiskey to fight off the chilly Manchester winds.

The Doctor Who set pictures make me desperately want to write Eleven and Amy Pond fic. I haven't even ATTEMPTED that one yet. Does anyone know if there are any caves to be found in Scotland, by any chance?

ETA: well to be honest the entirety of Stars' In Our Bedroom After the War could probably be a great Barty/Bellatrix post-Deathly Hallows AU epic. If one was into that sort of thing. OH GOD WHAT HAVE I DONE, WHAT HAVE I BREATHED INTO EXISTENCE.

OMG ITS NOT EVEN SATURDAY AND PEOPLE HAVE GIVEN UP POSTING INTERESTING THINGS ON LJ.

No its not fair that you all have lives, I say it isn't, why do you ask.

Warren Ellis's rant on the cancellation of Robin Hood, Primeval, the movement of Torchwood, and the state of British teevee. Not that I watch any of those shows but the man probably has a point.

COOL BAND: Beat Antique. They've come out with a new album today, Contraption Vol. 1 EP. I think they are brilliant, rocking some sort of hardcore and sometimes urban themes while actually sounding eastern European/Middle Eastern. This is all good in my book, and the fact that a good deal of their songs are instrumental mean YAY, WRITING MUSIC. I love good lyrics so much that  I tend to actually listen to them instead of writing when I try. (Or I accidentally transcribe what I hear while writing, which is interesting and apparently I'm not the only one.)

BAND I WANT TO LIKE: Anweledig. Welsh band that actually sings in Welsh, something I like as I'm trying to learn the language. But their music is a bit too... I dunno, poppy/Jimmy Buffett/ska/something like the lame German shit my grandmother sometimes listens to like Heino. Some of it. The stuff on myspace is okay I guess; "Byw" has its moments. I just really want to like their song "Merch Coffi" because a song with cute lyrics in Welsh called "Coffee Girl" has to be worth loving, right?

Spending my day reading and trying to write fic. Working on a Gene/Donna fic and I'm also really hoping I can get somewhere with a rather-awesome-if-I-do-say-so-myself fic idea for Jack/Irina. XDDD

ONLY THING BRINGING ME DOWN: I cannot find my Beauty and the Beast DVD anywhere. If you see it wandering the streets please tell it to return home. Reeeeeeeeeeeally want to watch it.

(I have freshly-made naan and hummus. Snack time!)

Okay, heard this on the radio the other day and immediately started shrieking and trying to lurch off the road. Thankfully, I failed, since it was during the traffic jam that happens before every class period on campus. I still got some interesting looks, though. I probably won't get around to finding it and making a fanvid. But I WANT to, which is what should count. (If anybody already has this song: *grabby hands*

The Boy With Two Hearts - by The Boy Least Likely To

Something grew out of nothing at all
The way things sometimes do
It grew so big that before I knew it
It had outgrown me and you
I am the boy with two hearts
I am the boy with two hearts
And there is only so far
I can be stretched before I come apart
I know I’m not much fun to be with
But you love me all the same
And some day hopefully I can just go back to being myself again
I am the boy with two hearts
I am the boy with two hearts
And there is only so far
I can be stretched before I come apart
I am the boy with two hearts
I am the boy with two hearts
And there is only so far
I can be stretched before I come apart

In other news, I am in the library studying/researching all day. I took off of work to I'd have enough time. I did at least an hour of editing!job work so I'd at least feel like I was making some money today. Bah. NEED MONEY GUYS. I need my stipend checks for the other editing jobs to come in, is what I need.

I dreamed up an idea for a perfect romantic comedy script. I have the whole intro storyboarded in my head. Only I don't have time to write it! Also I suck at scripts. This may be a problem, but I love the concept. You all will see it if it ever goes anywhere. There is a boy! And a girl! And they love each other and don't know it! ORIGINAL, I KNOW.

LJ is reworked! Yes, my computer is dying and my external hard drive is on its last legs after a suicide attempt in Canada, but LJ, at the very least, has a new layout and I come, full of Christmas bounty, bringing a veritable cornucopeia of goodness.

FIRST OFF:

visionrevision 
visionrevision 
visionrevision 
visionrevision 
visionrevision writers are encouraged to gather, get to know each other, and be inspired by writing prompts. It keeps those writing juices flowing like a well-roasted turkey!

SECONDLY:

I wrote an essay/blogpost thing about Twilight (book version) and it was the most popular pseudo-18th-century paper in my Brit Lit class. I know all of you are just thrilled with Twilight, so I thought I'd link it here. Oh, those books are unbelievable.

Because the Only Thing Hotter than Sex With Edward Cullen Is a Horny Blind Man with No Coordination And a Frozen Glass Dildo.

Have fun.

(Ohgodohgod I'm actually writing Twilight fic. Only because the whole setup with a girl + bloodthirsty vampire is classic, yes? Meyers just has no powers of writing ever and it's obvious her editor's day job is snorting coke off dead cops' asses for the carnal enjoyment of strange giraffe-hybrid men and this comes through in the text so I'm just doing a bit of... revising. Of themes and such. Because exploring take a look at this fucked-up shit is faaaar more interesting than Twooo Wuv wins forever, you know? Oh, God, somebody wtih actual shame, stop me.)

LASTLY:

I hope everyone who celebrated Christmas had a good one, and can confidently look forward to next year, knowing that life has a decent probability of looking pretty much the same. That's a little questionable right now, in my family. But the world is a beautiful place.

(But my flist? Is of terrifying length. Hm.)

Lyrics to Stars songs are so intriguing and good for writing prompts, I think. I've been fascinated with "Barricade" ever since Sara Crawford put "meet me at the barricade" in the bowl of prompts at our last writing marathon.

YAY WRITING MEME:

Just for my friends that are writers, here are a few prompts that have inspired me and my friends lately, take a moment and write a poem/vignette/whatever and post it in your journal, let me know, and then make up a few prompts of your own!

• the holes in her stockings stretch like holes in her memory
• just another signpost pointing straight to ruined streets
• bare-chested and hollow
• changes
• what is home?
• no one ever does
• his night is her day