i exist therefore i post

[lobelia321]

Well, I'm not getting tacked messages so I feel somewhat isolated and hence the need to post.

Hello! *waves* I exist!!!

There are posts in me but somehow I never get around to formulating them.

An aide mémoire:

• post about the creative writing workshops
• post about my experience of writing a novel in a month and
• the differences I experienced between writing origfic and fanfic and
• the differences I experienced between writing short story and novel

Hey, does anyone remember zarah5? I miss her sometimes, and her grinning orange.

Comments

[junalele.livejournal.com]

*waves back*

Personally, I'd be especially interested in the differences between short story and novel and origfic and fanfic. Just to give you some motivation. Erh.

zarah5... Wait a second, is that the same one from that great webside... What's it called... What it is or something like that? *goes to check* Holy cow! Yes, she is. That's so funny-weird. I knew her from her webside and we exchanged emails a few years back. God, I am so much behind on the whole lj thing...

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

Zarah is also German but I've forgotten where she lives. She left LJ when she started university. She was a really active and great lotrips poster and writer.

[junalele.livejournal.com]

Forgot where she lived, too. Oh, and she also wrote popslash and - yes! - footie slash.

Gah! When she started uni? I don't even want to know how young that makes her... And she did write so beautifully...

[andolinn.livejournal.com]

You know you can always do it the old fashioned way and go back to your posts and read the comments there... And there is a way to go back in LJ and looks at the last 50 comments you left. Somewhere. I imagine you can find it in FAQ.

[viva-gloria.livejournal.com]

http://www.livejournal.com/tools/recent_comments.bml

That one ...

I'd be most interested in your writing-thoughts. Especially short fic re novel-length (I remember arguing with you about this long long ago) and the workshops. And yay novel-in-a-month! I still look back wistfully at my first nanowrimo and wonder if I'll ever get the motivation to expand it to a saleable length. 'Cause, y'know, not at all bad for a first draft written to a time limit and without much of a plan.

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

The link you posted only tells me who commented in my own journal and where I myself commented in others, not who commented back. It's too much work!! I've now reactivated email but I hate email and haven't looked at my fan-name email in, oh, six months, and it's got a zillion emails in it and *trauma*. Still, at least the comments are there in email form. I've now filled in a support request.

Oh, we argued about short fic re novel-length fic ages ago? But I had no experience then! What did we argue? What did you say, and what did I say, and what did you say back...??

You've done nanowrimo, too? Oh yay! I loved nanowrimo so much. I just loved the experience.

[viva-gloria.livejournal.com]

It wasn't an argument in terms of disagreement, but rather in terms of holding opposing and Differently Right views: I believe we were talking about whether some well-written fanfic could be compared to proper published literature, and you came up with a list of literary authors far superior in style, etc: to which I countered that you were comparing novelists with short story writers, and suggested that the two forms are quite different in terms of what it takes to do 'em well. And we discussed the modern short story as an art form -- you, as primarily a non-genre reader, weren't familiar with the flourishing genre markets where (I still maintain) much of the exploration and experimentation with the form is happening today.

Roughly, anyway!

As for Nanowrimo: did it twice, 2004 solo with 60K of historical novel, 2005 in tandem with co-author (50K each in the calendar month, but we carried on; and novel is ... well, the reason I didn't do Nanowrimo last November was that I was in New Zealand, polishing! and now it's with a Literary Agent).

I loved the experience of writing with target / time limit but I wish I'd gone back to the 2004 effort (Voyages Home) sooner; I'm re-researching now and it's hard to capture the mood again.

Nanowrimo, together with morning pages, has done wonders for my writing -- not necessarily in terms of quality but in terms of how easy I find it to simply sit down and write; and to plot (What Fanfic Taught Me, 101) and so on.

I should mention that co-author and I have also, in the last not-quite-three-years, produced a million words of crossover piratey slash.

This writing lark is a terrible time sink though!

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

The nano is with an agent? This is terribly exciting.

The discussion re orig vs slash now rings a bell. It rings true in terms of what I might have believed then but god, you know? I've come so far since then it's like looking through binoculars the wrong way round; it makes me feel dizzy. I don't at all believe those things anymore. I, too, I guess, have been through the What I Learned From Fanfic 101.

So: what is your Fanfic 101, then? *settles down to wait what will hopefully be a long, juicy Gloria post*

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

I have been trawling the posts in the old-fashioned way! But then I can't remember where I commented and where not and it all just gets too much! I've now reactivated my email where I am still getting notifications but argh, email trauma. (I hate email.)