writing
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Tuesday, April 22, 2003
...Finished the draft of Insomniac!Race around 4 AM; it clocked in at 32 pages. The last, oh, five or so were crap. (Wait, actually, the three that start five from the end were crap; the final two were okay. Drunk!newsies is alwys fun.)Hopefully, having a beta-reader will improve this mightly, for right now, it sucks so hard it needs a straw. Or something.
Becky had too much free time at 11:49 AM
Sunday, April 20, 2003
...you know, I'm really passive agressive. or in this case, just passive. In other words, a coward, I guess, who'd rather lurk than disagree, even though I very much do.Nevermind. That was just because I'm not posting in my LJ. (Why? See that whole "coward" statement...)
Anyway. Went on a bit of a spree today... Wrote 8 pages of insomnaic!race, finally. I really wanted to finish that before Where The Change Is (AKA, Blink and Mush make each other's lives hell for two months before Mush splits town and Blink becomes an alcoholic--yay for angst) because that's how they take place chronologically. What with Jack being present in I!R (okay, title is Violent Dreams, but whatever. It's the Insomniac!Race story) and not in WTCI, and Race having left the lodging house by the time WTCI takes place. And I didn't want to publish non-chronologically, because I'm anal like that. But all that remains for I!R (now that I'm past the nervous breakdown bit... mwahahahahaha) is to have Race confront the wimpy badguy and decide to not confront the actual badguy. Terribly anticlamactic. Alas.
Jereh: **impatient** Weren't you going to write about me today?
Oh yeah. Shut up.
Becky had too much free time at 10:31 PM
Saturday, April 19, 2003
My characters sigh too much. They also shrug too much. I use it as a placeholder, a way to break up dialogue or to imply that they're moving and not just straight talking heads. But it gets a bit ridiculous. Jall sighed three times in that scene, and in my head he doesn't, you know, sigh at all. It's just a way to make the thing flow. ... Something for me to watch out for, I guess.I think I'm on the last scene of ep 20, now; I actually got some decent stuff done yesterday, finally. Nothing especially good, but better than what I'd had before (and had to delete) and it works to get the story where it needs to go.
Goody.
Becky had too much free time at 6:39 PM
Tuesday, April 15, 2003
Yes, the creativity is definitely returning at a crawl. I actually pulled out a sketchbook for the first time in months, literally, and began to draw Arant. I like the anatomy and proportions here, except the head and face. I think I may actually finish it up at some point after break.
Go me.
Dry spells suck.
Becky had too much free time at 3:10 PM
Monday, April 14, 2003
BTW, I find it highly amusing that the number one search for my domain at the moment is "newsies slash". Which is why I wasn't going to put any ficcage on queenitsy, since I'm a snob and wanted people to look around the domain for original stories, not fanfics. Alas. And yet, I find it vaguely amusing.If I was still obsessed with my hitcount, I'd be upset about it, though. Of course, I'd be upset in general. Ah, the joys of not caring. (Also, the joys of neglecting a site for three months. -sigh- I'm such a slacker...)
Becky had too much free time at 1:32 AM
Friday, April 11, 2003
Notes doodles! Fun. Some original, some fanart, some original characters who may appear in fanfics someday, if I ever get around to writing them. (I'm hesitant to write OC fanfics, but that's another post entirely.)Adult Kalin, meditating. Definitely not Old Kalin, but an adult. (You can tell; note the lack of hand. Actually, that's the wrong hand he's missing. Oops.)
Islan Kelanister, in Angel form. Yep, Erra's (and Ilyan's, and Islana's) ultimate grandfather. He was a cool guy. He was a pirate.
In a slightly more cartoony fashion, here's Blink. Sorta. Jeeze, you know, I've never drawn fanart before for anything in my life? (Discounting friends' stories, I mean; actual, like, movie/TV/book/whatever.) It doesn't actually look like him. Note the interesting shirt; I was trying to remember what his looked like, failed, and so I didn't bother to erase the guidelines behind it, which is why (even though it's not actually tight) you can clearly see his chest and abs, and the loose sleeves. (The junk behind it is where I was thinking about putting in someone else, but that didn't work out. So I drew it seperately instead.)
I then decided to solve the shirt problem by just not giving them shirts. That's supposed to be Blink and Mush. You really can't tell it's either one of them (eyepatch aside.) But I like the pose, and I like that Mush is giving Blink a longing look. That totally fits in the with the newsieverse in my head (which has changed significantly since I last posted about it.)
And finally, a super-cartoony Jack Kelly. Sort of. He looks like a girl, wearing a boyscout's uniform. And I hadn't decided about the hat; I honestly had no idea how to draw it, so I was playing around with that and fully planned to erase it when class ended. So it's... Special.
Here's an ultra-sketchy Caroline, whose story is actually partly (mostly, even) written. I'm just hestitant to post it. It's the OC thing again... I mean, a semi-romance in which an OC gets one of my favorite characters? That just screams Mary Sue, even though she in no way represents me. She's far too, shall we say, soft-spoken.
Unlike my other OC, whose story probably won't ever get written at all. She's named Elsie, and despite that picture, not actually supposed to be top-heavy, at all. That aside, I like the doodle; it captures her pretty well. Elsie is fun.
Here's a better picture of her face, at least. Her hat isn't quite right, since I had no idea how to draw it, but otherwise I think it's pretty good.
I'd really like to write her story, someday, but it's pretty much every female OC in the fandom. You know, the firey-tempered girl who dresses and acts like a boy? And has a love/hate relationship with one of the author's favorite characters? (Actually, both her story and Caroline's really center around Spot, who is probably only my fourth favorite now. The difference is that Caroline actually sort-of gets Spot, where Elsie would rather die than admit that she even likes him as a human being, let alone is attracted to him. And unlike, say, most Mary Sues, she then proceeds to never admit to liking him, and doesn't get to gether with him. However, like a Mary Sue (if she is one or not [or at least, an SI] is still up in the air, depending on my mood at the time, really) she does sleep with my very favorite. (Yes, that's Blink. They don't really date, they just screw around. It's a fun time.)
Anyway. That was my exciting American Studies class today. It's ashame I spent so much of the semester adamently refusing to bring a pencil so I couldn't draw anything, since I didn't take notes anyway (I just ended up falling asleep) and those aren't entirely crappy. Well, the fanart ones are, but the rest are okay.
And now... Naptime. Because I? Am exhausted.
Becky had too much free time at 5:13 PM
So. Fanfiction. Yes.
Fanfiction was never really my thing. Yes, I (like all of the other 13 year olds online) wrote some terrible Sailor Moon fanfics back in the day, but mostly my head was given over to totally original works. I like to have complete creative control, in a "fuck canon!" type of way. And since "fuck canon" pretty much defies the whole purpose of fanfiction--playing around with, you know, canon characters and situations--even though I had a lot of ideas floating around in my head, I never bothered to write them. The Saga (or Temira, or Seven's Story, or whatever my flavor of the month was--usually Saga, of course) took up my creative energy. And that made me happy.
And then I started a downward spiral. I blame NaNo this year. I hate my NaNoNovel from last November, and I knew I hated it as I was writing it, and I let it eat my creativity up and use it for something I couldn't stand. I think my creativity refused to forgive me for that, and as a result, my own characters abandoned me. And then there's this semester. It's been eating my soul, I swear. Not that my classes are all that bad, just a lot of work, and they leave me too exhausted to deal with fictional characters' trauma. It's been three months since queenitsy.com's had a significant update, probably the longest time between updates in the three+ years I've had a domain. Heck, probably even in the 5+ years I've had a webpage at all. Man. I'm still working on the next damned Saga chapter, and it won't come. I've had a few flashes of inspiration, but that's all, and none of them for this next chapter, anyway.
And somewhere as this crappy thing was beginning, I got the Newsies DVD. And went insane with it. Totally, completely insane. In a good way, of course; I watched the movie probably a dozen times in the first month or so of the semester, and got into the fandom. I began to live on the Newsies section of ffnet. And finally, one day I gave in. My original characters were misbehaving (that is, not doing anything, at all...) and I had (at that time) Racetrack running through my head, being slashy. And so I just wrote it. (See comment about 30+ page story below--abandoned in progress, months ago now.) And my focus shifted from Race to Blink, because my favorite slash pairing shifted from Race/Spot to Mush/Blink. I did a few false starts.
I wrote Better Than Nothing, which was a total breakthrough. A short story! A self-contained story in five pages! Jesus Christ, I've never, ever been able to do that before. And it was good. And I posted it on ffnet, and other people agreed that it was good. Ego swelled. Fanfiction writing continued. I wrote Cigarettes. I think it's one of the best things I've written, period. That made me very, very happy.
I've done more since then, and will probably continue to. I feel guilty for ignoring my original stories, and letting the domain sit and rot, but at least I've gotten of my durned high horse about fanfiction, which I never really got before. I do now. It's fun. I love the Newsies fandom, and the girls in the NJL. And even though my obession with the movie itself is passing (I haven't watched it in, like, two months) I think I'm going to keep ficcing it for quite awhile.
Mostly because stupid blink!muse won't give me my brain back. Though today, Kalin, Cleran and Daevan (in SD form) showed up to welcome him to my head. It's nice when the boys are one big family. One big, really fucked up family. Blink wants to run away now, but it's too late. (And it quickly degenerated into arguing about which one is my favorite. I think Daevin wins, with Kalin as the one who's most firmly embedded in my head. But anyway.)
I feel my creativity slowly returning. Slooooooooowly. I plan to keep up with fanfiction, but my goal is to finish the next Saga chapter over break if it kills me. (Which it might.)
Oh, and I actually doodled in my notes today! Since it was either that or sleep, and I feel bad dozing off in jerry's class every week. It's interesting stuff, I'm just, you know, tired. Stupid math homework. But I think I'll do the notes posting in a serperate, er, post.
Sooooo tired.
Becky had too much free time at 4:58 PM