the deep moans round with many voices

This story is set about ten years before main mercverse canon, insofar as this AU can be said to have any canon. :-) So. "Two Guys and a Girl," in which I bend, staple, and otherwise mutilate normal game canon involving trips to Nibelheim, because seriously, what's the point of crack AUs if you can't play around like this?

( Two Guys and a Girl: Part 6 )

End Part 6

Back to Part 5

Continue to Part 7

original post and comments

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( NaNo Word Count )

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My new writing goals:

1. Finish chapter 9 of "Guardian" and chapter 10 of "Lemonade" by Christmas.

2. Finish "Secrets" by my birthday. (Backup plan: finish it by my sister's birthday. Backup of the backup, finish it by the story's 5-year anniversary. Because I have been working on "Secrets" for WAY TOO LONG NOW, and it's getting very embarrassing not to have it done already.)

3. Finish "Undertow" by New Year's.

4. Come up with some sort of ending to "Strange Likenesses" by my birthday, because I don't want to delete it from the internet, but having a permanently unfinished story out there is going to itch like fire at the back of my mind.

Somehow I doubt I'll reach all these goals, but I think having publicly stated them, I'll be a bit more motivated to show some sort of progress.

Meant to finish chapter 11 of "Secrets" last night.

Accidentally finished chapter 6 of "Two Guys and a Girl" instead. And then started chapter 7.

Oh well, words are words, and there's still tonight left.

I may actually crack 25,000 words for the month. Which is not a lot by NaNo terms, but is, for me, an achievement! (My usual is 10,000 to 20,000, depending on how lazy and/or blocked I get, or whether random inspirations whack me over the head and demand to be written NOW.)

Tentative conclusion from this past month: it is easier to write more when I focus on only one thing at a time. (Except, this being me and me being Very Distractible, two or three things is more practical. Still, cutting the rest away and saying, "Not dealing with you now, thanks, go play amongst yourselves and stop bothering me for a few weeks," seems to be the most effective way to make me do a good imitation of productivity.)

( NaNo Word Count )

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"Beauty" is finished (as of yesterday), edited (as of this afternoon), and printed (as of tonight)... but not yet bound, because my parents' 3-hole-punch has gone missing. I will have to buy one tomorrow, or maybe those nifty report binder cover thingies, or maybe both! My usual habit is to punch three holes and bind with colored ribbon, because I've found, over the years, that trying to use anything short of a heavy-duty industrial stapler on more than about 6 pages is just asking for headaches, and because I'm too damn lazy to do stitch-bindery if I'm not being paid actual money.

Also, stitch-bindery is only a really practical option if I go to the bother of formatting a story in half pages on landscape orientation, and work out the correct pagination so the story's in order when I fold the papers. And doing that formatting takes HOURS, because no matter how you try to standardize it, the margins always go completely bizarre and require extensive manual fixes, and you end up with dropped lines and widows up the wazoo, and I hate having to tweak those into looking nice.

Um.

Anyway, the story's done, and I'm thankful for that. I'll probably stick it up on lj in a day or two, with a link to Perrault's original on which my version is based.

I may or may not be doing much writing tomorrow, because my parents' computer stopped recognizing my floppy disk (fortunately after I'd downloaded "Beauty" to the hard drive) and therefore it's kind of hard for me to pick up in the middles of chapters when I'm not quite sure where I left off. Ah well. I'm sure I'll think of something.

1. ( NaNo Word Count )

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2. I finished chapter 9 of "Lemonade" last night, but I want to look it over again today for the really blindingly obvious stupid parts that I try to edit out before posting the rough versions here on lj. (I always miss some, of course, and I am incredibly grateful to anyone who points out what I'm not seeing.)

I also figured out why I've been blocked on "Guardian" and on "Beauty" -- it was structural problems in both cases. See, in "Guardian," the last scene I wrote was going in the wrong direction (character and situation based, rather than plot based), and I knew somewhere in the back of my head that the story was going too far off track, but it took me until yesterday to realize why it was off track. I will be fixing that soonish.

With "Beauty," on the other hand, I knew where some of the trouble was -- see, it's turned into the story of a dysfunctional family as much as anything else -- so I had to go back and fix the relationship between Grace and Hope, and between the princesses and their parents -- which I did yesterday. Then I realized that the reason I'd been stuck on what to write next was that I wanted to write it from Grace's POV, but that was impossible because it's Hope's decision that will resolve the current plot impasse.

"Beauty" is a multiple-POV story, but in a different vein from "Guardian." See, in "Guardian," I'm switching POVs because my characters are in different places dealing with different pieces of the overarching plot. In "Beauty," it's all one linear plot thread, but I switch POVs based on which character is currently making the choices that drive that plot along. So I started with Iris, the fairy godmother who loses her temper and screws up. Then it was Grace, then Ricky (who goes and does something stupid), then Grace again to show the results of Ricky's screw up and how she deals with them, then Ricky to realize and explain his mistake, then Grace for the initial reaction and a somewhat subconscious choice to shoulder the decision off onto Hope's shoulders, and now Hope to actually make that choice. I think, once Hope chooses (and I know what she's going to choose -- there's really no other choice she can make, given the characters and the situation) I'll switch back to Grace for the conclusion... partly because I seem to be using Grace for reaction shots, but mostly because "Beauty" is, ultimately, her story.

( I do like the mechanics of story creation )

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3. On Tuesday evening, I leave work at 6pm. My mom arrives at my place at 6:30ish, I dump my bag into the car, and we head down to Madison, NJ. I will be at my parents' house Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday, and then Vicky will drive me back to Ithaca on Saturday morning so I can be at work by noon. Ardis (Dad's stepmother) and my Aunt Cara (Mom's sister) will also be in Madison, so perhaps I should wrap their Christmas presents and bring them down with me? Anyway, Wednesday is also Aunt Cara's birthday, so I bought her a card and a thing of local organic flavored chapstick as a mini-present. I also bought a hysterical political Christmas card to send to my Uncle Bill (one of Mom's brothers), because I know he'll love it, and a pretty birthday card for Grandma Doris (Mom's mother), whose birthday is a week from today.

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4. I think I forgot to say earlier, but as of a couple weeks ago, my parents have a new dog. Her name is Dot (Mom's decided to call her Dottie, but I refuse, on principle, to call a dog demented without meeting her first and verifying her personality) and she's about half the size of Gigi. She's some sort of terrier mix, about 4 years old, and was spayed recently after weaning a litter of puppies. They're having some trouble negotiating Dot's introduction to their house, but by and large they seem to be getting along all right.

It's weird to say "my parents' dog" instead of "my dog," but I don't live in Madison anymore, and Dot is not by any stretch of the imagination 'my' dog. Gigi was my dog. When I have the money to afford one, the dog I take home will be my dog. But my parents' pets are no longer mine.

Funny, that. It's not like I had much contact with Gigi in her last years, but she was my childhood dog, and therefore was and always will be one of 'my' dogs.

I still miss her. It doesn't ache anymore, but I suspect it will be a little disconcerting to visit Madison and see a different dog in that house.

( NaNo Word Count )

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Chapter 9 of "Lemonade" is already at 1,400 words. I don't think I've written successive chapters this quickly since... well, since the first couple weeks I was working on "Apartment Manager," actually. I don't usually write very fast.

But I think I'd been dragging my feet on "Lemonade" because the three of them have to have sex -- the point of writing the story was to throw Sasuke into a threesome with Faith and Duo -- and I couldn't quite figure out how to make that happen... and now chapter 8 has given me an emotional crowbar to work with. So I am happy about that.

I also realized that I've been avoiding "Guardian," and I'm not sure why. Plot thread overload, maybe -- I have to stare suspiciously at my outline and make sure I actually need all the scenes I think I have to write. But before that, I really have to sit down and finish "Beauty," so as to have it DONE BY THANSKGIVING, OMG, NO TIME, SAVE ME!

Ahem.

And I've already lost time today by covering half of GS's shift, since he mysteriously failed to turn up at the store, didn't call, and couldn't be reached by phone all day. I made $10 in tips off a lottery player, which was nice, and it's always good to have larger paychecks, but ARGH. I wanted to stay home and WRITE.

*slinks away, grumbling*