edenfalling: headshot of a raccoon, looking left (raccoon)
Happy New Year! Also, it is Yuletide reveal day! I wrote six fics in six different fandoms, for a total of ~10,000 words. I have listed them in the order I wrote them.

-----

1 ) A Woman with Silver Eyes: Kate Welker, the Rolling Stone Interview -- The Girl with the Silver Eyes - Willo Davis Roberts, 3,750 words. Twenty-five years after the Institute of Psychic Phenomena went public, Rolling Stone interviews Kate Welker, one of the Curtis Pharmaceuticals quartet and a long-time activist for both animal rights and the acceptance of the psychically gifted. Background Katie/OFC. (Written for [archiveofourown.org profile] Macadamanaity.)

Thoughts: This is not the fandom I was matched on... )

-----

2 ) Loopholes -- The Homeward Bounders - Diana Wynne Jones, 2,650 words. There's no rule saying you can't have more than one anchor. (Written for [archiveofourown.org profile] anait.)

Thoughts: Anait asked for a way to make Jamie happy, which is the next best thing to impossible... )

-----

3 ) Self Made -- Lucifer, 250 words. How Mazikeen chose her face. (Written for nextian, aka [archiveofourown.org profile] cosmogyral.)

Thoughts: When the list of all prompts went up, I looked at the pinch hitters' requests first... )

-----

4 ) Healing -- Black Jewels - Anne Bishop, 1,400 words. Wilhelmina Benedict visits her sister after Queen of the Darkness. Background Daemon/Jaenelle. (Written for [archiveofourown.org profile] random_chick.)

Thoughts: This is another pinch hitter request... )

-----

5 ) Dum vivimus, vivamus -- Seaward - Susan Cooper, 800 words. Caught between grief for her parents and longing for Westerly, Cally dreams of Snake. Mild Cally/Snake. (Written for [archiveofourown.org profile] pikkugen.)

Thoughts: I wrote a Seaward fic for lesserstorm two years ago. When pikkugen commented on it earlier this year... )

-----

6 ) As You Wish -- The Dark Is Rising - Susan Cooper, 1,125 words. Will was the one who kept them all together. Bran was the one who thought to ask why he bothered. Mild Will/Bran. (Written for [archiveofourown.org profile] Aishuu.)

Thoughts: This is basically an interest payment for taking so long to finish 'Friends and Neighbors'... )

---------------------------------------------

Yuletide statistics

This is the fourth year I have participated in Yuletide. The first year (on the old archive) I wrote one story at 4,200 words. The second year I wrote six stories for a total of 7,400 words; the longest was 2,800 words and the shortest 150. The third year I only wrote two stories (on account of being in Seville), one at 7,200 words and the other at 1,600, for a total of 8,800. This year I was back up to six stories, for a combined total of 10,000 words; the longest was 3,750 words and the shortest 250.

So my total word count has gone up each year, though the number of fics is all over the place.

I seem to write a lot of Diana Wynne Jones and Susan Cooper stories for Yuletide -- two for The Homeward Bounders, two for Hexwood, two for Seaward, and two for The Dark Is Rising. That is 8 of 15 stories, or half my total output. The other stories are a scattershot mix: one for American Gods, one for the Book of Ruth, one for Meredith Pierce's The Darkangel trilogy, one Enchanted Forest Chronicles/Hikaru no Go crossover fusion, one for The Girl with the Silver Eyes, one for Lucifer, and one for the Black Jewels series.

The thing to note about these is that they are all text-based canons rather than audiovisual, and the majority of them are YA fantasy novels. Clearly I have a Yuletide type -- or, more accurately, these are the fandoms I know well enough to write something pretty much off the top of my head, or am just so ridiculously in love with that I carry the books to my parents' house with plans to write treats.
edenfalling: stylized black-and-white line art of a sunset over water (Default)
1. I am attempting to read through the Yuletide archives, but I am only barely into C in the main archive and at the tail end of D in the Madness archive. (I go more or less alphabetically, with occasional diversions to things that look particularly interesting in rec posts.) This is partly because I keep having to be at work, partly because I am just very tired this week, and partly because I am trying to keep on top of some other internet things instead of letting them slide until 2012.

I may make a rec post on Saturday, but probably not. I don't think I really have the energy.

-----

2. My six Yuletide fics split neatly into three levels in terms of hit counts and audience response: two very low, two low-to-middling, and two almost-popular. One of the two almost-popular stories does not surprise me, but the other (which happens to be my assignment, yay!), DOES surprise me. I did not know there was such pent-up demand to read fic for that source. Then again, it is exactly the sort of thing that one falls fiercely in love with in late childhood/early adolescence, so perhaps it's not so surprising that people are pleased to see it getting a bit of attention.

(I am not fiercely in love with the source myself -- mostly I just think it's cute and sweet -- but I am pretty sure that if I'd first encountered it between the ages of 8 and 14 rather than at 29, I would have adored it beyond words. It has a similar feel to several books that I did first encounter in that stretch and do love madly, passionately, and all the way down to the marrow of my bones.)

-----

3. I am gathering links and stuff for an end-of-year writing roundup post. This has been manageable from January through November, but December is giving me a freaking headache. It's my own fault, of course, for writing all the "3-sentence" ficlets, but archivist!Liz is not pleased with writer!Liz at the moment.

On the bright side, I definitely cracked 100,000 words for the second year in a row, so go me!

On the less bright side, all my old WIPs are still WIPs, and I added a new one ("Weregild") to the list. *sigh* I don't know why I keep doing this to myself.
edenfalling: stylized black-and-white line art of a sunset over water (Default)
I wrote one more Yuletide treat last night, for a total of six stories: three in the regular collection and three in the Madness collection. I have heard from four of my recipients, who seem to like the stories, so that is a bit of a relief. *bites nails over the remaining two*

Yesterday I got up shortly after 9am, but breakfast didn't happen until after 10, due to technical difficulties with the blueberry pancakes. *grin* After breakfast we opened presents, which involves periodically 'helping' the dog open a gift so she will wander off to abuse a new toy or chew on a dried pig's ear and not be constantly underfoot in the wrapping paper.

Around 1pm I took the dog out for a walk, after which my family collectively failed to get our act together and choose a holiday movie to go see, so we ended up sitting around at home reading random books and magazines instead. (Mom and Vicky also took the dog out for another walk, searching for a couple ponds in the wilds of the Drew University campus forest.) Then we had snacks and burra-peg champagne cocktails around 5pm, while playing 8 rounds of hearts and two rounds of rummy -- we had wanted to play Clue, but unfortunately all the family boardgames are currently down in Vicky's apartment in D.C., since she'd been using them as part of her assisstant teaching volunteer internship thingy. But card games are fun too!

Dinner was tasty, dessert was also tasty, and generally it was a good day. :-)
edenfalling: circular blue mosaic depicting stylized waves (ocean mosaic)
In physical space, I made out like a bandit courtesy of my family and friends. And in virtual space, I got an awesome story!

You get a lifetime: It takes Wendy about a day to find out. (2,500 words)

[ETA post-reveal: written by [livejournal.com profile] zombieboyband!]

This is a Mysterious Skin story set just after the end of the movie, dealing with Wendy and Neil and their complicated friendship. It's also a little about their joint friendship with Eric, and Eric's friendship with Brian, and how Brian and Neil finally meeting and talking has shaken things up.

I warn you that the movie is about potential trigger warning ), and the story obvious touches on that, albeit indirectly. But it's sharp and clear-eyed and angry and sad, and somehow ends on a note of tentative hope rather than the lacerating revelations that close the film.

Go read it. It's beautiful.

-----

ETA: And here are some of [livejournal.com profile] zombieboyband's thoughts about Yuletide, after the reveal.
edenfalling: stylized black-and-white line art of a sunset over water (Default)
Dear Yuletide Writer,

Hi, and thank you in advance for writing a story for me! I'm pretty easy to please -- unless you write a story that's only a long sex scene, I'll be thrilled just to get a fic in one of the fandoms I asked for. *grin* But I realize that's not terribly helpful, so here's the (very!) long version. (I am sorry for the tl;dr, but I like to talk about things I love and I figure more details are better than fewer.)

---------------

General Information )

Okay. On to specific fandoms.

---------------

The Lions of Al-Rassan )

Lucifer )

The Dispossessed )

Mysterious Skin - TRIGGER WARNING )

And that is that.
edenfalling: stylized black-and-white line art of a sunset over water (Default)
Official Yuletide story has been edited. Thank you [personal profile] marycontrary and [livejournal.com profile] cherokee1!

First Yuletide Treat has been written, cursorily edited, and posted.

Dog has had her midday walk.

Lunch has been eaten.

Now I am going to pretend to be sociable with my family for an hour or so before sneaking away to write some more. :-)

ETA 4:45pm - Was sociable with Dad and the dog, then escaped to write another treat. This one is very short and in the newly opened Yuletide Madness 2011 collection instead of the main 1000+ word Yuletide 2011 collection.

ETA 1:00am - Wrote a second full-length treat and a second Madness treat, for a total of five stories. Three of them are in fandoms I have previously written. One of them is in a fandom I have at least talked about. And the last one (my assignment) is in a fandom I had never so much as heard of until I got my assignment this year.

I may write another treat or two tomorrow afternoon since the Madness collection won't open until the 26th, but for now, I am going to bed. Yay Christmas!
edenfalling: stylized black-and-white line art of a sunset over water (Default)
1. I made a few mostly cosmetic edits on my Yuletide story and uploaded the beta draft to AO3. This is because I will be in a minivan heading to New Jersey tomorrow evening when the deadline arrives, and it is better to have a slightly untidy story than no story. :-) (In all honesty, the story will work as is. I just want it to work better.)

-----

2. This new interface thingy LJ just rolled out, I do not like it. Not at all. The default pages are ugly and the margins are awful. I want more white space at the edge of my pages, thank you. I also want the light blue shading at the top of the comments section to go die in a fire. It is vaguely painful to look at for too long -- not enough color contrast, I think.

Plus all comment subject lines have been summarily made to disappear and turn into bold headings in the comments themselves, which is just... I don't know who thought that was a good idea, or why, but it is a BAD IDEA. It destroys functionality for no reason. Why was this not TESTED or run past the user base?

...

I am beginning to think about redirecting all comments to Dreamwidth and seeing if I can recreate even more of my LJ reading list over here. Also I may have to embark on the long and unspeakably tedious task of switching all the links in my master fic lists to point to DW entries, and all the internal links (forward to next chapter, back to previous chapter, jump to main index page, that sort of thing) to point to DW as well. That will take forever and a day, but I suspect it may be worth the headache in the long run.

The ONLY good thing I have noticed in the new LJ code is that on the mobile version, when I hit the back button from an entry to my f-list, I no longer get jumped up to the top of the page; instead, I only get jumped up one or two entries, which is still not ideal but is at least vaguely more functional. And that is not worth all the new idiocy in the slightest.

-----

3. PM has been massively overstaffing the smoke shop this week, in anticipation of last minute holiday shoppers. Today was actually quite slow, but I'm pretty sure that's because it rained all day. Tomorrow should be busier.

Anyway, I left about two hours before the scheduled end of my shift, because there was no point in me just standing around with nothing to do. I am of two minds about leaving early. On the one hand, I don't earn money if I'm not on the clock. On the other hand, if I go home, that means less work-related stress and more chances to take a nap. I am a big fan of naps. :-)
edenfalling: colored line-art drawing of a three-scoop ice cream sundae (ice cream sundae)
My story is done in rough draft!

...Oh god, now I need to edit it.

Hey, is anyone willing to beta for me? You don't actually need to know the fandom in question -- the nature of the story is such that all relevant details are included and explained as you read. Mostly I need to know if it flows naturally, if I'm being tin-eared anywhere, if I've made any spelling or grammar goofs, and if my structure accurately mimics the particular real-world thing I chose to copy. It's between 1,000 and 5,000 words.

I can post the fic as-is and edit any time up through late on the 24th, so I don't need the beta job back until Saturday afternoon.

Help, please?
edenfalling: stylized black-and-white line art of a sunset over water (Default)
1. My Yuletide story is easily over 1000 words. My Yuletide story is also not remotely near done. *headdesk*

Oh well, at least the writing is going smoothly now. I finally found the right opening and from there onward it's pretty stream-of-consciousness until I find something that feels like a good note on which to wind down and exit.

-----

2. I may have kinda-sorta outlined a story that acts as a sequel to Little Sister and a prequel to Grass and Silence, the snippet I wrote for [livejournal.com profile] animus_wyrmis. It is the tale of how Innenya the serpent (otherwise known as the Lady of the Green Kirtle) went about inciting rebellion in Narnia and destroying the Tree that kept Jadis out for nearly nine hundred years. Which is all well and good and fascinating, except it is not any of the various things I am supposed to be writing now and stole over an hour of potentially useful time. Argh!

...

*tucks outline away for future reference*

-----

3. There is no point three.
edenfalling: stylized black-and-white line art of a sunset over water (Default)
Idea and structural gimmick: check

Outline: not really, but kind of irrelevant given the structure

Canon research: all relevant details in a Word document for easy reference

Background research: in progress

Bonus evil genius gimmick: good to go

Wordcount: 400 so far

This story is going to be fun. *grin*

---------------

In other news, I am mostly done with Christmas cards, I have one gift ready to mail tomorrow morning, and I have been doing a bunch of online purchasing for other people. Man, presents are hard. I really envy people who have the gift of knowing what other people will like. I have never been good at that.

Profile

edenfalling: stylized black-and-white line art of a sunset over water (Default)
Elizabeth Culmer

July 2025

S M T W T F S
  1 2345
6789101112
13141516171819
20212223242526
2728293031  

Tags

Expand Cut Tags

No cut tags