valyssia

I’m curious how others deal with the question of gen fic.

I know, I know…that’s not really a question. Just hear me out.

The trouble with categorizing things—any things—is that there are always gray areas. Take my most recent piece, In the Time of Wolves. I’ve labeled it ‘gen fic,’ though the pairing in the fic is obviously Willow/Tara. They were together at that time in the series. In fact, the scene that I’ve written tiles neatly between two scenes of the episode, Forever, the first of which presents the couple in bed for sleepy reasons, not sexy reasons.

The issue I have is whether their togetherness in the series actually turns the story from gen fic to a ’shipcentric piece. The way I assessed that was by asking myself whether Tara could be replaced by another character who has a close friendship with Willow without changing the nature of their relationship or drastically altering the story.

I think that swap could be made rather easily. I’d have to change the location the scene takes place, or at least the location within Willow’s room for many of the characters. Giles obviously wouldn’t be sacked out in bed with Willow were their relationship similar to the one we see in canon. But ‘wow’ wouldn’t this piece be cool if Tara’s role was played by Giles? I could see it easily without altering much of the narrative at all and it’d be a nifty story.

That says to me that this story has much, much less to do with Willow and Tara’s relationship than the actual focus of the plot, Joyce’s passing. Of course how they react to Joyce’s passing will affect how they cope with one another, which will doubtless affect their relationship. However the same can be said for any pair of characters within the series, regardless the nature of their relationship. Xander’s scorn of Spike’s attempt to leave wildflowers at the Summers’ home obviously affects their relationship.

Anyway, that was the rationale I used and I’m not sure it’s right. Would anyone else like to weigh in?

I actually had a lovely birthday this year. Thank you for all of the kindness.

Thank you to theladymerlin and skargasm for the shiny balloons and the pretty pink pony for my Eljay profile page.

Thank you to kerkevik for the cute little drabble. No one has ever written anything for me before, so that was an especially wonderful treat.

Thank you to xclaire_delunex for the beautiful picture and the well wishes that preceded it.

Thank you to velvetwhip for the sparkly greetings and the kindness.

Thank you to whedonist for the sexy e-card, the amusing thoughts and the fresh Garbage. Gotta love Garbage.

I wrote about a thousand words on my birthday. They were fun words and I very much enjoyed playing.

I watched Game of Thrones season two, episode seven. I’m waiting for the finale to render a verdict, but so far G.o.T. lacks something it had last season. I’m not even sure I can quantify what that is. I’ll simply say that I don’t believe it to be quite as good, which still places it head and shoulders above pretty much everything else on television. In fact, it could drop a couple more pegs and remain be perfectly safe. I hope it doesn’t.

My neighbor, Karen, brought me a cute card and took to me to see The Avengers, which was incredibly sweet of her. I understand the popularity now. I haven’t had that much fun at a movie in memory. Not in recent memory, but in memory. Strangely enough it wasn’t a film that I found myself wanting to analyze. It was just fun for the sake of fun and occasionally laugh-out-loud funny. Raw mind candy of the tastiest sort. Very curious. Thank you Joss.

The day wound down with Femslash Today. I was a wee tad late in compiling my issue because of the film. And my father called while I was working. We had a pleasant chat about movies and television, goings and doings, and moving. He and my step mother have found another place to live. He only badgered me a little for my insistence that I finish my Buffyverse projects before I wander out into the snark infested waters of producing original fiction. He’s concerned and he means well. He was also quite flattering. All of the above makes such speeches tolerable, if not enjoyable. A pep talk with guilt.

*laughs*

I concluded my day with a little bit more of The Hunger Games. I’ve been listening to the audiobooks and thoroughly enjoying them. I love the casual style of the first person prose Suzanne Collins produces. Her protagonist, Katniss Everdeen, is wonderfully accessible, sympathetic and well rounded, a strong, yet beautifully flawed female character. The supporting characters are rich. The environments well rendered without weighing the narrative down. I’ve spied a couple of technical issues that have bothered me, but overall the series is very good.

The wound she describes Peeta having in the first book would be a ‘how are you going to spend the last fifteen seconds of your life?’ sort of injury. To my mind he should’ve bled out long before infection or blood poisoning set in.

I also had a great deal of trouble grocking how Rue might jump tree to tree and not rustle the branches, thus alerting the ‘career tributes’ to her presence. The ‘tracker jacker’ scene was particularly difficult for me to get my head around. Perhaps there was some wind that I missed in the narrative that masked the sound? I don’t know. The reality is that while a ninety pound girl sounds very petite, the leaping is still the equivalent of chucking nearly two bags of dog food at the top of a tree and expecting silence.

Yes, I know, I’m a bitch.

I can’t help it.

Hope that doesn’t spoil it for anyone. Feel free to disagree. That won’t be anything new.

Have I mentioned how much of a screw up I am recently?

I had this noble goal that I’d get the first draft of the next scene done this weekend. I’ve been pissing about with P.S. instead. Please feel free to throw things. I won’t mind.

About that sigh…

Menomegirl needed someone to help with the Sunnydale Herald and I raised my hand. I’m still not quite sure how I’ll manage it, but I’m going to give it my best shot. Hopefully that’ll be enough. It rarely is, but I can hope.

So, those of you who’ve received a random, unprovoked, perhaps even unwanted friending from yours truly and came here wondering why…that’d be the sitch.

My friend Tamoline and I discussed my previous entry this evening. We both felt that for the curious our conversation might be an interesting read.

Note: Tamoline’s statements are in italics.

( Our conversation is beneath the cut. )

I realized something this weekend that’s so ridiculously simple that I feel I should just say it.

A novel is really just a bunch of short stories that are all tied together with an introduction, a point of contention and a climax that provides some resolution to conflict. That’s it. I’ve been approaching writing novels the same way anyone else might approach writing a short story. I just write lots of them that are connected by common plot threads.

Before you guys write me off as some sort of lunatic…

The dentist was actually really nice. I just moved, so a decent dentist on the first try was a major score. The twisted logic in the last post simply appealed to my rather warped, morbid sense of humor, but that might’ve been the drugs talking.

Nope. Not the drugs. The last sentence still makes me giggle. It amuses me the same way the black knight scene in Monty Python and the Holy Grail does.

Anyway, what actually sucked was breaking my tooth the day before my birthday and spending the weekend feeling like total crap as a result. It was just bad luck. I broke it on a stupid breath mint after supper.

Lame, I know.

Talking with my friends and family didn’t suck either. It’s nice to know that a few people out there still care about me. My father listened to a couple of my crap story ideas and tried to be encouraging. He made me laugh too. My friend Dylan, whom I’ve known since my junior year of high school, pretty much did the same. He’s a writer as well and he shared a few of his own ideas with me.

The fact that I’d just gotten back from said dentist was just pure dumb luck.

Actually, it was kind of my fault. In fact this whole thing is. I text messaged my pop from the waiting room at the dentist’s office with a snarky ‘Shoot me now, please?’ He called wanting to know what was up and the rest is history.

What a strange day.

The novocaine headache has mostly worn off and I may decide to put an hour or two into writing after all. My mouth still feels like I chewed glass, but that’s pretty much to be expected.

I chewed the inside of my cheek and parts of my tongue to tender, throbby, leaky things today by spending too much time on the phone with lovely people to whom I normally don’t speak so much. You see, my friends and family have the same sense of timing I do. That is to say, not much.

So, I’m grumpy and bitchy and mean and I plan to spend the bulk of my night propped in front of the TV. No work for me. Pain pills and hopefully, a nap. And maybe another nap when I finish with the first nap.

But before I do that I wanted to ask you folks something. Have you noticed that we pay medical professionals exorbitant amounts of money to do things to us that might otherwise be perfectly legitimate grounds for murder?

He took a drill to my head, so I shot him.

That sounds reasonable doesn’t it? I think it does…or not terribly unreasonable. The bitch of it is you add ‘he’s a dentist’ to the picture and the whole ‘justifiable homicide’ thing goes right out the window.

Who makes these rules?

Does anyone else ever get the sense when they’re writing that what they’re really doing is making a mess? Is that just me? I can’t produce much more than a thousand words without going back to remove the rough edges and sort out the chaos. And even after I do that, I feel like what I have is still just a mess.

Nothing I write is ever worth reading until I’ve gone over it enough times that I can bear to look at it anymore…which of course means it’s not worth reading.