This is not a post

Fic update! I posted the first chapter of TWC4 at FF.net and AO3. Since it's a replacement of the chapter that is already there on FF.net, they won't register it as an update until I actually add a new chapter, so this is the "unofficial prerelease". :P I am, however, hoping to have chapter 2 done before the end of the month. :)

I'm so relieved to get this done. I had actually planned on working on this during October, but stress at the beginning of the month basically gave me artistic block on all fronts. I've only JUST started writing again. Hoping this is the start of something good! :)

If I can get to chapter 2 quickly enough (I don't know if that will work or not though) I'm going to work on "Those Daring McQuacks". I have the structure outlined and I tried starting act 2 a couple of months ago but i stalled on the scene. I was able to write it, it just wasn't paced particularly well and I was having trouble with what I wanted to say. I hope I can pick it up again and fix it.

Anyway, I don't think anyone checks this blog if I dont' put up links or reminders, but just in case people do, fic update message and general ramblings. ^_^ Hi!

It's October now?

So I only updated once in September. Then I came on here and I was like "Oh it's stil September, that's good! Oh wait." Because I remember very little sometimes. Bah!

I thought I was going to work on "Those Daring McQuacks" before I started on TWC4, and I even thought out some scenes and had them planned, and it just will not come out. I mean, I have written a few things, but they really really need rewriting and editing. And I'm just stuck on finishing them and connecting the dialogue and stuff. Bah. Also, things in real life land the past couple of weeks have just about killed my creativity drive :P

However, this afernoon I had a few good ideas for at least completing the first scene of TWC4's first chapter (I put up about 800 words as a placeholder on FF.net; the completed scene will only be the first half of chapter one, but it's a start) and surprisingly I was able to get some of it done :) So to maybe keep my inspiration going, I'm gonna post what little I just did since I won't have the chapter finished until the end of the month at the earliest; if I can keep my momentum though I might be able to get THIS scene finished over the weekend. I'm also not posting the part that's already up at FF.net so, if you have no context, the chapter begins with a moderate earthquake. This is immediately after it's over with.

*****

Beth held the glasses up directly in front of her face and squinted at them; she still could barely make them out. She felt them gingerly and when it didn't seem as if anything was going to gouge her, she put them on. One of the lenses had a spider-webbing of cracks over it, and the bridge was bent. She sighed wearily. "Occupational hazard."

Turning to Gosalyn, she took a breath and tried to make the best of it. "So! Better clean up that glass, huh? Do you have a dustpan anywhere nearby?"

"You bet!" Gosalyn cried, and took off for the kitchen. By the time she returned, Beth was kneeling by the wall, carefully picking up shards of glass and looking out of only one eye. "Uh, does that make it easier?"

"Huh? Oh, no - just, the crack in this is really getting in my way. I thought if I just looked through one eye - but it's making my head hurt." She placed a handful of glass into the dustpan and sighed, while Gosalyn loaded her arms full of larger shards and dropped them into the pile Beth had already started. Beth jumped at the sound. "Um, could you be a bit more gentle than that?"

"Why? It's not like it's gonna matter if it breaks *more*."

Beth shook her head. "You know, I think I should handle this. I don't want you getting hurt on broken glass."

"Oh come on! I know what I'm doing!" Gosalyn protested vehemently. Beth frowned and picked up another few pieces. As she turned to slowly place them carefully in the dustpan, Gosalyn continued, "Honestly, I'm insulted! You really think just because I'm a kid, I'm going to - YAAAAAH! AAAIEEEEE!"

"OH MY GOD!" Beth yelled, her eyes widening as she turned back to Gosalyn who was holding her hand to her side and grimacing in pain.

"OHHHH NOOOO! MY JUGULAR!!!" Gosalyn screamed, and Beth stared in horror, uncertain if she should try to make a tourniquet or run to call 911 first; then she realized that Gosalyn was laughing.

"Ahahaha... Just kidding," said the girl, pulling her hand out from her shirt and wiggling it. She caught sight of Beth's expression, which was still utterly horror-stricken. "Heh heh... sorry, that was probably not nearly as funny to you as it was to me."

Beth finally found her voice, which sounded flat even to her ears as she said beseechingly, "Please let me do this?"

Gosalyn relented, and went to sit on the couch and see if the earthquake had affected her video game console.

It's OK. Really.

I need someone to tell me that it's OK for me to not reply to everything in my inbox, and just concentrate on my fanfic for a night. Seriously.

I also need someone to openly point out the irony that I *only* start to think about replying to emails or DA comments when I have decided that I need to spend a night working on my fanfic.

And as a third point, I will now take bets as to whether or not I will actually get any fic writing done before I call it a night, or if I'll just procrastinate it out. Bah!

Ever notice I'm much more likely to update here when I am procrastinating, too? Double-bah!

Sheesh, well, bye-bye April

Man, I didn't get a lot done fic-wise this month. :)

This evening I decided I'd try to do some writing. I have done none, and I do'nt know if I will get any done after this. :P So hard to FOCUS. I need some inspiration.

I'm sorry, I thought I had more to write about. :)

EDIT: So I did get some writing done, though nothing substantial... DURNIT. I got a small portion of the start of chapter 2 of TWC3's second act, and somewhere close to the beginning of TWC4 (the music I was listening to demanded that I work on that scene). I guess there's really only so much you can do during an hour's worth of time. But I need a kick in ze pants to get me workin' on real plot content. :P

Someone inspire me! Pweeeeeease?

Love Comes Quickly

First: So sorry I have not replied to any of the replies I received on my other posts. At this point they're old enough that it probably won't happen, unless I find the time to make a new post specifically to answer. :P Sorry! But moving forward I'll try to be more reactive! I appreciated the responses anyway!

Second: WILL I FIND TIME TO WORK ON FIC OR WILL I KEEP PROCRASTINATING?

Third: A beautiful (is that the right word? no) song by the Pet Shop Boys which kind of thematically works to *one* of my fics... try and guess which. :D



I love the Pet Shop Boys. I also love people who parody the Pet Shop Boys. So for that reason and having nothing at all to do with fanfic or Darkwing Duck, here is a video from Flight of the Conchords.



"Counting out coins at the 7-11 from a quarter past six to a quarter to seven. The manager, Bevan, starts to abuse me: hey man, I just want some muesli."

WOOT!

Wow. So I'm a few more sentences away from being finished with TWC2. *sigh*

I'm going to edit it over the next couple of days and going to try to have the very earliest beginnings of TWC3 ready to post before I put up the final chapter, so that anyone who is curious about the next fic won't read the start of the old version and go "Huh? Why does this not match up at all?"

Looks like it won't make *quite* 6,000 words, but it's over 5,000 and as I said I have a few more sentences to go.

Well, no spoilers in this entry!

Meanwhile, I'm in the process of starting to put my fics up at An Archive of Our Own, because the ads at fanfic.net are killing me. Seriously, I keep having to force a shut down of my browser because these ads trying to get me to download a virus/spyware are all over.

Ew, speaking of which, i'd better run my spyware cleaner just to be safe. :( If I find anything I'm going to need to go change all my passwords. :P

Now here's what's really frustrating. I had an idea of something to post about here this evening, and now I don't knwo what it was, at all. RRGH. I hate that. I will say that I replied to the comment that was left in my last post, so that's there as a second comment...

Oh yeah, well, one other thing I was wondering about, though I don't think I'm going to get my answer here since this isn't really a discussionable forum. But I'll put it here for now anyway. *G* I am hoping, with TWC2 out of the way, to keep my momentum going and spend the next 6 or so months working on two fics at the same time (as i've mentioned before), one a rewrite of TWC3 and the other a new fic in teh continuity. But I'm starting to wonder if it would be worth my time to work on new stuff right now, or if I should focus on just getting the rewrites done first. I know my motto is to work on whatever I'm inspired on, but right now I feel like I could push myself to do either one (or try for both); the last time I tried to do a rewrite and a current fic at the same time I got writer's block for, quite literally, a year. To be fair I think the fact that I was pregnant for most of that time period had something to do with it, but still. I worry. ;)

If I'm going to only focus on one, I should focus on the rewrite, right? That'll benefit more people. I just wonder how much of an audience I have for new fics right now, which is too bad, b/c things are about to start happening in those new fics. Oh well... someone will get there eventually. ;)

Boo on me!

Yeah I keep saying I'm going to post more often, don't I? Okay, here's the deal this time around. I have, for the past three or so weeks, just not been writing. It's not even writer's block, it's just like a general indifference. Oh, I intend to write while I'm not at home. Then I get home and it's like "Naaaahhhh, not tonight."

Well, tonight I forced myself to finish a chapter of "All About Elizabeth" that had been sitting in near-completion for about three weeks (seriously, since the middle of August) and get that done, and since I don't feel like starting the second-to-last chapter of "Double-Plait Bolt" right yet I'm going to do the note-thing instead. The reason I put that off is because I am usually coding it for my website at the same time (let me at some point go into the sheer futility of this exercise, but not now) and I'm lazy about that. :P

Anyway though! Stay tuned directly for some (surprisingly short this time, I think) notes on Act II of "Double-Plait Bolt"'s rewrite!

June: Tidbits?

Heh, so here's some of the usual:

1) Waaah writer's block sucks. :P (I actually have been writing the past couple of days, but slowly and with a great sense of awkwardness; I really want to be done with this chapter so I can post it)

2) Good golly it's been how long since I've posted here?! (Maybe I should make an effort to post once a week, or... something)

3) Blah blah, lots of rambling with lots of parenthetical comments!

Moving on to less generic, more specific comments:

a) Thank you Dharma for your comments on my last post! I love reading your take on the characters, always. I'm especially fond of your take on LP, actually; it's like it gives me permission to write him the way I like to write him. ^_~ Any more musing you care to do on any aspect of the series, I for one would be very interested in reading it!

b) I am terribly terribly grateful to Eric, Amanda, and Icequeenkitty for their gifts to me of fanfiction. I will be posting more about this in my LJ, but I think the most detailed postings will be here b/c I would like to talk about Beth's role in them and how different they all are and how awesome they all are too. I also want to say, to anyone who intended to write for me and didn't manage it: don't sweat it, because it's very very likely that I would be *exactly* the same as you in that situation. If you *wanted* to do it that's more than sweet enough! I am soooo low on fic inspiration that even when I promise it I rarely deliver. Sigh. So yeah, the ones who wrote are not necessarily any more awesome than the ones who did not, but they do have the extra aspect of me having something to explicitly gush over. ^_~ (This will be easier once AMANDA UPLOADS HER FIC *poke poke* I am on the verge of typing it in myself just so people can read it... Which is probably not at all true, really, I doubt I'd spontaneously do that without her permission... but whoooo knooooows what desperate acts I may resort to...)

c) I was so, so right about that scene that's been giving me trouble, the one where Beth shows up at the Mallard house for the first time. It's NOT that hard at all but it's going so awkwardly for me, just because I've attached all this importance to it in my head. Argh. It feels like it's really overwritten - and so, for that matter, does a lot of the Launchpad stuff. I really need to simplify but I feel like I have a lot to *do* so that makes it tougher.

And a few things I think I might write about later:

i) A handful of soundtrack picks for various fics ("All About Elizabeth" has the most, "High Dry and Flooded" has a few, and otherwise I may have a short list of just your basic "character" music)

ii) I feel like I should make posts with "notes" on each chapter of the fics I've been posting. Not huge ones like these, but little ones with a list of the references that pop up, any trivia about a scene, etc.

iii) I like cheese. (In other words I don't have much else to say.)

Man! I really hope I can finish this stupid chapter by this weekend and get it posted! Part of why I'm getting antsy with it is because I decided a while ago I was going to finish Act II before I posted more on AAE, and it's been so long since I've written much on that story that I'm not 100% sure I'll be able to get back into THAT, either! Ay-yi-yi. I spent soooo long with writer's block, then I had about a year without it and it was fabulous, and now it's BACK. And within a year or so I'm likely to lose the little tiny bit of time I have to write, and I have SOOOO much left to do... whine whine... ;) It's fanfiction. Lighten up, Rebecca. :D

Well, hope everyone is happy! (And still interested in reading this stuff!)

Characterization notes

Ugh, I have had writer's block the past couple of weeks. Yeah, I know, *again*. Well, in this case it's one of those things where I am not even thinking about writing as much so I can't pull myself together to DO it when I have the time. I did manage to outline my ideas for the last chapter of act II of TWC1, though.

Since the last stuff I posted (and really, practically the last stuff I worked on) was LP-heavy, this is a good time to ramble about my characterization of LP! (uh-huh, sure.) I've never made it any secret at all that I'm a big fan of LP's. Unfortunately that doesn't mean I'm able to write him or anything. *G* Out of all the characters of this show I think I've always been weakest at writing Launchpad... There are a few reasons for this, I've decided over the past few months.

A big reason is because of the disconnect between "Darkwing" Launchpad and "DuckTales" Launchpad. I mean essentially there really are two Launchpads, with the earlier one being the more active one and the later one being much more reduced in role and scope. LP was always comic relief and always kind of good-naturedly dumb, but he had a much more active role in "DuckTales". DWD's Launchpad is a more passive character, often there primarily to provide a punchline more than play an active role in the crimefighting. They definitely stepped outside of that limitation quite often - not only in eps like "Water Way to Go" when LP gets to be the main hero or stuff like that, but just in general at times LP contributed more. But ultimately the character was not the same as on "DuckTales", he was kind of domesticated.

Don't get me wrong; I don't care at all. :D But it made it harder for me to write him, especially with any real sense of personalitiy. My liking for LP didn't translate into deepening him or revitalizing him as a heroic type or anything, it kind of translated as me thinking he was a great guy and would be a great boyfriend (to be honest: I never wanted him to be MY boyfriend. I have Ryouga for that, thanks) and so I just wrote him as Mr. Great Boyfriend. Which is not really fair to LP because it just, ultimately further reduces him.

I also made the huuuuge, but understandable given the age I was in, mistake of injecting the early stories with a healthy dose of angst. Did I say "healthy"? I'm not sure that's the right word for it. ;D It's excessive. I was young. A lot of the stuff that I was writing about was the sort of thing actually going around in my social circles (at least the self-pity and emo stuff, if not the actual events) but that doesn't make it less annoying to read. *G* Somewhere after "The Bride Wore Black" even I was sick of it and I took a vow: I was not going to write ANY more angst if I could help it. Not unless it actually fit the story and character, in any case! And in the past 11 years I've pretty much stuck by that, good for me. :)

So in revisiting these early stories, I'm trying to stick to that vow again. (as we can see, I apparently have decided it's VERY necessary to the plot in AAE, as it's laid on thick and heavy.) I've wanted for a while to improve on my take on Launchpad - he deserves more than just "Beth's would-be boyfriend". I've never even given a fully satisfactory reason as to why he fell for her in the first place. Not only that, but he's barely even Darkwing's sidekick in these stories, so I want to get him at least back up to THAT status.

Which basically means reinventing how I see him, let alone how I write him. It was about six or so months ago that I started realizing I write him as a very, VERY passive character. I'm infrequently "in his head" and when I am, it's usually in response to something someone else is doing rather than him doing anything. So I gave him more action in "High, Dry, and Flooded" - more sidekick action in particular - which was a good start. This attempt at breaking out of the "passive" role also led to me surprising myself by writing his confession to Beth at the end of that story. In the five ore more years I had been planning that fic, that scene was NEVER in the outline. Then about two weeks before I wrote it, it popped into my head. Surprise! ;D And it was totally right, and I never saw it coming.

It's been similar attempts at getting "into his head" in TWC1, perhaps to varying degrees of success. This is sort of my big chance to not only give him a bit more depth, but to in fact decide just HOW I want to present him in these fics. I can essentially start over. I mean, I know it's not going to be very different from what I've been writing lately, but I can lay down a more concrete base to work with.

I want to give him a few more layers, and as with any other character I really care for (and feel for) that means I want him to have some low points too. I want him to get a little irritated, act a little thoughtlessly, generally be wrong some of the time. I do believe that Launchpad is a sweet guy who couldn't be mean if he were being paid to be so; doesn't mean he can't occasionally say or do the wrong thing without realizing it. I don't know exactly how all this will come out, but we'll see. :)

In terms of character traits... well, for one, I don't tend to go with people who say that they think LP is "smarter than he lets on". I'll agree that he seems a bit dimmer than he did on "DuckTales", but I'd rather just write somewhere in between there than speculate that maybe he plays it dumb to keep DW's ego happy. I don't see any evidence of that, I think they just tweaked the character for a show that was based more in comedy than DT had been. LP is... um... not a thinker. So what? I like 'em big and dumb. (Once again, we have Ryouga for evidence.) ^_~ Nah, but seriously, I tend to like characters the way they are - flaws and all. If a character I like has a negative trait I rarely see it as character assassination, unless I think it's too played up at that character's expense (like Joxer on "Xena: Warrior Princess", don't even get me STARTED).

The brief, cartoony, choppy feel of the early stories allowed for a certain suspension of disbelief as regards LP falling for Beth. We may never know WHY, exactly, but it happened and it's established and we'll just go with that, right? Fine... except that I don't write that way anymore. That's why in the end I need to flesh it out. I need to think of the characters as *characters* instead of shadows, and I need a reason why LP would fall for this girl, a girl who thinks of herself as invisible and does a good job of convincing the rest of the world of it, too. I've no doubt that he'd be friendly with her, start up a conversation, find her pleasant enough, but fall in love? Why?

I've got reasons, finally. I hope I'll eventually get to them. For now I'll say, in the course of TWC1, you may be wondering if he's actually falling for her yet. Nope. Not within this story. There may be a little more than he's letting on to himself... maybe... but right now they're both just forging a tenuous friendship. Look for developments in fics to come, however.... IF I ever manage to write 'em. :P

Whiiiine. I hate writer's block. :P

Geez. I just had to log in three times, I kid you not.

So I set myself a goal that I would have Act II of TWC1 done by April 15th, and when I set it it seemed entirely feasible. Then all of a sudden, THE WRITER'S BLOCK GOT ME and now... oh lord. I don't think I had worked on it for about two weeks. I have to finish the second chapter (which is maaaaybe halfway done) and then do the entire scene at the house and I just, every time I think about it I get sweaty.

So don't think about it, right? Because obviously that's what's giving me the block, right? I would think so too but I don't seem to be able to easily write much of ANYthing! Argh! Sadness! I'm just trying to do it as I go and it's not coming out.

I did just sit down and force myself to do a bit, and I don't like it. I'll probably be slightly more okay with it tomorrow or whenever I manage to re-read it... I just wish I liked it more NOW. Usually I'm at least mostly satisfied with it. It's introspective stuff and it just kind of goes from moderately awkward dialogue into several paragraphs of unfocused internal narrative and... there's no flow. FLOW IS IMPORTANT. Flow is NECESSARY. I love my flow. :(

Oh well. Maybe once I force a little more, I'll get the floodgates back open and I'll be able to at least finish chapter 2 this weekend. I'd like to get all of Act II done before I go back to AAE, but we'll see what happens; if I switch back after chapter 2 then AAE might end up being the easier one to work on. We'll see. I was finding the flashbacks verrry intimidating. Oh, I am just not in a writing headspace right now. :(