(no subject)

[randomling]

• I'm so impatient for SeSa sign-ups. I'm taking part in a test for it this weekend (about which I'm very excited!), and just the thought of it is getting me all geared-up for the real thing. Roll on Christmas!
  
  
• I'm doing some serious thinking about my writing process and what works and doesn't work for me. So far I have discovered that the half-hour goals are fabulous for producing words, but not so much for producing words I like. (Whether that's an indication that I need to do more pre-planning, write slower, or be prepared to do more editing work, I'm not entirely sure.) I know that an exhaustive scene-by-scene plan doesn't work for me, as it tends to kill my desire to write the story, which is a fragile and precious thing. More thoughts on this as I continue.
  
  
• I feel a bit like something is missing from my bittybang story, but I've resolved not to look at it again - beyond writing the required summary for the challenge - until the start of November. It's cool to have the time and leisure both to edit it, and to give myself some space and perspective on it before I start the editing process. (Weird, though - this'll be the first story I've ever tried that with. I hope I don't kill it like that.) Not sure if this is the right thing, but all the writing advice I've ever read says it's easier to edit something it if you put it away for a while. Time to find out if that's true for me.
  
  
• I need to start thinking about when and how to run my Badfic Challenge next year. The only challenge I've ever done was the June Bug (which was pretty easy and I still sucked at it!) so I'm not sure how to go about it, really. Any tips, seasoned fans?
  
  
• I'm worried about how the hell I'm going to finish "The Plan". What I've written so far is really different from what I wanted to write and while I've never written something this long, I discovered that getting down words-any-words isn't all that hard. I've never edited something this long, either, though, and the sheer size of the job ahead of me is really intimidating. Plus, I've only written half of the story, so I need to put the editing part of it out of my mind for now.
  
  
• I think that's all for now!

Comments

[phaballa.livejournal.com]

Re: the Plan, I think what you should do is let me read it and then I can tell you what I think :P Or maybe I just want to read it. But seriously, all I can tell you is my process, which is: I have an idea, I come up with a conflict (usually internal) and then I write my story around that. No scene is extraneous. I never have to take scenes away--usually I have to add them. I write the bare bones of the story, and then I go back and add the flesh. Does that make sense? Clearly, not everyone writes this way, but if you're looking to try something else...

As for the Badfic Challenge. I've run many challenges. If this is not an exchange, I think the easiest way to run a challenge is to create a community and allow people to post their fics to the community themselves on the due date, or even links to their fics is good, too. Every challenge I participated in in SPN worked that way and it was great. The writer has control over how their work gets posted and readers can easily find the fics. You can make an index of links no problem, and even edit tags to make finding things easier. Then if you decide to run it again, you've got the community all set up.

[randomling]

I would love for you to read The Plan when I've got a draft, but I'm not happy enough with it to let anyone read it yet (apart from the two people who have been listening to my rambles about it and reading along since I started, which is sort of different). It's just so different from what I intended - plus, it's only halfway done!

Hm, that does sound quite different from my process! I like my first drafts to be as close to the finished thing as possible (which is why I usually do write slower than I can write) and rarely add scenes or take them out. I'm more likely to add scenes than take them out, though.

That sounds like a good plan for the Badfic Challenge. I already have a community, so that part is okay. So yes, that sounds like a plan!

[turps33.livejournal.com]

Rikes sent me an email about all the challenges for next year when we were discussing the WIP challenge. Let me go find it. Got it.

jan - wips ?
feb - chris (inky's current plan, at least)
mar - badfic?
april - dragons
may - remix
june - juc


I don't know if that works for you, but it seems a sensible option, and gives time to issue and prepare after Christmas/SeSa.

Running wise. When I did sparklyglee with vaudevilles We made a comm, put up prompts and asked people to write them for a certain date. Then we posted them on that day. Which did work mostly, but I'd do what Andrea said and have people post themselves because we found you can't backdate on a community and ended up flooding Vaudevilles flist with stories all at once. Something that shouldn't happen if people have posting control. Plus, then they can edit their own fic, because there's always something wrong.

[randomling]

That sounds like it makes sense - March for aign-ups, I guess that means? I need to figure out how long I'll give for writing and so on. But that does make sense.

Good God, I want to take part in all those challenges. Either I'm going to have to pick and choose, or next year's going to be in insane!

[turps33.livejournal.com]

Yeah, it's a good schedule. And this way people aren't getting slammed with too many challenges all at once. Because there's always a chance of burn out happening in that case.

Well, as long as you join the Chris challenge I'll be happy *g*

[rikes]

Re Badfic Challenge - I'd just like to know when you're going to run it, because I'm planning the WIP challenge and don't want it to overlap with others too much.

I see Terri has already posted my challenge "schedule" from when I emailed her thinking *she* was running the badfic challenge, don't know where I got that from. Those are the signup times for each challenge, assuming there are about two months between signups and going live. There is of course no need for you to do it in March, that was just an outline to help me plan the wip challenge.

But yeah, setting up a community and letting people post their own stories is probably the easiest way to run a challenge. Everything else you can pretty much figure out as you go.

[turps33.livejournal.com]

Well, I was talking about the challenge on my journal and encouraged Lucy to run with it. I like doing that, letting other people do all the work ;)

[rikes]

You're a very smart woman! :D

[ephemera.livejournal.com]

taking time between writing and editing is, hands down, one of the best things you can do to get a bit of distance to see if what you wrote achieves what you thought it did. (I know people work differently, but I don't think I know anyone for whom that's not true - I know people who don't want to go back because they're no longer interested in their story because they've moved on, but that's not really the same thing.)

Re the challenge thing, if you don't set it up to be an exchange challenge, most of the stress just - isn't. Esp if you let people post direct through a community and aren't doing hosting and so on.

Re rest of life - are you coming home this week? Mostly I feel like I haven't seen you in forever, but also, if you're not around, I need to arrange cat-cover for Ariel for Saturday.