Notes on writing
Aug. 15th, 2010 08:14 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
icepixieBoo. I hate it when I have to completely abandon a piece I've been working on because it just has too many problems to fix. Oh, well. Maybe I can incorporate sections of it into something else in the future.
I also don't like coming up with plot. Every three months or so for the past year, I've opened up my (post-series, part of my AU) "Ivanova and Garibaldi go to Earth to save President Luchenko from neo-Home Guard terrorists" fic and written two or three scenes it before realizing I still don't really have any kind of scaffolding to hang those scenes on. This is one of those times, and while I really like the nine scenes I have, I'm a loss about the mechanics of writing political intrigue/thriller stuff.
In better news, I've picked the poems for the "Five Poems Marcus Cole Knows by Heart" idea that's been kicking around in my head, and I may even have come up with a structure for the fic. I was both astonished and a little perturbed to realize that they're from William Carlos Williams, Donne, Millay, Pound, and Barrett Browning. Of the five, the only one I actually consider myself a fan of is Millay, and I actively dislike most of what Williams, Pound, and to a lesser extent Barrett Browning wrote. (Truly, I cannot describe to you my loathing for that damn plums poem.) I mean, I like these poems well enough, obviously, and they seem Marcusy, which is more important, but still, it's poking holes in my self-image.
(*cough* I may, possibly, have considered the idea of junking the Donne and Barrett Browning in favor of some combination of Yeats, Frost, Eliot, HD, Stevens, Bishop, and Auden so that I could make it into "Five Modernist Poems Marcus Cole Knows by Heart." Ahem. No, I don't have strong period preferences at all, why do you ask?)
I have made no progress on my "Marcus has a day right out of Ulysses" piece, which may well stay a pipe dream, but it's a very entertaining one nonetheless.
I also don't like coming up with plot. Every three months or so for the past year, I've opened up my (post-series, part of my AU) "Ivanova and Garibaldi go to Earth to save President Luchenko from neo-Home Guard terrorists" fic and written two or three scenes it before realizing I still don't really have any kind of scaffolding to hang those scenes on. This is one of those times, and while I really like the nine scenes I have, I'm a loss about the mechanics of writing political intrigue/thriller stuff.
In better news, I've picked the poems for the "Five Poems Marcus Cole Knows by Heart" idea that's been kicking around in my head, and I may even have come up with a structure for the fic. I was both astonished and a little perturbed to realize that they're from William Carlos Williams, Donne, Millay, Pound, and Barrett Browning. Of the five, the only one I actually consider myself a fan of is Millay, and I actively dislike most of what Williams, Pound, and to a lesser extent Barrett Browning wrote. (Truly, I cannot describe to you my loathing for that damn plums poem.) I mean, I like these poems well enough, obviously, and they seem Marcusy, which is more important, but still, it's poking holes in my self-image.
(*cough* I may, possibly, have considered the idea of junking the Donne and Barrett Browning in favor of some combination of Yeats, Frost, Eliot, HD, Stevens, Bishop, and Auden so that I could make it into "Five Modernist Poems Marcus Cole Knows by Heart." Ahem. No, I don't have strong period preferences at all, why do you ask?)
I have made no progress on my "Marcus has a day right out of Ulysses" piece, which may well stay a pipe dream, but it's a very entertaining one nonetheless.
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Date: 2010-08-16 02:17 am (UTC)And oh god do I ever feel your pain on the whole having to drop a fic thing, and also the plot (or lack thereof) thing. I keep trying to force one particular fic to work and failing, while this other thing has turned into a sprawling monster that won't stop devouring time-lines and generally embarrassing me.
(Oh, and I finally read the Millay and Boland poems you recommended, and I adore all of them. I've found one of my poetry collections that was a textbook for the modern poetry class, and it has lots more Millay, so I'm very much looking forward to reading those, too. You have made a convert. ♥)
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Date: 2010-08-16 03:21 am (UTC)And oh god do I ever feel your pain on the whole having to drop a fic thing, and also the plot (or lack thereof) thing. I keep trying to force one particular fic to work and failing, while this other thing has turned into a sprawling monster that won't stop devouring time-lines and generally embarrassing me.
Yep, I'm totally in the same place. Well, I think I've officially given up on the one I had to drop (it works okay in and of itself--it's Michael's POV of an elided bit of an earlier fic--but it just doesn't fit with that earlier fic, and I don't think anything ever will), but yes.
"Devouring timelines" sounds...ominous...
Yay Millay and Boland! I'm so glad you liked them. And I'm also impressed that your anthology has a lot of Millay in it; I found that she usually gets skipped over in favor of other poets doing more experimental stuff, and that makes me sad.
no subject
Date: 2010-08-16 03:54 am (UTC)"Expanding timelines" might be more effective. I originally meant this fic to be taking place in two different times - one during canon and one significantly after. But another, intervening part sometime after Sleeping in Light decided to dump itself on me, too. Three places in the timeline isn't too bad, I guess, but it's... a lot of extrapolation.
It doesn't have quite as much of her as it has of William Carlos Williams or Ezra Pound, but it's a fairly extensive little thing - 28 of her poems, although it doesn't include "What My Lips Have Kissed, and Where, and Why," which, having read it, seems like a bit of a misstep. Oh well. There's no telling sometimes why collections include or skip the things they do.
no subject
Date: 2010-08-16 05:23 am (UTC)Ahahaha. That sounds like what happens with my AU series. It started from one, just one, 1,000-word fic for which I did not intend even a sequel. Then a few commenters, and later Susan herself, demanded one, which was long and nearly broke me. I was sure I was done, but no. No,
So yes, I feel your pain. ;)
although it doesn't include "What My Lips Have Kissed, and Where, and Why," which, having read it, seems like a bit of a misstep
Oh, it does. That's sad. Hopefully it has "Recuerdo," though. And "We talk of taxes." Also "Dirge without Music." (Okay, so I have the complete works on my bookshelf and could do this all night, but I'll spare you. *g*)