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lierdumoaFirst order of business: Maya updated Underwater Light (In case you are unaware, this is *the* most popular Harry/Draco WIP since before ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
ivyblossom completed her trilogy). I highly recommend everyone, and I mean *everyone*, go read it NOW. It's set in fifth year, I think. Very PG (well, there might be some PG-13 thrown in, somewhere).
Read it if only for this line: "Pansy hit him on the knuckles with her spoon. 'Draco, if you touch my ice-cream again I'll hex you," she warned. "I am a woman. It is chocolate. What part of this do you not understand?'"
In other news -- I was a bit lonely last night. All of my AIM friends have lives and are out on Saturday night. I ended up having dinner with my sister while her boyfriend complained about the nearest grocery-store being out of pecan pie.
On the fic writing front, I'm feeling a bit discouraged. I went and read over the recently completed chapters 3 & 4 of BW, only to discover I had failed to fix a mistake I had made concerning timelines (first sentence of ch. 4 -- should say 5th year, not fourth). In addition to that, I found a really horrible and abrupt transition between scenes in ch. 3. The transition hardly makes sense -- it's practically a plot hole.
Thinking back on it, the last scene of ch. 3 should really have been the first scene of ch. 4. Thinking even further back, everything in ch. 3 except for the last scene should have been included in the last half of ch. 2, but doing that would totally fuck up my fairly even chapter lengths. Ah yes, ch. 2 -- that chapter contains a canonical error -- I accidentally said that Sirius' eyes are brown, when they are, in fact, grey/gray-blue).
I'll console myself with the knowledge that my characterization, at least, is adequate.
I swear, this fic is killing me. Everything about it is really, really *hard*! Even the lemon was a chore! This is not how it's supposed to be. I like writing lemons because it's pretty much impossible for me to fuck them up. Lemons include all the aspects of writing that I'm naturally good at and none of the aspects of writing that I actually have to work to be good at. And yet, with this fic, the lemon was the hardest thing to write. It goes against the natural order, goddamnit! What is usually the easiest part of fic writing suddenly became the hardest part of an already really difficult-to-write fic.
The first time I sent the last two chapters to my betas (well, actually I only sent them todaylight_shadow -- I wasn't able to get a hold of my other beta, amariel, until after I'd written the second draft) -- I said: "This is crap."
Now normally when I say my work is crap, I really mean that I find it very mediocre -- not up to my usual standard.
This time, though, when I said "This is crap," what I really meant was "This is *fucking* *crap,* and if it were any worse, it would be a Mary Sue transgender m-preg songfic.[1]"
By the time I finished with the second draft, I was back up to my usual definition of crap. In other words, still not that good, but passable.
And now? I see that I've left in some heinous mistakes. Sure, the fourth year/fifth year thing is hardly noticeable -- but a really bad transition between scenes is not nearly as easily overlooked. I think today I'll just be carefully editing Bitter Water and re-posting it on Fiction Alley, ff.net, and my lj (also, informing anyone who has requested to archive it that a new and improved version has been written).
Ugh -- the way this is going, I'm never going to get to write anything new. This totally sucks ass.
[1] Definitions for the preceding terms can be found in the Veela Inc. fanfiction glossary.
ivyblossom completed her trilogy). I highly recommend everyone, and I mean *everyone*, go read it NOW. It's set in fifth year, I think. Very PG (well, there might be some PG-13 thrown in, somewhere).Read it if only for this line: "Pansy hit him on the knuckles with her spoon. 'Draco, if you touch my ice-cream again I'll hex you," she warned. "I am a woman. It is chocolate. What part of this do you not understand?'"
In other news -- I was a bit lonely last night. All of my AIM friends have lives and are out on Saturday night. I ended up having dinner with my sister while her boyfriend complained about the nearest grocery-store being out of pecan pie.
On the fic writing front, I'm feeling a bit discouraged. I went and read over the recently completed chapters 3 & 4 of BW, only to discover I had failed to fix a mistake I had made concerning timelines (first sentence of ch. 4 -- should say 5th year, not fourth). In addition to that, I found a really horrible and abrupt transition between scenes in ch. 3. The transition hardly makes sense -- it's practically a plot hole.
Thinking back on it, the last scene of ch. 3 should really have been the first scene of ch. 4. Thinking even further back, everything in ch. 3 except for the last scene should have been included in the last half of ch. 2, but doing that would totally fuck up my fairly even chapter lengths. Ah yes, ch. 2 -- that chapter contains a canonical error -- I accidentally said that Sirius' eyes are brown, when they are, in fact, grey/gray-blue).
I'll console myself with the knowledge that my characterization, at least, is adequate.
I swear, this fic is killing me. Everything about it is really, really *hard*! Even the lemon was a chore! This is not how it's supposed to be. I like writing lemons because it's pretty much impossible for me to fuck them up. Lemons include all the aspects of writing that I'm naturally good at and none of the aspects of writing that I actually have to work to be good at. And yet, with this fic, the lemon was the hardest thing to write. It goes against the natural order, goddamnit! What is usually the easiest part of fic writing suddenly became the hardest part of an already really difficult-to-write fic.
The first time I sent the last two chapters to my betas (well, actually I only sent them to
daylight_shadow -- I wasn't able to get a hold of my other beta, amariel, until after I'd written the second draft) -- I said: "This is crap." Now normally when I say my work is crap, I really mean that I find it very mediocre -- not up to my usual standard.
This time, though, when I said "This is crap," what I really meant was "This is *fucking* *crap,* and if it were any worse, it would be a Mary Sue transgender m-preg songfic.[1]"
By the time I finished with the second draft, I was back up to my usual definition of crap. In other words, still not that good, but passable.
And now? I see that I've left in some heinous mistakes. Sure, the fourth year/fifth year thing is hardly noticeable -- but a really bad transition between scenes is not nearly as easily overlooked. I think today I'll just be carefully editing Bitter Water and re-posting it on Fiction Alley, ff.net, and my lj (also, informing anyone who has requested to archive it that a new and improved version has been written).
Ugh -- the way this is going, I'm never going to get to write anything new. This totally sucks ass.
[1] Definitions for the preceding terms can be found in the Veela Inc. fanfiction glossary.
