darklyndsea

Lately I've been thinking about recs. I don't actually read a lot of actual lists of recs (mostly because the way people describe recs to convince people to read them is completely useless to me), but Delicious, where I find a large chunk of the fic I read, functions in much the same way. There are a few people who tag everything they read, but for the most part people only tag fic that they enjoy for whatever reason. And since you can see the number of people who have tagged a particular URL, it works pretty well if you want to see what a lot of people like- an aggregated rec list, if you will.

( Read more... )

Current Mood: contemplative

Random Review

In Random Review I review something at random. Probably most of the reviewees will be fic. If you feel sensitive about whatever I'm randomly reviewing, don't read that review. Some reviews will be good, some will be bad. Tastes vary; you might not agree with me. Feel free to comment, randomly or not.

Reviewee: The Immortal Spacemonkey by Shannon K
Fandom: Stargate SG-1 and Highlander crossover
Length: 97,323
Overall rating: 3/5
Author's summary: A SG1 and Highlander crossover. It's been done many times, but here is one more. Daniel is older than anyone could imagine and has somethings in his past that he would rather keep to himself. Read and review please!
( May contain spoilers... )

Current Mood: productive

"Write what you know" is the most basic advice given to amateur writers for a reason. When you write what you know, you have to do less research and are less likely to get things wrong, not to mention that it's far easier for those who are just getting their toes wet writing. It's easier to come up with a plot when you're working with what you deal with in your everyday life because you know what's possible, and what's interesting to other people who are interested in the same things you are.

Writers writing what they know can lead to greater depth and quality. For instance, when I read about people who are disabled, it's easy to see which writers know about being disabled from personal experience, and which ones merely think it makes a good plot point. I can tell which writers have been/are in the military, when they're writing about the military. It's not just trivia that makes the writers who know what they're talking about on an intimate level stand out. You can throw trivia at me all day, and I'll know the difference between that and somebody who has experience, even if I myself have no experience with what you're writing about. If you're an insurance adjuster writing about an insurance adjuster who has whacky adventures, you're going to have a more accurate perspective on that than somebody who googled it. This doesn't mean you can't stretch yourself- if you were in a major earthquake in California, you can likely write convincingly about a major earthquake in the fictional world you've created.

When you write about subjects that you don't know, you run the risk of getting them wrong. We've all watched movies that lay in our area of interest and got everything completely wrong- you think Hackers was anything near accurate in regards to computers or hacking? When you write about subjects you do know, you get them right unless you deliberately decide to get them wrong.

Current Mood: productive

Writing is a weird process. What works on one writing project will fail horribly on another. Some pieces have to be plotted out scene by scene, or even paragraph by paragraph, and others only need for you to have a vague idea of the plotline. Sure, individual writers tend more towards one end of the spectrum than the other, but even then there's variation by piece. So writers- or at least writers who want to improve their writing and finish their works- have to continually expand their toolbox of ways to work with a story from the first idea to the last revision. Sometimes pieces beg to be worked out with a mindmap, or on index cards, or via pictograms on a dry-erase board, whether the writer has worked with that method before or not.

...Which is actually completely off-topic from what I was planning to say in this post, although it's something I do want to say.. Take 2.

Writing is a weird process. To a certain extent you always have to think about backstory- whether that's a completely original backstory or one which is partially created already (unless you're writing Truman Show fanfiction, and you live in the world where the Truman show is actually real, there will always be gaps...now I want some Truman Show fanfiction from that world). But thinking about backstory can go two ways (or probably more, but two main ways). The first being it's predictable backstory, at least to you the writer. You start thinking about the past of the characters and you don't have any times where you're surprised or shocked at it. The other way it can go is, you're thinking about their backgrounds and some of the details make you stop and wonder how in the world that got to be canon for the verse you're writing in. It feels right, but it's unexpected.

This being NaNoWriMo, I'm going back and forth between Steve and Lenny to do my writing (Steve being my desktop and Lenny being Eric's laptop that he's letting me use). The traditional method to transfer files is to do it manually, which is annoying to do on a twice-or-more daily basis. Other methods include emailing it to yourself, only having it on a thumb drive, and using Google docs or another online method. They all have drawbacks, mostly in requiring internet access or aggravation- or both. I mostly use Groove, because I have it anyway and it automates the process both ways, and all I have to do is make sure both of my computers are connected to the network and on, and that the files are closed on the computer the updates are being transferred to. It works for me, and is better than the thumb drive method I used previously.

The only problem is, it requires both computers to be on for it to work. Steve's pretty much constantly on, unless he puts himself to sleep- and then it just requires a shake of his mouse to wake him up. Lenny, on the other hand, isn't usually on...and last night and this morning, after I typed a good 1,948 words, I forgot to turn Lenny on. So when I got to the write-in today, I was all, "Noooooooo!". I connected to the wi-fi at Coffee Haus, in hopes that I could make my mom email me my work from on Steve. And then, when I looked back at the NaNo folder, I saw that it had updated! Apparently Groove works over the internet, too! Which, honestly, makes enough sense that I should have expected it, but I'm a bit slow sometimes. But, hey, that was awesome to learn since I didn't expect it.

Current word count: 14,785

Current Mood: ecstatic
Current Location: Coffee Haus, Arlington TX

So, for the fourth year running, I'm doing NaNoWriMo. Quite frankly, NaNo baffles me. My muse keeps tossing plots at me to write for NaNo that are out of my zone of comfortable writing (which I suppose is a good thing, but still), and somehow I keep winning. 2006 posed some interesting writing issues because the main character (this was original fiction) just didn't think in a way that made it easy to write- he was raised in zero-g, in a space station where there were no adults; he had no true conception of adulthood or up and down. 2007 I wrote Farscape/Highlander/SG-1, with Crichton as the main character. I can't write Crichton at all, except when I'm feeling a sugar rush, and added to that I think those were all new-for-writing fandoms for me. In 2008 I wrote BtVS/Harry Potter- both new-for-writing fandoms to me- with reincarnation, and Xander-reincarnated-as-Harry as the main character, and I ended up copping out on some of the plot because I just couldn't figure out how to work it if he remembered his past life from the beginning. This year I'm writing what is primarily Highlander fanfiction, with multiple crosses that aren't all that important to the plotline. With Richie as the main character. I don't dislike Richie, but he's not my favorite either.

Why do I keep being forced into writing extrovert characters for NaNoWriMo? I'm not an extrovert. I don't understand extroverts. I'm fairly sure I do a horrible job of writing extroverts. And yeah, extroversion isn't the only problem I have with writing them well, but it's certainly a huge factor. It doesn't really help to stretch my writing muscles in a new direction if I do it so badly that I cringe at even the thought of it. Seriously, I want to go back to writing the Batclan. I understand them (some more than others, granted, but it's that way with any group of characters). But nooooo, my Muse has stopped letting me write Tim and Bruce, and moved onto all sorts of random premises that don't always have an entire plot attached.

And yeah, fun time for NaNo to start. I have a Latin test on Tuesday and a Philosophy test on Wednesday, and let's just say I'm a bit behind in both of those classes.

Current word count: 2,761

Hi, I'm

darklyndsea , also known as

lyndseas on Livejournal. My current hobbies in no particular order are writing and reading fanfiction in a variety of fandoms, cross stitching, doing NaNoWriMo, and translating Stargate the movie into Latin, badly since I'm still in my first semester of Latin. I'm a complete slave to my Muse: if she says I can write, I can write; if she says I can't, I have problems writing anything that doesn't feel wooden to me, much less actually completing anything.

I have more ideas than I know what to do with, and sometimes my Muse gives me ideas that I can't write at all. If you're idealess and want some, I will happily give you some of mine; I keep them here. If I somehow do manage to pass on an idea I'd like to hear about it.

Current Mood: excited

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Meta: Recs

RR: The Immortal Spacemonkey

How to Write 1: Write What You Know

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November 2012

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