Mar. 5th, 2011

I've been working myself around back to rewriting Trace, which has taken a while; my pattern for writing seems to be "write furiously, post and edit in situ furiously, finish posting, ignore story for between two months and four years."

Trying to break that.

Anyway, I'm wrestling with the front of Trace because there is a lot of loaded up backstory to these characters. It's by necessity for two reasons: one, yeah, okay, it's a fanfic, these characters came with a history. And if that were all, I could ditch the backstory. But two, a lot of this backstory is integral to the function of the plot. I can't just pretend that there's no prior relationship between Joseph and Colin, because half the story is about Colin watching Joseph's shade become a physical presence outside of him, and Joseph seeing what happens to Colin on the inside where he's more magical than not, as opposed to on the outside where Colin's magic can be written off as "he's kind of weird". And I can't go easier on the politics from Colin's last stay at Railburg, because Noel and Colin need that bedrock to stand on for their intimacy to work.

IN ESSENCE I HAVE SCREWED MYSELF.

I can take out the sex, but that's frankly not going to solve the overall problem. Originally I was just going to write a chapter introducing the backstory, starting with Joseph rescuing Colin from Hoboken, but I wrote it and a) it's clumsy and b) it's kind of obvious and c) if I'm going that route I really should just write the god damned prequel, and that's so much work.

So the goal now is "be a better writer" and work the backstory into the text in a way that is not confusing and not obvious. Which is nice, that something which started as a fanfic is now about to push me out of my comfort zone. (Talking of comfort zones, I stumbled over a very nice review of Nameless the other night, and it made me re-read a couple of chunks of the book. Tell you what, that book didn't suck nearly as much as I thought it did.) Apparently Douglas Adams did this a lot by deliberately writing himself into a corner so I'm just going to go with "I'm pretending I'm Douglas Adams".

There's no real reason to tell you guys all this except that you're way cheaper than a therapist and I don't have an editor. And also I wanted to make a post to let you all know about a coupon deal, and this is the post my brain decided to make.

So. HEY GUYS THERE'S A COUPON DEAL. From now until Monday, enter GIANT305 at checkout to get 20% all books at Lulu.com. These include my books! Just in case you needed any ideas....
You know, I get very angry about plagiarised work when it's done in academia; as a graduate student I always felt it was not only lazy, but a waste of my time and an insult to my intelligence as the person grading the paper.

Frankly, when people lift my fanfics, it's almost adorable. I mean honestly.

Get your lulz out: a bb writer over on fanfiction.net lifted Lab Book this morning and posted it under their name. I've reported it to Abuse, we'll see what they have to say.

I'm not especially worried about anyone thinking it's not mine. Lab Book's a pretty well known fic, and while I'd like to see the plagiarist squirm a bit, just so's they won't do it again, I'm mostly amused. I mean, it's fanfiction.net for christ's sake. Not that I don't have fond nostalgic memories of FFN, but it's not exactly the hub of Sherlock fandom.

(That said, thank you, Nonnie, for notifying me of the theft! It's much appreciated.)

On a more serious note, if this person nicked my fic, they may very well have nicked the other one they've posted. Sherlock writers, you may want to have a look at KiltsDaarlings and make sure it's not yours.

Try to keep your head from exploding when it hits the WALL OF UNFORMATTED TEXT.

ETA: AHAHAAHAHAH they're on DeviantArt too. Off to report them there as well...Sherlock artists, check the gallery...
I just watched The Sting and Escape From Alcatraz as a double-header.

I feel the uncontrollable urge to form a crew.

I don't know what my crew will do, but it will be magnificent and felonious. We'll wear fantastic clothing and do shady things and stare silently at all who oppose us. There may be FBI agents involved. Someone might get shanked. There will definitely be women in pinstripes. I wonder if Katherine Hepburn's available, this seems like her gig.

OH SHIT KIDS I HAVE OCEAN'S ELEVEN ON DVD

brb robbing a casino. With my crew.

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