this machine will not communicate

Things what I'm currently working on:

• A rewrite of a script I've been working on, in some form or another, for ten years, called "Flesh and Blood."  It was my primary script in grad school; my first year was the first draft, and then the second year, I did extensive workshops in two different classes.  It went through about four various iterations in those two years.  The protagonist went from being a mid-30s nurse to a late-20s cop.  From 2007-2010 I went through a few drafts on my own, finally settling on the protagonist being a senior in high school.  The central premise stayed the same, but the bulk of the story changed quite a bit.  I didn't do anything with it from 2010-2015.  Last year, the producer who optioned one of my other scripts gave "F&B" a read-through and liked it - modest budget, thrillers always sell - but felt it needed work.  So I did another re-write, sticking with the high school millieu but shifting to a more psychological, kind of "Hannibal" (TV) vibe.  My unofficial agent and manager (we're all working on developing stuff, but I haven't signed anything) were into it, but thought I'd gone too far in the psychological direction, needed to come back a bit and hit a few more of those thriller tropes.  So I'm doing another draft, this one almost a full rewrite in the first half, with more of the pages from the previous draft sticking around for the second half.  I'm shooting for getting through Act 2 at the least by the end of March, and I'm making really good time.  At this point, I've been working on it for so long that doing different drafts and iterations is easy-peasy.  I never feel like I'm killing any darlings because I've killed them all at one point or another.


• A new script idea, still in the outlining phase.  I'm not usually an outliner for a first draft, preferring to find the plot and learn who the characters are as I go.  What that means is that my first draft usually gets either tossed or extensively re-written.  When I'm just writing on my own, it's no big deal; now that I'm working with others with development, there's more pressure to not waste time and energy.  So I'm having a hard time going through a part of the process I usually never address until I've gone through the whole script - I sort of do the whole thing backwards.  I'm watching movies for structure paradigms, but I need to get my ass in gear.  I'm so much more interested right now in "F&B," it's hard to stop and work on something else.  My goal was to have the outline done today; I'm just at the end of Act 1.  So, this weekend, then!


• My novel, "The Orphan Queen."  Always and forever. I'm at 400k words now, so obviously it would never be published as a single novel (not that I ever worry about publishing, to be honest; it's not why I'm writing it).  But I know where the story ends, so I'm writing to that point, and I'll figure out the rest as I get there.  I started it in the summer of 2012, so coming up on four years.


• Trying to complete old B5 WIPs.  I'm almost done with the next chapter of Alma Mater, and I just started the next and hopefully last chapter of Cells (which as far as I can tell, exactly one person read chapter four, so this is clearly just for my benefit, haha).  Over the past month or so I actually re-read all my own B5 fanfic (is that really self-indulgent?) and I just super-miss the fandom as it was here in 2010-2012, and I hate that everything's moved to tumblr because tumblr's a pain in the ass.

For some reason I got it into my head that I couldn't post until I had finished my edit of Part One, because to do otherwise would somehow admit defeat?  I didn't think of this literally or articulate it to myself, but every time I thought of a post, I would think, "no, I'll be done with the edit soon, I'll post then."

I am actually done with the edit now!  I ended up feeling that I needed an epilogue of sorts, instead wrote a full chapter, and had to go over that enough that I felt it was as polished as the rest of Part One.  But it is, in fact, done now.

(Of course, not posting has nothing to do with why I haven't been reading my flist.  I get the weirdest social media-related anxiety and issues sometimes, I don't even know.)

One of the major things that stalled my progress was the absolute glut of video games I either received or purchased for myself around Christmas.  I hadn't really been playing games much the last few years, and I'd forgotten what it was like to come home from work (or, in earlier years, school) and just sit down and play Civ for like five hours straight.  (What is it like?  It's great, except you start feeling like you haven't showered in a week, even if you did, in fact, just shower.)  I think I've gotten it out of my system, but for about three weeks there, I wasn't doing a whole lot else.  It was kind of sad.

Randomly this last week I have found myself actively missing fandom, specifically B5 fandom circa-2010, and landcomms, specifically scifiland, a whole lot.  I've been saying for over a year now that I was going to make a new fun B5 comm that was going to be like half-meta, half-landcomm, and I've never gotten around to it, so it's hard to whine about there not being anything going on when I'm not even attempting to be active myself.  But 2010-2011 was like a great period of time fandom-wise and I really miss it.  :(

And here is my favorite gif from the last month:

I had today off, as I work this weekend.  I used my time wisely for a change!  (Wisely for me, at any rate.)  I woke up not much later than I usually do, and went up to Starbucks to write.  I'm 11k into my het_bigbang fic, and I'm very happy with it.  I'm glad I signed up, because I'm not sure I would have written it otherwise.  It is very plotty, though - so far I've only had one kiss!  I do enjoy dense plotty stories slotted into canon, though, instead of the standard gap-fillers and post-ep stories.  It feels like I'm expanding the universe in some way.  

After I finished my writerings for the day, we went to see Super 8.  WHICH WAS AMAZING.  It reminded me so much of all the movies I love from the 80s - that feeling that you're watching actual kids, y'know, and not weird teenage worldly facsimiles.  It was just a really, really great movie, and for the first time in a long time, it actually made me want to pick up a camera and make a movie. 

I've spent the rest of the evening working on a fanvid for fandomverse, and I actually started before the day it was due, so I'm spending some time on it.  I'm about three-quarters of the way through, and may be able to finish this weekend.  Hopefully it won't be as busy as it was the last weekend I worked; sometimes I'm like, holy crow IT'S THE WEEKEND, why are you all at the library.  GO DO THINGS.

I was going to (finally) watch the Game of Thrones finale (it's okay, I read the book, I know what happens), but I'm kind of tired of looking at my computer screen, so I think I'm going to snuggle into my bed and either read or watch some Battlestar.  The perfect cap to an actual nice day.

So I just started this new Pride and Prejudice book and it's...okay.  I'd read another trilogy that was much better, the events of the book from Darcy's perspective; still, this one has sex so that's fun.  But it kind of got me thinking about this whole genre of books, which is basically just published fanfiction.  Some of them even start out as fanfic posted online.

What it made me think about is that I obviously just need to write some Austen novel-length fanfic.  Except when I think on it, all that comes to me is some weird AU Marianne Dashwood/Severus Snape thing and that doesn't even make sense.  But if I had the time, I think I'd write something along those lines anyway, because I am coming up with the most cracked-out wonderful ideas.

That's...the extent of this post.  Who else am I going to talk about wanting to write a Sense and Sensibility/Harry Potter crossover if not with you guys?

What are people's thoughts on Real Person Fiction?  Have you read any of it?  Does the very idea of RPF squick you out?  Do you think less of a writer who tries her hand at RPF?  Is there some RPF pairing you would want to read or even write but don't?  Do you have an unabashed love of RPF (and don't care who frakking knows)?

I'm not saying yet why I'm asking!  But I am curious.

Soooooooooo I finally caved and signed up for a tumblr.  So far I've only reblogged a couple things, and it'll take me awhile to figure out how everything works.  In the meantime, everyone who already had a tumblr, let me know so I can follloooooowwww yooooouuuu.

In other news, am currently watching the SAGs.  I do not want Melissa Leo to win.  Boo.  I want Amy Adams/Helena Bonham Carter/Hailee Steinfeld to win.  I hate when there's a category where I'd be happy with two or three or even four people winning, and the one I don't like or don't care for is the one who always wins.  It's just cosmically unfair.

So I've been having a lot of fun in this Fringe Challenge community, and I just joined a more general SF TV challenge community - and you should all join, too!  You're already doing fandom-y stuff!  It'll be fun!

It's scifiland, and it will be awesome.  I'm on Team Sidekicks!  Yay!