the hypercube of happydalek

I have a dear old friend who has been writing the same damn story for over a decade now, and I'm so tired of getting his piecemeal, incomplete drafts in my email that I'm about to just take his idea and write the friggin' thing myself! 

You see, he's planned this sprawling series of short stories, novellas and novels, but hasn't finished anything in probably four years, and the last thing he did finish he has consigned to a purgatory of constant revision (which for him always means he wants to make it longer).  Most frustrating of all, he keeps playing with and revising plot threads in the middle of his series when he's never even attempted to write out the beginning!  Never.  He's told me how it starts, and frankly, that part of the narrative has always been the most interesting to me.  (It's really a defining experience for his protagonist, too, but he has repeatedly failed to grasp that fact.)  I'm seriously thinking about writing a "fanfiction" for it, just for my own satisfaction!  (And maybe to prove a point or two.)  My friend has a brilliant way with the written word, but bless him, he suffers from a lack of creativity, character development and general organization that is driving me up the gorram wall.

*angry flail*

The words flow!  Things happen!  And it is good.  I love it when that happens.  :)

But today....that didn't happen.  At least it didn't feel like it.  I spent most of the afternoon and evening trying to write one particular scene.  It ended up as two scenes, and a combined total of 1,600 words (which is kinda wow), and it felt just like a term paper.  Like trying to craft the introduction to a term paper.  (Because that was always the part I hated the most and saved til last to do.)  Ugh.  The worst part is, I know almost all of it is going to end up on the cutting room floor after I finish this draft.  It's a fic I started writing almost 3 years ago, and my progress on it stalled completely last summer.  I've taken it up again mostly because I'm tired of it sitting on my harddrive and mocking me with its incompleteness.  The current draft is probably about 2/3 done, and I've known for a long time how it's going to end, I just couldn't make it happen.  But now I'm trying to embrace the suckitude.  I'm going to finish the draft and then I'm going to perform a massive rewrite on said draft before I think of hunting down a beta for it. 

Also, I don't recommend taking such a lengthy break on a writing project.  Half of my computer time today was spent reminding myself what was going on and how much everybody knew and what things were called.  *headdesk*

I went out socializing tonight with a friend who is an aspiring professional magician.  He is particularly magnificent at card tricks, and as such always carries a deck with him.  We got to talking and throwing ideas around, and speculated about inventing a fifth suit.  We decided that it should be called the teardrop, and be black.  Iconic and simple.  So of course, I get home and do a bit of googling and discover that, lo!  There already was a fifth suit!  The link takes you to a blog entry that has pictures of the short-lived and elusive green Eagles suit (or in England, blue crowns).  I can see why it didn't catch on.  But anyway, that's a bit of random trivia for you.  And I think a black suit of teardops would be far superior.  If I had the means, I'd manufacture them myself and slip them into other people's decks just to mess with them.  Then turn it around and accuse them of having a screwy deck.  Heehee.  

The upshot of all this is that I ended up having lots of caffeine too close to bedtime.  I shall now commence flying hummingbird laps around my room for a few hours.  Buuuuzzzzzzzz.  (And by fly, I probably mean "toy meaninglessly with several fic ideas that I'm pretty sure I'll never actually finish.  Or even properly start."  Especially since, for unknown reasons, I've been fixating on fundamentalist Christian End Times media lately--you know, stuff like the Left Behind books, and the Thief in the Night film series --and it's given me a truly bizarre hankering to try my hand at it.  Yes, I know it's absolutely crazy stuff.  Totally not in-line with the rest of the New Testament at all, not to mention the gross interpretational creativity at work, but I can't help it, it's fascinating.  Not to mention--true fact--that it's what I grew up on.  I had rapture nightmares, people.  Mostly about having to leave my poor pets behind, which is terrifying for an eight year old.  In one version, Jesus let us bring our pets with us, but my cat leapt out of my arms to his death while I was flying up to heaven.  Fundamentalist prophecy: scaring the shit of baby!happydalek for most of her childhood.)

Wow, that parenthetical got a little out of hand.  Point is, I now want to write versions of the stuff where the Antichrist is a good guy who gets mislead by the devil and ends up forcing the devil to kill and possess him rather than do evil; or the mass disappearances are thought to be the rapture but are actually something quite different and more sinister (I've got character outlines for this one); or at the very least, pen a parody version that's from the viewpoint of a non-believer who stays that way, and shows how a peaceful world society can only happen once the paranoid fundamentalists are no longer there to stir up trouble.   I dunno, I'm just feeling cynical, I guess. 

Anyway, this was supposed to be a blurb and now it's huuuge, so I'm gonna stop rambling and go desecrate my childhood theology.  Love you all!

So, I just discovered The Doctor Who Random Pairing Generator.  It gave me Alan Jackson/Liz Shaw/saving the world, and for a bizarre little moment, I thought it meant "Alan Jackson" the country singer. 

From looking at my journal entries, you wouldn't be able to tell that 90% of my free time is spent writing fic.  Seriously.  It's practically my default setting: "Hmm, I'm bored.  I know!  I'll write a few scenes."  It always has been, since even before I knew how to write.  I'd dictate stuff to my parents and then draw the illustrations.  The problem is, I don't finish things.  Ever.  Well, not ever ever.  I have a few short fics, drabbles and the like that are floating around on the internets. 

But for as much as I write, the proportion of it that is complete is so astronomically unbalanced that it might as well equal zero.  With that track record, writing is a huge, HUGE waste of my time.  So much so that I'm thinking I might give it up for lent this year as a vice.  0_o. 

It's a terrifying thought, but it's either that, or I finally discover a fount of discipline somewhere and start finishing stuff.  I'd very much prefer the latter to happen, but the only way it's likely to is if I become accountable to somebody other than myself.  I'd like to make it a quasi-New Year's Resolution, to finish my fics.

So in that spirit, here's the Unfinished Fic Meme that some of you out there have done already.  It's a simple one, to post snippets of things that are rotting away on your harddrive.  Since that basically constitutes the sum total of my documents folder, the following is a very small, hand-picked sample. 

First, the fanfic.  More specifically, the non-Doctor Who fanfic.

Star Wars

1. A tiny scene, set between the two trilogies. 

( Darth Vader! )

2. A longer scene from another project, set somewhere post-RotJ

( Jedi! And bombs! )     


The Mummy

1.  Would you believe there are almost no Indiana Jones/The Mummy crossover fics out there?  Here's the sum total of one I tried to write.

( Imhotep and Jones )

2.  I love the idea of an Imhotep revenge fic.  And ideas were about as far as I got on writing one.

( Imhotep! And snarky Rick! )

Star Trek: TOS

Set during the first five-year mission, I had a complete synopsis written up for this, and then...it just kinda stalled on me. 

( Kirk, Spock and McCoy banter! )


The Magnificent Seven

Demonstrating my love for teensy, tiny fandoms!  This thing died a quick death when I realized I was writing a Mary Sue.   

( Cowgirl! )

The Wild, Wild West

In the last couple weeks I've dreamed up at least 3 different, full-length fic ideas for this show, two of which I promptly lost interest in.  Here's a bit from one of them.

( James T. West!  )

Aaaanndd...that brings us to Doctor Who

1. My only attempt at writing Martha. 

( Martha! And regeneration! Apparently. )

2.  I keep toying with the idea of writing a sequel to Fission, but somehow it keeps eluding me.  My working title, appropriately enough, is Fusion. 

( Identity issues! )

I'm torn.  I feel like NaNo should probably be spent on original fic, but some of my most developed (and not already half-written) material happens to be fanfic.  Dilemma. 

The most promising fanfic idea I've got right now is an epic Doctor Who/Star Trek crossover where Klingons capture the TARDIS.  Fun, but derivative.

I have an original idea stewing, but there just isn't much to it yet.  Seems more crummy-SciFi-Original-Movie than 50,000-word-novel.  Must concoct subplots.  This whole experience is going to be odd.  I'm not used to launching into a novel after so little development time.  But perhaps it's a good thing, as most of my ideas have yet to make it out of Development Hell.

Once more, I am here, if anyone wants a NaNo buddy.  

Because, well, why the hell not? 

I've actually never even attempted it before, but given my difficulty with finishing things unless I have a deadline smack in my face, maybe it'll be the motivation I need to Just Do It, yanno?  Seems pretty low-risk.  The worst that'll happen is I won't finish it, which is exactly what happens most of the rest of the time.  I'm probably crazy for trying it this year, since most of November is going to be me busting my hump on ten-hour days in the field and living in hotels without a computer, but this is my first November in 16 years where I don't have school obligations sapping my time and creative energy, which makes me think such a venture may be compossible. Carpe diem, right?

The real tricky part is going to be coming up with a story.  I have so many projects started that part of me is reluctant to scrape together something new, but it's only fair to do so.  

So, here I am in NaNo's database.  Make me feel obligated, people! 

Title:  The Woman at the Well
Rating: PG
Word count: 1380
Characters: Peri, Sixth Doctor
Summary: Peri gets some interesting advice. 
A/N:  In honor of Passover (and the Orthodox celebration of Easter next weekend), I bring you this unlikely little fic.  Warning: very crack. 

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