the hypercube of happydalek

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'm really tired, but have to get this off my chest.  In addition to "Fission," I have a second Doctor Who novella in the works that I'm slowly posting on Teaspoon and ff.net called "The Six Doctors."  As the title implies, it's a multi-Doctor story that I started developing almost as soon as I first saw the Ninth Doctor back in 2005, and it really took off when I read in interviews that Russell T. Davies wasn't interested in doing a multi-Doc story, leaving me to wonder how such a thing could be accomplished nowadays with the current crop of aging Doctors.  It was the very first fanfic idea my muse ever came up with, and I've spent the last year plus working on the thing, and I'm finally getting to the point where I can see the light at the end of the tunnel. 

Then today I find this!  Admittedly, ol' Robert Holmes was working with a different baddie and different set of Doctors, but the similarities are totally freaking me out.  To find out my novel idea (pun intended) is so close to even a cast-off Holmes script is kinda cool, but I'm really bummed.  Here I was, thinking I was doing something original, only to find out that the Beeb rejected something very similiar over 20 years ago.   Yikes.  Not that I've ever pretended to have great literary skill, but sheesh!  Kinda makes me want to set the whole thing aside and pursue the weird little plot bunny about a companion being stranded on a planet and forced to cooperate with a similarly stranded Dalek (I'm tentatively calling it My Friend the Dalek) that's been on the mental back burner lately. 

Just thought I'd share that.  Go back to ignoring me.