I am not succinct.

Goodness, has it been a year already?!

I first joined LJ to participate in last year's NFE, and here it is, time to do it all over again!

This time will hopefully be easier—it was all new territory last year, having never really written anything seriously in, oh, ten years. Little did I know I could be so, well, prolific... yeah, there will not be a 20K fic coming from me this year. :P

Anyway, some progress has already been made, which is surprising, because my prompt scared the hell out of me when I got it! But...it should work. I hope. Regardless, it's nice to have something to do besides endless job hunting.

That and it's getting me to work on the as-yet-untitled sequel to my NBB (which also is in the process of getting tweaked for ff.net).

OK. Off to write.

Well, this is it! My NBB, Fuel To Fire is posted!

And with wonderful icons, too, courtesy of crantz!

Some of the amazing works I’ve read in the past year have been so incredibly inspiring. Last year at this time—almost to the date—my nights were spent pouring over Narnia fic after Narnia fic with a large pitcher of hot tea as my only companion...and not getting my fill of either. When it came time to the NFE, there just wasn’t any doubt—I had to give it a shot. And thus the Dichotomy universe was created, quite by accident.

Writing proved to be challenging, yet fun. Especially since I have made it very vocal for several years that I have never, ever liked being forced to write anything for anyone. Really vocal. However, the NFE changed my attitude, as did the smattering of one-shots that came soon afterwards. And then a niggling of an idea sprouted from a throwaway line in Dichotomy, I started jotting down ideas, before you knew it, I had 24K written of a story… and then the NBB was announced. Perfect.

So. Here we go. This is a word dump of ideas, thoughts, feelings and a drop of beliefs here and there. In some sense, it can even be a bit autobiographical, but I’m sure most writers can be accused of that. It’s strange to close this chapter, literally, in Scrivener…I’ve been staring at this stuff for 6 months after all. But, I have other writing folders that are ready to be explored.

In the meantime, there are many things I want to share with the readers regarding Fuel To Fire, so behind the cuts are extra notes, research, inspiration, and whatnots for each chapter.

( The Title )

( Chapter 1 )

( Chapter 2 )

Hmmm, it's been awhile since I posted...

Life has been busy, but I am now faced with a few blissful days of having no obligations towards anyone but me. That means cleaning, organizing, taxes... and, of course, writing.

I've started the revising process of my NBB, which is something I have been looooong been looking forward to! The goal was to hit, on average, one scene per day. And so far, so good. Of course, some scenes were in worse shape than others... and I do have about 24 of them. Hoo-boy. It's still projected to be 60K. However, each scene revision has added about 500-1500 extra words. Yikes.

And I shudder when I think of the slop-fest that I sent in as a first draft, though! I kinda want to sent in the revised stuff and say, "No, really, I CAN write coherently!!"

Ah well. That'd only be worth it if there was a running for "Most Improved."

I'm wondering if I'm going to be pulled in to pinch hit on the artwork... but I'll cross that bridge if/when I come to it!

Well, the outline and word count update are in on my NBB! I did not get near enough written in November as I would have liked, but I was up to my ears in distractions it seemed. I am, as the picture indicates, about 70% done of my anticipated word count, which I think is still going to be slightly higher than the projected 56,000. Of course. Keep in mind though that this was a WIP when I signed up, and I've only added about 15,000 in the past month, despite using it as a NaNoWriMo... yeah, kinda failed at that.

Plus, it doesn't help that I have about 6,000 words written of a sequel to my NBB, and another 2,000 for a holiday-themed story, which may just be a prequel to the NBB. Yikes! So, I HAVE been writing, I just have my priorities all jumbled up.

I very much look forward to getting it in shape enough to share with a beta or two... I'm dying for outside opinions, but it's just too early still. And as soon as I'm done with this first pass, I will sign up for the artwork portion, if there's still time to!

In the meantime, I did some experimenting with metonomia and lady_songsmith about how is a good way to use Scrivener for beta purposes. I used to work strictly in Pages, with my research in Numbers, but considering NO one has or uses those programs and use Word instead, I would find myself stuck in converting/exporting hell. And that would lead to multiple files and versions on my end and just... ugh.

However! Using the beauty of both commenting and revision mode (where you can mark edits in different colors... each pass can has its own color!) in combination with the snapshot function and saving things in a Dropbox.... voila! One file, shared, clearly edited, easy to update, and more importantly, easy to compare revisions.

The only thing that Scrivener lacks for me is the option to make charts and tables. I NEED charts and tables, ones I can edit how I'd like. The "outliner" mode is nice and all, but it's still limiting in what it can track. Plus, I miss the NaNoWriMo progress graph... I didn't realize how much I relied on that thing! It would be beautiful to have something visual tracking a complete work within Scrivener.

How's everyone else doing on your NBBs?

I'm having some thoughts while I sit here with a glass of cheap wine, waiting for the chicken to come out of the oven... I'm coming across this subject again somewhat as I write a sequel to Dichotomy, and would love to hear peoples' thoughts.

( To OTP or not to OTP, that is the question. Whether 'tis nobler in the mind... )



And now my chicken is out of the oven and is rested, so now it's time for a very late dinner.  Thank you all, and bon appetit.