Question:
Is it possible to churn out bad fan fic of your own WIP?
Answer:
Apparently, yes.
Yesterday, I was struggling with a scene. Not that I was actively not writing it, exactly. Just that I kept writing 2-3,000 words of it and then having to throw it away because it sucks.
Not sucks like the prose is clunky or the dialogue is stilted or there’s too many adverbs and adjectives. The scene is tense, funny, hawt.
Too bad it makes no frigging sense.
Version 1: Heroine follows hero to his bedchamber, waits by the open door while his valet helps him from one outfit to another, then goes inside when hero calls to her and excises the other bodies from the room, exhorting them to shut the door behind them.
The problem? Uh, hello, Regency house party. Broad daylight. Servants everywhere. WTF is she doing with him in his bed chamber, watching him undress and redress, then agreeing to spend some quality time with him alone once he kicks the servants out? Stupid, stupid, stupid. All three of us. (Hero, Heroine, Erica.)
Delete button.
Version 2: No bedchamber. Too dangerous/stupid/fanfic-y. Hero sweeps heroine into a room off the main thoroughfare, conveniently stocked with sofas and just as conveniently devoid of houseguests and servantkind. He does what any other anti-marriage Regency buck would do: promptly starts to get nekkid.
Rrrrrrrrrrrrrrt! (That’s the sound of a screeching halt.) Although the partial nudity was ostensibly motivated by something other than the desire to get into the heroine’s skirts (checking out a wound) it’s still him with his shirt off and her right there staring at his bare chest, if a bit nervously. (As well she should.)
I think you’re trying too hard to get five scenes ahead of yourself, Erica. Remember Keats: “If the poetry come not as naturally as the leaves to the tree, it had better not come at all.”
Same goes for your h/h – and yes, the pun is fully intended!
Comment by Bill Clark — December 14, 2007 @ 10:05 am
I am definitely trying to get ahead of myself. No question there. And I shall be denied, as I’m gone for most of today, and fly North to visit family tomorrow…
Comment by Erica Ridley — December 14, 2007 @ 10:18 am
I think that’s one of the hardest parts of writing regencies — how to get the hero and heroine nekked together with all those darn rules!!
Comment by Carrie R. — December 14, 2007 @ 10:24 am
fly North
*Bill checks the atlas and discovers that Greenwich is north of Tampa*
Umm…anywhere within striking distance of CT?
Comment by Bill Clark — December 14, 2007 @ 11:12 am
Perhaps he had a poisonous snake, icky spider or something crawling down his shirt and he has to rip in off in his intense dislike of insects and/or reptiles? I’m going with Bill – you’re trying too hard. Something I’ve NEVER been guilty of. lol
Comment by Kris — December 14, 2007 @ 12:57 pm
I hope you saved the scene somewhere. You’ll probably be able to use it sometime.
Comment by BernardL — December 14, 2007 @ 2:50 pm
Since the scene won’t leave you, write it and put it in a file. Maybe after that you’ll be able to write the scene you really need.
Have fun on your trip!!
Comment by Vicki — December 14, 2007 @ 3:18 pm
*Bill looks in vain for an answer to his geography question*
*And equally in vain for a post from the airport while Miss Erica awaits her transportation northward*
Well, since no one else is posting on this blog today, I guess I will. It won’t be as witty or profound as what Miss E writes, but hey – we can’t all write as well as she does.
I woke up this morning with butterflies in my stomach. The kind of butterflies I get when I know I’m about to take a trip. But the only trip on the schedule was to the local bookstore, which wanted more copies of my fancy-pants leather-bound gold-stamped limited-edition “Portrait of Greenwich”, which long ago sold out except for the authorial stash. Even though I keep on shamelessly jacking up the price (which was steep to begin with), the demand doesn’t seem to go away. But who’s complaining? Not I, for sure!
So why the butterflies? Well, it’s all Miss Erica’s fault, of course. I realized I was empathizing with her, since she told us she would be emplaning today. And somehow I feel as though it’s I who am emplaning, not her. I mean, she.
So here I am at the library trying to exorcise my butterflies by writing about them. Do other people do this with their feelings, I wonder? I mean, if you have a funny feeling in the pit of your stomach, do you just ignore it, or do you write about it in order to understand it better and try to come to terms with it?
I’m one who has always used words as a tool to understand life better. I can scratch my head (or whatever) endlessly and wonder vaguely why life is as it is, or I can try to define what I’m feeling or experiencing by writing about it. Obviously, for me the latter approach is more productive.
In the present instance, having realized the source of the butterflies, I can now cope with them by sending them straight back to the person in whose stomach they really belong. So what if she already has a full complement of her own? She’ll just have to make room for mine as well.
Ahh…that feels better. Writing may give some people ulcers, but for me it’s better than Alka-Seltzer.
Should I apologize to Miss E for hijacking her blog? Probably so, but I wouldn’t have done it except for those dang-nab butterflies she no doubt intentionally foisted off on me. As Henry Ford famously said, “Never apologize, never explain.” But you know what? Henry Ford was not a nice man. And I am, or try to be, at least. So, Miss E, I apologize for running off with your blog, and hereby return it to you.
So post something on it now, already!
Comment by Bill Clark — December 15, 2007 @ 12:12 pm
I am here! Been here 4 hours, snowed 4 inches, supposed to snow another foot tomorrow… sure looks like Xmas this side of the Mason-Dixon line!
Comment by Erica Ridley — December 15, 2007 @ 10:01 pm