Weekend roundup

I finished the final draft of my Combat! fanfiction story "In Little Stars" last week. Nice to have that one out of my brain, as it was started in January 2008, and it was emotionally taxing. It went through four drafts during that time, more than my usual for fanfic, ending up at nearly 18,000 words. But then I can rarely write short fanfic stories. My brain still prefers to work in "hour-long" episode formats when it can. I'm also glad this one's done because I have just two more fanfic stories left in me, and one's already done (first draft-completed during last year's nano), and the last story is two-thirds written. And that nicely leaves most of my free time available for the new novel.

The new novel is shifting, growing, even as I still work on chapter one. Hero's voice continues to elude me, but that's okay. With the overall growth it's doing, I'd rather keep everything fluid and open right now. I'm waiting for one more piece to click in place. When it does, I'll be ready to jump into it more firmly. But I've had that lovely bouncy excitement every day as I wait for work and daily commitments to end so I can work on it. I love that feeling!

On the movie front, watched Barbary Coast with Edward G. Robinson, Miriam Hopkins, and Joel McCrea. Meh. Not bad, not good. Just... meh. Edward G. was awesomely cool as ever (dig that earring), and Joel earnest and love-lost and spouting poetry while making horribly, terribly bad decisions. Walter Brennan adds suitable color and made me grin every time he appeared. Walter Brennan is just the best, he really is. When he gives the money he stole from Joel back to him, he's priceless! Brian Donlevy's lurking about as an oddly dressed thug... it's funny, I always think of him as a rather imposing man (a lot of that is his don't-mess-with-me attitude and the tough characters he plays), but you know, he isn't. Particularly next to Joel McCrea. Okay, that's not truly fair, cuz Joel makes most other actors look small, but still. Donlevy's still young and thin here too... and that outfit. Gadzooks, he needs to lose the unflattering, high-necked outfit. Really. Badly.

And now, to Nicole at Classic Hollywood Nerd, a very very HAPPY 20th BIRTHDAY!!!! I enjoyed a slice of Stir-Crazy Cake this evening to celebrate! (A truly yummy cake, easy to make -- very highly recommended!) Hope your birthday is a fabulous one!

Joel McCrea in Barbary Coast, broad-shouldered and handsome, as always!

Yeeeee-haw!

You know how some stories you have to work at, and some just work? Effortless, easy, no thinking involved: they just work.

And when you're writing one of those, it's a float-on-top-of-the-skies feeling. Sheer writing joy! It's like you can do no wrong. Just get out of the way of your subconscious and let it do its job. All the dramatic pieces just fall into place of their own accord, and you don't have to wonder if it's going to be any good or not because when it's right, it's a totally different feeling from stories you have to, well, work at.

ILS is like that. I haven't had this much fun letting a story write itself since DTD. That one also wrote itself and it worked.

Maybe it's no coincidence that I'm doing the final edits on DTD in the mornings at the same time I'm writing ILS in the evenings.

"I like livin'..."

How sad is it that I pop into my own blog a couple times a day just to look at the picture I put in the previous post? But it's a pleasant interruption from work, which is threatening to overwhelm me, so I'll take all the distractions I can. I showed my sister part of "Jeopardy" yesterday for the Dirty Dozen connection, and she was quite shocked and delighted that he was such a hottie in his 30's. But she and I like mostly the same look in our men, so I knew she'd dig him too.

I have a rough outline of the last half of POW done now, and more new words on a fanfic story. I have two fanfic stories left to write (well, two and a half), and then I'm done. They're pressing stories, stories that are driving me crazy to get them down. Don't think I've ever had that with any of my previous stories. I just wrote them for the fun of it. These last two, I have to write. Unfortunately, I also have to write the conclusion to Murder's Melody. Or maybe I'll just pull that story for good and let it die a hard and painful death in the incomplete files. I know what happens, I just can't get motivated to work on it with these other stories horning in.

What I'd really like to do is just sit down on a Sunday and finish off the second draft of "In Little Stars." Turn off the internet, stop watching my weekend movies with hot, drool-inducing actors, and finish the damned thing. Then finish "Blood of the Air." Because both are eating up valuable brain cells that I could be spending on POW and the DTD rewrites, but they won't go away no matter how hard I try to shove them into the cellar. If anything, they get stronger in my head each day I delay working on them, and my focus even simply working on an outline for POW was sketchy. I haven't been grabbed by stories this hard in ages. And it's a perfect pair of stories to end my C! fanfic career on, too, particularly BotA. I dig that!

Now, I just need to stop talking about it and get writing so they're outta my head already! Go! Shoo! Shoo!