I almost wish I was limited to pen and paper these days, despite the toll it takes on my wrists. Writing seemed more visceral then. The very shapes of the letters seemed to drive the words. I'd get a weird sort of deja vu, watching my hand, watching the letters form on the page with the utter certainty that I'd watched this before. I've actually had a hard time throwing away some handwritten drafts, because the handwriting is imbued with more of the personality of what I was thinking than any typeface.

On the other hand, it doesn't seem quite real, quite like something worthy of being out in public until its in "print". The first time I printed out a story, rather than just typed it ('cause all the typos made it seem nearly handwritten), I stared at my words printed on the page and thought, "That's a story. That's not just me rambling on, scrawling daydreams in a notebook. That's words printed on a page." Felt much more serious at that point.

I write either on the laptop, on the desktop, on a paper bag that's handy, on the back of a business card...

You get the picture.

Nicole, insent!

Ple, received and back atcha.

If anyone is interested, 'Dream A Little Dream' has been posted at Buffy Fic. It may or may not be complete depending on...well...me, I guess.

I've read things and had no memory of writing them.

I've had that experience as well. And come across story fragments that have me going "Damn... that wasn't half-bad... I have no idea what was supposed to happen next, though."

Shifting from composing in hand-writing to typing was a big deal for me, especially because back then my typing was dead rotten. (However getting a data-entry job then switching gradually over to being a programmer really helped that.) I still usually do a "Copy As" between the first draft and second draft to preserve the rotten first draft ideas and phrasings so if nothing else I can go back and convince myself that I do have some editing skills. :-)

Last night it happened the same way it did with my first little story. About midnight, I had a brief idea about a conversation going on between two characters, so I sat down and started typing. However with the first one I stayed with just the two characters, but on this new one I'm actually branching out, bringing other characters and more extensive ideas into the story.

I'm not sure where it's going since I never had a real plot to begin with and that's making me a tad nervous.

Does everyone else get actual plot ideas and my muse is just being stingy with the assistance?

I rarely get actual plot ideas right off. Normally, I get a scene, or a conversation, or an image. Plot unveils itself as I write. (Which is why a planned 1500 word piece is now at 27000 and counting.)

Once, maybe twice, the plot has come out and bonked me on the head and told me "this is the story, the characters, the arc, so make it so, bitch!" Thankfully, this doesn't happen often.

I rarely get actual plot ideas right off. Normally, I get a scene, or a conversation, or an image. Plot unveils itself as I write.

Yes, this. Plei, of course, can tell you that I rarely know what's going on with my own story. I tend to not know the ending, or the point of it all, until the last couple paragraphs or so.

Announcing here and in Bitchy Fic

"Glory Night" is up in all its, well, one-file glory at my website.

[link]

If the fandom were more active, I would totally create a "Homicide" Mary Sue test. Because my life is sad, I found a story I hadn't read and thought "Great. It's long." But this new detective: -dresses perfectly -charmed Gee's socks off -Was Timmy's good childhood friend that he may or may not have lost it to in high school. -Has a PHD from frickin' Harvard, in sociology and training in profiling, from Quantico, thank you very much, but she's in Balmer getting her hands dirty or some shit. Uh huh.(She's in it for the glamour.) And of course, is so babesome that none of the guys talk of much else. And even Munch doesn't say pervy things to her. After that, I had to stop reading, but I'm sure she sings like Kathleen Battle and can talk to her dog.I've got the link, but posting it here would push me over from Bitch to...bitch.

Oh, erika, my sympathies. The only Homicide stuff I ever read was by Saundra Mitchell, and it was cracking good cases. (And I think taken down from the web in like 1998.)

Mostly, I think it was a show that was really hard to write fanfic for, you know? It was either going to be strange, digressive, meaningless dialogue, or it was going to be a case, and those are the hardest/least popular genres of fanfic out there.

Okay, I happen to know there was a lot of crossover slash that went on, but that stuff never particularly grabbed me.