This is so nice. Having everyone together for my birthday. Of course, you could smash in all my toes with a hammer and it will still be the bestest Buffy Birthday Bash in a big long while.

Buffy ,'Potential'


The Great Write Way  

A place for Buffistas to discuss, beta and otherwise deal and dish on their non-fan fiction projects.


Liese S. - Sep 23, 2004 8:28:17 pm PDT #6811 of 10001
"Faded like the lilac, he thought."

winslow

On the commute home, I realized I could just go to the bookstore. I didn't have anybody waiting at home. No obligations. I could make my own plans.

When I had cried at the train station, this wasn't what I imagined. Married at eighteen meant I went straight from the folks' house to the dorm to our apartment. I'd never lived independently, and it seemed terrifying.

Instead, it was liberating. I didn't love him any less, and when he came home, I wouldn't be any less glad. But I would be more confident, less reliant, stronger.

I took the next exit.


deborah grabien - Sep 23, 2004 8:29:31 pm PDT #6812 of 10001
It really doesn't matter. It's just an opinion. Don't worry about it. Not worth the hassle.

Liese, that's extremely pretty.

A moment to indulge my memories - which have been running fucking rampant recently - with another First Time drabble. Also autobiographical, although unlike the last one, the conversation isn't precise.

Reverie: When First We Met

Sunlight streaming through windows, splattering the piano, the antique rug. We're talking, lazy, idle.

"It was at Woodstock."

"That was the second time." He shakes his head at me. "Six months earlier."

I blink at him. "What? No way."

"At a bloke called Peter's apartment. Just after Christmas. Big posh place on the Upper West Side."

"But...but..." I'm stammering now. "Woodstock. You were a newlywed. I went and cried behind a stack of amps. I'd remember an earlier meeting, wouldn't I?"

"Apparently not." The brown eyes move away and, with a shock, I realise I've hurt him. "But I do."


Liese S. - Sep 23, 2004 8:33:29 pm PDT #6813 of 10001
"Faded like the lilac, he thought."

Aww, wow.

That's wild, because the whole line of things could have perhaps been different. And he thought you remembered.


deborah grabien - Sep 23, 2004 8:38:46 pm PDT #6814 of 10001
It really doesn't matter. It's just an opinion. Don't worry about it. Not worth the hassle.

It floors me, that I don't remember. I remember the party, because I'd been to a booksigning with my much-older journalist sister that day, and Peter Beagle had signed my copy of The Silver Stallion, and then she took me to this party where there were all these music industry types - that's what Peter did, PR or some junk - but I don't remember meeting N there. He said he remembered meeting me just fine - his immediate reaction, according to him, was "well, now, here comes something different."

But I still don't remember him being there.


Allyson - Sep 23, 2004 8:39:29 pm PDT #6815 of 10001
Wait, is this real-world child support, where the money goes to buy food for the kids, or MRA fantasyland child support where the women just buy Ferraris and cocaine? -Jessica

Drabble 2, ripped out of an unfinished essay:

I discovered the Bronze in the Spring of 2000, just when I hit the wall of monotony at work. A co-worker made the fantastic suggestion that I think about what I was worth, divide that by what they were paying me, and the difference would be the number of hours I could spend doing jack shit at my desk. This gave me 1.7 hours of slack-time, if I rounded up, and I did. This was more than one full day of work I spent chatting with other people about television shows, life, and arguing about the wisdom of using stranglation as a means to torture a vampire, since, you know, they don’t breathe. I chalked it up as “flex-time.”


Susan W. - Sep 23, 2004 8:41:31 pm PDT #6816 of 10001
Good Trouble and Righteous Fights

Liese, I love, love, love your under the bed drabble.


deborah grabien - Sep 23, 2004 8:42:22 pm PDT #6817 of 10001
It really doesn't matter. It's just an opinion. Don't worry about it. Not worth the hassle.

OK - is there any reason at all you can't lace the book with some of these drabbles? Because that acts as a damned near perfect introduction to the section on the Bronze. And after all, the drabbling? Definitely part of fandom.

So it's appropriate, surely?


Allyson - Sep 23, 2004 8:46:32 pm PDT #6818 of 10001
Wait, is this real-world child support, where the money goes to buy food for the kids, or MRA fantasyland child support where the women just buy Ferraris and cocaine? -Jessica

It pretty much is the intro to the Bronze. The Firefly drabble is a loose riff of the first paragraph of the Save Firefly story.

Liese, I am Susan on your drabble.


deborah grabien - Sep 23, 2004 8:52:55 pm PDT #6819 of 10001
It really doesn't matter. It's just an opinion. Don't worry about it. Not worth the hassle.

So, they work both as drabbles and as parts of the broader picture? Gorgeous, that is.


Liese S. - Sep 23, 2004 9:49:52 pm PDT #6820 of 10001
"Faded like the lilac, he thought."

Thanks, all. Very kind of you.

Of course, I am mortified that I had to go back in and edit the typo in my favorite author's name! That's the trouble with cut & paste, you propagate your errors much easier that way.

Also, Allyson, I really like deb's idea of integrating shorter bits like the drabbles in your book. You could use them to give splashes of color and hints at things you can't go into further. I can definitely picture sidebar excerpts and pieces alongside your essays in that sort of a compilation. I think it would work well for the reader and for the flow of your whole entity.