I'm almost ready for Beta reading of Save Firefly, which needs a sexier title but I won't deal with that til it's really most sincerely dead.

It's an unweildy beast. un-fucking-weildy.

Save Firefly, which needs a sexier title but I won't deal with that til it's really most sincerely dead.

Boobs for Firefly?

which needs a sexier title

My Firefly Brings All the Boys to the Yard?

I knew I wanted to write ever since I wrote my first story in third or fourth grade, with talking horses. But I had a lifetime's habit of starting stories and never finishing them. I have tons of nearly identical novel openings from high school, always teen romances with heroines who were petite and had curly black or red hair with blue or green eyes (since I am a sturdy peasant with straight brown hair and dark brown eyes), and who played clarinet or flute, since I played the sax, and who had a crush on the trumpet section leader or maybe a wide receiver on the football team, since I was in love with the drum section leader. By junior or senior year they were getting better written, less Mary Sueish, and developing some variety of plot, but I didn't write while I was in college.

After college I did a couple of Lois & Clark fanfics, and then made it five or six chapters and a mass of research and worldbuilding into a projected epic fantasy trilogy. That was in 1996 or so. But then I went to England in 1997, got distracted from the story what with meeting DH and being in a new country, and by the time I tried to go back to it, I'd changed too much to write that same story.

So sometime in 1998 or '99, I said, "Face it. You're talented, and you like to write, but you never finish anything. Just drop it and live your life." But then in 2001 I got the idea for Lucy, and thought, "You never finish anything, but this story won't get out of your head, so start writing. It'll stop bugging you after three chapters or so." But it didn't, and I decided I was going to finish it, no matter how long it took nor how good or bad it turned out to be.

Which is a very long-winded way of saying that I pretty much always did want to write.

Susan roooooocks.

Save Firefly, which needs a sexier title but I won't deal with that til it's really most sincerely dead.

Boobs for Firefly?

"Boobs in Space"?

I'm curious now, about how other writers out there see the things they've already written, individual approaches.

I'm one who tends to writhe in horrified embarassment at remembered mistakes, so I burned the notebooks which contained the very earliest versions of a really, really big Star Wars fic I did back when the first movies came out. The "finished" version is in a binder about ten inches from my left knee, so it didn't die a final death, just evolved. I'm *almost* tempted to wish I still had those notebooks so I can see how I progressed as a writer, but not really. I remember. And the me 20 years later has a vague itch to rewrite the thing one more time, but Amy would probably commit me.

I can generally let the things I've written recently rest in a state of sufficient accomplishment, though I tweak little things occasionally if I'm reading on the computer. Sometimes I go, "Hm, fairly bland plot twist there, should have done that to pitch the conflict a little clearer." And sometimes I stare at a phrase or situation and go, "Dear God, I *can* write."

I think I fit Amy's description of "writes well but has no story to tell" . I understand the concept of getting better at one's work, and expect to work to achieve that. I have a standard, but it is my own, and I don't compare my work, my working style, my word count, or my success or lack of it to anyone else, nor have I expected to achieve results similar to anyone else's. That part of being a writer doesn't interest me.

I'd love to sell something new, it would be validating, in that way that remuneration is validating. But basically? I'd be really really thrilled to have an idea burning in my head that I could wrestle with and spend the day in that world and hear those characters in my head, and some days get it right, even if days in a row I didn't. I had that. It's gone, and I have no idea whether it will ever come back.

Hand up over in this corner, Allyson, when you're ready for readers.

I got the bad writing out of the way early on: really bad novel at age 15, in bad Italian, grandiose and self-indulgent and thoroughly pointless. No idea where it is, but the point is, never been ashamed of it. It was a story. I told it, however badly. I put too much me into it - I was 15, for fuck's sake - and then put it away for two years. I looked at it again, burst out laughing, and never looked back.

There was a story in there, and characters, ones on a journey.

Allyson, also with the beta, please, ma'am. And title: "Emotional Rescue, Deep-Space Style"?

OK - I gloat gloat gloat.

Completely up to date photo of Isle of Dogs.

See the south bank, the big white rectangles in the river? That's the Royal Naval Dock Yard. Not too far from there, in Greenwich, just to the east? Was Henry VIII's manor house, Pleasaunce (aka Placentia). He married three of his wives there, including Anne of Cleves.

Directly opposite the Royal Naval Dock Yard is a small green undeveloped square. It's where I'm going to set my 16th century haunt-inducing crime.

My story just fell into place.

Gloatygloatgloat.

Happy now.

I'm almost ready for Beta reading of Save Firefly, which needs a sexier title but I won't deal with that til it's really most sincerely dead.

Hey, and finally I'll be able to ask to read it on time!

Whenever I read the words "Save Firefly", I think about the big red button in (wait for it) "Out of Gas"¹. I can't help it - my mind immediately goes to that visual place.

It's really interesting reading about the different approaches of everybody here. Nothing to add, sadly, just waving to the people I haven't posted with for so long.

¹ deb, and anybody else who hadn't watched "Firefly" - it's the one episode I can't stop falling in love with. Also, embarassingly enough, I can't stop posting about it, either.