erika, I keep all my stuff forever, because I'm crazy like that. Like, blue bins full of notebooks and archived data like whoa. It's kinda ridiculous. But I do often go back through and glean stuff, so I feel like it's worthwhile to have, my SO's protestations notwithstanding.

Lyrics and lyric snippets especially make reappearances later. In fact, right now I'm working up two old pieces and a new one.

MM, aww.

New drabble theme for today: power lines (to be used with any definition of power, or lines, or whatnot)

MM, man, that's--yeah. Nicely done.

Nice, MM. And poor Em, it sounds like she's recovering well though.

I'm still working on 21, maybe one more good block of time to finish it off. Good blocks of time are hard to get though.

I tried everything to write uplifting for "Power Lines", but this is what really wanted to be written:

Power Lines

Sometimes she can see it like anyone else sees it, freeze-frame, like "My God, what are you about to put up your nose?"Despite not being great at school, she's not a stupid person and can sometimes tell that sucking powder off a toilet tank that a billion people have used might not rank as the smartest idea ever, and pretty gross at that, and she's been doing it long enough that the highs aren't great like that first magical time. But she still likes how small her problems get as she does it, and how sometimes, it still feels like she can fly. But it's like she's Supergirl who's stranded in her phone booth.

Wow, erika. That is awesome.

I got to the end of 21, but I still need to do my read through. I ended it a little short of where I thought I would, but I hit a good place to end at a good word count for a chapter, so I ended it there.

Spent part of last night reading through some of my old fanfic. No, don't know why, exactly. As expected, technique-wise, it was pretty terrible. Head hopping all OVER the place. Story-wise, there was some cliché, but to be expected, since they were pretty heavy on the romance side of thing, but two things really jumped out at me: one, that with each story, I can visibly seeing technique improving and two: damn, but there was a lot of heart and joy and passion in those early stories.

I want to really remember what it was like to love writing like that again.

Maybe that's what drove me to read them.

I can see loads of improvement just going from my rough draft to my first revision, and that was far better than my first attempt a few years ago.

Most of my first revision is a total rewrite, and it feels like I've gotten a lot better. I'm not altogether happy with this revision, but I figure it's almost another rough draft. At least I think the next revision isn't going to be completely rewriting almost everything.

Today I started listening to it in my car while commuting and comparing it to the experience of listening to my audio books. It's not there yet, it doesn't flow as well as other stuff I've listened to, but it isn't terrible. Of course listening to a computer read it doesn't help, but I try to compensate for that in my head.

Thanks, MM. I liked yours too. For vastly different reasons.

I want to really remember what it was like to love writing like that again.

I've been like that too. It's the biggest personal frustration in my life right now, that the writing just won't work. I caught myself reading something of mine and thinking, "I really like this story, why does this seem so familiar--oh my god. I wrote this." It's like a totally different person, with much more grace and talent, existed then. And then I start thinking that I can never match that again, and then I mentally smack myself and pull up some old unfinished stories and give it another shot.