Final Fantasy Fun

Word count at the start of the day for LHAD Ch. 49: 5071
Word count at the end of the day for the same chapter, when I actually posted it: 4986
Total words produced today: -115.

As I noted on wrisomifu, "I'm pretty sure I created some new words today, too. They are now huddled in the corner trembling and awaiting tomorrow's pruning shears."

Now I remember why I used to call my dissertation the Zeno's Paradox PhD Paper.

But you know what? I am going to pretend that those negative words are PROGRESS.

2333 / 50000 words. 5% done!

(In fact, I should simply post a total published word count at month's end, but I need a visual motivator.)

A.K.A: "Does It Count As a Writing Session, If You Only Touched the Delete Key?"

I'm not officially participating in NaNoWriMo, because REASONS. However, I'm shamelessly stealing their progress bar.

764 / 50000 words. 2% done!

This is misleading, as I began today's writing session by deleting/editing/trimming about 200 words from a partially-finished chapter. Also, my goal isn't really to write 50,000 words in November, but rather, to devote most of November to finishing Love Her and Despair or at least getting it as far along as I possibly can.

To that end, thanks to owlmoose , I have officially joined the wrisomifu challenge, aka "Write Something, You Miserable F***." Ten minutes a day is all the challenge requires.

For me, I've added two additional stipulations:

• Writing for work doesn't count. I write TONS for work, but that's all copywriting, writing for the general public, the sort of stuff you find posted on editorials, blogs, and how-to pages. It's missing my creative/poetic spark. Instead, for WriSoMiFu, my ten minutes must be dedicated to LHAD, or at the very least, something lyrical, poetic and creative, just for fun.
• Editing/trimming/fiddling doesn't count. That's how I fail to make progress: I keep polishing existing bits instead of moving forward. So the word count is for new words, never-before-written words, and that's the only kinds of writing that counts for WriSoMiFu.

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This entry was originally posted at http://auronlu.dreamwidth.org/210865.html, where it has comments.

Two of the remaining 10(ish) LHAD chapters finished, the third proceding along nicely thanks to the fact that I've given in and started letting the cat wake me up at 6:30 AM when my muse is still in dream-mode. The iPad helps tremendously; the creative writing side of my brain prefers a small portable medium that reminds me of a blank book or journal.

I'm so tempted to put up the next chapter, but I'm trying to hold off until everything's finished, then do a once-every-two-weeks serial posting so people can follow along. (The first chapter in the batch reestablishes the Story So Far since I know readers will have forgotten most of it by now.)

Anyway, I was just listening to a rough draft while doing housecleaning -- It's one of my favorite ways of proofreading and getting back into the zone to write the next chunk -- and my iPad did one of those silly computer things which are probably only amusing to me. Imagine the Victoria computer voice declaiming under a full head of steam:

"Isaaru was there, of course, but Auron had declined the graciously-worded invitation to join Bevelle's new icon in the maesters' box. He could just discern three wavering forms on the far side of the sphere pool: the high summoner arrayed in Yevon's vestments with no concern for hypocrisy, a stumpy warrior monk in splendid dress armor, and the new Grand Maester wearing an Alert Battery Low, Power at 10%."

(Er, Lucil? The little voice says you're wearing a machina. Might wanna get that checked out.)

If you've got an iPad, Text-to-Speech is hidden away under the Accessibility section of iPad Settings. The very last setting lets you turn a triple-click on the Home button (the iPad's belly button) into an on/off switch for Text-to-Speech, called Voiceover. It's a bit clunky, but these two Voiceover-only gestures are fairly easy to master: two finger swipe down means "start reading here and keep going," and three finger swipe scrolls up or down a page.

Anonymous Review of Love Her and Despair, currently jammed at the "Houses of Healing" phase of the story arc...

"I'm glad this story is over,"

I wonder if the comma is commentary.

I will try and be an optimist and assume they meant, "Good story," but I couldn't help interpreting it at first glance as, "I'm glad you've stopped posting this; I was tired of seeing it show up on the front page of the archive." I have received some hostility to the main pairing, since fandom consensus is, for reasons I will never fathom, dead set on Aurikku as the OTP for Mr. Grouchypants. (Why not Auron/Braska? With all the m/m shipping out there, I am surprised that isn't the favored fandom OTP.)

To Anon: LHAD is not over, dangit. It's stuck. Every time I go to write the link between the Fields of Pelennor and the last leg, my writing is flat, flat, flat.

(Obviously, not really Pelennor, but I'm using that story structure. Final Fantasy games tend to have a Final Boss Battle sequence that turns out NOT to be the finale, because the final confrontation the game's been building towards almost always turns out to be Not the End. So then there's a Really Truly Final Boss. I am finding it surprisingly difficult to transition from the Not the End climax to the Last Battle.)

Very frustrating. And I know at this point, I had better write ALL the final chapters before posting so I can release them weeks apart, making them easier to follow. And this linking chapter has to double as an introduction, or rather a reintroduction, as it's been so long that readers will have forgotten the story.

I gave you a vacation because I realized you were burnt out. I've been employing your evil twin Skippy in copywriting, which is not great literature, but which puts kitty grit in the box.

I realize that you may be sulking in the corner wondering if and when I'm ever going to pay attention to you again. Well, wakey wakey! I've been trying for a couple weeks now to rouse you out of hibernation.

Look. See that novella? The one I started in 2007? The one that I'd really like to finish? With the bits and pieces of final chapters waiting for me to catch up to them, and a detailed story outline that's been settled for years? Do you think you might come out of your sulk long enough for me to write the next chapter-- heck, the next scene -- without it sounding lifeless, mechanical, and poorly written?

This is what the last chapter of my dissertation felt like before I decided to hang up the quill. However, I am not giving up on you. We've been together too long. We were an item back when I was writing godawful Trek, Blake's 7 and Doctor Who Mary Sues by flashlight under the covers. You're stuck with me. So snap out of it and work with me here. Let's dance. I don't care if I only get one die-hard reader who's willing to wait for you; I will NOT leave this thing unfinished.

It's a good story, and it deserves to be told in full, Scouring of the Shire and all.

I just added up all my main characters, trying to make sure I didn't forget anyone. And I am BOGGLED. How did this happen? When I first wrote the drabble-that-turned-into-a-oneshot that was the seed-idea for this saga, it was a cast of FOUR, with one more right at the end. Now?

Love Her and Despair CAST: (scale of 1-10 for minor to major character): 

1. Auron   --  10
2. Lulu      -- 6-10
3. Isaaru   -- 7-9
4. Pacce   -- 5
5. Rikku    -- 6-8
6. Wakka   -- 4-6
7. Yuna Jr. -- 4-8
8. Elma   -- 5-7
9. Cid    -- 4-5
10. Lucil   -- 4-6
11. Baralai   -- 4-6
12. Paine    -- 3-5
13. Nooj     -- 3-5
14. Gippal   -- 3-5
15. Maroda    -5-7
16. Zuke   -- 3-6
17. Vidina   -- 2-3
18. Shinra    -- 2-3
19. Brother -- 1
20. Mbela -- 1
21. Etta   -- 1-2
22. Shelinda -- 1
23. Buddy   -- 1 
24. Anima, Bahamut   -- 2 
25. Luzzu -- 2-3
26. (Dona, Barthello, Maechen, Kiyuri, Wedge -- 0.5 -- yes, Maechen already had a cameo, but it was "teeny-weenie")

Some characters are minor walk-ons and cameos (16-25). However, that's 15 characters with character development and plot arcs that I need to wrap up. Which would be fine, except that most are interconnected. I wrote out a rough "character arc chart" a few years ago treating the first 15 as individual timelines, but I never attempted a flowchart dealing with all the relationships which need to be resolved in tandem. (Cid seems to be determined to be mixed up with everybody's business, even though he doesn't develop/evolve at all. Well, it's a Final Fantasy story...there Has To Be a Cid. *punts Cid*) 

So, when I tried to start wrapping up and jettisoning nonessential personnel befor the Scouring of the Shire / Last Battle chunk of the story, I got stuck, like hitting two handfuls of typewriter keys and jamming them against the ribbon. That's no excuse for posting only two chapters in the last year, but the moral of the story is: keep your main cast to 7 or less, or be prepared to juggle a LOT OF BALLS.

Okay. I can now cross off Cid, Brother, Buddy, and...dangit, Zuke, why did you have to walk back into the story?! Go away! 

In other news, I just updated LHAD's Sticky Post / Table of Contents for my Dreamwidth account so that the navigation is functional, which it wasn't before. You can now navigate from chapter to chapter on DW, instead of having to go to LJ for easy reading.  

Also, I lost a year, so it's not as bad as I thought. I looked back and see I started it on December 14, 2007, not 2006. Think I'll finish in five years? Just in time for Final Fantasy X (HD) to come out. No, I don't have selfish reasons for being happy about that release...nope nope. ;) 

I haven't ever joined NaNoMo, because I've never had the time and immediately explode when I have deadlines. However, I've been pecking at writing again in November. It's as difficult as ever— how I miss being a young, naive writer who never saw my flaws, who just wrote for writing's sake— but at least it's happening. Unfortunately, the mundane writing I've been doing for the last year seems to drive my creative muse out of my skull. So it's one or the other, and I cannot afford to play for too long.

Yes, I'm still pecking away at LHAD. I believe that story is the best thing I have written, and I want it finished, for me, and for mugs, and for everyone who's ever given me good fic or feedback and might enjoy it, although it's taken much too long. 

Right now, however, I'm being self-indulgent, letting a lightweight FF5 story take me wherever it wills.  After LHAD's ten thousand plot threads and original character arcs, I feel a twinge of embarrassment in falling back on a "replay a game from one character's POV and throw in a romance."  However, FF5 is such a delightfully simple and undeveloped story that it begs for all kinds of embellishment.  Alas, "romance" isn't exactly the term for a disaster waiting to happen. I'm waiting to find out whether it remains a farce or turns into a Greek tragedy.

Unfortunately, I set myself an impossible task by writing the first chapter in an idiom which is foreign to my nature. It's one part Dorothy Sayers and one part ellnyx's "They Call This Progress," an FFXII western Victorian AU. (Sorry, link is flocked, but anyone who's read ellnyx's more mannered Balthier stories will have some idea what I'm mimicking, clumsily.) Final Fantasy has its own recurring archetypes, and Faris is obviously some distant and Fangish antecedent of Balthier.

Also, as this is relevant: George Lucas. Luke/Leia. Did he intend them to be siblings from the start, or did he tweak their relationship and execute a 3-point-turn halfway through writing Empire? And was it bungled, or a brilliant way to invoke a classic tragic-mythic archetype without letting it go too far? (cf: Splinter of the Mind's Eye; Lucas really should've warned that author what was coming in the third film.) As I tiptoe gingerly along the same hoary archetype, I can't help pondering. Also, how might that saga have ended if Han had turned out to be the long-lost sibling? 

So, mad Russians finally drive me to Dreamwidth. I've always felt favorably about it, since most of the FF gang has migrated. I'm just bummed because I had my LJ set up exactly the way I like it, and it's a permanent account, so, all the icons forever. But usericons are minor.

I shall of course cross-post, and keep checking LJ -- in fact I'm still checking LJ first, before DW, because my brain is hard-wired to think of LJ as "home base." But I don't trust its stability. From now on I shall treat DW as the primary account and LJ as the mirror.

So there's that.

Second thing is that I'm playing my way through FFXIII, finally. I meant to keep a game journal, but, well, I didn't. It is such a curate's egg of a game, but for the most part I'm enjoying it. I want to tell heavenscalyx to play it, except portions of it would make her and Rose scream. But there is a canon lesbian relationship in the party, at least as canon as Sailor Moon (original, not English dub). It's a pity one of the pair is a bit of a sap, but I am happily focusing on their ship and not the parts of the game that work less well for me. I am relieved that several of the characters have turned out to be less annoying than they were for the first hour of playing time.

And, oh, Fang. Square finally gave me the female character I have been waiting for. Except I wish she had magic, too, but I guess that would be too much Mary Sue in one package.

Also, is it my imagination, or was someone dressing Lightning in Utena clothes? Plus roses and rose petals.

I'm up to, uh, the Palamecia, Luck Be a Lady bit. Trying to figure out which combinations of characters are useful and failing miserably...I keep running around in the first spot where you're allowed to mix and match teams, and dying because I've screwed up. I did too much level-grinding with Lightning + Fang + Hope and learned every way to use them, and now it seems like trying any other party, I'm missing all my favorite tools.

LHAD is jammed like 20 keys of a typewriter smacked there by an exuberant 6-year-old. I'm half regretting posting the last chapter: I loved the first half of it, with the gang gathered on the bridge of the airship decompressing, and that was fresh, new, scene so easy to write. The second half was difficult because I'd written Lulu Post-Sin 4 years ago, almost the first thing I ever wrote, and I've had years and years to build up various alternate versions of that moment, each of which had some emotional punch, but trying to pick and choose and stitch together all of them, I feel like I lost something. I'm almost tempted to retcon and post the original version of that scene, if it would let me move forward. So frustrating. I fear it may be that way all the way to the end. I wrote early drafts of the concluding chapters first, and I find the part of a story i've written and visualized and imagined the longest is the hardest to write when I get to it, because I wind up trying to connect all the patchwork pieces, favorite moments and cool lines of dialog like a quilt, instead of blazing a path forward.

And augh, it is hell. And I must make it work. I MUST.

I just rewrote an entire outline for all the parts that were jammed, and realized I had to throw out most of what I've written. Topic. Too broad. Too brilliant. Too all-expansive. Start over with something small and simple and obvious. FINISH, and humble thy pride. Even though it should be done by now, starting over may be the best option. Glugh.


But in brighter news, LHAD finally unstuck. I'd written a big chunk of the next chapter 3 months ago, but it was flaccid. So I set it aside.

Only now I have chapter 41 at 4,000 words, and it doesn't really have a great stopping place. and chapter 42 at 2300 words, and it's a PERFECT stopping place. Oh, there. Yes, rub that a little harder, angst cliffhanger CLIMAX. And chapter 43 started, and I know just where it's going, although I've said that before.

And oh yeah.

Best two quotes from today's (noticeable, but not damaging) earthquake:

(Paraphrasing some news article which sadly I forgot to save I'm too lazy to hunt up again):
"Petco park [San Diego's baseball stadium] swayed noticeably for several seconds. The public address announcer asked everyone to remain calm. The fans cheered."

and on Twitter,
"The worst part about a 5.7 earthquake? I'm afraid to go to bed without jammies on."

*says, sans jammies*

I'm finally finished chores and have time for creative writing. However, I'm so brain dead now that I'm not able to make the pretty. Our Heroes are heading into Sin, and that means Endgame Epic Weird Dream Sequence With a Side Helping of Crack. It's something I can often write, but I have to be in the zone.

For three years, I've had this endgame vaguely in my head. I've got  a file of "The Story Foreseen" (© JRRT) with a chapter outline, scraps and snippets (mostly dialog), and tons of alternate ideas. Alas, when I sit down to flesh out the bones and select from all the scraps, the result is never as beautiful and dramatic and moving as I had envisioned. I'm trying to write The Fall of Gondolin, and it keeps sounding like The Silmarillion.

Related tangent: Does Diane Duane have a hallucinogenic WTF-sequence during the climax of every novel, or just The Wounded Sky and My Enemy, My Ally, my favorite two installments from the early days of published Star Trek novels?) 

Other related tangent: After reading the latest chapter of owlmoose 's Aftermath, I'm vaguely thinking I really should start using a beta reader for my polished work. Except (a) I am too much of a flake to offer a commitment like that in exchange, and (b) when I do finish a chapter, I just want to frickin' post it. This will forever make my writing less than it could be. Just think what LHaD would've been if I could've had the patience/fortitude for a beta reader instead of letting you folks beta for me in comments/critique/feedback?! I do go back and edit based on feedback/comments, but by that time everyone's read it! 

Okay, Rikku-babes, let's give you a bit of cool before I call it a night.