Tag: The X-Files

NaNoWriMo status update

I’m 7 days into NaNoWriMo, and I’m having a great time. I’m already halfway to 50k, but I’m not patting myself on the back too hard for a number of reasons.

First and foremost, this is fanfic; I haven’t had to go through the process of creating too many new characters, or building a world, or a backstory. A lot of the heavy lifting was done by someone else before I started writing, and I have the luxury of playing with what’s already there. Fanfic is easymode.

Second, since this piece follows my previous fic, I was already in the practice of writing or editing every day, and had outlined the story (for the most part) and thought about it well before I started writing it.

Third, my inner editor has been bound, gagged, and locked in a closet. As such, what I’m writing this month will never be shared with anyone else in its current state, which really takes the pressure off. I did NaBloPoMo several years back, and it was hard. Knowing people might read what I’d write? Scary.

In contrast, NaNoWriMo is a free-for-all of words without worry. Grammatical errors galore, typos, repetitive phrases, a wobbly timeline, lack of context, plot holes galore–my current draft has all these and more. And I don’t care, because I’m getting the ideas down, and eventually I’ll go back and edit, and edit some more, and bring it all together.

It’s a different experience from writing the first fic, which was edited as it was written. I’m not sure I like the writing-without-editing process better, but it works for the purpose of writing fast. I’m not sure I would do it this way again, but it’s an interesting approach.

The month only gets harder from here; the end of November is busy with travel and Thanksgiving, so my goal is to get to 50k before I leave for London. Then I’ll try to spend the rest of the month re-reading and editing and filling in the gaps.

NaNoWriMo, here I come!

X-Files fanfic cover in progressI mentioned in one of my last posts that I’m participating in NaNoWriMo in November, and I may be setting myself up for failure. Next month is ridiculous, schedule-wise, with each of us traveling for a week, and with Thanksgiving, and my tendency to edit as I write, I have no idea how I’ll reach the requisite 1,700 words per day. But hey, you never know.

Until a few months ago, the longest paper I’d ever written just barely crested 10,000 words, and it was a college essay for Canadian Studies about Pierre Trudeau; a fascinating guy in his own right, but not a particularly fascinating paper. I was known to drop college courses if the syllabus required any papers greater than 10,000 words, and I purposely chose a major that didn’t require writing a traditional thesis.

I’m hard-pressed to think of anything that interests me enough to hold my intrigue for 50,000 words, so the idea of writing a novel for fun seemed like an annoying way to spend my free time.

That said, I used to write all the time; poetry and short stories, plus blogging (before they called it blogging), but never anything longer than a few thousand words. That would require an attention span.

Speaking of things that do hold my attention, a few months ago I started re-watching The X-Files and reading the new X-Files Season 10 comics, and that got me thinking about the epic story arcs that show generated (and all the resulting loose ends). 2013 marks the series’ 20th anniversary (oh, hey, I feel old) so I’ve had this show on the brain, and I started thinking about a story.

I’ve written XF fanfic before, and hopefully it will never see the light of day, because I spent most of the stories thinking up excuses for the characters to fall into bed together. (In my defense, the sexual frustration in the first seven seasons is almost unbearable, even now, watching the show as an adult.) After a few nights of mulling over one particular plot idea, I got the crazy idea in my head to start writing fanfic again, this time with a storyline that doesn’t read like soft-core porn. I wanted to stay true to the original series and the characters, and follow up with the William story arc.

That fic is currently sitting at over 60,000 words. It still needs editing and beta reading and more editing, and I feel like I’ll be plucking away at it forever. But I did it, and now my life list is happy.

Write a novel(-length piece of fan fiction) — check!

I’ve outlined my ideas for the sequel, which I intend to be my NaNoWriMo project. Again, I tend to edit as I write, which is not great for speed, so I’m going to try to curb the urge to tweak every last word. I’ll try to write scenes as they come to me, rather than writing from beginning to end, then piece them together after the fact.

In any case, I’m happy to have a project to work on that’s different from my usual fare. If you’re writing this year, please be my friend on NaNoWriMo! I’m going to need all the motivation I can get.

yep, still a nerd

In my haste to get something to eat before my lunch hour was up, I totally forgot to include two of my most defining nerdy traits.  So another day, another lunch break… another post.

Playing by Heart
Playing by Heart

The first:  I’m a recovering X-Phile.  In high school and college my dorm room walls were plastered with pictures of David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson, Mulder and Scully, my favorite FBI-fighting team.  I owned all the episode guides, read all the fanfic (even wrote some of my own, embarrassingly enough), knew all the in-jokes, and desperately wanted my heroes to get it over with already and screw like bunnies.  Yeah, I was one of “those” fans.  When everyone who knew better stopped watching the show in the 6th or 7th season, I was still securely anchored in front of the TV every Sunday night at 9, giddy with anticipation.  Thankfully the show ended in the 9th season, or I might still be defending myself (poorly) to television critics with better taste than I on some obscure Internet forum somewhere.

My second nerdy love:  Jon Stewart.  He’s tall, dark, handsome, and makes fun of politicians for a living.  But before he hosted the Daily Show, he had a small-ish role (alongside noneother than Gillian Anderson!) in a movie called Playing by Heart, which served as my feel-good movie for several years.  It wasn’t a great film by most standards, but it made a certain hormonal teenaged girl cry in all the right places, so it served its purpose.  The feel-good movie of choice has since been replaced by Love Actually, but my love for Jon Stewart and his biting wit continues.

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