So I was over at the Kink Meme today, readin' Sil's prompt responses (she has three of them up there! one with more than one part! WOO-HOO!) and feeling grand, when it came to me that there seemed to be a running theme of McCoy taking care of Chapel. Wouldn't it be fun, I thought, to turn it around?

And then this thing crawled out of my head, going "Wriiite me, wriiite me." It turned out...a little different than I'd expected.

Let me be clear here: this is a finished thing. It is also unbetaed and rather rubbishy. But since I spent the whole damn afternoon and evening wrestling with it, I am just going to post it and let it go at that.

( Need )

Our penultimate week! I think.

And if you haven't been paying attention before, the TAR (Ten-Aino-Ray) Challenge is for the three of us to write a certain number of words a day, culminating in a certain number of words per week. If you do not meet your goal, there is BATSU!-penance for the writer to do. Each Saturday, we write up a report of our week's activities, including any funny asides and (in my case) about nine paragraphs of writing babble.

Word Count: 13, 692
Caveat: Not counting words produced in chat with Kitten
Second caveat: Or any plotting done this week, even if it was done in dialogue.

Stories worked on: "Jim Kirk Babbles With Nurse Chapel," Their Song, and the alternate ending to "Skills and Rumors."

Stories worked on in my head: Jim Kirk, ROMANCE NOVELIST and "Inbetweens," the PWP for Pea.

Medium used: Lappie still coming in strong, with word processor + MSN chat an excellent way to get words out.

Music of the week: "Neon Moon" by Brooks and Dunn is an awfully good song to write to. I also used some Killers, "Greater Lights" again, "There, There," by Radiohead, other random songs. Oh, and last week Mari introduced me and Pea to the song "Southern Manners" by The Watson Twins, which in association with McCoy and Chapel has become UNBEARABLY SEXY. It's not an exact fit, but the chorus has lines that just work. I am saving it for "Inbetweens" porn.

( Writing babble (it's really long) )

Writing Thought for the Coming Week - Find your ending. It'll turn your VOID into a tunnel with a light at the end. (It'd better.)

It's that time again! Time to recap what I, Ten, have been doing as part of this challenge that Aino (hallowd) and Ray (raynos) have taken up. To recap for those just joining us, the challenge goes as follows: We set a daily word count for the week (minus one day off), and each Saturday we have to write up a report with our total word count and any funny asides we are capable of.

And I keep writing this thing later and later, because Jim Kirk keeps jumping all over my thoughts. He's such a pain in the ass who will not shut uuuup.

Word Count: 11, 179 words
Caveat: Not counting chunks I've written in chat with Kitten, because I'm not sure how to, since they're half-spec, half-'fic

Stories worked on: Let's see, how many tabs do I have open here? Seven! So that would be: "Jim Kirk's Amazing Adventures in Life Debt," Their Song, "Inbetween," the beginning of the JT Kirk, ROMANCE NOVELIST, "Skills and Rumors," "If and When," and a teeny bit on "Mechanics of Massage." Oh, and a possible opening for "Starbase 19"? There was spec on a few more, including THE ADVENTURES OF BAKKUN, but we'll not go there for now.

Medium used: The lappie primarily, MSN chat secondary, though I did look at my notebook this week.

Music of the week: Pretty random, that, though I did finish off "Skill and Rumors" smut to repeated listens of Matthew Good's "Weapon." Oh, and "Set the Fire to the Third Bar" got in there, too. But mostly random.

Writing Thought of the Week - There is a plot bunny pen in my head, and they've started BREEDING. It's fun to open a new file and throw words down to see where things are going, too. But I can prioritize and finish things, too...really. ;)

Writing Thought for the Coming Week - You may want to start figuring out some plot for a couple of those up there. Plot can be fun, too!

Or the post where I jot down all the random ideas I've been writing or itching to write. All nuTrek (aka AOS, aka that Star Trek movie that is out in theaters right now) based, but includes both ideas based in canon and ones based in slightly AU-verses.

( The OTP that ate my brain )

...and here I thought I'd end up writing carefully crafted, linguistics centric stuff. Um. Ha.

So this is what I need to mix into finishing Song and my ficathon entries. Hee hee hee MAN. It'll be interesting to look back at this at the end of the year...

Here's the chunk of words I wrote at Mari and Pea tonight.

I am looking forward to seeing where this one goes.

Also way unformatted. Formatting has been mostly fixed, and new parts are being added.

( Kirk has a thought )

To recap: I'm participating in the TAR Challenge (Ten-Aino-Ray) for the next six weeks (well, I think we're down to three weeks now) or thereabouts. We set a daily word count for the week (minus one day off), and each Saturday we have to write up a report with our total word count and any funny asides we are capable of.

Word count: 15,635. *scratches head* Which is not exact, because kasuchi and I did bits at each other, but that's what I've got down in a doc.
Caveats: Part of that word count is up for a serious rewrite, which should shorten it. But it counts for now.

Stories work on: A completely different fandom and OTP ate my brain this week, resulting in big chunks of three nuTrek stories: "The Mechanics of Massage" (or some such title); a comment 'fic we'll call "Skills and Rumors" for now; and a whole lot of random inspired by raynos and himawari that I'll just call "Jim Kirk's Amazing Adventures in Life Debts" or...something close to that. It needs thanking, that title does.

Medium used: Lappie, but three different, um, semi-mediums? Meaning I didn't just write in a doc file; I also wrote in comment boxes and, tonight, in the MSN chat window.

Music of the week: "Jai Ho" *wince*; "Halo"; "Where the White Boys Dance" (it's so catchy!) and "The Peanut Vendor." I let iTunes off shuffle to crawl down my recently added music, and that was pretty nice, too.

( Writing Babble )

Writing Thought for This Week: Try not to psyche self out when it comes to plot needs. The Realism Brain and the Writing Brain tend to cooperate, but since they do, when the Realism Brain goes "What are you SMOKING?" it totally screws up the Writing Brain. Tell it to shut up and go pout and it can come back and fix things later. Dammit.

AKA the Chapel prompt for Pea and Mari

It's already 1200 words. MONSTER. CREATED A MONSTER. Also, I need an appropriate icon for this pairing, so we'll just go with curves at the mo'

( Graveyard ramblings in Sickbay )

To recap: I'm participating in the TAR Challenge (Ten-Aino-Ray) (huh, if we'd gone Aino-Ray-Ten, it would've been the ART challenge! Next time *g*) for the next six weeks or thereabouts. We set a daily word count for the week (minus one day off), and each Saturday we have to write up a report with our total word count and any funny asides we are capable of.

Word Count: 10,394
Word Count caveats: A chunk of that is the start of a rewrite. Another chunk of that I wrote just now so I'd get to 10k. (It's a fun scene. I should go try to finish it after this, even if I am writing ahead.)
Fun word count fact: My goal for a week is, um, 3000 words? I wrote pretty much all of that after writing my report last week. I had smut to get through!

Stories worked on: Their Song (6RW) and one of the Ficathon 09 possibilities (two drafts of that opening), which I will now give the random, tentative title of "Platters." Well. Mostly random. :)

Medium used: Partly computer, but a big scene in Song got its start in my little Moleskine. Which I've now retired in favor of a "Note to Self" notebook, may it serve me well.

Music of the week: "Inertia Creeps" served me well for the smut again, though a chunk of it was written to "Halo," too. And I'm sure I had something dubious on for other sections. Possibly "Jai Ho," much as it pains me to admit that ;) Also possibly "An Audience with the Pope," which I admit freely!

( Writing Babble )

Writing Trick to Try this Week: More notebooky writing. Might make a good post work writing exercise, a sort of chill out thing. Also, pens + paper = WHEE.

I suspect these will always come in the late evening, because that's just how I roll.

Words for the week: 3708
Stories worked on: 6RW aka Their Song (I think, at its word count, it gets the italics); "Six Ways V: Her Bright Idea.' Time was also spent writing out something like the overall plot of the Torchverse. ETA: Oh, and about a sentence of "Kiss the Rain." I'll get there, Neph, I will.
Medium used: Computer. But both work computer and home lappie, with work writing happening in an innocuous WordPad doc. Shh, don't tell, 'kay? I did some DRAMATIC! plotting in a notebook, too, come to think of it.
Music of the week: "The Peanut Vendor," Anacani. I finally ripped it to MP3 last week, I was listening to it so much. Relatedly, my musical horror of the week was learning that EVERYONE HAS COVERED THAT SONG. DAMNIT.

( Babbling )

Things I learned from the Ladies: I apparently need to try writing on a train! Though with what, I dunno. Also, chat is good for spec, but you'd best SAVE SAID SPEC if you want to use it again.

Normally around this time of year I start doing writing challenges. This is where the Sweetpea Challenge and Summer Sweetness came from, as well as last years Thirty Days of June challenge that...I didn't do so hot on, so no one saw it. *laughs* But since it is tradition and all, I have a new challenge for the summer!

It is called The TAR Challenge. The goal is to write at least 500 words a night for...some undetermined period of time(hallowd, are we clarifying that?); Sundays, I think, are optional, but otherwise it runs Monday - Saturday. Every Saturday, the challengee posts a basic report on number of words done, what they worked on, and any number of other funny comments they want to make about the work they did. I expect I will have many of those.

So here's what I plan to work on this summer.

( To-Doom List 1 )

I've always felt it's better to overdo the to-doom. Obviously. This is gonna be a busy, busy year for me...

So here's a "Tiki Lounge" post, only in longer form.

( Rant rant rant )

( Six Ways IV 1 )

( Six Ways IV 2 )

( Six Ways IV 3 )

And now I sleep. I HOPE.

venusorbit1 tagged me for this one, with the choice being either Minako or Nephrite. And since I'm on top of my grading, I will do both!

( Minako )

( Nephrite )
I want to tag everyone on Serenity and Endymion, because I am always curious to see how people think of those two...

I have just had "Here In My Room" on for the past thirty minutes to write to.

I suspect tomorrow night, it'll be on for the whole two hour span. Or at least part of it.

Like it was when I wrote Bodyguard AR smut.

Did I ever thank you for that?

If not: <3333333333333333 THANK YOU! <333333333333333333

Love,
Ten

After I wrote a ginormous scene on the Necklace (two weeks ago tomorrow), I thought it best to give my mind a break. Even with the story gnawin' on my mind, it seemed a good time to let it simmer (and let the plot straighten itself out) before I went back to do another large chunk. To take time out, I started on Six Ways IV, which I thought would be an easy little piece.

It died on me. I got right up to the BIG SCENE and the story collapsed like a soufflé.

Okay, thinks I, I go back to the Necklace early.

Then I got hit by an idea. A terrible, awful, wonderful idea. Which then took the place of the original Six Ways III, which was about V & K at college. I may write it another time; it was short and sweet.

I thought this idea would be short, too. Taut. Noirish. It was a style I'd written in before, and I was excited to try it again.

Ha. Ha ha ha. Ha ha ha ha ha ha oh yes, you see where I'm going here.

I never meant these Six Ways to get over 5000 words. They're supposed to be ficlets, damnit, not HUGE SPRAWLING STORIES. Except now I got me a sprawling story, and I have to see it through to the end. 'Cause hell, I want to know how it ends.

So here's a snippet, before the story grows beyond an LJ post.

( Sway with me )

So when I sat down to write this weekend, I thought to myself, "Self, you don't have a second of six for these six ways. Everything else is all figured out, but what's your second?"

I mentioned this to Pea in chat, and my vague idea, and then suddenly the vague idea exploded and even though it was going on five in the morning, I hunkered down to write it out. I churned out the first 1000+ words, came to a good stopping point that could actually be an ending, then passed it over for a read. Tonight, I sat down to finish it...and ran into snarls...and then they wouldn't stop talking..and I finally found some semblance of an ending. It does not, sadly, end with boning. But there's some potential! In there! Somewhere! Possibly!

I should warn that the language is much less formal than what is generally used in the Silver Millenium, which was a fun change-up for me. Oh, and there's swearing and uncivilized language. Right there in the second line and everything!

( Six Ways II: His Wounds )

*bounces* Hey, it's more Sailor Moon stuff!

Yes, yes, I know what I should be writing. But I've had these little bits, these one shot stories, in my head, like a Five Things, only in the loosest sense possible. Five Things Stories usually have some sort of theme, or some binding thing, running through them. These don't quite qualify. For one, there are six of them. For another, the binding theme would have to be really general, something along the lines of "Six AU Scenes For a Pairing I Am Crazy About."

Rather than call it that, we'll just call it "Six Ways," as in "Six Ways of Looking [at a pairing I am really nuts about]." And leave it at that. So yeah, there's five more of these coming, as soon as I can pull them from my brain. And they're all one-shots, even if they have as open an end as this one does. Have fun filling in the blanks, yall!

( Six Ways I )

Okay, I may have to go back and add an ending to that, but otherwise: one-shot. Finished. WHEE, DONE. :D

I was gonna start a thread about this at the Shitennou forums, but then I realized it would mostly consist of me bitching about the woes of writing overlapping stories, along with *headdesking* over the antics of the main characters of the Necklace. And how much I love Jade. Which I've even got raynos doing now, because he gets all the good lines. Overall it sounded more like a journal thing than a forum thread...and hey look, I've got this journal right here...

For the unitiated, the JBS = Jewelry Box Stories = a set of four stories written for *cough* Sailor Moon *cough*, set in the Silver Millenium, where *anything* can happen. Because canon is all unspecifically specific that way. (I wonder how many people have included Serenity's "Witch"? It's a canon detail I sometimes think I've dreamt up, along with Mars swearing her chastity to Serenity. Though that could've just been uneven translation...anyways...) They're all named after a piece of jewelry--one of these days, I'll write a frame for that--and I've been working on them on and off since, um, 2004. (Bleach people, you have NO CLUE, ahahaha!) I've finished one--"The Bracelet"--and have been poking at "The Necklace" recently. The other two, incidentally, are "The Ring" and "The Earrings," because I am all completely uninformed about jewelry straight laced like that. And really, how could I fit in "The Clitorial Hood Piercing"? This is *Sailor Moon*, after all.

( And now we get to the bitching )

( For VV01, a snippet )

43,216 / 50,000 (86.4%)

So I didn't beat NaNo. Obviously.

However, during a month in which -
-I helped host and run a conference
-I gave two quizzes in my class, among other teaching duties
-I found out some fun medical news

I managed to do 43,000 words. Which is probably about 12,000 words more than I did last time I tried NaNo, and about that many more than I've written during my "high productivity" fic months. (Except for one period between November and December of 2005, when I first got into Bleach. But I wasn't working as much then.)

So I'm kinda proud of it.

I'm also kinda proud of the fact that I really can write large chunks of text in a small amount of time, that I managed to think up half a plot and get it down, and that I wrote everywhere. I wrote in the car, I wrote at home, I wrote at the Lab, I wrote at a friend's, I wrote in restaurants and even outside. I probably would've hit 45,000 if I hadn't had weird things happen to me the final Sunday of NaNo. I might have hit 50k if I'd managed to work in one more day of writing.

So it's doable. Even if I can't write a full novel in that amount of words, I could probably do that many words in a month. And that's good to know.

Now: to finish off said novel and work on some old memes. I owe fic bits, commentaries, and some porn. All of which I'm looking forward to much more than I was when I started writing at the beginning of the month, which...YAY MUSE. YAY.

I've been up for, what, 19 hours? So it's about damn time I pull my fingers off the keyboard.

Except that every time I paste my word count into the NaNo counter, it chops somewhere between 200 - 400 words off, and I get all frustrated and pound out another 500 words to try to make it read something like the word count I'm getting in RoughDraft.

So! RoughDraft count currently is:

31,349 / 50,000 (62.7%)

NaNo Word meter count is currently:

30,941 / 50,000 (61.9%)

*grinds teeth so hard*

As for story progress, that's about two and a half chapters, a fight scene, random mysticism (there's a band name for you), a coupla people fainting, and a plot bomb I probably shouldn't have dropped this early in the story. But hey, it's NaNo! That's what revision is for.

Oh, and a little over 6100 words in the past four hours.

No, I don't quite know how that happened either, except that I just...didn't...stop.

And the NaNo meter keeps pissing me off, too. GRRRR. (Is it my tabs? IS IT MY TABS, NANO METER?)

Now I's gonna go pass out.

17,348 / 50,000 (34.7%)

To catch up tomorrow, I need to do 5990 words.

Then again, unless RoughDraft is a lying liar who lies, I just did 2500 tonight. (I went over Kitten!)

apocalypsos is right; it's amazing how fast things go when you're just pounding out dialogue. Not to mention nonsensical tech LA LA LA.

Incidentally, the story is being posted under flock. I mean, I probably even don't have to say that, but just in case you were wondering--it's all locked down.

Now I fall over whee~

Sorry about the spam, yall, but I sorta exceeded expectations. Also, posting this cuts me off for the night, which I really need to do considering when I need to get up tomorrow morning.

13,504 / 50,000 (27.0%)

Which means I wrote a little over 4700 words today, not counting the ridiculous commentaries I put on the story posts.

Whew. Don't expect to see that happen again any time soon, not with the grading and other school/work stuff I have to do.

But it's nice to be just that much more caught up.

11,434 / 50,000 (22.9%)

I meant to post one of these earlier, but the conference knocked the stuffing out of me. It's why I'm behind, too--I kept having to pull myself out of writing mode to make myself sleep, because the next day I had to be up and functional for nine straight hours or so. It didn't give me much time to daydream, either, though I managed to grab a spare moment here and there to figure out how else I was gonna make Nym and Care miserable.

Speaking of "Nym," I looked over my planning notes from earlier this year and realized, hey, my main chick's nickname changed! And it doesn't make sense! Her name is Mnemosyne, so her original nickname was Nem. That made sense. Then I started writing it, and all of sudden she turned into "Nym." Which doesn't make sense. So tonight I wrote in an extra random snippet about how she was a Nem, but now is a Nym, and I need to go fix it in my notes.

Also, my wrists are starting to ache. But in a good way.

Now I'm off to VI to put some food in me, and hopefully get another ~1000 or so words out. If I can write double what you're supposed to do for NaNo for the next coupla days, I may just catch up. Or at least, not be lagging quite as much.

It's very nice to break 10,000 though. Yay story! You have 10,000 words!

I am doing NaNoWriMo, which in my head always comes out as "NaNoHellNo." Guess which one will end up as the tag?

Anyhoo, I'm over at the website as Sinrui, because this is the name I use to sign up for stuff. Just habit, I suppose.

I'll be posting stuff tomorrow--both what I've written (under flock) and a little bit of commentary on why I'm excited to get this story out of my head--but for now, have a graphic.

3,462 / 50,000 (6.9%)

Which puts me ever so slightly ahead of where I should be. I'll have to work more on that today.

Some somewhat original fiction seems called for.

Thanks to JoCo for "I Crush Everything," which is actually about a squid. But it works here, too.

( A boy and his whale )

All right, guys, bring it on.

Ask me a question about one of my fanfictions. It can be absolutely anything in any fic and I will tell you the honest-to-god answer. Don’t hold back. Ask about major upcoming plot points if you want to. Whatever you ask, I have to answer truthfully.

*dances to Pat Benatar* Hit me with your best shot, fire away~

;)

Two days until I start Pea's "Making You Write" challenge! Which I may or may not be able to post here with, depending on the content. We'll see. :)