Returning to the fandom was a fluke. In late December 2017, I happened to see that Michael Weatherly and Jessica Alba were going to be on the same episode of Live with Kelly & Ryan. Also, it came out that Ryan Seacrest was Jensen Ackles’ roommate back in the day too. I remembered what I had left unfinished, and I wanted that to not be my legacy as a writer. I had left so many works unfinished over the years, both original and fandom, I should finish this at the very least.


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The Shortest Distance

The Full Story Rundown: Four years after getting married, Kris and Junior are having a few problems, causing a rift between them.  They arrive at Raintree hoping to regain what they've lost over the course of time and travel, leading to several revelations about Kris - 1) her brother Jace wants to reunite the family for a long lost half-sister's wedding and 2) after an accident during training, Kris found out that she was going to have a baby, which effectively would end her career as a jockey.  Along with a few other mishaps, Kris's world is shifted off its axis, leading her to want some space from Junior and going back to Raintree for its familiarity, hoping to find herself again.  Eventually, she realizes that she can't go back to the way things were, she has to move forward.

Chapter 1 - "Distance" by Christina Perri
Chapter 2 - "Spaces" by One Direction
Chapter 3 - "Wild Heart" & "The World We Knew" by Daughtry
Chapter 4 - "Let It All Go" by Birdy & Rhodes
Chapter 5 - "Lego House" by Ed Sheeran


I don't think this story will be broken up any differently at this point.  Chapter 1 is when Kris and Junior return to Raintree, Chapter 2 is their interactions with Matt and Dani, Chapter 3 is the party, Chapter 4 is when Kris finally spills what's on her mind, and Chapter 5 is when Kris and Junior make up.

When I started this story, it was supposed to be about Kris finally meeting her father.  The reference to Kris's half-sister comes from the webisodes, when Jace wonders out loud if they have more siblings by their father that they don't know about.  Jace's story with Kris never got completed during the series' run for whatever reason, as he appears for most of the webisodes detailing Kris's life before Raintree (ending with a cliffhanger about the guys from the chop shop) and the third to last episode of Season 3, leaving on an ominous note that he would be there to pick up the pieces for Kris if/when something went wrong at the ranch.  (Considering how much went wrong in the Season 3 finale, it seemed like he was being set up as a main character in Season 4.) Kris would attend the wedding, confront her father, and reconcile with Jace that both of them were wrong in how they dealt with each other.  At the wedding, Junior would find out that the groom was a relative of Dani's, leading to Dani finally meeting her mother.  Then that would be a wrap for this fandom.  But as seen above, I felt like this fic was getting too out of hand (it was supposed to be a one-shot, but the momentum to get to these scenes was more than anticipated), and I left the ending open to interpretation.

If I was going to invest time into a Wildfire fic, I would have done it with rewriting the Season 3 finale and all of Season 4.  Season 3 wouldn't have the illegal match race, but a deal going south between Dani and Sheik Omar, bringing Junior back into the Davis fold, and an another event causing Matt and Kris to put their relationship on pause, all of it subtly tying back to the Raintree/Davis rivalry hitting a new peak with Raintree back in a steady economic position.  Season 4 would involve Junior turning into his father, Dani trying to find herself outside of the horse business, Matt looking at whether he thinks the farm should become more like Davis to compete or remain solely a family endeavor, and Kris managing her family's tumultuous re-entry into her life.  Gillian's exit would be more played out, in like the first or second chapter.  Then Kris and Junior would hook up in secret a couple of times, but then get caught via pictures published on the internet.  It would lead to the industry questioning if Kris and Junior had an agreement about what races were won and lost, because he's owner of a horse farm and she's the jockey for the rival farm, eventually causing problems with their families.  The situation would be particularly ugly with their private lives getting dragged out in public, which is hard on them because they're both trying to be taken seriously.  Junior realizes that he doesn't want to be his father.  Kris learns how to set boundaries with her family, and to recognize that she needs to reform her decision making process.  While Kris and Junior would remain apart for some time to defer the fallout, they come to a moment when they are forced to decide whether they're friends, rivals or lovers.  It won't be an easy decision for them, but they finally choose each other.  Junior proposes but Kris turns him down, saying that if they're together for one year and one day (their relationship was always on and off again, Kris wanted to see if they could make it work long term), he can ask again and she'll say yes.  In the meantime, Matt would get a new love interest more suited to him, but he'll have to work hard to not screw it up.  The show would end with Matt's wedding at Raintree, and Junior quietly proposing to Kris at the reception in the barn with Wildfire.  She tells him that it's been one year and six days, so she's not required to say yes, but she will anyway.

Everything Has Changed
"Everything Has Changed" -- Taylor Swift ft. Ed Sheeran
"Broken" -- Seether featuring Amy Lee
"Little Do You Know" -- Alex & Sierra
"Sledgehammer" -- Fifth Harmony

The Diplomat
"Who I Am Hates Who I've Been" -- Relient K
"I So Hate Consequences" -- Relient K

Things That Go Bump in the Night
"Last to Know" -- Three Days Grace
"You Didn't Tell Me" -- Lawson
"Over My Head" -- The Fray

Get Over It
"When the Heartache Ends" -- Rob Thomas

The Invisible Girl
"Invisible" -- Taylor Swift
"Misery Business" -- Paramore

What Do You Want
"Everything You Want" -- Vertical Horizon
"Honest" -- Kodaline

The Summer of Our Discontent
"One Phone Call"-- Backstreet Boys
"Lead the Fight On" -- He Is We

Ask Me How
"Monster" -- Imagine Dragons

Good Boys
"Team" -- Lorde

Emergency Faculty Meeting
"Crashed" -- Daughtry

Alter the Ending
"Alter the Ending" -- Dashboard Confessional
"We Remain" -- Christina Aguilera
"Grow Up and Be Kids" --- The Cab

This Is How A Heart Breaks
"Unraveling" -- Tyler Kyte
"You Don't See Me" -- Safetysuit

When the Morning Comes
"Point of No Return" -- Starset



Upcoming...
Rumour Has It
"Rumour Has It" -- Adele
"Girlfriend" -- Avril Lavigne

I've gotten into another show, El Internado Laguna Negra, (Black Lagoon Boarding School), which is the Spanish boarding school version of Lost, and fits as a muse for a few older YA stories I have.   Max/Alec fans might enjoy it since Julia/Ivan have a similar dynamic.  Personally, Fermin is my favorite character.  Since I might be posting some El Internado fics in the future, I wanted to close the curtain for Dark Angel. The reason I decided to put the writing version of training wheels back on is because I really need to rebuild my ability to write. While I don't think it's going to be as prolific as Dark Angel for my writing, I don't want it to be. I stumbled upon El Internado because I was watching Gran Hotel on Netflix, and went through the IMDb list of previous shows the lead characters starred it.  For some reason, EILN caught my eye and reminded me of a show I loved when I was younger, and I happened to find someone posting the series subbed in English (oddly fortuitous timing? how can I say no?).  Since then, Julia and Ivan have replaced Max and Alec as my muses for scribbling.  The show has its faults, but for some reason it's got my imagination in gear because it needs so much "fixing" that I can work with it.

I've always had a thing for TV shows with glaring logistical errors that I could fix through writing, and so I've spent more time writing for myself and making sure I kept up the momentum to write with this new gust of minor inspiration.  DA fanfic a few years ago was to keep my writing limber, but I need to feel confident in my writing again.  I once read that if a writer restarts too much, it means that she doesn't have faith in the story and lacks the confidence to see it through.  Based on what I've lived through, I think this is true.  I haven't been able to see my stories clearly, and I keep circling the writing drain of too many cold openings that go nowhere.

In my experience writing, it's clarity of vision that comes through in writing.  Scenes that I wrote clearest were always the ones that I could see the clearest.  It was obvious when I got stuck writing, the words dragged or got tangled.  But clarity comes with confidence.  If I can't confidently see what's in front of me, then there's no hope for writing.  If I don't believe in what I see, then I can't write it.  Watching the show kicked off my muse again, and I had started writing original plots again.  I was about to hit a stride when I got some disruptive news that almost stopped my writing again.  Instead of giving in, I pushed through to keep writing since my day to day activities hadn't changed.  This incident also gave some insight into why I had problems writing over the last few years, which had to do with bouncing around between jobs and going to grad school.  My mental energy was getting sucked into finding and learning new jobs so often, my brain couldn't find space for writing.

I'm using the scenes coming to me from the show I'm watching to rebuild my ability to see a scene from start to finish.  The first one I wrote, I wrote 3 different versions with different set ups and dialog and events.  At first, I felt like I had failed because the first one didn't come out the way I had wanted, but I realized that I could rewrite it as many times as I wanted.  I keep small notebooks with me for short scenes and ideas, and I've almost filled up one I bought last November.  Usually, it takes 2 years to fill a small notebook, because I'm not supposed to write stories with multiple scenes in them since they can eat an entire small notebook.  I changed the rules a bit to keep my writing momentum going and to vent about how things were going.  I've made some progress.  I'm crossing my fingers for more and bought an extra notebook.

Being in grad school, having a boss who impersonates Pol Pot and all that other life stuff in between really wreaks havoc on trying to write.  I can't even believe that November is over and I didn't get the chance to write anything.

Ironically, this is the month when there was an episode of Being Erica where the lead character realizes she's gotten far away from her dream of writing fiction.  Then the entire episode of The Simpsons featuring Neil Gaiman and the entire publishing industry.  Then someone said that it figured that I couldn't keep writing because I've never been the sort of person who could finish what I started, which I found insulting.  That kind of got my gears in motion that I had fallen out of my writing habits, and writing is a habit and perpetual process no matter what.  Then I got a kick in the pants when I saw that someone reviewed Wake... and I felt floored. 

How did I let myself fall off the wagon like that?  I put my fanfic aside for original writing and I ended up accomplishing very little in either.  I keep starting stories but then scrapping them, I remember reading that when a writer did that too often, it signaled a lack of belief in herself and therefore the story.  I've gotten stronger resolve to finish Between the Lines since its the closest story to being done. I even worked past an inconsistency that I didn't like just two days ago.  Once that's done, it's on to Wake... and eventually Long December.

Thanks to everyone who sent me birthday wishes.  I had a wonderful time turning a quarter of a century old.

I'm also more and more freaked out by how coincidental the shows Once Upon a Time and Being Erica are with my life.  Sometimes I feel more like a character than a writer.

I know I haven't been updating or writing much in general, but I still have goals to finish.  I'm happier now than I was this time last year.  I've made peace with things I can't control and I feel like I'm building momentum to something great.

Cheers to another birthday gone by and many more to come!

I'm in total awe of it being 2011.

It's a whole new year.  While sitting on the train to my friend's house party, I wrote in my mini-notebook how ironic it was that I was going to be spending the New Year with two friends that I knew in 2000, then lost contact with until 2007 and we're closer now than when we started.

The decade from 2000-2009 had to be the most insane decade of my life, now and probably forever.  It was my teen years, high school dramedy, writing my days away and going to college and having my entire world turned upside down.  It's hard to imagine that another entire ten years of my life is complete.  The decade was off to a rough start in 2010, but I'm hopeful that this year will turn things around.

There are a lot of things that didn't turn out the way that I planned.  There are lots of things I wish I could change and lots of things I wouldn't change for the world, which would be a really weird Venn diagram.

So here's to a Whole New Year of falling in love, singing in the streets during ungodly hours of the morning, laughing until my face hurts while strangers stare, writing in quiet corners, old acquaintances not forgot and all the new things that I'll look back on in 2021 and shake my head at.

Welcome to 2011!

Hard to imagine it's been over 2 years since I officially joined the Dark Angel fandom.  It was a different show for its time, the first show that mentioned the Taliban and to use the ticker tape at the bottom of the screen that we're so used to seeing now.  It was also the first mainstream primetime show to actually have real diversity.  But it was hardly one of the truly epic TV series of all time.  Too many plot inconsistencies and fraying at the end are what did the show in. 

Still, it was one of the best worlds to play in.  If it wasn't, it wouldn't still be a pretty active fandom being written for FF.net, since the show has been off the air for almost 10 years.  Dark Angel and Firefly are two shows FOX canceled in succession and whose fanfics became in essence greater than the shows themselves in some ways.

When I joined in 2008, there was a lot more activity going on than its had recently.  Sure, when a fandom is new there's tons to discover and nothing will compare to that, but 2008 was a busy fandom year.  The Alphabet Games were going on and there were a lot more creative risks being taken with Max/Alec shipping, along with more M/A fics in general.  Several great serial stories were in full swing and it was an exciting time to be a reader -- where would Max and Alec be in their next adventure?  There were lots of different AU, Manticore, and S2 Redux stories.

Nowadays, it feels like  there's not much going on.  There are a few interesting stories, but nothing that's really grabbed me.  There are fewer M/A overall, which is pretty sad.  I've been thinking about posting that long awaited (and bemoaned) Chapter 6 of Wake... which is why I'm thinking about the series as of late.

FYI -- I use the Max/Alec ship as a litmus test for how much I'll get into someone's work.  Not that I'm hating on M/Ls, but from my experience I've been keener on the writing style of other M/A shippers.  It probably has something to do with liking snarky heroines and morally ambivalent bad boys.

After deciding to hit reverse and shift gears, I ended writing almost 2k words for Aerie last night, which was twice what I'd written for The Destroyers on the first day.  I should have some extra free time next week to make up for the ground I lost, but plowing through a story that doesn't want to be written was bogging me down even worse.

I've figured out how to do the word count for my notebook as well. 

1 line = 11 words
1 page = 26 lines

I might just finish this!

Now if all my problems could be solved so easily...

Writers live and die by inspiration.  There’s no telling when or how much inspiration will hit you.  Sometimes it’s hard to tell which is worse, a surplus or a deficit.

Too much inspiration and a writer can feel like she’s being pulled in too many directions.  Too many ideas, too many characters and too much clutter can damage the direction of a story.  It can also be aggravating if there are too many story ideas and it’s unclear which one to flesh out, because a writer can really only pick one story to throw her soul into.  Maybe a second one to off-set the emotional demands of the first (like if a story is too dark or too light, writers will have a second story they’re working on to air out emotions and ideas they can’t use).  After that point, the work starts to suffer.

Too little inspiration and a writer feels like she’s dead and it’s the end of the line for her writing, period.  Uninspired writing isn’t always horrible, but that exception only rings true for a handful of writers (e.g., Charles Dickens but he channels that disgruntled-ness into his writing rather than it permeating around the prose).  Writer’s malaise can seep into a story quite quickly and the reader will feel how exasperated the whole scenario is.  It’s sort of like cooking, when the person can taste the cook’s passion and other emotions in the food.

Suffice to say, I’m suffering a little from Category A and a lot from Category B.  I’ve had several (what seem to me at the moment) very good story ideas.  I’ve got them sketched and scratched all over the place (I’m working on getting my scanner up and running to declutter those).  Anaxarete, Elara, Prufrock, Confessions of A Fairy Godmother, and Aerie are all really good stories, perfectly delineated and waiting to be written.  Then there’s my fanfic, which I’m sure I’m disappointing someone somewhere with because I know that Wake is beyond awesome but it won’t actually be awesome until it’s done. 

I have a surplus of inspirational ideas, but for some reason I can’t get any of the stories off the ground.  I can’t find the right place to start telling from.  There are huge holes that weren’t obvious in the outline.  Maybe the characters didn’t turn out quite the way they were planned.

Basically, I’ve got writer’s block in the worst of ways.

I’ve been trying different coping methods. 

1) Stepping away from writing.  --  Sometimes when you’re just too close to a story, it can get claustrophobic.  No room to breathe.  The problem with this method is that it can ruin writing stamina and encourage a writer to quit out of sheer lack of motivation.  Needless to say, it’s like falling off a horse, not getting back on and deciding to go on the rest of your life without riding.

2) Doing more: Read, Watch, Listen, Learn.  --  You don’t have to wait for inspiration to come, you can hunt it down. 

A) Reading books similar to the one you’re trying to write can help by showing how others did it, what ideas are out there, and shaping your own to be unique or even reference something you thought was brilliant.  Or read something completely different and find a really cool new angle that you can use in your story, like in a dark, post-apocalyptic story give the dark character an oddball sense of humor. 

B) Watching movies and TV shows has pretty much the same effect, but it’s more visual which you might need as a push when trying to put together a fight scene or game scene that need to be visual. 

C) Listening to songs that remind you of your story can is another route.  I know lots of authors (myself included) who put together soundtracks to keep them motivated while writing, and it can help keep you in your writing frame of mind without having to write. 

D) And finally, we arrive at the learning curve.  Even if you’re having trouble writing, research and learn as much as you can about the topic you’re interested in writing about (writing about dragons, research every dragon myth or story you can).  Or improve on your skills as a writer by learning as much as you can about grammar and punctuation and how to type properly (a lot of people who post things don’t realize they make tons of small errors with spacing, etc.).  Or learn how to query and get into the industry, so that way when you are done you won't lose as much time looking for info about how to get in.

3) Fighting fire with fire.  --  Or in this case, if you can’t write, force yourself to write.  Maybe you’re just missing momentum to get your story where it needs to go.  Take part in NaNoWriMo or host your own.  Sometimes the hardest part of the journey is Chapter 1.  No matter how good or bad it is, just do it.  It helps to set goals for yourself as motivation, like you need to get to Chapter 7 in two months, otherwise you’ll waste time putting it off.  Right now, I’m writing as many author notes on anything and everything, even stuff that won’t be a part of the story in its prose form -- motivations, inspirations, background notes.  At least this way if I put the story on the shelf, I won’t be scratching my head later over details when I pick it back up.  I have been writing for a while and know that this happens after you put a story away and return to it later. 

As always, I’ll let you know when the block has been chiseled.