WIP challenge: April 20 check-in

[insignia]

The week is nearly over, and I hope you had a good one :D Anyway, what sort of progress have you made today?

• I wrote
• I edited
• I plotted
• I researched
• I posted!
• I did something else

Also, today is snippet-day! So post 'em if you have 'em!

Comments

[insignia]

Look, I'm checking in today! I haven't been doing that much lately. I also haven't been writing. All the work I plan to do tends to not happen at all, because I just go "blah" and watch cartoons instead.

All month has been like this. I keep thinking I'll get something done "tomorrow" or "next week", and then I never get around to it. Can somebody please tell me to shape the hell up? ._.

[linaewen]

I would tell you to shape up, except that would be the pot calling the kettle black. ;-) I tend to go blah and watch something myself, it's much easier! Best wishes with taking yourself in hand this weekend!

[insignia]

Thank you! ♥ I'll try.

[linaewen]

It was One of Those Days today, too busy to do anything but run my feet off! I may get some time later this evening to put my thinking cap on and see if I can at least write some opening sentences for the next chapter. If not, I have a quiet weekend planned, and there is definitely writing on the list of things to do!

I don't have a snippet from current writing, but here's a bit from my most recent chapter, posted about a month ago (yikes, it's been a month since I last wrote something significant!):

What is to become of us? Pippin wondered, shivering.

"It is cold to be standing here all night long," said a voice behind him. "Were you ordered by your lord to stand watch here upon the wall? Or rather, is it a task you have taken upon yourself of your own will?"

Pippin turned to find Dûrlin facing him, an understanding smile on his face.

"Watching through the night with no sleep or food will make your day tomorrow quite hard to bear," Dûrlin said gently.

"I know!" Pippin sighed, turning back to the wall. "But I just can't seem to stop or look away. Will any of them come back, do you think?"

"I am one who always believes that good will triumph and that those in my charge will stay safe to return to me," Dûrlin replied. "Perhaps that makes me unreliable in giving an honest answer to you or predicting the return of those for whom we both wait. It hardly seems possible in the face of the greatest evil of my lifetime that anyone could return from that darkness -- yet I believe they will. Faramir is a resourceful captain who has long prepared for this battle; he may be outnumbered, but he will not be easily defeated. And he will have the aid of Mithrandir now. Do you doubt the wizard, then?"

"No," answered Pippin slowly. "No, I don't doubt him. He'll come back, and he'll do his best to make sure Faramir comes back, too. It's just hard to be the one waiting!"

"It is indeed hard to wait," Dûrlin nodded. "And it is easy to despair if the waiting is long. But if you have faith in the strength and abilities of those you know and love, then waiting with hope is the best way to support them."

"Is that why you believe that Boromir is alive and will return? Because your faith in him is so strong? It's not just wishful thinking?"

"No, my hope is not wishful thinking, nor is it a refusal to face facts, as some might suggest. It is a confident expectation that he lives still and is on his way home. I doubted for a time when I first heard the news, but my hope soon returned, stronger than ever. I have little upon which to base my confidence, other than experience and long practice in trust. But my faith in Boromir's strength and his seeming ability to cheat death in the past keeps my hope alive. And when faith is dimmed and hope wanes, I ask the Valar to strengthen me, that I might not grow weary in hope and continue to be of support to him, wherever he might be. It is my sworn duty to Boromir to be strong in the face of despair and to be a light of hope to all around me until that day when my hope is proved to be foolish. Until such proof is given me, my hope for his return will not waver. That holds true for Faramir and Mithrandir, as well, and for those others who are close to you who no longer walk by your side. You will see them again."

Pippin sighed, but the look on his face was determined and less despairing. He looked up at Dûrlin. "It's a hard job, isn't it? Being hopeful when everyone else is assuming the worst, I mean."

Dûrlin smiled and laid a comforting hand on Pippin's shoulder. "Indeed, it is the hardest job in the world, especially when matters seem truly grim. Yet that is just the time when hope is most important, for everyone."

"I'll do it, then," Pippin declared, straightening his back and standing tall. "I'll be like you and keep hope alive! I'll keep watching here, not because I'm afraid and sad because everyone left me, but because they need me to be here waiting for when they return."

Dûrlin bowed to Pippin, and the smile on his face was one of pleasure mixed with relief. "You honor your friends and this City you now serve with your courage! May I support you now in your resolve to wait by bringing some rations to fuel your hope?"

It was Pippin's turn to smile with pleasure. "I won't say no to that!"

[crowdog66]

I've been so crazy busy with paying work this week that I haven't done as much writing as I'd hoped, but I think what I've got is of pretty good quality. Today I plotted in my head but didn't get any time to jot stuff down.

For the snippet, I'm going to post a very short story from the Lethe!verse, "Resonance", that was posted this week on AO3. It's told from the POV of a secondary character in the AU, but he'll probably play a fairly important part in the later chapters of the main fic.

***************************************************

Haskell knows a thing or two about music. He's been playing it all his life since coming to Lethe with his sister Hask, and he's learned (or perhaps remembered) all about the qualities of tambour and panpipe, fiddle and flute, and the drums that can shake loose the bones and the passions of a revelling crowd. He doesn't say much, but he listens to everything — and he hears more than most people give him credit for, even Hask, who, although she's his closest friend in this world, has a tendency to be flighty and to perceive only the surface of what she sees.

He watches too, and notices much. But primarily he listens to the music that the people of the Court make with their clothes and their expressions and their ways of sitting and standing and walking — and especially he listens to their voices, and their inner worlds open to him with every word they speak.

Even if they're not speaking directly to him.

Haskell may not remember any concrete details of the world they hail from, he and his sister and the Guardian and the virus, but he knows this: that what Bob is and what Megabyte is are meant to exist in opposition. When they raise their voices together it should be violent and bitter and cacophonous, the sound of two conductors striving to defeat each other in a war of operatic scores. Bob's leitmotif of quick restless strings and clear defiant horns should always challenge Megabyte's theme of thundering percussion and menacing brasses, and the conflict should be clear to anyone with ears to hear and eyes to see.

And they argue, certainly — in fact, they seem to enjoy disagreeing with each other as inventively as they can. Their voices circle and fence, strike and feint and interweave, marking point and counterpoint in a never-ending duet. They act like two widely separated strings on a single instrument… no, like two instruments of completely different pitches and timbres, of dissimilar forms and functions and vastly disparate cultures, blending their voices in one complex melody, each of them playing to their strengths around a canon they are creating for themselves, and to hell with everyone else.

It shouldn't be possible. But Hask is a man of few illusions, and he isn't going to deny the existence of the impossible when it's right there before his eyes and his ears. He can even hear Megabyte's music when Bob is alone with him and Hask, the Guardian's personal melody infected by the shadow of a darker progression even as he lies in the arms of his friends, his heart singing ardore to one who is not there to hear.

Haskell knows a thing or two about that as well. And although he wishes that Bob would be still long enough to hear the song of his own spirit, quiet and deep and full of longing as clear and as vast as the sky, in his heart he is resigned to being forever unheard. Bob has a part to play in a far greater drama, of that Haskell is certain, and he's also fully aware that when the finale is sung it will be Megabyte's baritone that is married with Bob's triumphant tenor, not the harsher voice of an instrumentalist who is wise enough to know his limitations and to offer, out of unrequited love, the gift of silence.

THE END

[roane]

Beautiful.

[crowdog66]

Thank you. :) May I ask what you found particularly lovely or effective about it? (I've been getting next to no feedback on this 'verse even though I've been told folks are reading it, so I'm feeling a bit insecure and in need of telemetry.) If you're rather not elaborate that's perfectly fine too, of course!

[roane]

Well, I know absolutely NOTHING about any of these characters or the canon at all, but the way you write is very evocative. The musical metaphors are really effective for me, and I feel like I understand the relationship between Bob and Megabyte, despite not knowing anything about your setting.

[crowdog66]

Mission accomplished, then. :) Thank you!

[roane]

I've been making slow, steady progress. Today was mostly rewriting bits, refining things, and a LOT of plot-bouncing off my betas. I THINK I managed to resolve the issue that was bugging me most about my planned plot. Something worked, because my brain is clicking along again with it.

So, snippet, from the current in-progress chapter of Pull the Stars from the Sky (which I hope to finish and maybe even post this weekend sometime). Harry is short for Harriet. She's John's sister, and is responsible for getting him the job with Sherlock's tour.

****

“John!” Harry took his call almost right away. “How are things going?”

“Harriet. When I get home, you and I are going to have a long discussion about what the word ‘difficult’ means.” John breathed slowly through his nose. Anderson was out of the hotel room they were sharing, and John was trying not to pace.

“What?”

“Sherlock Holmes is not difficult, Harry. Sherlock Holmes is bloody impossible.”

“What’s happened now?”

John lost the battle and started to pace as much as the phone cord would let him. “I can deal with the constant sarcasm that comes my way. I can even deal with a little bit of groping now and then.”

“But?”

“You could have warned me about the ‘test’, Harry.”

There was just the sound of transatlantic hiss. “Did you pass?”

“Did I—” John pinched the bridge of his nose, then dissolved into laughter. Harry started giggling with him on the other end. “I hate you,” he finally said.

“No you don’t,” she said. “You’re having the time of your life. I can hear it.”

[roane]

Er, finish the current chapter, not the whole work. This is chapter 3 of an expected 10. :)

[crowdog66]

What a delightful glimpse into their relationship! :) Truly, hell is sometimes one's family. (And the bits of physical business you described, although painted quickly, were painted deftly and came across effectively. The piece has a lovely rhythm to it that really pulls the reader in.)

[roane]

Thank you! One of the more compelling things about the show for me is the physicality of the actors playing John and Sherlock. They both have very specific, well-defined gestures and ways of moving, and I'm trying to capture that in my writing. (The pinching of the bridge of his nose when irritated, for example--is VERY John Watson.)

[snowynight]

I wrote 1K. It's the first time in such a long time that I'm happy about it.