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writethisfanficHow has your writing been today?
Since it's Friday, let's have snippet/question/general chatting day! Post a snippet if you want, ask questions if you're stuck on anything, or just curious, seek out a beta, or talk about what part of your writing has been driving you bananas/you're over the moon with.
Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 6
Today I...
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wrote
5 (83.3%)
edited
1 (16.7%)
researched
0 (0.0%)
posted
3 (50.0%)
had a rest
0 (0.0%)
did something else
0 (0.0%)
Today was...
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great
2 (33.3%)
okay
3 (50.0%)
average
1 (16.7%)
meh
0 (0.0%)
I don't want to talk about it
0 (0.0%)
Since it's Friday, let's have snippet/question/general chatting day! Post a snippet if you want, ask questions if you're stuck on anything, or just curious, seek out a beta, or talk about what part of your writing has been driving you bananas/you're over the moon with.
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no subject
Date: Friday, November 16th, 2012 21:16 (UTC)Eliawen paused for a moment as she entered the woods so that her eyes could adjust to the sudden dimness. The grassy field where she had been gathering herbs had been ablaze with light, but under the eaves of the trees it was suddenly darker. As she grew accustomed to the dim light, she saw the path ahead of her dappled with sunlight, and the nearby river flashed where the bright rays pierced the trees and sparkled on the water.
Following the path further into the forest, Eliawen listened to the water's chuckle and splash as it flowed over rocks and around tree roots that extended out into the current. The River Erui was not wide, but it was swift and cold as it flowed from its source in the White Mountains through the forests and fields of Lossarnach on its way to the Anduin. Eliawen loved where she lived -- in a small town on the edge of the forest, surrounded by fields and meadows, with the river nearby. Erui's voice was always in her ears wherever she went, and that made her very happy.
The part of my writing that's driving me bananas is the fact that when I just sit down and write, it goes really well, but I tend to procrastinate or avoid actually making myself write, and end up playing a computer game instead. Silly!
no subject
Date: Saturday, November 17th, 2012 00:16 (UTC)(This is for my
If you have anything to offer in terms of concrit, I would love to hear it :D Swearwords have been bleeped.)
It was almost midnight and they were still awake, coffee going cold on the table. Sherry was still holding the phone to her ear despite the fact that Leon hung up two minutes ago.
Chris felt the anxiety pound through his head like wildfire. He hadn’t taken his eyes off Sherry since her phone rang.
“What are we going to do?” Her voice was shrill. She was twelve again, frightened to death.
He stood up and kept his eyes on her. “Run. We have no choice.” He pictured Ada, suave and insane and wondered if they’d reach her in time. She lived 40 miles away, and in the opposite direction to Claire. If he had to choose between saving his sister and some sociopathic bi**h he barely knew… He felt sick.
Sherry was still looking at him like he had the power to save her. He touched her shoulder gently. He wasn’t that man anymore, he wasn’t a soldier. He barely knew how to fight. “Hurry, pack a bag. How long did Leon say we have?”
She checked the time on her cell. “Forty minutes.”
He swore and started backing out the room. “Hurry up.”
***
Emma was groggy when he woke her, with an arm thrown over her eyes to block the light. She turned over in bed as he ripped the blankets off her.
“Daddy no,” she said, trying to cling to her pillow. “It’s still night.”
“Yes, but you need to get up. We’re going in the car.” He grabbed her pink school backpack and started throwing clothes in at random. He’d carry her out of the house still asleep if it came to that.
But she sat up. “What are you doing?”
He reached into her medicine draw and rummaged through the paraphernalia of an asthmatic, and swore again, slamming his palm on the cabinet. Jill was so much better at this sh** than he was, he didn’t even know what inhalers she needed.
“The blue ones, daddy,” she said, pointing.
He turned to look at her, six years old and barefoot. He’d never wanted to drag her into this, he’d always made himself believe that this madness would never be a part of her life, and here he was preparing to flee for his life with her in tow.
“What’s happening?” She said, rubbing at her eyes, “are we going to a party?”
He laughed despite himself, because this situation was completely ridiculous. How had they got themselves into this, after so many years of peace?
***
He carried her across his chest, with the backpack clutched against her stomach. As he ran through the house, he thought painfully of all their keepsakes, baby photos, BSAA reports, old STARS badges growing dust in a drawer; all of it would be lost. There would be time to think about that later.
Outside, Sherry was waiting in the car, swinging the keys around her fingers. She jumped when she saw him, and opened the doors.
“How long left?” He said, depositing Emma in the backseat.
Sherry checked her cell and shuffled over to the passenger seat. He slammed the door behind him and started the engine, backing out of the drive before even he checked the rear view mirror. He imagined his instructor scowling at him from twenty five years ago.
“Thirty minutes.”
“S**t!” He punched the steering wheel, and felt rather than saw Emma flinch. She unclicked her seatbelt and clambered into the space between passenger and driver seats, grabbing hold of his shoulder.
“Daddy, what’s happening?” Her voice shook, and she had tears on her cheeks. She was still wearing her pyjamas, and Dora the Explorer on her chest lit up in the pearly glow of the streetlights as he drove down empty streets.
He wasn’t entirely sure of that himself, and he definitely wasn’t sure how to explain it to a child. “Everything’s fine, just sit back.”
The nervous tone of his voice only panicked her even more, and she tried to push her way further on to his seat. He was still accelerating, going at least thirty miles above the legal limit, and he still wasn’t sure if they’d make it in time.
no subject
Date: Saturday, November 17th, 2012 03:35 (UTC)Not sharing a snippet since everything I wrote tonight is kind of mature :D
no subject
Date: Saturday, November 17th, 2012 13:17 (UTC)I'm very happy that I finally conquered chapter 3 of DFITM earlier this week because it has been bugging me something chronic for quite a while and I also got chapter 6 finished too. I just need to go back over the 4 chapters I have so far then work out a way to write chapters 4 and 5 now without too much fill in the blanks.
no subject
Date: Saturday, November 17th, 2012 20:44 (UTC)For a snippet, I'll go with something from "An Unexpected Proposal", which is set in the A.I.: Artificial Intelligence universe and told from the POV of a police officer conducting video and audio surveillance on stretch of waterfront in a major city. The city in question is one giant red light district, and he's bored out of his mind watching people proposition, grab and grope each other; it's a bit of a relief when the pedestrian traffic thins around midnight, but he's become convinced that the drug dealers he's keeping an eye out for are never going to show up... and then a couple appears, an older orga with his arm around a younger male mecha, and takes a seat on one of the benches. The man is asking the machine if Rouge City is "as he remembers it," and the robot has responded that there seem to be less women then in the past; when the man responds that this is probably because his target pursuit protocols are temporarily offline and asks if that bothers him, the robot replies that no, nothing else matters when they are together...
Contains one bad word. You have been warned.
**********************************************
Husselbeck stifled a yawn: standard lover-robot patter, more romantic than the other variations of Let's fuck he'd been bearing witness to all evening, but fundamentally the same game. He took a couple of long swallows of Insta-Caff, barely noticing the way the older man smiled more widely and covered the mecha's hand with his own, idly wondering if he should propose a money-bet to Morales based on which of them spotted the mythical drug dealers first. Consequently he missed the details of what happened next, a few sentences lightly traded — something about dinner and dancing, and whether the mecha had enjoyed itself or something equally ridiculous — his attention only really returning when the man spoke more sharply, though still kindly:
"What is it?"
The mecha's gaze had shifted away from him, to its right and down. "I should be pleasing you, not the other way round," it said, and was that a trace of… wryness, in its accented tones? Surely not: lover-robots were renowned for many things, but a sense of irony was not foremost among them.
"As well-programmed as you are in that respect, I need you for so much more than mere sensuality simulation." He curved his left forefinger under the mecha's chin and gently raised its face to his. "Or have I still failed to convince you of that fact?"
It frowned fractionally. "No, but —"
After a moment the man encouraged it: "Go on."
"It's what I was built to do," the mecha responded, scanning his face with quick glances. "And if I cannot fulfill that purpose…"
"For the moment," the man corrected it, and stroked its sculpted chin with his gloved thumb. "I should think you'd also have learned by now that you're a great deal more than your designed function." He was smiling again with such tenderness that Husselbeck felt an instant's cognitive dissonance: after an evening of cheap currency there it was again, the gleam of sovereign gold, but he'd never thought to see it bestowed on such an unworthy subject. "Even without your sensuality simulation subroutines in operation, the core of who you are remains — and that's of inestimable value, at least as far as I'm concerned."
Husselbeck's mind leaped into high gear, processing the words two or three times. A lover-robot without a sexuality function? Well, that accounted for the what was missing in its body language, the lack of over-the-top seductiveness that normally infused every line of a sex-mecha's structure. He watched, genuinely curious now, as the mecha paused, gazing back at the man — its owner, surely — with cool green eyes that nevertheless seemed to shine with an answering brightness, and a hint of allure in spite of what was admittedly inoperative.
"I knew my place in the world once, you know," it said.
"But you weren't content with it," the orga responded with the air of someone who's come to a firm conclusion based on previous conversations.
And then, even more startling, contradiction without hesitation or deference: "That's not entirely accurate. I did what I'd been made to do, and I was very good at it. My customers always went away satisfied." A pause and another sidelong glance away, followed by a slower progression of words: "But I also knew that there was something more, that I wasn't functioning entirely within my operating parameters. I could tell that other mecha didn't generate thoughts the way I did, or think beyond the task of the moment — not even Jane, who was my counterpart and my partner with so many clients." Its gaze returned to the face of its owner, intent and searching. "Nobody else in the world has ever looked beyond my form and function before — until you."