Oregonian

[Oregonian]

Hi, everyone.  I’m Vicki from Oregon.

I read the Harry Potter books in 2008 and started reading fanfiction a few years later.  But there seemed to be a hole in the array of stories — nobody was writing about the longterm effects on Harry of his childhood abuse.  In March of 2012 I wrote in my journal “Maybe I could write that story,” and in October of 2012 I began posting the chapters of The Baby in the Closet on Mugglenet.

Thus it began.

I write stories only in the Harry Potter fandom.  They range in length from under 1000 words to about 44K.  No long novels (yet).  I also write poetry because MNFF had a great poetry forum that got me started and taught me a lot.

I write a wide variety of topics and eras.  I enjoy writing minor characters, even though they seem to attract fewer reads and reviews, because less (or practically nothing) is stated in canon about these characters, so they afford great scope for imagination and creativity.  My characters range in age  from pre-Hogwarts Harry to old ladies.

I don’t writing love relationships in terms of snogging and shagging, but rather in terms of two people facing important challenges together.  I spent some years as a Validator at that other site, reading everything that came through the queue, so I have read enough stories about the Marauders to last me a lifetime.  As a result, I don’t write them.

I took a course on writing Missing Moments at MNFF and developed a head canon on the formerly homeschooled students who were forced to attend Hogwarts in 1997-1998 (as mentioned by Remus Lupin in Chapter 11 of Deathly Hallows).  This concept spawned a series of interrelated stories (Greenhouse Seven, Maggots, The Crofter and the Snake, The Friar’s Unexpected Army, This Year Will Be Different, and my current WIP).

I also have a group of Christmas stories written to prompts of the MNFF Christmas challenges.  Plus other less tightly related stories.

I began taking writing classes (fiction, poetry, screenwriting) at the local college in 2014 after retiring from my full-time job, and I have a stack of writing textbooks that slowly grows taller.  This study has been invaluable in gradually improving (I think) the quality level of my stories.  My writing is all done in longhand on sheets of unlined paper (often the back sides of junk mail) and then typed into the computer.  So there are stacks of these papers, held together on a clipboard or with paper clips, all over the table.

Slowly these stories will be transferred to my author page at HPFT as the queue allows.  Meanwhile, the stories (but not the poetry) are all on HPFF under my same author name, Oregonian.  The poetry on MNFF will be transferred too.

Please feel free to ask me any questions, or just chat.  I’d love to hear from you.  (My daughter, who is a computer engineer, says that her friends think it’s cool that her mom writes fanfiction.) 

 

 

 

[galadriel]

Hi Vicki! 

I think it is so cool that you have so many interrelated stories. As someone who gets distracted easily by various other interests and jumping between stories, i'm always in awe of anyone who manages to complete their fics and write a bunch of other things in the same universe. I have read a bit of Only One but none of your other posted fics - something i need to change, soon! 

I also have some questions for you: 

1. You said your writing covers a wide range eras. Is there a particular era that you have an inclination to over the others? Why?

2. I'm really curious to know about your writing process! While i plan stories out on paper, most of my actual writing is done on a word processor because I can't write as fast as the words flow in my mind. Does writing on paper help your ideas flow better? Do you have an organisational/planning system to make sure everything's in place? tell me your secrets  

3. What kind of themes does your poetry usually revolve around? 

4. Tea or coffee?

5. If you could learn just one spell, which would you choose?

Looking forward to your answers!  

Nim

[Oregonian]

Hi Nim,

Thank you so much for replying to my venture into the world of the Writers' Journals.  I'll try to answer your questions without running on and on (at least, not too much).

1. You asked about the era that is my favorite to write and why.  I have ended up writing a bunch of 1997-1998 stories because I chose a statement from Deathly Hallows to focus on, for a Missing Moments writing class and quickly developed a head canon much too large to fit into the word limit for the final exam for the class, so I had to select a tiny bit of that head canon for the exam (Greenhouse Seven, not yet transferred to this site) and have since been writing parts of the rest of it.  Other than that period, I seem to gravitate toward canon characters in the period after the Second Wizarding War because it is interesting to see how their wartime experiences have influenced their later lives.  But about half of my stories don't fall into those eras.  I really enjoy focusing on many different eras.

2. My writing process...  I'll bet we all have our own idiosyncratic process.  I did not learn to type until high school (in the days before word processing, one learned touch typing in high school, and penmanship was a serious subject in elementary school; we got graded on it), so I have a long history of writing in longhand.  Therefore when I write by pen, the words flow naturally from brain to the paper as if by magic, whereas when a keyboard is interposed between the brain and the "paper", the necessity of hitting the right keys, backspacing for typos, using the shift key for capitals, etc, is a distraction that breaks my focus on the flow of the words.  It's kind of like eating a sandwich with a knife and fork instead of just picking it up in my hands.  In fact, if I am facing a blank sheet of lined paper, the ideas don't start to form until I pick up a pen and physically hold it in my hand, even if I never write a single word on the paper.  Odd, isn't it, how the brain uses that physical sensation to turn itself on.

The story starts out as sheets of paper with brainstormed lists of possible events that could be included, specific things that Main Character wants, needs, & values, and how MC's character arc will develop over time.  Then comes a paper chart slotting these elements into vertical columns for MC's main plot, with side columns for events of side plots, and (for longer stories) notations of where the Inciting Incident  and Plot Points 1 and 2 will occur and what they will be.  Chunks of random narrative get written on sheets of paper as I think about these events and want to write down a few hundred words of vivid images and important lines.  So I develop a draft plan for the story.

The story itself often gets written in non-chronological order.  While I'm working on one bit of narrative, a "brilliant" idea suddenly appears for another, still sketchy, part of the narrative, so I seize a fresh sheet of one-sided junk mail and this section is written while the muse is striking; then that page goes back on the table to be addressed later.  A page can have writing at the top and the bottom of the sheet with a blank space in the middle for an as-yet-unwritten bridge.  Alternate version of sentences get written sideways in the margins.  A page may be sliced horizontally with scissors and an extra section taped into the gap, the literal cut-and-paste, so that the final bundle of 8" X 11" papers includes some longer than11" and others shorter.  My tabletop can hold multiple stacks of paper, each one representing a chapter currently in development, with supporting research documents (e.g. maps) on the bottom of the stack.

It may sound disorderly, but a big plus for me is that nothing ever gets lost.  No files disappearing into cyberspace, nothing accidentally deleted.  So long as my house doesn't burn down, I'm good.

For shorter writings, such as e-mails, common room postings, and brief reviews, I compose at the keyboard, but even a "long, thoughtful" review starts out on paper as a brainstorms of concepts that gradually assemble themselves into a logical order and then evolve into hopefully graceful sentences.

3. Again, my poetry covers a wide variety of themes, but all easy understandable by the readers.  My HP poetry was written for the Mugglenet Fanfiction poetry forum, which had monthly lessons, assignments, and challenges.  The Annual October Triathlon: Race to Hallowe'en required three poems each year on spooky themes.  The annual Christmas Carol events required us to re-write well known (and lesser known) carols into the HP universe: thus "Good King Wenceslas" became "Good King Ragnuk" in the same meter and rhyme scheme as the original, for example.  I did a bunch of those.  Other monthly assignments involved using various formal poetic forms (sonnet, villanelle, sestina, pantoum, etc; I was introduced to many new forms) on a theme of one's choice, or writing to prompts which were excerpts of published poetry.  One fun event was called "Last Line Standing."  Our poet laureate selected a 16-line poem, erased all but the final word in each line, and challenged us to write a new 16-line HP poem using those saved words as the ends of the lines.  Five extra points to the poet (not me) who first identified the original poem and author (something by Christina Rossetti).  My entry for that event was "Searching For the Horcruxes."  And some poems were just about things I wanted to talk about:  "Narcissa in the Forest", "My House Is Empty and My Family Dead," and a series of poems about the seasons at the castle (in a variety of poetic forms).

4. Tea or coffee?  About half and half; I like them both.  There are supposed to be health benefits for both beverages.  Plus it is cold here in Oregon for the majority of the year.

5. If I could learn just one spell, I would learn a Levitation spell so as not to injure myself by trying to pick up stuff that's too heavy to lift safely.  So far I've been lucky, but...

It's been fun thinking about these things.  Thank you so much for asking (hope I didn't bore you).  I went to a writers' conference in Eugene last fall, and one author/speaker said that we should try to include one episode of sadness, one of fear, one of love, and one of humor in our stories,  so I aim to do that in my WIP.

Vicki

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Jo Raskoph]

Hi Vicki. I have nothing much to contribute except that I enjoyed this last post very much and am very impressed by the paragraphs about your writing process on paper and your poetry. I get a feeling that you have a lot of valuable insights to share and am looking forward to reading more of your posts here and elsewhere on the forums

[Oregonian]

Hi Jo.  Thanks for your comment above.  I have been working on getting my materials from MNFF and HPFF transferred to this site bit by bit, going through them to spot and clean up the last few pesky typos.  This is a hard job because the brain knows what the sentence is supposed to say,  so when the eyes sweep over the words, the brain automatically corrects the lost or misspelled word.  If error-free copy is essential, as in some competitions, I use the technique of reading the story word by word from end to beginning, which is a very slow job but which forces me to focus on each word.

 

Now I am looking forward to attending the 2019 AWP Annual Conference & Bookfair, which is held in different cities in different years, but this year it will be in Portland at the end of March.  AWP = Association of Writers & Writing Programs.  I have never been to this conference before, since it's usually not anywhere near me.  It's a great big hairy deal, takes over the entire Portland Convention Center, and has lots of workshops and presentations to visit.  There's a huge exhibition hall with scores of booths set up in long rows where all the colleges and universities that have writing programs are advertising themselves and seeking students to enroll. (I know this because I saw a photo of a drone's-eye view of this set-up at a previous AWP Conference in another city in a previous year.)  It is surprisingly cheap to attend, compared to some other writing conferences;  I suppose that the booth proprietors are paying a good fee to participate in the Great Hall, so that makes it cheaper for the rest of us.

 

My baby brother is coming down from Washington state (by then the snow will be melted) to stay with me for a few days while we attend the AWP Conference together.  He has written a book, the manuscript of which I read and critiqued a couple of years ago, and he has since redone it in ways that make it better and stronger, but while he is here, we will go over the punctuation, which needs improvement, and I will teach him the grammatical rules of punctuation.  My impression, looking at the informational materials about this conference, is that there will not be agents there looking for promising manuscripts, but one can pitch their manuscript to agents at smaller regional conferences, such as the Willamette Writers Conference (held annually in Portland) or the Pacific Northwest Writers Association conference (held annually in Seattle), which is closer to my brother's house.

 

A couple of years ago I attended a conference of the Historical Novel Association (they alternate years, one year in England and the next year in an American city), and  2017 was in Portland.  So I paid my bucks and went.  I was working on a story at that time about Godric Gryffindor as a young man making a trip to Russia (worked out in my head but only the first chapter on paper).  I signed up for this conference at the last minute and selected one particular workshop (don't even remember the actual title of the workshop) and received an e-mail from the presenter of that workshop inviting me to submit a couple of opening pages of my historical WIP for her to comment on.  Now all I had was Godric in Russia (a very working title), so I sent her the requested two first pages, and she sent me back a seriously critical commentary on those two pages ( thus passed any illusions about being a good writer, though in truth they were very rough pages sent in a hurry).  When I went to the conference a few days later and attended that session, the lady commented on the flaws she had seen in all the first pages submitted to her by the attendees, and she used my pages as examples of serious flaws (without mentioning my name, of course).  It was interesting.  

 

I did learn that the genre of historical novels has set rules about the form of the story presentation. For example, it's not enough to mention in the first two pages that the Vikings are rowing their short-draft longships up the rivers to pillage the towns and castles along the riverbanks.  You have to specifically say, within the first two pages, that you are in England in the year 890.  I had assumed that the readers could figure that out, but one must never assume.

 

Have fun, stay warm, stay safe.

[Alexis Black]

Hello there! I'm here to pass along some questions from your Secret Snake!

 

Hello Vicki! It’s your Secret Snake here with some Writer’s journal questions !

1. So, Greenhouse Seven is one of my favorite fics of all time. I also took a keen interest in the line about previously homeschooled students being compelled to attend Hogwarts and that’s always been big in my headcanon of that year, despite the fact that I’ve not written it much. I thought Howe added quite a lot to the story and I was so glad you thought to write him. 

Another small bit of canon that you turned into something bigger was, well, Herbology in general. Your descriptions about the process of caring for plants were so engrossing that I wouldn’t have minded reading on and on about it. Was that a result of a real life affinity for plant life, rigorous research, or both? 

2. Dark Enough To See The Stars is quite unlike anything I’ve read in HP fanfic before. What inspired you to dig deeper into the nature of Wizard’s study of Astronomy? Did you have the idea for the ending from the very beginning, or did that come along after you’d decided upon the premise? 

3. Between college classes and courses you’ve taken at mnff, what was the one writing lesson you’ve learned that’s stuck with you the most? 

4. I’ve noticed that all of your poetry that you’ve uploaded to the archives is written in rhyme. I’m one of those people that finds rhyming in poetry occasionally easier to pull off than free verse because it gives me a concrete structure/baseline to work off of. Does rhyme come easy to you, or is it a difficult, but ultimately fruitful process?  

Until next time, Keiji Sada

[Oregonian]

Hi, Secret Snake.  It's so good to see you here!  I am happy to answer your questions.

 

1. How do I know about Herbology?  My university education was in biology, so I am familiar with research techniques in science and could put some of the basic processes into the story, just enough to give it the laboratory flavor.  Of course, three out of the four plants studied in Greenhouse Seven are fictitious, known (at least to me) only in the HP series.  Mandrake is real, and it is a hoot to read the descriptions of early superstitions about it in Wikipedia.

My first post in this topic listed my other stories linked to Greenhouse Seven.  They are not  all yet transferred to this site, but they are accessible on HPFF under my author name.  One of them that extends the story of Howard Sutton is The Crofter and the Snake, an imperfect story that needs to be expanded, but which has some good scenes. Katie/SunshineDaisiesWindmills wrote a requested review for it, outlining what it needed for improvement; her excellent remarks can be seen on the HPFF site.

2. Astronomy is a subject that has interested me since my childhood.  This story was written for three purposes: as a gift to a fellow Slytherin, Georgia, on MNFF; as my final exam in a Romance writing class; and as an entry in the TV Challenge.  For that, one had to pick a TV series, past or present, with many episodes, then select 6 episode titles to be the titles of 6 chapters, and write a 6-chapter story.  (The actual TV series didn't matter, just the titles.)  So I picked the old TV series Bonanza because it had 431 episodes.  I chose Scorpius/Rose because that was Georgia's favorite, and I guess that Scorpius + Astronomy + Romance just came together.  The initial idea was something like Scorpius's original plan, but I became aware that that was a cliché plot that people would laugh at, so I added the complications and the extra characters to be the opposite of his plan.  I knew, early on, everything except exactly what their momentous find would be; that final idea occurred to me suddenly during the writing process.

I try to write stories that are different from what other people write, so I don't write romances in which canon characters are paired up in endless different combinations, because those have been written so often before.  (Although those stories are popular and successful because lots of people enjoy them.)  It makes me happy when a reviewer says, "I haven't read anything like this before," even though out-of-the-mainstream stories can get fewer hits and reviews.

3. One writing lesson that has stuck with me -- Oh my, it's hard to pick one because there are so many, but I will say this one: Make sure that every sentence you write contributes in at least one of these three ways. 

• It sets the scene, using non-random details that contribute to the character of the place or the persons.
• It develops the character/nature/personality of the persons in the story.
• It drives the plot forward.

Sentences or details that don't do these things will act as clutter that dilutes the impact of the story.  "Plot" is not the same thing as a list of events; my journal is a list of the events in my daily life, but it has no plot.  I have read many very long stories, 50 chapters, that are lists of events but have no plot.  Try to avoid 1. noncontributory details (two pages describing a baked Alaska that the trio and an OC eat in a restaurant -- nothing to do with the plot!), 2.flat, undeveloped characters, and 3. a wandering, structure-less list of events.

 

4. Is it easy or difficult to achieve good rhyme?  Meter and rhyme are not difficult for me, maybe due to a lifetime of singing, where the verses have a strong musical beat and satisfying rhymes.  Think of the great classic hymns.  When I write, some lines just flow, but I am equally likely to jot a list of words in the margin that rhyme with my previous word and see where I can go with them.  If, after effort, nothing ensues, I may have to re-cast the previous line and try again with a different rhyme.  My unlined paper will be filled with fragmentary good-sounding phrases that have the desired meter, or usable couplets that might be insertable somewhere.

Short lines (such as in Good King Ragnuk) are harder because there is less space in each line to achieve a natural flow of words.  It's a feat to have natural, unforced rhyme and syntax in short-line poems (say, 4 metrical feet).  With longer-line poems, 6 or 7 metrical feet, it's much easier because there's so much more space for improved re-arrangements, such as repositioning a necessary but un-rhymable word into the interior of the line.  If that word must be at the end of the sentence, you can end that sentence in the middle of a long line and then start a new sentence to finish out the line.  Some readers appreciate that technique ("enjambment"), but others don't.

So some of this is just a matter of choosing a technique.  A formal poem can always be made to flow naturally in the end, no tortured word order or weird word choices, if you think creatively and try many alternate ways of saying it.  Sometimes I do write free verse, but only if the topic of the poem calls for it, and if there is some other form of internal structure.  

Thank you so much, Secret Snake, for sending me these questions via the kind hand of Alexis Black.  If, when the Secret Snakes are revealed, I see that you have a Writer's Journal, I will be sure to send you some questions. 

Vicki

 

 

. 

[Oregonian]

Hi guys, I'm here again to talk about the conference that I'm going to, with my brother, in Portland at the end of this month.  (See my February 13 post, above.)

So I went online last night to pick out the workshops that I want to attend.  There are three days, six time slots in each day, and a couple dozen workshops in each time slot, about 500 workshops in all.  So you'd think it would be easy to pick out workshops that appeal to me, but actually it was not.  This conference is geared towards people who administer creative writing programs in colleges & universities and people who teach in those programs, not toward people who just want to learn to write better, so most of the workshops are designed for those purposes.

But I found one that I will definitely attend.  It's entitled "When Harry Met Hermione: Fan Fiction in the Creative Writing Classroom".

This is the description: "If you've taught creative writing, you've likely encountered student writing inspired by media fandom.  Rather that dismissing such writing as derivative or banning it from the classroom, this panel suggests ways to draw on students' fan writing experiences when teaching craft.  Panelists experienced in teaching beginning writers will share how and why they use fan fiction in their classes and discuss best practices for working with students who struggle to break out of fan fiction tropes."

I was struck by the phrases "...dismissing such writing as derivative or banning it from the classroom..." and considered that to be a short-sighted and elitist attitude.  None of us is planning to publish our Harry Potter fanfiction commercially (not legal anyway), but we all see the value in practicing and improving our craft.  The devaluation of even excellently written fanfiction is what leads writers to say that they don't tell anyone exactly what it is they write, not even family members and friends.  That's so sad.

The workshop description speaks of "...working with students who struggle to break out of fan fiction tropes."  Reminds me of those forum topics one sometimes sees,  where contributors list all the cliche plots they can think of, and the list gets longer and longer, while everyone is rolling on the floor laughing.  There can be tropes in non-fanfiction also; my unfavorite is the suburban married couple whose love has faded and whose marriage has gone stale, and they are bored and unsatisfied and drifting apart, and nothing happens in the story, no plot, until the end when one person tells the other he/she wants to leave.  Whoop-de-do.   But my creative writing instructor loved stuff like that.

So far as I know, none of us has a paid position teaching creative writing at the college/university level, and yet we teach each other all the time, as beta readers, as reviewers, as collaborators, by giving suggestions and constructive criticism, and mainly by supporting one another, so that no one gets discouraged and gives up.

When I get back from the conference, I will tell you what the panelists said about this topic.  Should be interesting.

Vicki

[Guest Noelle Zingarella]

Vicki,

This topic (and the rest of the conference) sounds so interesting! I'm very much looking forward to your reflections on it afterwards.

I was just having a discussion with @Bunbury about the Aeniad being Illiad fanfiction. And, as I keep mentioning, all the Arthurian and Carolingian Romances are fanfiction of a sort too. This idea that everything has to be totally original is ridiculous. Really, there are only a few basic plots when you boil stories down to their base: Boy meets Girl; The Brave Little Tailor; and Man (or Woman) learns a lesson.

That being said, I have to admit that I don't tell everyone I know in RL that I write fanfiction, even if I tell them I have started writing again. I'm afraid of being judged, and so I keep it vague unless I'm talking to someone I think will accept it, or who is writing it herself. 

Anyway, I'm looking forward to reading what you learn at this conference. 

Yours,

Noelle

[Oregonian]

I apologize for taking so long to respond to your remarks.  (Confession: I had forgotten that this posting was here.)

It's a shame that we all keep our fanfiction writing in the closet.  As you say, the classic themes have stood the test of time, no matter what literary universe they are placed in.  Except for the most extreme of science fiction, every story is situated in a world that already exists in fiction.  It's time for us to come out of the closet and take pride in ownership of our own works, the products of our brains, imagination, and life experiences.

It's true that we will not be able to publish our stories until that far-future date when the Harry Potter series finally goes out of copyright, but when did we ever use monetary profits as a measure of the artistic value of our work?  Since the dawn of time, men and women have been telling stories and, when writing was finally invented, writing some of them down.  I hope they were never embarrassed by their stories because some elitist somewhere implied that they weren't good enough.

What would happen if we spoke openly about what we do for a hobby?  I'd like to think that most people would be impressed by the fact that we try to write, and that relatively few would criticize our chosen subject matter.  It could open a discussion about why we gladly do something that others might consider to be burdensome work, and about what we get out of it other than royalties from a publisher or profits from book sales.  My daughter says that her fellow workers (computer engineers) think it's cool that her mom writes fanfiction.  If we're proud enough of what we write (imperfect though it may be) to post it on a website, we should be proud enough to let other people know.

My daughter was recently looking at the 2019 schedule of performances for the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in Ashland (we are going to see Macbeth) and she saw that a new play entitled Mother Road was being staged.  It's an extension of John Steinbeck's famous novel The Grapes of Wrath, with newer members of the Joad family doing various things.  I wouldn't have thought that The Grapes of Wrath was out of copyright yet, so maybe the playwright got permission, but still, that's fanfiction for sure.

Vicki

[Oregonian]

Hi guys,

Taking a moment out of my personal timeline (have to be at church in half an hour) to talk about my sudden (as of last night) dilemma.

I have been writing like mad on my entry for the Slytherin-Centric Challenge (yeah, I put it off in favor of other pressing duties, saying "There's still plenty of time") and I came to face the horrible situation that JKR has a serious timeline problem concerning the Battle of Hogwarts.

I'm writing about Horace Slughorn and his activities around the time of the battle, specifically when he leaves the castle with the evacuating students and returns the next morning with Charlie Weasley.

I have concluded that there is no way that the students could have evacuated in the space of time that JKR allots .  There are "hundreds of students" who leave the Great Hall at about 11:30 p.m. to make the long walk up to the seventh floor.  Then they enter the Room of Requirement through the door from the hallway, down the flight of steps, and into the R of R.  They traverse the R of R and exit through the door at the back of the room, which leads down a flight of steps to the tunnel.

How long is the tunnel?  Well, when the trio arrive back at the Hogshead, they and Neville walk the length of the tunnel, talking all the way, and reach the door to the R of R as their conversation ends.  So I read those pages of conversation aloud, timing it: 7 minutes. At a walking rate of 3 mph (lighting is poor, but I assume they were eager to reach the end), the tunnel is 0.35 miles long.  (This is obviously shorter than the walking distance by road from Hogwarts to The Hogshead pub, but this tunnel is magical.)

 

Now at midnight (Harry checks his watch) the battle begins.  A jinx fired by the enemy comes in through a broken window (the window that was broken when Grawp pushed Hagrid and Fang through it?) and smashes the gargoyles outside the staffroom.  Harry sees the smashed gargoyles and remembers the bust of the ugly wizard onto which he placed the diadem in the R of R when hiding his old Potions textbook the previous year.  Harry heads for the R of R.

As he nears it, he meets Aberforth in the corridor, who says "I've had hundreds of kids running through my pub, Potter!"  This is not long after midnight, maybe 12:15 a.m. at the latest.  Harry encounters Ron and Hermione and they have a brief, hurried conversation.  Harry enters the R of R and sees Augusta Longbottom there.  He asks if there are any students left in the tunnel and she says no, she was the last person to come through and sealed the tunnel.  Assuming that she also took 7 minutes to travers the tunnel, it means that all the hundreds of students had managed to walk/run up to the seventh floor, get completely through the tunnel, and exit through the little one-person-at-a-time portrait hole over Aberforth's fireplace in a little over 30 minutes.

These hundreds of students could no-way travel as fast as a single person.  In crowds, bottlenecks and slowdowns always occur, such as at doorways and on staircases.  Once they arrive in Aberforth's upper room, the students have to go down the narrow stairway to the barroom, where they are Sidealong-Disapparated to their homes by whomever in the group has an Apparation license.  That would be a limited number of Apparators, since many of the older students with licenses had stayed at Hogwarts to fight.  Yet the students are all out of the tunnel (says Mrs. Longbottom) and presumably packed like sardines into the Hogshead (how many can it accommodate?) as they wait for the limited numbers of Apparators to take them home one by one.

I have decided that for the Slytherin-Centric Challenge, I am going to have to submit the short synopsis of this event concerning Horace Slughorn, which I wrote a few years ago but which was never posted on any archive, while I try to untangle my strategy for this expanded version of the story (which of course is expanding far more greatly than I had anticipated.)  You can see a different take on this event, from the POV of a different canon character, in my story The Crofter and The Snake, which is still visible on HPFF, awaiting some revision. 

Ah me.  I am reminded of JKR's statement that partway through the Goblet of Fire, she realized that she had screwed up her timeline and had to go back and rework it quite a bit.

 

Edited March 24, 2019 by Oregonian

[Guest Noelle Zingarella]

Oh dear, what a pickle! I’ll be interested to see how you resolve it.

[Oregonian]

Hi guys.  I told you I'd check in with you again after returning from the AWP writers' conference in Portland.

It was very big.  15,000 attendees filling up all of the Convention Center.  46 different rooms (ranging in size from small to quite large) where the 613 different programs were offered.  It went from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. for 3 days, no lunch breaks, you just had to eat your sandwich on the fly during the 15-minute passing breaks between sessions.  A huge exhibit hall with 797 booths, mostly small publishing houses hoping to sell stacks of their books or attract authors with new manuscripts, and booths of colleges and universities that have creative writing programs and want to attract students into their programs or attract authors to submit manuscripts for the literary magazines that these universities publish.  This was all a new world to me.

I told you I'd report on the session about "When Harry Met Hermione: Fanfiction in the Creative Writing Classroom."  There were four presenters on that panel, and they were all very favorable towards fanfiction.  Read that sentence again: They were all very favorable towards fanfiction. They all had a history of writing fanfiction themselves in their younger days.  

They pointed out that fanfiction writers had learned to read their source texts very closely, were familiar with the common tropes and were self-aware about their use of them (when they did use them), and were accustomed to giving and receiving feedback.  They (ff writers) were used to stretching their ideas, trying new things in their writing, and giving and responding to challenges.  They were often excellent at creating (and blocking) vivid/memorable scenes.  The ff writers were aware of gaps/points of entry for subverting tired texts and narratives (that is, AU and Missing Moments).  They were unwilling to be satisfied with insufficiently bold storytelling, and interested in imagining and voicing the perspectives of marginalized characters.

The panelists said, concerning using fanfiction in creative writing classrooms, "When possible, highlight students' fandom-derived strength in your own critiques and invite them to bring those strengths into the classroom," such as "Challenges: Ask the class to create a challenge for each other in their next writing exercise.  This could involve a specific setting, situation, character prompt.  Encourage students with fan writing experience to draw on their knowledge of fan writing experiences."  Is this really so revolutionary?  Not to us. 

I went to another session on "Literary Prequels, Sequels, and Spinoffs".  The panelists cheerfully admitted that what they were doing could be defined as fan fiction.

I came away from these sessions thinking that we fanfiction writers have been hiding our light under a bushel for far too long.  We know that there is a lot of excellently written fanfiction being posted on the net (as well as some that's not so great).  This can also be said about the manuscripts that arrive at publishing houses -- there are good ones (that get published) and not-so-good ones (that sit in the slush pile).  Fanfiction can stick to overused tropes or be brilliantly imaginative.  Yes, there are detractors and look-downers, but I increasingly believe that these people haven't read much fanfiction, if any, certainly not the good stuff, and might not know what they are talking about.

My brother had a good time at the conference.  He has a manuscript, vaguely reminiscent of Game of Thrones (it's in that genre), that he would like to sell, so he went to the sessions about selling your manuscript and getting published, and now he's all enthusiastic and wants to go to some other conferences where he can pitch his story to agents.   I'm glad it worked out for him -- I was afraid he would think that I had dragged him to a dud and wasted his time.

 

 

[Guest Noelle Zingarella]

Wow! This conference sounds so exciting (and overwhelming)!

I find it absolutely fascinating that we 'amateur fanfic writers' have come up with a vibrant and exciting way to contribute to literary culture and to improving the writing process. It's really encouraging to hear what they were saying at the session you attended. Mr. Zingarella keeps saying that he views fanfiction as a much more natural way to build a literary culture as well.

Good luck to your brother as he tries to pitch his manuscript. Please let us know how it goes for him.

Did you walk away with any new ideas? 

[Oregonian]

Actually, I didn't really get ideas that would help me in my own writing.  This conference was not so much about the craft of writing as it was about teaching writing at the college and university level, and about trends and genres in writing, and some stuff about getting manuscripts published.  Lots of sessions dealing with writing by or about traditionally marginalized groups. But I found enough to keep me interested.

I just got back from four days in Palm Springs, California, attending a family wedding.  I went there with my brother and his wife, and in some slack moments I started rereading a book entitled Creating Character Arcs by K. L. Weiland. Just managed to review the first few chapters, but the info made a bigger impression on my brain this second time around.

The author says that you want your main character to exhibit some character change or growth (good or bad) over the course of the book (unlike, say, James Bond, who doesn't change from the first page to the last).  So the character starts out with the Lie That The Character Believes, such as Ebenezer Scrooge in A Christmas Carol, whose lie at the outset is the belief that happiness comes from amassing as much money as possible.  (By the end of the book he no longer believes that.)

So I thought hard about my WIP's main character, Howard Sutton, who was always conceived of and depicted as a nice guy in my earlier stories (where he was not the POV character).  I couldn't think of any Lie That He Believed.  Yet the author of the book said that his character growth would depend on my identifying it.  So I thought about everything I knew about him, and it became clear.  The Lie That He Believed was that the Second Wizarding War didn't really concern him -- it was someone else's problem, and someone else would deal with it.  

This realization gives more structure to my story. No longer is Howard merely wandering around the landscape doing interesting stuff; there is something I need to accomplish with him.  The author says that as inklings begin to appear that Howard should modify his belief, he should at first resist these inklings, and I can think of ways to to accomplish this.  This book, Creating  Character Arcs, makes tons of sense, and I've only reread the first couple of chapters.

But I lent it to my brother and then told him he could keep it (his main character does need a little help in the character arc department), so I will have to buy myself another copy.

[Guest Noelle Zingarella]

Vicki, this is a wonderful and helpful concept! I may have to see if this book is in the library. Both Severus and Miranda have a lot of Lies They Believe, so I'll have to think about how to use them to focus the story (and if the individual lies are part of a larger theme).

I went to read Greenhouse Seven and how did I not know that you've been writing about the homeschooled kids who were forced to go to Hogwarts?? I will leave you a proper review (probably after Holy Week) and I must go over to hfff to read the other story about Howard. What is your WIP featuring him? I love how you present him--he is so at ease talking to people of all ages and this is what I have noticed in my own homeschooled kids. And most other homeschooled kids I meet. They talk to people almost like adults socializing at a cocktail party would. 

As a homeschooling parent, the idea of being forced to send my kids to any school--let alone Hogwarts under the Death Eaters--is terrifying and something I'm very interested in reading about. Please keep me updated as you work on this!

[Oregonian]

Hi Noelle,

I hope you can find the book, but I sorta suspect that you'll have to order it though your local bookstore or Amazon.  Another great book, if I haven't mentioned it already, is The Emotional Craft of Fiction, by Donald Maass; it's hugely valuable, and I haven't seen any other book like it.

The other story including Howard Sutton, told from the POV of Tracey Davis, is The Crofter and the Snake, which is accessible under my author name on the newly resurrected HPFF (along with a few reviews, including one by Katie/SunshineDaisies, who at my request kindly told me how to improve it).  It had started out as a one-shot challenge entry but grew like a marshmallow in the microwave oven, ending up in an awkward and unsatisfactory state halfway between a circumscribed one-shot and a fully developed novel.  The WIP is the story of these characters and this situation, expanded to a state worthy of the concept and including the new skills I have learned from my further study since I first wrote the story.  It won't be posted until it is finished (my usual custom).

If you do read The Crofter and the Snake, you will see that, although Howard learned his wizarding skills from his parents, rather than at Hogwarts, he did attend Muggle school and has a foot firmly planted in each world.  I see his character as established by his growing up on a croft (or farm, as we would say in America).  My observation, from personal and general experience, is that farm-raised children take on adult responsibilities at an early age and become mentally mature at a faster rate than non-farm children.  So we see Draco Malfoy at first eager to participate in Death Eater activities to prove that he is an adult, but Howard has no need to struggle for proof -- he knows that he is an adult.  But when thrown into the unfamiliar milieu of a formal wizarding academy, he finds that he has a lot of acculturation to catch up on. 

I don't know what title I will put on the expanded story when it is finished.  My son likes the present title.

Have you started reading the WIP by @ReillyJade about Draco Malfoy and OC Emmaleigh Ross?  (The title escapes me at the moment.)  It includes an excellent treatment of Lucius Malfoy during the tumultuous Year 7.  I'm looking forward with great interest to your Romania segment.

[mydearfoxy]

@Noelle Zingarella If you can't easily get the book, K. M Weiland's website has pretty much all the info and is generally super helpful in many ways!  helpingwritersbecomeauthors.com 

[Oregonian]

Thanks for posting the suggestion, @MuggleMaybe.

Today I was staring at the blank page without good inspiration, and then I decided to go outside and pull some weeds because the rhythm and boredom of the job has in past years led to a relaxation and wandering of the mind that helps ideas form.  So I started on a difficult bit of garden -- some weeds that really want to go to seed, but if you let them, then when you touch them, the seed pods spring open and spray seeds all over, so those little suckers really needed to come out now.  After about an hour of songs running through my head and other useless mental junk, some ideas started to come.  (And a lot of weeds went into the green-lid bin.)

I am working on some canon-compliant (I hope) pieces of various lengths about Neville post WWII.  I enjoy writing him because of his self-determination.

[Oregonian]

I am now at sixes and sevens about whether I should try to get any writing done while I'm in France for a month (mid-June to mid July).  My sister and I will be in Aix-en-Provence, and she is a night owl, late to bed and late to rise, while I am the opposite, so I can see myself sitting on the balcony at 6 a.m. while the summer air is still cool, gazing out over the ancient town, sipping my coffee and coming up with creative ideas.   I'll probably end up doing it.

[Oregonian]

I suddenly got this idea while lying in bed last night.  You now how E. L. James 's book Fifty Shades of Grey stemmed from a Twilight fanfiction (or so they say)?  A while back I wrote a 700-word drabble about Draco, Astoria, and Scorpius in response to the prompt "Someone learns something unexpected about their ancestry and acts upon it."  Of course, in such a short span of words I only got as far as Plot Point One, but later I used the idea, with names changed, as the basis for a short story of 8000+ words for my Creative Writing - Fiction I course at the college.

Subsequently, in Creative Fiction - Screenwriting I and II, I expanded the story and wrote it as a screenplay. 

Now, seeing that @crestwood has started writing a sci-fi story as a screenplay and that the validators have approved that format, it occurred to me, at about midnight, that I could post my screenplay also.  Maybe when I get back from France.  Too much "stuff" to get done between now and then, however, to take on another project!  

[Oregonian]

Hi Everybody,

I have been staying here at my daughter's house in Albany, Oregon, since July 14, recovering from my total hip replacement, which was done in France.  Making excellent progress, walking around the house without a cane, but still using a cane on the long walks through the neighborhood, which I do about four times a day.  Hoping to be allowed to return to my own home soon (2.5 hours from here).  I have been thinking, as I walk around the house, that my right leg is now a little shorter than the left (common problem after knee or hip replacement, solved by putting a heel lift in one shoe), so I sat on the floor with my spine against the wall and my legs stretched out in front of me, asking my daughter to check if one leg looked longer than the other, and she examined them critically and declared that they were exactly the same length, so kudos to Dr. Olivier Mollaret, my French surgeon, for a job well done.

I have been putting off working on my own WIP because of my conviction that what I have written so far is garbage, so I procrastinate, reading my writing textbooks over and over, thinking in my head how I will incorporate their ideas into the story, but not writing anything down.  So yesterday I forced myself to read what I had already written, fully expecting to cringe at every sentence, but I was pleasantly surprised to discover that it wasn't half bad.  So I read it to my daughter last night, and she didn't exclaim "Nobel prize winner!", but she thought it was good. She liked the part about the bats.  She is concerned that the protagonist may sound like he is too "cool" (a Gary Stu), but I assured her that his flaws will show up soon enough (we've only seen the opening scene).  Maybe another week and a half at my daughter's house here, and then the doctor will let me go home, so I had better get cracking, because I am sure that there will be a long list at home of stuff that people expect me to do and take care of.

 

[Guest Noelle Zingarella]

On 8/8/2019 at 10:29 AM, Oregonian said:

She liked the part about the bats. 

I was very interested to read this WIP before--but now that I know there are bats in it I'm even more excited! It's so good to hear that you are improving--and awesome that your legs are the same length! I'm not sure that mine are...

 

[Oregonian]

We have started this wonderful program in Slytherin House called Snake Pals, in which willing participants are paired up as writing buddies to encourage each other in writing, setting goals, reporting to each other on our progress, and so on.  And it's working! I am back  to writing reviews and cranking out the words on my long-neglected, oft-promised-but-never-delivered WIP.  (The arrival of cold, damp fall weather that precludes some yard work helps also.)

The more you put something off, the more daunting it begins to feel, and the easier it is to procrastinate.  That has been my problem, feeling that I shouldn't write anything else until I finish this one, but not being able to get going on it either.  Feeling that I'm beginning to be a fraud by claiming to be a writer when I don't actually write anything!  Endlessly re-reading my excellent writing textbooks but then not actually putting their instructions into use.  Who knows?  Sometimes you just have to wait until the time is right and the spirit moves you and you get on a roll.

Edited September 28, 2019 by Oregonian
typo

[Oregonian]

It's been more than three months since I posted anything here.  I blame the busy season -- first, the delightful but time-gobbling House Cup event, the Night in the Department of Mysteries (totally non-productive, but so much fun), and second, the various bazaars conducted by the various organizations that I belong to and for which I must contribute much time and labor (all for very good causes, mind you), and finally the Christmas festivities themselves, again time-gobbling but indescribably rewarding because they involve family and friends.

Now we are in the bottom of the year.  January, the low month on the totem pole.  Too cold and dark to do yard work.  Praying that the snow will stay up in the mountains where it belongs because I hate to shovel snow.  No major holidays coming for quite a while, just the family birthdays that sprinkle themselves through the pages of the months of the daybook like confetti.  Time to write, impelled by dogged determination to get as much done as possible in the brief time before the weeds start pushing themselves up again and threatening to go to seed.  The clock is ticking.

The three D's.  Determination (got to keep going), deadlines (spring is coming when the old lady's fancies lightly turn to thoughts of endless yard work), and death (what if I suddenly suffer a heart attack and drop dead with these stories still untold?).  Gruesome thought.

You know, there is great value in writing fiction because we learn from reading or hearing about other people's lives, even fictional characters' lives. For any one reader, many stories are forgettable, but there will be some few stories that will stick with him/her for a long time, maybe teach valuable lessons or even change a life.  And maybe the stories do that for the authors (us) as well as for the readers. The content of the stories, and the writing of them, can change us for the better.  Stronger, braver, bolder.

So I will soldier on this winter.  Will Howard Sutton make it to May 2, 1998?  It's not up to fate, it's up to me.

 

"There is no greater agony than having an untold story inside you."  -- Maya Angelou