inmyownlittlecorner Posted November 4, 2021 Author Share Posted November 4, 2021 4 hours ago, PinsandKneazles said: OMG I LOVE that Extreme track - takes me right back to the early 90s ❤️ Congratulations on the brilliant word count! Thank you so much I love that song too I got down 2K more words this morning, and chapter 22 is drafted. Tomorrow I will focus on editing it up, to get it ready to post next week. When that's finished, I'll be on chapter 23, which will contain (I think) the Death Eater attack on the school 👀 To make my life a little easier, I've been working out a timeline of the attack, since it's told non sequentially over like three chapters in HBP. If anyone is interested in this scholarship, you can find it under the spoiler bar: Spoiler Timeline of the Death Eater Attack on Hogwarts in HBP Sometime that evening: Dumbledore tells Minerva, Filius, Remus, Bill, and Dora to patrol the school because he is leaving for a few hours 9:45 pm Draco finishes fixing the Cabinet. Sybill walks in on him, but can’t see him Harry confronts Dumbledore about Snape hearing the prophesy. Dumbledore sidesteps and asks Harry to come with him to the cave Harry gives the Felix Felicis to Ron and Hermione, tells them to rustle up the DA to help guard the school 10:15pm Dumbledore and Harry leave to go to the cave 11:20pm Draco comes out of the Room of Requirement, and gets past Neville, Ron, and Ginny (who were keeping watch) using Peruvian Darkness Powder and his Hand of Glory. Ron, Ginny, and Neville alert the others. The Death Eaters head for the Astronomy Tower, the Order engages them in a fight Just before Midnight Gibbon runs up to set the Dark Mark over the school Minerva sends Filius to get Severus to help the Order Dumbledore and Harry get ot Hogsmede, borrow brooms and tell Rosmerta to alert the Ministry Dumbledore and Harry arrive in the tower. Dumbledore tells Harry to put on the invisibility cloak and sends him to get Severus. Draco comes in. Dumbledore wordlessly immobilizes Harry to keep him from interfering Filius tells Severus what has happened. Severus stuns Filius and tells Hermione and Luna (who were watching his office) that Filius collapsed. He orders the girls to take care of Filius and runs up to join the battle 12am Draco confronts Albus. He is joined eventually by the Carrows, Greyback, and Yaxley By this point, Gibbon is down, Neville is hurt, Bill has been attacked by Greyback The Death Eaters run up the stairs and block them with a curse. Neville tries to go after them but is thrown back Severus runs through the cursed barrier and into the tower, and kills Dumbledore Severus tells everyone to leave, he shoves Draco out the door. Fenrir and the Carrows follow Harry’s curse wears off. He stuns Yaxley and gives chase. On the way out he stuns Fenrir too, and helps Ginny with the Carrows Harry uses a shortcut, and catches up to Severus near Hagrid's hut Severus sends Draco on ahead, and confronts Harry Thorfinn sets Hagrids hut on fire Severus keeps Thorfinn and the Carrows from killing Harry Severus battles Harry, eventually knocking Harry down Buckbeak attacks Severus, who outruns the hippogriff (!!) and Apparates away 12:20am Hagrid saves Fang and puts out the fire. Harry tells him about Dumbledore and Snape, but Hagrid doesn’t believe him. Harry goes to find Dumbledore’s body and finds Regulus’s locket Ginny takes Harry to the hospital wing 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Aphoride Posted November 6, 2021 Share Posted November 6, 2021 hi noelle, here with some questions for you!! 1. what has surprised you most about writing this story?? 2. writing a series is a looooong job - are there things which you've changed about the plot to better work in the series (like,, things you've pushed back or brought forward than where they originally would be because it makes more sense or impact where it is now)? how much of the series as a whole do you have planned out at this point?? 3. favourite writing drink?? 4. i see you have a playlist for this story - if you had to pick just one song to encapsulate this story, what would it be?? 5. only a few chapters from the end of a story is an equally exciting and nervous place to be - are you more nervous or more excited?? 6. write, write, write!! 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
inmyownlittlecorner Posted November 6, 2021 Author Share Posted November 6, 2021 (edited) Thank you for these lovely questions 5 hours ago, Aphoride said: 1. what has surprised you most about writing this story?? How long it is eventually going to be when it is finished! When I started back in 2019, I had no conception of its being even two books--let alone four 😅 5 hours ago, Aphoride said: 2. writing a series is a looooong job - are there things which you've changed about the plot to better work in the series (like,, things you've pushed back or brought forward than where they originally would be because it makes more sense or impact where it is now)? how much of the series as a whole do you have planned out at this point?? Yes! I would say that a few of the major plot points have been basically the same, or at least present in some form since the beginning. And (unless I change my mind at some point) I've had the final image of the series in my head pretty much since I started. I think the biggest thing that has changed, is me giving myself permission to really flesh out parts of Severus's story that are often glossed over in fics of this kind. In an early draft of Moonlight, I sent Miranda to Romania just to kill time until the end of the OoTP timeline. I had maybe a chapter about Romania and that was it. But that seemed kinda lame, and I got to reading about Romania, and wound up writing ten more chapters I hadn't planned on. Another part of the timeline I see glossed over a lot is the year that Sev is Headmaster of Hogwarts. I really didn't want to skip that time, because while it will be dark and dreary, there's so much potential for dramatic development. So I have an entire book planned (book 3) to deal with that part of the timeline. I have a good amount of major plot points for book 3, and maybe 3 major plot points for book 4 in mind at this point. I know pretty well where I'm going, but there will be twists and turns I can't see yet. 5 hours ago, Aphoride said: 3. favourite writing drink?? I usually write in the mornings now, so coffee (but decaf--thanks anxiety) 5 hours ago, Aphoride said: 4. i see you have a playlist for this story - if you had to pick just one song to encapsulate this story, what would it be?? Oh this is hard. I think I would pick Building a Mystery+ by Sarah McLachlan 5 hours ago, Aphoride said: 5. only a few chapters from the end of a story is an equally exciting and nervous place to be - are you more nervous or more excited?? Definitely excited! I'm ready to have another part of this series finished and out in the world 5 hours ago, Aphoride said: 6. write, write, write!! Thank you ❤️ Edited November 6, 2021 by inmyownlittlecorner Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
inmyownlittlecorner Posted November 10, 2021 Author Share Posted November 10, 2021 Whooo!! I finished chapter 22+ !! I had foolishly thought that this would be a relaxing chapter after all the excitement of the werewolf Circle in the previous chapter. It did not turn out that way. I am happy to say that after two chapters of Sev and Miranda not getting to interact with each other at all, they are back together with a vengeance in this chapter. I'm really happy with how the chapter turned out, and there are a couple of big moments that I've been planning for a looooong time that I finally get to share with everyone. NaNo Goal Check: finished 1 of 2 chapters word count: 6279 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Oregonian Posted November 11, 2021 Share Posted November 11, 2021 I loved reading your answers to the questions from @Aphoride. It is fascinating to read about how other people construct their stories and how they experience the process. I had to smile at the part where you said that you had expected the Romania section to be about one chapter but it expanded itself into ten chapters. That's what happens when you start doing research. It reminds me of digging in the ground, uncovering a tiny bit of what you think is going to be a little artifact, quickly extracted from the dirt, but the more you keep digging, the bigger the artifact appears to be, until you realize that you have stumbled upon something huge, maybe the corner of an entire buried city. And it is going to cover a lot more ground than you expected and will take a lot longer to excavate. 😁 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
inmyownlittlecorner Posted November 14, 2021 Author Share Posted November 14, 2021 Thanks @Oregonian! I like that analogy of excavating ❤️ I'm about 4.5K words into the next chapter of libera. The time has pretty much come to deal with the attack on the school. Unlike the last few chapters, which have been 1-3 long scenes, this chapter is going to ping around between a few different POV characters. Hopefully (?) that will help build some tension. I haven't been very excited about writing this, tbh. At first I was thinking it was just because I'm a little tired from finishing and posting the previous chapter on Wednesday. But I think it's also because I'm still not convinced that writing the whole attack on the school from Sev's POV is the thing my story needs. I think it would make a good fanfiction to do a real deep dive into what Sev was thinking/feeling during the whole flight of the Prince and everything. But I don't know that *my* story needs that. So I think I'm going to take it from his POV to a certain point, and then skip over to Miranda's to tell out the rest of the chapter. This was, more or less, my original intention. I'm going to trust my instincts and go with it. At least until I change my mind again. Current NaNo word count: 10836 Current NaNo chapter count: 1/2 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
prideofprewett Posted November 14, 2021 Share Posted November 14, 2021 4 hours ago, inmyownlittlecorner said: I'm going to trust my instincts and go with it. At least until I change my mind again. Mood. I am constantly trying to convince myself of this same thing. But I am a firm believer in, if you believe you know what you're doing enough, everyone else will to. I'll definitely be popping back to read more of this soon! 💖 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
inmyownlittlecorner Posted November 16, 2021 Author Share Posted November 16, 2021 Thank you @prideofprewett It's so true!! Okay, so having said what I said in my last post, I am now in the midst of writing the attack on the school/flight of the prince. And like, Sev doesn't appear to want to let go of the POV. I guess I had more to say about the whole business of offing Dumbledore than I thought I did. We'll see if it all gets to stay in the final draft. I guess part of the reason I didn't want to do a retread of those scenes is because I was worried that it had just been done to death in Snape/OC fics. But I went back and checked a couple of them, and actually the ones I checked completely skip over those moments. They tell before, and after, which was exactly what I had been planning to do. So I guess if I want to be different (and you know me--I always want to be different) I actually should write through the whole flight of the prince. We'll see if I change my mind tomorrow, lol NaNo Word Count: 14305 NaNo Chapter Count: 1/2 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Oregonian Posted November 17, 2021 Share Posted November 17, 2021 I hope you don't change your mind tomorrow because second-guessing oneself can be such an impediment to actually getting anything done. So I say, "Boldly go where no one has gone before," (or something like that). What you mention in the first paragraph, "...worried that it had just been done to death in Snape/OC fics," probably haunts a lot of us. There are so many fics out there...how can we ever hope to know if our idea has already been written by someone else? Even multiple times? But Miranda/Sev is sufficiently original, delving into so many 'missing moment' possibilities (has anyone ever explored Remus's mission to the werewolves?) that I am sure you can pull it off just fine in writing about the actual moment when Snape flees the castle. It's a powerful chapter, and perhaps other authors did not dare to write about it. Good luck! 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
inmyownlittlecorner Posted November 17, 2021 Author Share Posted November 17, 2021 Thank you @Oregonian! This all makes so much sense. So, I did "boldly go" through the flight of the prince this morning. I actually just finished, and I'm a little shaky from adrenaline, it was so exciting. I'm so so happy that I decided to write through it after all. It needs some editing and such, but I think it was definitely the right thing to do. One of the other Snape/OC authors mentioned that the death of Dumbledore and the aftermath is her least favorite part of the books. And it is very sad, of course. And shocking. However--I kinda love it too. What a climax. What a powerful moment. And then during the flight of the prince, when Harry and Sev finally face each other--it's amazing. We've been building to this moment since the beginning of the series. And Sev is as feral and unhinged as we ever see him. So it was really fun to try to write it from his PoV and explain a little more about what he was thinking/feeling at that point in time. ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️ I've gotten a couple of glorious picspams from the NaNo tag thread and I want to put them in here for posterity by @RogueSlytherin 😍 by @RonsGirlFriday 😍 NaNo Word Count: 15728 NaNo Chapter Count: 1/2 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Oregonian Posted November 18, 2021 Share Posted November 18, 2021 You're right -- Snape is about as unhinged as we ever see him in that scene with Harry as he (Snape) is fleeing the castle grounds. To write it from Snape's POV -- my, what a tour de force! I am eager to read it when it is finally posted. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
inmyownlittlecorner Posted November 20, 2021 Author Share Posted November 20, 2021 (edited) Thank you @Oregonian! I hope it will live up to the expectations 😅 The chapter continues to evolve. This evening I made the decision to break it into two chapters. I have the whole thing drafted, and I have the first 8-ish pages edited. But it's sitting at a solid 10K words, and it's not getting any shorter. I realized that this chunk of time is actually told over the course of four chapters in HBP, so breaking it into two chapters for my fic seems pretty reasonable. My biggest worry about doing this was killing the momentum. But I think I can break it at point where, while it's not exactly a nail-bitting cliff-hanger, there should still be enough sense of foreboding that the reader would want to click to the next chapter. This also has the side benefit of making my December posting schedule slightly less impossible. I'm posting updates of libera every other week, and I have this chapter I'm about to break into 2 entirely written. That means I only need one more chapter ready to post in December--so I might possibly have time to work on the one shots I somehow signed up to write. I'll be using the rest of NaNo to start drafting these, which are as follows: Fic for a Snamione Discord Server gift exchange. (I can't talk too much about this one, as it's supposed to be a surprise) Fic for the Comfort Zone Fest: we filled out a survey about what sorts of things we'd written before, and the moderators assigned us stuff to write that wasn't like those things--thus getting us out of our comfort zone. I LOVE doing stuff like that. The next installment of the Found Magic series. I've been dying to write this since I had the idea in the summer, so I hope I can squeeze it in with all the rest. lol, we'll see how this goes I mean, yeah, I got this Edited November 20, 2021 by inmyownlittlecorner 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
inmyownlittlecorner Posted November 23, 2021 Author Share Posted November 23, 2021 Whoooo!!!! I *think* I just finished chapter 23! I am going to give it another read through tomorrow with fresh eyes before posting it. But I *think* it's done. And I'm very glad that I decided to split it into two chapters, because this part is 6K words by itself. I also started drafting the Snamione gift exchange fic thing. The concept is something I've never tried to write before, and it's at the stage where it might be cool--but it also might be a disaster. Always an exciting point to be at, lol. 1 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
inmyownlittlecorner Posted November 24, 2021 Author Share Posted November 24, 2021 I did in fact finish chapter 23+ of libera. I may even have caught all the typos. This chapter is a lot more chill than the previous chapter was, which I don't think is a bad thing. It gives the reader time to take a breath before everything that's coming next. I was pretty unproductive during my writing time this morning, but I figure that's okay. Everyone needs a break sometimes. Looking at my writing spreadsheet, I've actually done more words this month than I thought I would, so that's cool. NaNo Chapters: 2/2 NaNo Wordcount: 19,539 2 1 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
inmyownlittlecorner Posted November 30, 2021 Author Share Posted November 30, 2021 I wound up with 24K for the month--way more than I thought I would do. The draft for my gift exchange fic just passed 10K this morning. I keep thinking it's almost done, only to chase the horizon for a little longer. But I've started editing it from the beginning as I finish up the end, and I now feel pretty good about how it will turn out. I'll be focusing on that to get it done by the December 12th deadline, and then I'll come back around to edit up chapter 24 of libera. I hope you all had a good NaNo, and best wishes for a happy December ❤️ 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
inmyownlittlecorner Posted January 1, 2022 Author Share Posted January 1, 2022 (edited) 2021 Writing Wrap-Up December went by in a whirlwind, mostly taken up by writing gift fics. This was my first time ever doing that, and I loved it so much that I want to bookmark time in my writing calendar for next year to do the same. I ended the year with 187249 words, that broke down thusly (graphs by me using google docs): 80453 rough draft words 106796 rewritten words 101813 Sevranda words 31447 Snamione words (how this happened, I have no idea) 22281 Loki/Angrboda words 9722 Eileen/Rita words (that BROKE my heart) 6830 gifting words 5127 Severitus words 4374 words for Spike from Buffy the Vampire Slayer 672 words for the yet unrevealed Comfort Zone Fest Finished Stories I finished the following fics in 2021: tidings of comfort and joy+ (Severitus fluff) An Evening at Number Four, Privet Drive+ (Magical Dudley AU) Truth Will Come to Sight+ (Data contemplating the morality of murder) Something Rich and Strange+ (Snamione fairy tale creature fic) The Hour of Lead+ (Spike angst) Bifrost Blues+ (Loki/OC fluff) Across a Crowded Room+ (baby's first Wolfstar) Unspoken+ (Cedrella/Septimus Angst) One Foot on the Platform (and the Other on the Train)+ (Eileen/Rita angst) Elementary, My Dear Severus+ (Snamione time travel detective fic) Walking on Air+ (Cedrella/Septimus ballet AU ) like water in the desert+ (Eileen/Minerva angst--why so much angst this year, idk) WIPs I made some very good progress on libera nos a malo+ (the OG Sevranda) and got distracted by Breathing Underwater+ (Sevranda Muggle Cop AU) The Take-away Even though I wrote fewer words this year than I did last year, I'm really happy with the quality of the work I produced. I explored a couple of new-to-me fandoms, and I stretched myself in terms of ships (I can't wait for y'all to see what I had to do for the Comfort Zone fest 👀). Shiny New Goals for 2022 I spent the first part of last year assigning myself word count goal after word count goal, only to wind up failing to hit the mark almost every time. Things got better when I made my goals more qualitative and less quantitative. So I'm going to carry on with that theme and see how it goes. In 2022 I would like to: ✅ Keep using my scheduled writing time most days (breaks are fine and encouraged, but most days, I want to use the time I've blocked out for writing for that purpose ✅ Finish libera nos a malo ✅ Host (and participate in) January Poetry Jam ✅ Write a one shot for the Remus Lupin Fest (eek!) Finish the Miranda/Dante one shot I've had in a draft for Idk how long Finish the next installment in the Found Magic series in time to actually post it for Halloween 2022 ✅ Participate in one round of Sing-Me-A-Rare, probably the Fall one ✅ Write more gift fics Complete a draft of Kairos in Retrograde AKA book three of The Moonlight Quartet ✅ Post a few more chapters of Breathing Underwater Figure out how the darn icloud thing works so I can back up my writing somewhere besides a jump drive 🌟 I'm wishing you all a Happy New Year 🌟 Edited December 31, 2022 by inmyownlittlecorner 1 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Oregonian Posted January 1, 2022 Share Posted January 1, 2022 It is impressive how you have been so organized and analytical about all your writing. It sounds as if many of your goals are participation in activities and events that are not strictly on this site. A very Happy and Productive New Year to you! 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
inmyownlittlecorner Posted January 1, 2022 Author Share Posted January 1, 2022 9 hours ago, Oregonian said: It is impressive how you have been so organized and analytical about all your writing. It sounds as if many of your goals are participation in activities and events that are not strictly on this site. A very Happy and Productive New Year to you! Thank you so much! Yes, some of these events are not on FFT. I found the Remus Lupin Fest via Tumblr. The Sing-Me-A-Rare is hosted by the Fairest of the Rare group on Facebook. I highly recommend giving that one a try, if you don't mind joining Facebook and Ao3 (you have to be a member of the group to participate, and the stories are all posted to a collection on Ao3). Each round is prompted with a song, and an HP rare pair (you can have as much or as little input in your prompt generation). The stories are all submitted anonymously, and everyone who submits a story then commits to read and comment on each story before voting on their favorites. At the end of the round, all the stories authors are revealed. It was a really nice way to meet people and get some feedback. The Poetry Workshop is on a writing discord server I work as a moderator on. I wish you a Happy and productive New Year too! 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
inmyownlittlecorner Posted January 14, 2022 Author Share Posted January 14, 2022 The Poetry Workshop I ran last week went pretty well. I was very proud of all the folks who gave it a try, especially since almost everyone was a little nervous about it. I was especially impressed by the folks who were writing poetry in English, when English is not their first language. So lots of Kudos to them. Now I'm supposed to be working on chapters 25 & 26 of libera. I do have about 2.5K words of that drafted, but even though I'm in the home stretch, I spent a good amount of time this week working on chapter 3 of Breathing Underwater. Idk, I'm having a hard time this week, and it's been fun to escape into an easier story. And in a lot of ways, Breathing is easier to write. It's single POV, with one major storyline and maybe one minor storyline. And it's a lot of fun to write something so...crass I guess is the best word for it. With all that said, I do still hope to finish libera up this month if at all possible. There are a lot of strings to tie up for the end of this book, but it's still doable at this point. We'll see how things stand at the end of next week I guess. 1 1 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Oregonian Posted January 14, 2022 Share Posted January 14, 2022 Wow! Tell us more about the Poetry Workshop. Was it online? How long did it last? How many participants did you have? What was the format? Why did you decide to do this? As usual, I'm very impressed! 🤗 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
inmyownlittlecorner Posted January 14, 2022 Author Share Posted January 14, 2022 (edited) Thank you @Oregonian I hosted the poetry workshop on a writing discord server from 3 January--9 January. Each month, we try to have some sort of writing workshop or event on the server, and this was my idea for January. The goal of the workshop was to encourage people to give poetry a try, because I feel strongly that prose writers can learn a lot from writing poetry once in a while, even (especially!) if they have no intention of becoming a serious poet. This is because poetry forces you into an economy of words. Depending on the poetic form you use for your poem, there will be limits on which words you can use. This makes you be very intentional about the words you use to express your thoughts in the poem. I think that intentionality can help us become better prose writers, because it gets us in the habit of thinking intentionally about all our words. And the sort of wordplay that goes on in poetry can often be translated into prose writing, enriching the prose. Each day of the workshop, I introduced a different poetic form, and gave a list of 10 prompt words. Then folks were free to write whatever they wanted, using one or more of the prompt words as a jumping off point. They posted the poems in our discord server, and I gave everyone feedback. I stuck to being a cheerleader, because I wanted people to feel safe to try something new. We had 15-20 people participate over the course of the seven days, and the workshop is open through the rest of the month for people to work through and get feedback (though I won't be posting any new prompts or forms). We also wound up creating an Ao3 collection for people who wanted to post their completed works online. I'm thinking about cross-posting the workshop to FFT as well, maybe in a series of blogposts, or maybe in the tutorial section. Thank you so much for your interest and encouragement ❤️ Edited January 14, 2022 by inmyownlittlecorner 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Oregonian Posted January 24, 2022 Share Posted January 24, 2022 It's really great how you encourage people to learn about poetic forms, something beyond just random free verse, and go to so much trouble to help them get started. That's a lot of work, especially since you seem be very busy with your own writing and your family. And sometimes the result is a classic gem that everybody loves (I'm talking about @RonsGirlFriday's unforgettable poem about the granola bar in the bottom of the purse). I was in church today (masked and very socially distanced). We sang only two hymns, but as I was singing I was thinking how strongly the musical form imprints the poetical form into our brains. If we could only get people to sing lots of songs, every day... 1 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
inmyownlittlecorner Posted January 25, 2022 Author Share Posted January 25, 2022 Thank you @Oregonian! And I agree, singing songs every day would be good for people on so many levels. Speaking of songs: I started a Breathing Underwater Playlist+ because this fic isn't consuming enough of my brain yet, lmao 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Oregonian Posted January 25, 2022 Share Posted January 25, 2022 When I was in elementary school, we had singing in the classroom quite often. A songbook was a standard textbook that every kid had in his or her desk, and there was a piano in the classroom, and the teacher could play (it must have been a job requirement for elementary school teachers in those days). We learned lots of child-appropriate songs. Happy memories. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
inmyownlittlecorner Posted February 16, 2022 Author Share Posted February 16, 2022 Writing Update (all graphics in this post were made by me) Things have been going pretty okay writing-wise since the start of the year. I started off with the poetry workshop at the beginning of January, in honor of Severus Snape's birthday. In addition to being the most extra dude, there's that moment in PS where Snape writes out his logic puzzle in the form of a poem, and since then, i've been convinced that he's a poet. I decided to write all of my poems from his PoV, as though he were the poet (I did something similar with Augusta Longbottom a while back in dance a roundelay+) The Prince's Poems+ I was also able to cross post my entry in The Comfort Zone Fest. Death by a Thousand Cuts+ is a short piece featuring Lyall Lupin and Fenrir Greyback out for revenge on each other. Things go...not the way they'd planned. It's super-duper dark and was indeed outside my comfort zone. I was given the pairing and a handful of prompts/tropes to work with, all of which had been purposefully picked for me because I had never written them. It was a fun, if somewhat harrowing experience. I finished my beloved libera nos a malo+ in January as well. It was a bittersweet moment. I was very happy to tie up this book. But all the characters are left in such precarious situations that it feels more like a resting stop than a conclusion. Which I guess makes sense, being as it's the interior book in a series. I am happy with the way it turned out, though. I feel like it's a tighter plot, with higher quality writing. I feel like I know these characters well now, inside and out. In February, I took a little detour to participate in Fairest of the Rare's LoveFest. One of the activities was gifting fics to other writers featuring various rare-pairs. I put them together in a collection to post here: Just a Little Loving+. Rare-pairs include Severus/Tonks, Eileen/Tom Riddle, Eileen/Rita, Eileen/Sybill, and Peter/Regulus. Lots of Eileen this time around. These were all supposed to be short pieces, but the Severus/Tonks and the Eileen/Tom could easily turn into a series of sorts...Maybe the Eileen/Rita too...Oh well, I'll just add them to the list of plot bunnies I guess... The fic that has taken over most of my writing brain is the Muggle Cop AU Breathing Underwater+ I can't even tell you how much fun I am having with this story. I never thought I would write an AU like this--modern day, no powers, etc, but it's just clicking with me for some reason. And setting it in Chicago has been part of what makes it fun for me. I can pull on the knowledge of having lived there, so I guess it's a more visceral experience than it is when I'm writing about a place I've researched. This Severus is a much crasser version than the one in The Moonlight Quartet. He's solidly working class, and he never had the boarding school experience like he had in Canon where he learned to put on a different, more upper class appearance to fit in with the posh purebloods of Slytherin House. It's actually kind of neat because, in terms of schooling at least, Miranda in Breathing has more years of education than Severus (MFA in Acting from DePaul), and her syntax, while still casual, is sometimes more refined than Severus's (the reverse is true in The Moonlight Quartet). This is also my first time writing a bisexual Severus, and I LOVE this for him. I didn't have that in the original plan, but by the time I got to chapter 5, it was pretty clear to me that this was the case. As I write, I'm also getting ideas for some one shots/short stories in the same universe, and at some point I'd like one of those short stories to tell us a little more about this line from chapter 6: Quote But he also knew that his stupid idiot of a heart was still stuck on Lily Potter. He’d tried—God knew he’d fucking tried—with Ted, with Aurora, with Emmeline. And all those relationships had crashed and burned like something out of The Italian Job. Aurora has already appeared on the page in Breathing, and I'm pretty sure Ted Tonks is going to show up at some point too... Ope, and I'm supposed to be working on a thing for another fest (that is anonymous until reveals so I can't talk too much about it until then) that is due on the 28th. I have maybe 3K words so far?? Hopefully I will be able to grind out the rest of that in time. 1 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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