I'm sure I'm overthinking this. It's a problem I have: why let something be simple and clearcut when it can be convoluted and weirdly awful?

louiselux has set up a wonderful new community, saiyuki_time - Daytripping to the West, for timed fic challenges. The first challenge is up, and the time is 1 hour. I am excited - but I've never done a time writing challenge before.

The time is just the time I spend actually committing words to media, right?

(I feel so stupid.)

Too much has been going on in RL for me to take in much of springkink. But now that I look at it (briefly - 'cause I'm at work), the vast majority of stories seem to be about Kingdom Hearts (!) or Transformers (!!!).

Aren't these a video game and a rather simplistic kids' cartoon, respectively? Can someone explain why these might be so popular for the springkink treatment?

And here I thought that my much-expanded repertoire of manga knowledge would enable me to appreciate this stuff more effectively this time around ... .

So I've noticed that people sometimes do fic writing that uses writing prompts that seem like writing exercises, albeit enjoyable ones ... "50 Things" is one such.

Where does one find these prompts?

It was funny how this fell out! Recs for:

Arthur Ransome - Swallows and Amazons | Arthurian Legend | Bible - Hebrew Bible or Old Testament | CS Lewis - Chronicles of Narnia

I have to say I was mildly freaked out by the amount of Biblical fic, but some of it was quite good.

We seem to have a pretty much all-Yuletide all-the-time thing going on ... I guess I'll join in the confetti throwing.

These are sort of scattershot ... I hit the first few things I recognized, and then got more systematic, starting with the letter T:

Blade of the Immortal | CJ Cherryh - Alliance Universe | CJ Cherryh - Chanur series | Terry Pratchett - Discworld | T.H. White - The Once and Future King | xxxHolic

So on its listing, my Yuletide gift (that is, the one written for me) has a little yellow star.

What does that mean?

Uploaded!

And of course, I promptly noticed a punctuation error (a period and a comma within the quotes before a so-and-so said) and a repeated word ("Going out out ..." instead of "Going on out ... ") on the final display screen. I think there were some instructions at some point about how to ask for corrections, but I'm going to leave it for a day or so in case I notice something else ... !

My sister A., God bless her, finished reading it through yesterday, but we were out all day. She went over it with me this morning. She had good substantive points to make - some of which helped make the wishier part of the plot less wishy - and said that it was exciting and kept making her want to find out what happened next even though it's so long! (Final word count after revisions suggested by A.: 12,201 ... .)

Now I just need to strip it down into a good text file ... and there are lots of italics in this, for various reasons, so I need to preserve that. I may have to do this at lunch at work, so I can take advantage of my better text/HTML-handling tools there.

It was 11,673 words. I need my head examined. But I read it through and I pretty much liked it. One sort of wishy plot element, and the ending is very squishy, but recipient might well like that, given the request.

I've forwarded it to work, so I can check it out under Windows, and then it goes to the sister for beta. She was pursuing a writing Master's at Columbia at one point, and she likes the author, so I think she will do a good job. If I can get it back at the end of the weekend, I should be able to send it in just in time ... .

Eh, I've decided to live dangerously. I've unlocked the post I set up for discussing emungere and louiselux's serial fanfic Cupidity. Remember that this story is rated NC-17, folks. You are warned. The discussion post is here and thus far it's just been smillaraaq and myself - we'd be glad of company from anyone who wants to talk through the story and doesn't feel comfortable cluttering up the story LJ with her/his speculations.