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Sunday morning writing thoughts (crossposted from Tumblr)
The thing about writing long stories—at least for me, at the speed I write and the length I write and with my brain’s particular propensity for being a machine that produces enchanting ideas that all want to be 200,000-word stories—the thing about writing long stories is that it requires discipline.
This is just the way the arithmetic of writing long stories works out: on a lot of the days you spend writing a long story, you are plugging away in the middle of something with the excitement of starting long behind you and no hope of ending. On a lot of those days it is not your favorite of the stories bouncing around in your head. On a lot of those days you don’t want to work on it, or you have lost all faith in it, or you darkly suspect no one wants to read it. (I’m not asking for reassurance here: I’m just saying, this is the inevitable way things go in my brain, over time.)
Some days are good, some days you have a clever idea or you are writing an exciting! big! thing! but a lot of days you’re kind of just plugging away—writing something necessary, or something that will turn out to be someone’s favorite bit six months from now, but on any given day when you’re writing a long story it’s just putting one foot in front of the other, laying down more words, sticking with the thing you’re writing in the faith that eventually you will come to the end of it and you will have produced a long story, because there is no other way for me to produce a long story.
...This slightly grim writing thought brought to you by the game of Steve/Bucky 2048 I just played, hoping it would let my brain rock-tumble its way toward some productive thoughts on any of the things I really need to work on today. Instead I had a really! important! insight! into the emotional arc of the A/B/O marriage of convenience fic I’m not writing. Thanks, brain, but I’m still going to have to work on a bunch of other things today instead of that.
This is just the way the arithmetic of writing long stories works out: on a lot of the days you spend writing a long story, you are plugging away in the middle of something with the excitement of starting long behind you and no hope of ending. On a lot of those days it is not your favorite of the stories bouncing around in your head. On a lot of those days you don’t want to work on it, or you have lost all faith in it, or you darkly suspect no one wants to read it. (I’m not asking for reassurance here: I’m just saying, this is the inevitable way things go in my brain, over time.)
Some days are good, some days you have a clever idea or you are writing an exciting! big! thing! but a lot of days you’re kind of just plugging away—writing something necessary, or something that will turn out to be someone’s favorite bit six months from now, but on any given day when you’re writing a long story it’s just putting one foot in front of the other, laying down more words, sticking with the thing you’re writing in the faith that eventually you will come to the end of it and you will have produced a long story, because there is no other way for me to produce a long story.
...This slightly grim writing thought brought to you by the game of Steve/Bucky 2048 I just played, hoping it would let my brain rock-tumble its way toward some productive thoughts on any of the things I really need to work on today. Instead I had a really! important! insight! into the emotional arc of the A/B/O marriage of convenience fic I’m not writing. Thanks, brain, but I’m still going to have to work on a bunch of other things today instead of that.
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(I am one chapter into a fanfic that has to be a novel, and I'm in the OMG THIS IS SO DAUNTING stage. I mean, I really want to write it and I've written three novel-length pieces already in my life, so theoretically I can do it, but OMG it's daunting.)
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And then he gets recruited by Erskine, and Erskine saw him having that argument with Bucky, and when Erskine says, "You have your alpha's permission to enlist, of course?" Steve swallows hard and says yes, and goes home to forge a letter from his husband, James Barnes, to the relevant authorities, giving Steve his permission. (Normally he carries a forged letter from a great-uncle in Ireland for this purpose, but that's not going to fly with Erskine.) By the time he hands it in Bucky's halfway across the Atlantic Ocean; by the time he actually gets the serum Steve's half convinced himself that Bucky really would have supported the sham because he always agreed with Steve about omegas' rights and what a travesty it is that Steve as an omega had to have anybody's permission.
So then Captain America happens--his omega orientation is rigorously hidden as it doesn't fit the Captain America stage persona, and Steve hates that but accedes to it because he tells himself it's a role, it's the job. He gets really good suppressants that still don't work perfectly against the serum-enhanced biological imperatives of a healthy twenty-something omega body, and an IUD to ensure he won't get knocked up even if something goes totally wrong, and the chorus girls know he's got a husband at the front who he can't talk about because Cap's supposed to be an alpha, and they're very sympathetic and protective of his secrets.
And then Italy, and the 107th, and Steve snarling my husband at Col. Phillips when he asks about Bucky, and Steve being dismissed like an empty-headed over-emotional omega and going off to rescue Bucky (Peggy, also an omega who knows something about not wanting to be under any alpha's thumb, knows about the marriage but Steve has assured her that it is of course entirely a sham, and they are halfway in love, and of course she pitches in).
And then, after successfully rescuing Bucky, Steve has to pull Bucky aside on the walk back to camp to tell him that everyone back at camp and indeed the official apparatus of the US Army... kinda thinks they're married. Because Steve told them so. Because they wouldn't let him enlist without Bucky's permission, and Bucky always wanted Steve to be able to make his choices, so Steve figured Bucky wouldn't mind, right? And by this point Steve has told himself and a few other trusted people that story so many times he almost believes it.
And meanwhile Bucky, captured, tortured, and then rescued by this impossible alpha-ideal version of his Stevie, is now being told that Steve has taken everything Bucky ever wanted to give him and turned it into a lie and a cheat without even asking him first, and used it to put himself exactly where Bucky never wanted him to be--on the front lines, in harm's way, in the middle of the war that has brutally stripped Bucky of his innocence. So Bucky is of course hurt and furious and also drags Steve off to the first church they find in Italy to get actually married, and, uh...
Well. Things continue in intense feelings and total failures of communication from there and into the 21st century. :D
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I would like to link to this elsewhere. Is that okay?
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It's like a hike or a long bike ride. You love to say you have done the Appalachian Trail, but really, your feet hurt and your back aches and it feels like a slog most of the time, despite the glorious scenery or how much you love the story.
And, apparently I needed to get that off my chest, hee!
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Yeah, I don't really know either--I wrote my first novel when I was still in high school, and it just seems to be the form I gravitate to, so somehow I stick with it. And having done it once, it starts to be addictive... :D