4 days until I turn 36!

Blood Contingency — In the past, I very frequently jumped ahead in stories to scenes I was particularly interested in and just wrote whatever I felt like of those scenes instead of working on, you know, the part that was actually next in line to be written. A long time in the past (like twenty-to-twenty-five-years-ago-style in the past), I would even keep a separate file labeled “[Story Title] ja” (for “jump-ahead”) to house all these scenes written out of order.

Now, I have nothing in the world against this style of writing, but I don’t do it much anymore. These days I tend to have a story summary that turns into a longer and more detailed story summary that turns into actual writing. However! A lot of stories I started back in the day still have bits and pieces of writing I did out of sequence sitting around, and Blood Contingency is one of those stories, and this chapter was already half written when I got to it. That’s pretty awesome, actually.

Now, obviously the reason it was already half written is that Saitou and Sano are going to have sex for the first time, and I was excited to get to that. To get to that, and then stop short and wonder what level of detail I’m going to have to get into here and whether I don’t just want to fade to black (spoiler: I probably do). Everyone undoubtedly knows by now how I feel about both writing sex scenes and the general practice of including detailed sex in a story. And I don’t think this particular story requires a detailed sex scene.

But maybe it does. A detailed sex scene is often a really good way to establish just how close the couple is, what emotional stage their relationship is at — and that’s something pretty important to establish in this story at this point. When you’ve got vampires wandering around unable to let go of love from 150 years ago, it’s fairly essential to indicate just how deep that love was.

However, I also kinda feel like other scenes that don’t involve twelve different euphemisms for “penis” could convey that just as well, and in far less space than detailed sex inevitably takes. So the long and short of it (heh, that’s a dick joke) is that there will probably not be detailed sex in this story, but I don’t deny the possibility that there might be.

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Aku Soku Zan(za) — I am going to post the next part of this story on my birthday, and ALL I WANT FOR MY BIRTHDAY is for someone to acknowledge that they’ve seen it. They don’t even have to make specific comments on the events of that part of the story and indicate they’ve read it, just let me know I’m not screaming into the void. Something along those lines for various other stories would be really nice too, but at least for the one that’s going to be posted that day…

All whiny whining aside, though (and it’s kinda sad how I vacillate between crying about lack of attention from others and patting myself on the back because I love my own work so much), have I mentioned how much I’m liking this rewrite more than the original? And I always loved the original pretty damn much XD Anyway, I feel like Tokio has so much more depth to her now, and is going to have an actual arc to go along with those of the other two… it’s really nice!

The Test — Yep, still trying to make this scene hit all the points and do it not-boringly. And still looking forward to the scene after this (in writing order; there’s something in between that’s already written; it’s a slightly different deal than the jump-ahead practice I mentioned above, but similar) wherein a lot more (very funny) stuff happens.

Did I mention I’m about at the end of this story? The scene I’m working on, the (very funny) next scene, and one spot where I’ve got “[Boring kiss description]” holding the place of an unwritten paragraph are all that stand between me and linear completion! I mean, I can’t say how long editing will take, but the horizon is in view! How awesome is that!

On the phone with ZG yesterday, there was some discussion of what my next GW fic will be after this one’s finished. I have a lot of ideas summarized (and some even properly in progress), but you never quite know what will grab my full attention. It undoubtedly won’t be a HoH piece, since the next one there is Communication Skills (which I would be actively working on even now if my Japanese culture consultant hadn’t enacted radio silence :\)

It’s possible it will be The Place. I know, The Test followed by The Place — what is my deal? It gets worse, though, when I reveal that the primary pairing of The Place is Dorothy and Relena. After I moan like a spoiled child about people not paying attention to my work, then I go write stories with pairings nobody cares about! It does have the usual suspects as side-pairings, though, so I guess we’ll see XD But seriously I need more lesbian around this place.

TLY — I got started on what I mentioned last week: implementing the previously neglected stowaway scenario. “Stowaway” is not the right word for someone sneaking along on a walking/riding expedition, but it certainly has the correct feel to it.

Anyway, it’s taking longer than I expected, heh, and I have no idea how it’s going to throw the chapter standard out of whack. Just gotta get it written and worry about fixing it in editing later; once it’s written, of course, I can get back to linear progress. Just when the current chapter was starting to move so nicely, too! Shake my head.