i was young once, and it was embarrassing

[dragonlady7]

So this weekend, I slept in my childhood bedroom. It's been totally redesigned since I last lived there. I redid some of it my first year of college-- I came home during the summer and repainted. Instead of pink with red trim, I left it pale blue with ultramarine trim. It looks, if I say so myself, quite lovely.
It also now has a giant filing cabinet in it, and my parents keep all their paper records there. All kinds of stuff.
Anyway.

I got thinking, being in that old place, and on the train ride back to Buffalo I went through the folder of things I'd written, transferred from about six computers ago and enshrined in an archive of possibly-unreadable files.
Many of them still open.

I started writing a novel at 12 or 13. I forget when, exactly. My friend Abbie was collaborating. We wrote endlessly, and drew pictures. She went on to major in illustration, while i majored in creative writing. She now works in a pet store. I work for an air purifier manufacturer. Eh.

Anyway. This novel.

It's embarrassing. Much of it is really awful. It's an endless angst-fest. It started off as a boilerplate fantasy novel with dragons. There was a Mary Sue main character, just like me only taller and more beautiful. She was also stronger and good at everything. Over the decade or so I spent working intensively on this novel, she did mature, as I did-- the screamingly funny sex scenes got less poetic and awkward, and more actually possibly realistic.
I know I've mentioned it here before.
Anyway.
It started off with, as one does when one is 13, a story revolving around a Boy and a Girl and their adventures but also their love story. The relationship was the central focus of the plot.
As the plot got more complex this sort of became boring.
So I added in a Tragic Twist-- she had a true love before The Boy, and that True Love was tragically killed, and so her relationship with The Boy was made much more complex by it.
To make things yet more complex, I decided, the Dead True Love would be The Boy's best friend.

Last night I was reading through some of the old stuff I'd written way back when and I decided that this was all stupid, and the only true answer now was to make The Dead True Love and The Boy gay lovers.

I suppose that's a sign that I've come a long way.
Either that or it's a sign that I've been reading too much slash.
Either that, or maybe I need to get laid more. I dunno.

Other than that, I wound up sleeping 12 hours last night, with Chita either attacking my feet, purring on my chest, or purring on my face most of that time. I rolled over on her twice. She really doesn't care at this point. She gave me lots of face-kissies this morning.

Z ordered me a birthday present and is thoroughly pleased, and won't tell me what it is. It's shipping by ground from Illinois because it's a hazmat. ?!?!?!

I have no idea. I don't know where I found this guy. But I'm totally keeping him.

I mentioned to him, by the way, that I might get a gun. He was unenthused. Just wait until the government collapses and I have to defend us! Then he won't be so unimpressed!

Uh, I mean, you know, um, stuff? I'm so not paranoid or delusional. Shut up.

Comments

[kkatowll.livejournal.com]

Frankly, I say keep the screamingly funny sex scenes, but make them between the gay boys while the girl watches. There ya go, problem solved. :)

[dragonlady7.livejournal.com]

Actually that was partly why I wanted to make them gay lovers. I was like, screw this awkward courtship crap. I want her to watch them making out and just have no idea what to do about it. That would be way cooler.

Upon reflection, I realize that I'd forgotten that I'd already made The Heroine have a torrid lesbian affair with one of the secondary characters. Well... I don't know if I'll leave that in-- adolescent torrid lesbian affairs may be a bit overdone.
In my work, at least.

The sex scenes may only be that hilarious to me. The idea of sharing them is mostly just mortifying. I mean... I had no idea.

[heartofoshun.livejournal.com]

The Dead True Love and The Boy were gay lovers--hey, dude, it works for me. I was looking at my first fanfic and thinking I should write an epilogue of the projected ending for ff net where people were actually reading it. (All of this came up because I was mad that Ang stopped posting Hands of the King, after I have been reading it for so long...

Here is my Epilogue (don't get all superior after you read this--this is the unpolished version)--What Happened After the Last Chapter I wrote: Legolas's sweet young wife was killed by orcs. So sad. Then he met Aragorn and Gollum. He really liked him (just friends no slash)--Aragorn not Gollum. Then Legolas went to Rivendell and off on the ring quest. He got sea-longing so bad because he couldn't stop thinking about that sweet young dead wife who he believed was waiting for him in Valinor. Sailed off with Gimli finally. Now everyone knows why I didn't finish the story.

Then after writing this is became cystal clear to me what the problem was--it should have developed into a angsty, slash romance between Aragorn and Legolas. Legolas being the one with the absent wife--that's a brand new twist on the standard Legomance and Lego/Aragorn slash. (Yes. I am kidding. I really am. I will not write that, but I may post the first epilogue above.)

When does looking back on past work stop being embarassing? And, I do not feel sorry for you. You were 13--I was an adult.

[dragonlady7.livejournal.com]

I feel super guilty about the Ang thing-- I was one of her biggest commenters for the first sixty chapters before she redesigned the site and, this is embarrassing to admit, I couldn't figure out how to navigate to the workshop.
I feel terrible.
I was one of only like ten people even in the workshop.
And I would occasionally get notification of updates and comments and stuff, and once I even emailed her saying i didn't know how to get in to comment anymore, and she helped me get in, but when I couldn't figure it out again, I didn't have the heart to tell her.

And now I can't even find where she told us all that she was going to stop posting. I know she posted the end, in that protected bit of workshop, adn I just couldn't figure out how to read it.

Also, Finduilas dies. I couldn't really deal. I mean, duh, I knew that from the beginning, but yeah.

Sigh.

Anyway. I have to say I am really, really, really glad that i am the age i am. If I were even a couple of years younger, those early examples of my writing would be on the Internet now. But, no! I was writing in '92-95, and the Internet wasn't available yet. By '01, I had an LJ, and all the shit I wrote then is up on the Net for all to see... but those are a crucial few years, and I promise you, whatever's up in my early archives, it's not as heinous as the really early stuff.

Actually, the really truly awful howlingly bad stuff was written in faint pencil on paper and is probably no longer legible even to me. Another small mercy.

But yes, I am a bit tormented about HotK and don't have the guts to face that whole thing at the moment. I do feel terrible. I haven't said anything to Ang either.

(At one point I gave her feedback, all in one go, on every typo from chapter 1 through chapter 39. All in one go. I read it that avidly. I spent a whole weekend doing nothing else.)

[mother2012.livejournal.com]

Ahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!!