mood: ecstatic
music: You Found Me – The Fray

When Mark broke up with me, my writing and webdesigning both took a toll. I didn’t really have the energy for it, not to mention the heart. It wouldn’t be accurate to say something tacky like that he’d been my inspiration or anything (because I don’t need to rely on people IRL for inspiration when the Internet is filled with such amazing, talented writers and artists), but that major event shook up my world to the point that I couldn’t really function as the Elaine I was anymore. And I’ve mentioned repeatedly on here that writing and designing are at the core of who I am.

I tried doing NaNoWriMo this past November, but I just couldn’t handle it. Too much drama was going on in my life, and I was emotionally exhausted from everything as it was. I was in the middle of Live, Love, Dream, but the topic became too difficult to deal with. My only activity in writing pretty much consisted of long journal entries and posting chapters of Duelist’s Point on FF.net. Then, I started working on the superhero story that I’d conceived a couple of years ago in Vegas. And hot damn, this stuff started flowing out of my fingertips like magic! To this day, I’ve written over 25k words for it, which is the most I’ve ever done for any original story. I’m very, very proud of what I’ve come up with.

But fanfiction still wasn’t really striking the right chord with me. Blame it on the emotional scarring, blame it on how I’d become a big fat cynic about romance again, blame it on the lack of a fandom, anything. It just wasn’t working for me.

But then I started diving into the DC Comics fandom, and reading Superman/Batman stuff, and I remembered what I’d loved so much about fanfiction.

It gave me an escape — and something to believe in.

And so I finished City Love. I finished Live, Love, Dream. I began really thinking about what all those review/favorite/alert notifications I received weekly from my FF.net stories. And about two weeks ago, I started writing my first DC Comics fic. Finished it the day before yesterday. Posted it on worlds_finest last night, nervous as all hell about the fact that the people who were going to read it weren’t stragglers from a dead fandom or an old pairing — they were people whose stories I had been following for the past few months, people who floored me with their writing, people who were legitimate fans, legitimate readers, and legitimate writers.

I know it’s crass to say that a lot of the reviews I receive on FF.net are from quite a different crowd, but it’s the truth. Anyone who writes fanfiction knows the rep that FF.net users have. LJ writers are of a different caliber completely. And gosh, was I nervous to get back into the game!

But they loved it. It’s only been twenty-four hours, but I’ve already received twelve reviews, all of which sing high praises for the story, which isn’t even 2000 words long.

I couldn’t stop grinning like a loon all day.

I’ve still got it. In fact, I’ve got it much more than I ever had it before, seeing as the last time I was writing with the big guys was when I was a notable Darkshipping author at age twelve! I mean, I had my stint in Cars, and The Magic of Mistletoe has a whopping 91 reviews, but still. It’s been a while.

And DAMN, does it feel good!

And I think I’ve forgotten how big of a difference I can make in people’s lives with these stories — I mean, just look at what they did for me! Fanfiction pretty much got me over Mark and how bitchy and hurtful my friends were being earlier this year. A lot of my reviews mentioned that my story had brightened the reveiwers’ day. And let’s face it — nobody really needs to say that. A good story doesn’t have to actually affect your daily life.

But anyone who’s a real reader knows that it does. It really does!

So I’m going to really put my heart into this this summer. I’m going to try to churn out as many stories, continuations, drabbles, anything, as I can.

Because I love writing.

I love reading.

And I definitely, definitely love sharing with people who feel the same way.

mood: pleased
music: Hello Seattle (Remix) – Owl City

Clark pauses for a moment, trying to find the right words. It’s always much easier when he’s writing.
- “And So We Meet And There Are Sparks”, by untitledno8

Today, I finished my latest notebook. I can’t tell you what feels better, the triumph of filling up a notebook or the excitement of starting a new one.

I love being a writer. I love it. Sometimes, it’s awkward because I don’t want to be that kid who thinks she’s the shit just because she writes in her free time. I never profess to be working on novels, because I don’t want people to think I’m this fantastic prolific writer. But people assume anyway, and then I feel like a poser. But then when I really think about it, it’s like, who cares? If they think I’m just trying to be cool, fine. If they think I’m going to be some bestselling author, fine. Neither of them are true, but what does it matter when I have a pen in my hand, blank pages to fill, and gigs to fill on my laptop?

I don’t care what people think of it, because how can I deny something that is so at the core of my soul? Ugh, that sounds so corny, but seriously? Writing is me. I might even venture to say that I’m the most me when I’m writing, if that makes sense.

I posted Live, Love, Dream a week or so ago. It’s the Heartshipping future fic that I started last summer, before the breakup. The official summary is “After a harsh separation from his wife Anzu, Yuugi learns how to survive a breakup, hold onto his dreams, and fall in love with a long lost friend.” The story details how and why Anzu and Yuugi’s marriage fails, along with how and why Yuugi and Ryou fall in love. It’s 14k words, probably the longest one-shot I’ve ever written, but I liked it as one unit better than split into multiple chapters. Gosh, I’m so proud of it. I think it’s all very realistic, and I can say that with confidence after experiencing everything that I’ve experienced in the past year. I also really like the story and the emotions involved in the story a lot, because it addresses my cynicism about marriages and people who just don’t work with each other no matter how in love they are, but it also shows the possibility of finding someone who gives you what you could never find in anyone else. It’s sobering yet hopeful, ya know? I dunno. I thought it was cool because I wrote over half of it before the breakup, and then when I read it right after the breakup, I couldn’t really…handle it. The emotions in the story just resonated with me too much, and I later realized that that’s a great sign. I dunno. I think it’s my favorite work of mine now.

I’ve also been working on my superhero story (I can’t figure out a suitable title!) continuously, which has been such a joy to write. I don’t even know how it’s all coming out so easily. I’ve never written so much material for an original story before. It feels so damn good. I’m working really hard on characterization, because I think that’s one of the most difficult things to get a really good grip on. With fanfiction, you have to make sure you don’t write your characters out of character, otherwise your stories will be unrecognizable as part of the fandom. With original fiction, you have to make sure your characters make sense and are likeable and relatable without being obnoxiously Mary-Sue-like. Also, the lines between cliched characterizations, interesting interpretations of archetypes, and characters that are just too random and original to make sense are really thin. So I’ve really enjoyed figuring that stuff out. Designing characters always been one of my favorite parts of writing, anyway. Since I was little, I loved creating characters. Half of my writing notebooks from when I was little are filled with scribblings about characters that I created and then never really used for anything, haha. I’m also getting a lot of practice in writing from different points of view. Right now, I’m practicing writing the story in the protagonist’s (1st person) point of view, which I never do, especially not in past tense. It’s been interesting. It’s so much harder to describe stuff from that limited of a perspective, but it’s also way easier to grasp the character’s voice and motivations that way. I dunno, it’s been neat! But I think that when I finish, I might go back and rewrite the whole thing in 3rd (maybe 3rd limited?) person, since I think that shows off my writing skills a little better.

Anyway, yeah! I just started a Clark/Bruce fic (from Alfred’s perspective, for practice on telling a story through the eyes of someone not really involved), and I want to finish my Charlie/Mike masterpiece, “Broken Glass,” this summer, along with my long-lost Darkshipping chapter story, “Fly with Me.” In fact, I’m going to check out FWM and post another chapter of “Duelist’s Point” right now! Woo!

mood: proud
music: Listztomania – Phoenix

I love words. I love writing them, I love reading them, I love speaking them, I love studying them. I’ve been called a flake, a hypocrite, and a liar, all because of my love for words and the way I use them too loosely. When I am happy, I love to express it through words. When I am upset, I need to express it through words. When I am confused, I always turn to words to help me sort out my feelings. When I am earnest, I use words to make promises. When I am trying to help, I use words to comfort and advise.

(I know I’m in love because he’s the one person in the world who can really make me speechless — it means that he has the power to extinguish the words swirling around in my head and render them useless to describe how he makes me feel, whether that feeling be good or bad. That’s how I know that my feelings are legitimately strong. That’s how I know that he’s something special.)

I love reading. In the past month, I have read so many books and so many stories. I am still uncertain as to whether I am doing this more out of a desire to read books or more out of a desire to escape to another world where things are different and if not better, at least not directly affecting me. I’m pretty sure it’s a mix of both, but that’s no matter. I love the power that these formations on a page, these sounds that we make — I love the power that words exude. I love the way that a good book can change your life. I love the way that a single line on a single page in a single book can suddenly make you understand something that your friends have been trying to teach you for ages. I love the way that a string of words, phrased a specific way, can remain etched so clearly in your memory even when the last names of half the people you knew in high school start to fade.

I love writing. Since the breakup, I’d mostly only been writing original stuff. Fanfiction was too difficult to engage in with other, suddenly more pressing things on my mind, and anything based on real life hurt too much (well, other than two stories I wrote immediately after everything happened and before I got any answers to my questions). Today, I spent most of my time cooking, working on late Christmas presents for my friends, and watching television shows, namely The Daily Show and Yu-Gi-Oh!. Watching YGO! was fun because I’ve never seen Duelist Kingdom in Japanese and so it’s new while not really being new at the same time. It actually made me really want to read Duelist’s Point, my epic NaNoWriMo story, and so I pulled out and edited a lot of chapters to be posted later (maybe tomorrow). Then, I was reminded of the other recent Darkshippping stories I’ve written. I’d totally forgotten about both Defeat and The Pharaoh’s Ring (which hasn’t been finished yet! I had no idea). I worked on TPR for a while, which was really enjoyable. (It was really interesting to me that after the past four months, I have a totally new perspective on a lot of the character interactions and conflicts. It’s pretty amazing and useful. Maybe the next time I’m upset I can channel it this way, haha. New character understandings!)

It’s one of the best feelings in the world, when the words just flow so naturally from your fingers. It’s something I was always really sad to not be able to achieve with music (upon hearing this, Mark would tell me to practice, haha), but I imagine a lot of musicians know what I mean by that sort of blissful feeling.

Anyway…I’m just really thankful to be blessed with this talent. Or this interest. Or this hobby. Whatever it is, I’m grateful for it. Writing soothes my soul. I may never be a big shot author — or even a small, published one — but I’m proud to be a writer. I’m proud of everything I’ve produced, even the really embarrassing stuff, and I’m proud to continue to produce stories all the time, whether or not anybody reads them.

mood: at peace
music: Dear Vienna – Owl City

I love good action/adventure stories. Watching Avatar for the second time today (with my parents this time), I realized how to better explain my taste. I really love action; fighting sequences are really awesome to me — but unfortunately I’m also extremely squeamish. So I really enjoy action that’s not gorey or gruesome; action that gets the point across without explicitly emphasizing the violent aspect of it. Adventure stories are great for this. Most stories that have “battles” are usually winners for me. I also really like putting action scenes in my stories, but I kind of suck at writing awesome action. I think it’s definitely one of the hardest things to write convincingly (Rick Riordan actually does it really well in the Percy Jackson series; it was always very easy for me to visualize what was going on but it wasn’t like simple or anything; it was clever action that made sense and was exciting), along with romance.

I really love movies that fashion a new world. You know, ones where the writers had to sit down for a long time creating a world. I’m hardly degrading movies that aren’t like that, but those are definitely the ones that really catch my eye and get me really excited and…into them, really. Anyone who knows me knows that I’m a total sucker for new worlds, superheroes, magical universes, mythology, all of that good stuff. My friends at Berkeley are always making fun of me for my random plot bunnies/wild imagination tidbits that I like announcing to the world, haha. Once, we were hanging out in C.J.’s room when we suddenly heard a loud train horn outside and were really confused, seeing as there are no trains that close to the dorms. Really excited, I suggested that maybe a superhero had just teleported a runaway train into the soccer field on top of the parking garages and that now our lives would be changed forever. I just love thinking about that kind of stuff. Maybe it’s childish. Maybe it’s unrealistic. Maybe it’s escapist. But more importantly, it’s fun.

Right now, I’m working on an original story about superheroes. The idea was born two summers ago during a family trip to Las Vegas; we had to take my dad to the hospital that time, and afterward, we dropped my mom off at Walgreens to pick up some meds. While we were waiting for her, I chatted with the cabbie. His story, in combination with the David Copperfield show that I’d seen the previous night, sparked my imagination and grew into a full-fledged plot bunny. I really hope that I’ll get somewhere with this.

In fact, I’m going to go work on it right now, before I sleep. Thank god for break and all this freedom!

I have spent the past two months writing, writing, writing. I’ve been having the time of my life. Before high school, it was easy to write chapters for five different stories at the same time, but once high school began, it was near impossible to get any writing done during the school year. Thank god for the summers, during which I went crazy writing CATCF and Cars–both of which were a delight to be completely immersed in. Ever since school started and especially after everyone left for college, though, the part of me that craves reading/writing has been deliciously sated. I write in class, I write at work, I read at home; it’s a fantastic life, really.

This year, I decided that I would give NaNoWriMo a try. Ever since 2002, two different epic plots have been spinning around in my head–one original and the other fanfiction (Yu-Gi-Oh!), affectionately dubbed “Epic Novel Thingy” and “3D”, respectively. I’ve written many parts of both, but as some of them came into being when I was twelve, a lot of them aren’t exactly the best, most well-thought-out things. So this year, I read the NaNoWriMo website and found out that their purpose is to get authors to get off their asses and write those damn ideas that have been floating around in their heads. And I thought–”Well, why the hell not?” So I decided that this year, I’m going to give my epic YGO! fic a try. It’s not super plausible. It doesn’t make total sense. It doesn’t really fit into the timeline anywhere. It features way too many pairings and original characters. It’s a little too…”I-came-up-with-this-when-I-was-12″… But… Well, why the hell not?! So I’m going to do it. I’m going to attempt to write 50k+ words of action, adventure, romance, and drama. AND I’M GOING TO LIKE IT.

For the past few weeks, I’ve been doing a lot of pre-writing and planning for this epic story, and it’s been a lot of fun. I’m really excited to get started. Even if I don’t win (read: finish all 50k words), I’ll at least have gotten off my butt and started on the damn thing, right? And, well, the story is so shitty (to an outsider, anyway; to me, it’s fucking brilliant, LOL) that it won’t matter if I have to write it under a time constraint! Yay!

So yeah. Don’t bother me when the next month rolls around. But do cheer me on!

I’m just glad that I’m finally getting a chance to do this, after years and years of being too stressed out by school to get involved.