I am fairly sure I am just asking for woe and disappointment here, because we are running a bloody big event in November. How am I going to write even a hundred words a day? Eek, really.

However. At the very least, Nanowrimo is good for writing more. So I'm going to sneak into the local Kick-Off Party (31st October at 12.30pm - lunchtime) in the Library Bar in the Teviot (Enter Teviot, turn right until you reach the staircase, then in front of you, to the right of the downward staircase, there is a room which is part of the Library Bar, but separate from the rest of it). I may even sneak along to the Sunday Write-In (Sunday 1st, 4pm, back part of Starbucks, entrance above the Chinese medicine shop, just before the scaffolding in front of the obnoxiously loud souvenir shop). The Nanowrimo Regional Person identifies herself with a "highlighter-yellow shirt".

And! I know what I'm going to do.

I'm going to try and kickstart my Exhausted Brain which has been stumbling and braking towards the end of "The Games" and "Through The Mirror", by inviting you to play.

Please login and post a request for a drabble or a flashfic (it will be at minimum 100 words: if I decide I can't be arsed writing it as a drabble, it'll be longer...) in either one of those universes. I'll do crossovers if you like. (It, er, makes an alarming amount of sense that MirrorM*A*S*H and The Games are in the same universe, just fifty years apart.)

Rules:

1. You have to login. Get an IJ account. Thank you. (Give Squeaky some money! He's buying moar servers! Yay!)
2. Specify if this is MirrorM*A*S*H or The Games.
3. If you want a crossover, specify the fandom (essential) or the pairing (optional).
4. Give me a word.
5. (Optional) Give me a theme.
6. Do not ask for stories which are spoilers. I'm still trying to finish the damn stories... Ask for a missing scene, an AU, a crossover with a background character, a something.
7. There is no rule 7. Inspire me.

A while ago, Dusk Petersen noted to me that a problem with my website was that none of my stories had blurbs: I acknowledged that I write lousy blurbs and prefer "none" to "lousy".

One of the questions in SurveyFail (Q54) was "If you write m/m slash, how do you study male anatomy and physiology in order to write more convincing stories?"

and as both the question and all of the multiple-choice answers contained too many false assumptions to be answerable, in comments to a post discussing that and other poorly-worded questions, I listed the topics I researched for Sins & Virtues.

Six people in the next six days asked me for a link to the story. To give perspective, I think the total number of people who ever read Sins & Virtues prior to 1st September this year is something like 15. (I sent out a dozen hard copies: not all of those got read...)

Okay. I really do need to write blurbs. Even crappy blurbs which consist entirely of a list of research topics.

I read this.

And it made me think two things:

1. I do get the point of having "If you want to read it, there's a warning associated with this story". Except I also agree much more strongly with this (from livejournal, three years ago) and this from fanfic symposium: warnings are not obligatory.

2. But given that, as she outlined very clearly, a trigger may be something as unexpected as calculus - ought we all then to warn for every event in the story, since any event may be triggering?

I don't want to cause anyone unwanted distress.

But if you read my stories, you should know that I want to harrow up your emotions like a fork in butter frosting: to make you cry, make you laugh, turn you on, startle you like a thin knife that pierces your heart before you know your skin is broken, suck you in as if I were a black hole and you were my light, make you shake, make you shiver, melt your brain, make you keep coming back -

...if you want me to do that to you.

If you don't, you shouldn't read my stories.

This year, as in all years since 2003, I drew a book fandom: The Charioteer, by Mary Renault.

This year, though, I had embraced my bookishness: I had offered to write in all fandoms where I'd read the canon so many times I couldn't remember how many.

I think I first encountered Mary Renault in The Persian Boy, though it might have been The Mask of Apollo. (Nicola Marlow first recommended that to my attention.) This was when I was 15 or 16 - before I came out, anyway - and I didn't read The Charioteer until some time after I came out: 17 or 18. I picked it up first about the same time as The Persian Boy, and was put off by the opening chapter, which is Laurie as a small boy. Sometime after I came out I discovered it was well thought of as a gay novel. I got it out of the library.

Then I found my parents had a copy - I think probably because one of the central characters, Andrew, is a Quaker, a conscientious objector - the main part of the novel is set in 1940, just after Dunkirk. (My parents are Friends, and I was brought up a Quaker, though mostly I only go to Meeting now for weddings/funerals.) That was an elderly paperback, with "three men caught up in the struggle of their forbidden love" or somesuch blurbed on the cover. I read that paperback to death. The copy I now own I bought sometime before 1992. (I know this, because I remember reading it around the time of my Finals and figuring out that the first time I read it I was younger than Andrew, and now I was the same age as Ralph.)

But the story I was asked for wasn't to be about Laurie, or Andrew, or Ralph: it was to be about Alec, who first appears mid-way through the book, the host of a queer party, a close friend and former lover of Ralph's, a medical student (he says he's taking his finals that year, but he appears to be working as a houseman - intern, if you're American - because the nurses refer to him without qualification as a doctor). The title of the story, and the sub-titles, are from the classical version of the Hippocratic Oath.

( about the story )

Far From All Intentional Misdoing.

Received over the weekend (yes it has been 25 years...):

Certificate of Merit




Awarded in honour of her selfless devotion and services to Slash Fandom to


JANE CARNALL


In celebration of 25 years providing us all with Adventure*, Romance** and occasionally HOT SEX***.


She has become a close and wonderful friend to many a slasher****, providing help, support and porn wherever she can. With gratitude to Blake 7 whose interesting characters***** set her feet on this happy queer road she now travels. Congratulations, looking forward to a further 25 years.




Ann Johnson

Director of the Jane Carnall Appreciation Society since 1983


* With proper plots.

**Often the tortured, convoluted kind we love.

***Not enough hot sex in my opinion but begging often helps.

**** Some of us are even privileged enough to call her family.

***** Real hot sexy men and women. You didn't think she watched it for the great plots did you.

( And to celebrate )

Update: Sooner or later, this journal will be suspended by LJ Abuse because of the default user icon. (For a summary of this issue, see: ljabuse blog.)

House MD, no second-season spoilers. Thanks are due to carbonel for beta'ing, and to the little_details for pesky details about appetizers and Wilson's age.


Thank you for nothing

Jane Carnall

( Wilson leaned forward on his desk with his head in his hands. )

This is by way of being a bit of a sequel to MirrorM*A*S*H.
---
There were images of a man tortured to death in every room.

The bed was actually more comfortable than an army cot. The food here was better, too. And, once he'd got used to the bells (Matins, Lauds, Prime, they told him) he could sleep the night through.

( Read more... )