Writerly Ways

[cornerofmadness]

So I was cruising through Dreamspinner Press' open calls since I did decide to slow down and develop the vampire one into a longer piece. I thought no more short stories but let's be honest, I can't really do that. I just need to be more selective since if i want to build up the writing cred in this century (as opposed to what I'm bagging along from the last) I have to do SOME short stories.

Anyhow there in the open call was one for guardian spirits. Angel fic...eh. then it occured to me NOT all guardian spirits are angels. A dark curly head poked up into my subconscious as said 'set it in Pompeii with the Lares.' I said go away I'm working on ideas for springkink and nano. I was just looking to see what publishers wanted. These two gentlemen said WRITE US DAMN YOU.

Fine. But I don't have any of my Pompeii books here. It's all online they argue (they're right). Okay fine. You can't be named Tiberius. But it's like the number 3 most popular name of the time. Sigh. At least Pompeii got buried before the trinomic naming system took hold. I was not looking forward to typing out Tiberius Aelius Rufus all night.

which brings me to another post on writing I read this week where they discussed writing cross-gender (i.e. men writing women and women writing men) and the mistakes they make. The main contention was to make men very unemotional and very terse. I had a problem with that.

Yes men DO show emotion less and they DO talk less but the discussion sounded in favor of one step up from a robot. That said I KNOW I do have issues with making my men too girly on occasion and I've been called out on it. However, in reading a lot of male authors writing men they don't make them these alpha male say three words and never cry type either. So where is the balance? THoughts?

Personally I think one of the best ways to know if you got it right is to have a writers group that has both men and women. Usually these first readers will point out where you have work to do.

So this week's writing challenge, write a passage from the pov of the sex opposite your own.

I still have done next to no writing this week. Hell this week went by so fast I didn't even see it go. I did like a spare 900 words of orginal fiction. I'm going to have to scale back the fanfic writing with Nano looming. That's not a bad thing. I was getting a little burn out with fma_fic_contest so I'll take me a little break from that and I REALLY wish I hadn't picked so many springkink prompts. I feel obligated to do them since they're for someone else. Oh well, it's kink. They can be short.

115501 / 175000 words. 66% done!

Comments

[cornerofmadness.livejournal.com]

hahaha no no, I'll do them (i can probably figure out which they are since the others belong to ELD) but i might be late... or you'll hear lots of swearing here

[enemytosleep]

haha, true enough about the others likely being ELD. I went ahead and prompted there at your request a little while back. Figured it might fun for you two to write some FMAk ink fic that wasn't only for each other.

[cornerofmadness.livejournal.com]

and it will be. In fact if you don't mind, go ahead and tell me which ones they are and if there's anything special you'd like to see in the story (or a setting) let me know.

[enemytosleep]

12: FMA (Maes/Gracia) - Newly weds, want to have a baby

14: FMA (Roy/Maes) - pre-war drunk sex

24: FMA (Roy/Olivier) - femdom

Nothing special, except the Roy/Maes I'd love to have a good helping of comedy if you can (wasn't looking for angsty, but if you go there that's cool too). Otherwise have fun with them as you see fit.

[cornerofmadness.livejournal.com]

silly drunk sex is probably doable.

that and spelling Olivia that way. I don't like how Olivier looks..