I'm trying to break writer's block. I don't know if it can be truly called writer's block; it's Real Life rudely intruding and disbalancing me emotionally.

In Gotham's Shadow is challenging to write for me. Its projected length is at least 50K because this story was intended to be my NaNo'07 project. Only once before I have written a story so long. Spirits That I Called was the NaNo'05 novel and is only a very rough draft. It isn't finished at all, it isn't even readable yet. After that I was so fed up I haven't been able to look at that pre-novel again so far. (Although I believe that it could become a real novel if I could bring myself to sit down and rewrite it.)

So my personal record is at 50K unfinished. The longest finished story is The Demon's Own at 4.9K. In Gotham's Shadow has just jumped over the 10K hurdle. It is quite respectable for me but now I am lagging and I haven't reached the middle yet. I wonder if I am not cut out to be a novel-length writer. The problem is that the plots I dream up are novel(la)-filling but the act of writing them down - this I find incredible hard.

So, fellow writers, what is the preferred story-length you are writing? Did you ever have similiar problems reaching novel-length? How do you maintain the motivation?

x-posted to kyrre and anvar

I would like to manage such immersion into a strange culture:

The Aphorisms of Kherishdar by haikujaguar

Tags: worldbuilding

Fandom: Batman Begins AU/Shadowrun crossover
Prompt: 075. Shattered
Wordcount: 4434
Beta: by temve, all remaining errors are mine
Summary: In an alternate future the League of Shadows begins the war against a far greater Evil than just civilization.


A New Player

Any other woman attending the party paled in comparison. She was tall and lithe with large green eyes and long, midnight-black hair. Her looks and her smile charmed the men and her voice spellbound the masses. Everything about her was natural, none of her perfection owed to surgery or cosmetics. That was of great importance to him. She complemented his human shape. When he kept his true shape, she was Nadja Daviar, His Voice, who translated his mental speech for the cameras and microphones.

( Read more... )

Tags: au100, in gotham's shadow

Fandom: Batman Begins AU/Shadowrun crossover
Prompt: 085. Missing
Wordcount: 4146
Beta: by temve


Shadows of the Past

The vast floor-to-ceiling glass window allowed Bruce Wayne a spectacular view of Gotham. The evening sun threw long shadows over the cityscape. With half an ear he listened to the news trid reporting about the last hours of the elections. Nothing was yet decided. Dunkelzahn and his main rivals were extremely close in the polls.

The world has so much changed since the Awakening. Magic has returned, we have had to get used to metahumans and paracritters. Technology has blurred the line between men and machine. He glanced at the trid screen where the report cut to Dunkelzahn's speech. Dragons run for presidency. Sometimes it feels too strange. I belong too much to the old world of my youth. And at other times it feels the same, Gotham with its glittering outside, corporate and political battles hidden behind smiles, afflicted by barely restrained corruption and crimes inside.

( Read more... )

Tags: au100, in gotham's shadow

Fandom: Batman Begins AU
Prompt: 076. Rebirth
Wordcount: 695
Beta: by temve


Foreshadowing - A Prologue

The first sensation when he opened his eyes was a biting smell that made him gag. He coughed up a greenish, stinking fluid. The same, he realized, that covered his skin from head to toe. He was naked - that was his second realization. It was warm. There was uneven rock under him and a few feet away he could see a small pond, shimmering a sick yellow-green in the dim light. Everything else was hidden in the damp fog. His mind worked far too sluggishly and he couldn't remember how he had ended up in this place.

Then adrenalin shot through him as his last memory returned to him. The hostage-taking on a friend's yacht. The terrorists who wanted to prove just how serious they were about it. The raised machine gun. The bullets he had no chance to dodge, sitting as he was in the wheelchair.

He flopped on his back and ran his hands over his chest. Smooth skin. No mark, no sign of a bullet wound. He hadn't dreamed that, had he? There were only a few fresh cuts and scrapes on his hands, and another memory rose as he looked at them, of him screaming as he crawled from the shallow pit, ranting and beating against shapeless shadows and the rock with his bare hands. Had this been real?

A door creaked. Steps approached. Bruce rolled onto his side and flattened himself to the ground. But the steps unerringly came to him.

"There is no need to hide, Bruce."

The voice was familiar. In shock, Bruce surged to his feet, only to stumble and to fall to his hands and knees in even greater shock.

"You!" and then "How?"

Ducard - no, he was Ra's al Ghul, Bruce needed to remember that - squatted down next to him.

"I have given you a gift only very few even know of. Rebirth, Bruce. And complete healing." He smiled at Bruce's incredulous stare. "The secret of my immortality, Bruce."

Bruce needed a few moments to get his bearings, to let his mind catch up with what it was being fed. The sensations swamped him. He could feel his kneecaps scrape on the rough ground. He could curl his toes. It should be impossible, but it wasn't. Finally he found his voice.

"Why? We are enemies, Ducard!" The familiar name slipped unbidden over his lips instead of the hateful Ra's al Ghul.

Ducard cocked his head thoughtfully. "Maybe because my world would be poorer without you. Maybe I enjoy it too much having an adversary who can keep me on my guard. Maybe I care for a certain young boy who needs his father. But mostly," and his voice took on a deadly seriousness, "because the world we know is about to change and I prefer to keep at least one familiar constant in it."

A chill swept through Bruce. "What are you planning? Another mass murder?" Possibilities, one worse than the other, flitted through his mind.

"I? I plan nothing but to wait and see. This great change has nothing to do with me. I don't even know what is coming, just that it is."

"You are speaking in riddles."

Ducard leaned forward, his demeanour even more intense than before.
"I have read the omens, Bruce, I have seen the signs. It is coming and it will be soon." He met Bruce's incredulous stare.

"I know that you don't believe in matters science can't explain - yet. But you will see. This change will affect everyone. I feel it in my bones."

He rose, indicating that their conversation was finished. "You will need to train your muscles before you will be able to walk again. But I can trust you to take care of those details. I have arranged for your return to Gotham, my boy. For the time being, farewell!"

With that he vanished into the fog. Bruce himself felt like in a daze, even as some men came to help him up and get ready for his journey.

He still brooded over Ducard's words for a long time after he returned home to the Gotham of the year 2010.

Tags: au100, in gotham's shadow

I had planned to participate in NaNoWriMo 2007 but Real Life was against me. I still have a lot of plot notes and parts of an outline from October.

I want to write the story. I will not aim at 50K in 30 days, maybe 500 a day is more realistic. I will post the story here in chapters or scenes as soon as I have finished them. I can't promise that they will be in order, we will see.

It's an Batman Begins AU that turns into a crossover with the Shadowrun RPG world whose canon timeline I will twist into an AU too, I believe. Prior knowledge of SR won't be necessary, I believe, to read this.

The tag for this is: In Gotham's Shadow.

Fandom: Batman Begins AU
Prompt: 029. Teammates
Wordcount: 100 without title
Beta: none

Complication

Bruce turned sharply when he heard the faint scuffle from the hallway. He hid the photocopies in his back-bag and ghosted to the door.

A dark-clad man crouched over an unmoving form. Bruce bit back a curse. The break-in had been too easy. They had become careless.

The other looked up. "He was patrolling..."

"And you let yourselves be seen?" The last word was a hiss of displeasure. The other shrank back. His distaste of unnecessary deaths was well-known. Bruce stared him down and considered contingency plans.

"Torch the place," he ordered his teammate. "Make it look like an accident."

Tags: au100

Fandom: Batman Begins AU
Prompt: 089. She
Beta: none

Justitia's Sword

"Rachel? Rachel!" She jerked her gaze away fom the candles when his voice penetrated the daze she had fallen into. She looked at him and he could see the deep exhaustion.

"I'm sorry", she apologized. "Here I am having dinner with a wonderful man and all I can do is thinking about work."

"You had a trying day", he answered with a weak attempt at a pun. "But you won."

"No, I lost." Frustration etched sharp lines around her mouth. "Zsaz is only a thug. But we lost a vital witness and so Judge Faden didn't even deign to hear about the evidence of Falcone's involvement. Again.

"Falcone is doing what he wants and everyone covers it up." Her hands closed to white-knuckled fists on the white table cloth.

"Sometimes I wish I could break the rules too. To bring them to justice." She pressed her palm to her forehead. "Forget that I've said this, Henri. I shouldn't even think it."

He smiled in understanding and squeezed her hand in wordless comfort. Soon, he thought. She was almost there.

Tags: au100

2006 was a happy year for me, but not really productive regarding my writing. I was distracted. :) And I haven't coped with the change that being a parent brings. Usually I become productive after midnight, like now, when I am tired and my inner editor has already fallen asleep. Then I don't care anymore if I write crap and in most cases it doesn't turn out too bad or is rewritable. But my Little One is an early riser and if I don't go to bed until midnight the next day is hell. I haven't found a solution yet.

I forfeited the x-over ficathon and the slashromance challenge. I didn't write much for the au100 challenge but at least I wrote something for it. All five of the ficlets listed below. NaNoWriMo was a good effort but ultimately a failure. I did some conlanging and worldbuilding but it wasn't really post-worthy.

January:

Resolutions (Batman Begins AU, ficlet)
Surprise! (Batman Begins AU crack!ficlet)

March:

Heir (1/5) (Batman Begins AU drabble)
Heir (2/5) (Batman Begins AU drabble)

July:

Hot and Cold (Batman Begins AU, ficlet)

November:

NaNoWriMo - 23,882 words; dropped out


So what are my goals for 2007?

• Getting back into habitually writing. Writing a minimum of 100 words at least 5 days a week.
  
• Reviving the Sith AU.
  
• Making at least a serious attempt at rewriting and expanding the 2YN novel.
  

I'm sorry to have dropped out of NaNoWriMo. Honestly, I wouldn't have reached the 50K. But 30K seemed very likely. Nonetheless, I have written 23K+ during November I wouldn't have written otherwise. And I have learned much about Ancient Yemen during my research. For next year I know to start earlier with plotting, outlining and visualizing a story. Although it was a fascinating experience to write organic and let myself be surprised, it isn't practicable when I need to write more than 1.5K per day. I just need to know the plot beforehand.

Tags: nanowrimo