#writing 2015

[redpensandgreenarrows]

Writing: A Year in Review (2015)

Tagged by the lovely @dust2dust34

Tagging: I saw so many of my fellow writers tagged already, so I’ll try and think of some who haven’t been tagged yet: @mel-loves-all, @bytemegeekette, @hopedreamlovepray, @anthfan, @sophie1973, @befitandchase... and anyone else who has yet to be tagged and would like to do this!!

total number of completed stories:

15

Not including Five Times Oliver Gave Felicity His Jacket, since I have chapters left to complete

total word count:

33,355

Again, I didn’t include Five Times... since it’s not finished, but this still blows my mind! Having returned to writing fanfic only this year, I consider this an achievement! :-)

fandoms written in:

Arrow/Olicity

looking back, did you expect to write more fic than you thought you would this year, less, or about what you’d expected?

Oh boy... truthfully I don’t think I had an expectation, because I didn’t know how much Olicity would grab me! If I had to choose, maybe... thought I would write more? I do have some WIPs out there that just need my muse to pick up again.

what’s your own favorite story of the year?

Hmm.... I think Happy In Domesticity might have been my favorite. We got so many great teasers from SDCC 15, and just imagining what domestic!Olicity was going to be like was such as joy!! Also, writing about their summer away. *sigh* The good times ^_^.

did you take any writing risks this year?

Oh, yes! I wrote my first angst-fill fic this year: There is Something in Your Loving that Tears Down My Walls

I was so nervous about this fic, wanting to do it justice (just ask @dust2dust34, with how much I bugged her about it!). But I’m happy with how it turned out. :-)

do you have any fanfic or profit goals for the new year?

Yes - thought this has been a goal of mine for a while - write a true multi-chapter fic. 

The times I’ve tried before fell flat, and I never got very far. I would lose my muse or interest. So, maybe this coming year I’ll plan something out and actually write a multi-chapter fic! :-)

best story of the year?

Best? Yikes, umm.... I think I’m going to have to go with There is Something in Your Loving... again. I’m just really proud that I took a risk and stepped out of my fluffy comfort zone. I put a lot into that fic.

most popular story of the year?

Ha. I think that might have been The Benefits of Early Mornings. The little silly prompt that turned into a beast of an Olicity AU.... or at least “a beast” by my standards ;-). The love I received for that fic blew me away and I couldn’t believe how many enjoyed it. It was definitely a fun one to write!

story of mine most under-appreciated by the universe, in my opinion:

I’m not sure if they were completely under-appreciated, but they seem to be my less-read fics: There is Something in Your Loving... and Coming Home.

The former, I assume because it is angst, and angst related to what is going on in the show currently So, I can understand if readers what to stay away from the angst right now and live in the fluff ^_^. And Coming Home, because it was my first Olicity fic, and the first fic I had written in at least 3 years. I was just joining the Olicity fanfic world, so I was just getting myself out there.

most fun story to write:

I think it had to be Of Carnivals and Stuffed Dolphins. Olicity Roadtrip fic and fluff abound!! 

story with the single sexiest moment:

Hmm.... It may be a toss up between Two Can Play This Game or Rounding Third and Heading for Home (from A Hundred and A Thousand More)

But I think I’m going to go with Two Can Play This Game... Olicity and a pool table.... you do the math ;-).

most sweet story:

Baby Feet from  A Hundred and A Thousand More. Very short, but it features daddy!Oliver and baby!Tommy ^_^. I found the most adorable pic for inspiration too.

”holy crap, thats wrong, even for you!” story:

Umm.... nothing? I don’t have fics like this, because I simply cannot write them. I can barely read some of those heart-wrenching fics out there, but trying to write them for myself is 10x harder. There is a reason I live in the fluff! ^_^

story that shifted my own perceptions of the characters:

I’m going to go with There is Something in Your Loving... again, because it allowed me - personally - to delve into both Oliver and Felicity’s (though mostly Felicity’s) vulnerabilities and insecurities, as well as their inner strengths. It was fun to dig around in their emotions myself without just watching it on screen. 

most unintentionally telling story:

Maybe my on-going fic Five Times Oliver Gave Felicity His Jacket, because while they are not true scenes from the show, I’m trying to keep them as canon as possible. Also, they are set throughout all 4 seasons of Arrow, so I’m having to put myself in the mindsets of the different seasons, and remember how Olicity grew and evolved throughout the years. It’s and interesting and fun exercise. 

hardest story to write:

An un-named Al Sah-him fic that is sitting in my WIP folder. It’s written from a unique perspective, and I need to get my muse back for it. Because I’m excited to write it, but It’s going to take some work to get it just the way I want it. 

biggest disappointment:

Not being able to get out all the fics I had running around in my head, but hey.... there really is no rush ^_^.

biggest surprise:

Finding this awesome fandom family, who is so welcoming and helpful! Also, to any and all who read my fic. All of you are awesome, and I thank you from the very bottom of my heart. 

Have a wonderful New Year!

[erthling91]

Just got a shock

I always forget that I’m friends with people on Facebook. What gets me though is when suddenly I’m faced with one of them posting a picture of my ex of nearly 6 years. I didn’t even know who else was in the photo at first, only able to see him. I almost didn’t recognize him, because when I left him he couldn’t grow a full beard and now he apparently can.

It has been almost four whole years since I saw him last, and those pictures are a punch to the chest.

I don’t have any actually happy feelings for him anymore, and I love my husband dearly, but seeing him is much harder than I anticipated. I got rid of all our pictures, and almost everything he ever gave me materially, so there is little reminder of him in my life. Tall people of his coloring make my heart skip a beat in panic. Hearing his name attached to other people, strangers, makes it hard to meet them when I would have otherwise been glad to. I have so much of him stored up in my head, and there is so much of me that he formed with his thoughts, his words, his deeply-steeped presence for all those years, from the childhood memories onward.

I wonder how much of me is a part of him that he cannot excise. I wonder if he had done as I have and viciously hacked out the wound up pieces that had not yet adhered to the bones of us. I wonder if he has scraped up enough of himself to fill those holes, or of he waited until there was a chance to grow to fill them in with newness.

We met as babes unaware, joined by older siblings with a teacher in common. It was 7 years before we saw each other again.

The first time I visited his home at age 11, there was a picture on the wall that drew my fancy, and tugged open memories from those first days; the photo was off his sister and my brother in Halloween costumes. He was Sonic; she was a ballerina.

I almost didn’t notice later on when his mom took it down so that he wouldn’t have a reminder of me.

His mother hated me for making him happy. She called me a dyke, then a fat bitch after her son for money they didn’t have and I never wanted.

I put him first in my world. He was the sun in my sky and the glue holding me together through my mist difficult years, and I wanted to be what he needed. I couldn’t, and when I left him for something unforgivable I was still ashamed of my inability to be there for him.

Because when I left, the strain he’d been suffering and lied to me about for years festered, and in moments broke him. He railed against me. He begged for me back. He begged everything he could think of, and I turned my away.

I too was broken. I had railed silently through my pain, putting it to the side so I could be there for him, love him. I ran empty when he betrayed me. I see his face and my stomach drops out. I think I hear his voice and my throat swells in fear. Then I’m faced with this blurry picture of my past in a beard and I remember the last time he walked away from me and I’m back there. I’m empty because if I feel those emotions again it may just rebreak what I’ve spent years healing.

And I won’t let that happen. I’m tempted to stare at him until I’m disgusted again instead of homesick.

[figsandtea]

Colonel Sanders

As remnants go, this one is prime

this dismembered figure of a figure

of a man they called unyielding:

ironic. Also, that his parts left behind

rest not in deep, still oceans

among niveous sand, reclined

and still. Instead his limbs

are scattered over sucking mud

danced over by penumbra of passing

boats, of passing fish, even the birds

that drift lambent on the surface

temporarily.

Do you figure these

potamophilous thieves knew something

about the nature of the man, that made

them want to give him to the waters?

(http://www.japantoday.com/category/national/view/colonel-sanders-statue-and-his-curse-lifted-from-dotonbori-river-in-osaka)

[figsandtea]

Housewifery

I am wiping down the

clean counter, smelling bleach

fumes and the wilting

flowers I just placed

upon the wilted flowers from last

week in the garbage by the back door.

I look at fruit on

the pristine kitchen table

delicious laminate that

looks like the last honey in

the bottom of the jar, gold you’ll

never pour, but wash

into the sink.

The purple of a single Aubergine is

gorgeous on that shiny surface

looking more like pearls than

diamonds, with the glow of skin

recovering broken ground, the glow of

imperfection taken

out of context, beautifully.

I’m inclined to call them aubergines and

they taste no different when I cut

the chalky flesh to salt and bury

among the peppers in the sauce. I call them

Aubergine

because the name tastes better, satisfies

the promise of poured-out gold.

[figsandtea]

Smile

Poor Judas.

Tomorrow was not coming for you

after all, even though you had plans

for your silver, the pieces of round that rang

Muted inside a piece of cloth.

Those men in perfumed robes claimed you were

chosen for this task, they clapped you

on the back and bought you wine

and beyond the asking never talked to you again.

You kissed his cheek and smelled his fear, and you

were afraid. But you stood back anyway and swallowed

all your grieving as they took him away to hang

from wrist and shoulder on a cross.

Go on now, then, beyond your tomorrow,

in the company of those two impossibles: hope

and understanding, tied up in silver, left in dust

as you hang on, on ropes of gut.

[figsandtea]

Winter Twilight

September green tinged silver sunlight, broken by branches barely showing, grasping desperately onto their clothing, hoping for one more balmy summer night; They lose, though, lasting only til vermillion autumn's crown comes, conquering with chilly fingers bringing out the whispering of dry dead gossip leaves. These shrunken leaves that speak their secrets, small and shy, to fallen stars across the sky stars that lend no light but burn out bright before their rays can touch the hardened ground And now, frost lace for homespun brown; October, don thy finery, a final gasp of beauty never lasting past the dawn. The water stills beneath its silver rippling reflective face a mirror for the barren beauties that once were oaks and maple trees In December, a feathering of downy gray on ancient mountain bones, on craggy limbs of scrub and pine that line arroyos still beneath the breath of winter winds whistling as they do their work stripping bare the frozen earth Then; the drip and sigh of water finally released from bondage here, the topaz sun shines through a copper gilt on threadbare clouds thin as April snow drawn down, the woolen cloak of night creeps past the tired hills and palest pink peeps out from tips of branches poor naked branches, exposed and cold are given vestments, new and tender with which to greet the sunlight, shining silver through the greening growth of spring.

[figsandtea]

A Response

Women are the sea, they say.

Venus rising from an empty shell,

removed of its inhabitant. The Selkie

girl, who wears her seal-fur skin about her shoulders

sand riming her knees from crawling

up the shore in twilight, tracking

a man to mate with. Tides

and changeability, spite

and caprice, that is the sea

and women.

If women are the sea, they are the sea before

the oceans were plural. They are a sea of creatures

teeming, cavernous mouths and brittle teeth,  they are full

of trailing tentacles of boat-like squid. Luminescence. Drifting

particles that flash to brilliant red

in sunlight, darting silverfish and perfectly

suspended jelly boxes.

If a woman was the sea, she would contain

a world within her, each freckled

many-legged crustacean flipping across dappled sands, each

night-breeding fingerling that will die under the moon

as soon as its eggs are spawned.

Each leviathan that dwells in the story

of a sailor with shaking hands and broken lips,

the creatures at the bottom of the sea that call

across the distances to one another in fathomless

bone shaking tones, and writhe

beneath darkened waters, plucking whales

to feast upon.

[figsandtea]

Older

Growing older is being

the person you said you would

not be, when sitting in art class,

to other people whose hands were slick

from handling grey clay, or terra-cotta

red to the wrists as if they’d been

helping a woman give birth painfully.

That person you would not be plans not because

they have things that need doing, but to stop

themselves from forgetting something needing doing

like the laundry, like feeding the cat, like

planting the garden your children will see as they

blow out the candles on their fifth birthday cake.

Growing older is planning

ways to make your life more complicated

than it needs to be, because your life

is not as complicated as you secretly wanted

it to be when you were sculpting wobbly cups

from sand and water, and watching

the circles form on the dark surface

of the wheel from water dripping off your thumbs.

You wanted that complication

a house someday because you wanted

a reason to be awake in the early mornings,

to see that sunshine light up  under the doorjamb

in your darkened kitchen as you sip a cup of coffee

from a coffee cup you’ve had for years that your daughter

will break someday.

You can’t claim

to be old, but older is a process sneaking

up on you with every night

you go to bed and say

tomorrow I will finish what I started.