Procrastinating.
16 Feb 2014 06:33 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
curiouswombatI am procrastinating. I have a story to write for Back to Middle Earth Month, and it is all in my head - the characters, the story line, the beginning, the end. But actually getting all those pictures and scenes converted into words that sit nicely on the screen... I am procrastinating.
And I procrastinate, in part, by reading things I know and love, or things that have been recommended, but sometimes by rooting around in The Pit of Voles, reading the summaries.
There are some summaries that appeal - and about 1/2 of these turn out to be stories that I actually enjoy - like finding a truffle. But I can spend hours reading summaries and deciding not to read the stories - see, procrastinating.
Now and again there are summaries that simply make me smile.
And so, after spending much of two days off work at the beginning of the week procrastinating in that fashion, there are three or four summaries that I would really like to share. If you are interested
Legolas visits Imladris after 100 years. While there Arwen gives him her love. Yrch are spotted heading to Imladris, so Legolas leads a group of elves to take care of them. He gets badly wounded, and dies in Imladris. What does Arwen choose to do? Legolas/Arwen romance! AU! Might need tissues. Death and suicide; warning.
What does Arwen do? After that warning I think I might be able to guess....
When Legolas and his mother are saved from the band of men that have kept them captive, Legolas is the only one of the two who has lived through the ordeal. With all of the kingdom trying to save Thranduil from his grief, will they be in time to save his son?
Somehow, to me, 'saved' implies getting out alive....
Legolas and his friend Hardur aren't pleased about how one of Thranduil's soldiers looks at their younger sister.
The family relationships here sound as if they may need a little unravelling.
And the use of one wrong word makes this my absolute favourite -
A porthole has been opened. My idea of how my friends and I would handle the fellowship if they were here.
I'm pretty sure that none of those were written by anyone I know. If so, I'm sorry for smiling - but perhaps you might like to look at that summary again.
There was also a story with an interesting premise, of which I read a few chapters, but I gave up because I got the giggles every time the writer called the ruling house of Rohan 'The House of Erol'...
As for the B2ME story - well there are now 308 words written... But there are about another 3 weeks to go, and I always find the first few paragraphs to be the worst, so it actually will be finished in time, I reckon!
And I procrastinate, in part, by reading things I know and love, or things that have been recommended, but sometimes by rooting around in The Pit of Voles, reading the summaries.
There are some summaries that appeal - and about 1/2 of these turn out to be stories that I actually enjoy - like finding a truffle. But I can spend hours reading summaries and deciding not to read the stories - see, procrastinating.
Now and again there are summaries that simply make me smile.
And so, after spending much of two days off work at the beginning of the week procrastinating in that fashion, there are three or four summaries that I would really like to share. If you are interested
Legolas visits Imladris after 100 years. While there Arwen gives him her love. Yrch are spotted heading to Imladris, so Legolas leads a group of elves to take care of them. He gets badly wounded, and dies in Imladris. What does Arwen choose to do? Legolas/Arwen romance! AU! Might need tissues. Death and suicide; warning.
What does Arwen do? After that warning I think I might be able to guess....
When Legolas and his mother are saved from the band of men that have kept them captive, Legolas is the only one of the two who has lived through the ordeal. With all of the kingdom trying to save Thranduil from his grief, will they be in time to save his son?
Somehow, to me, 'saved' implies getting out alive....
Legolas and his friend Hardur aren't pleased about how one of Thranduil's soldiers looks at their younger sister.
The family relationships here sound as if they may need a little unravelling.
And the use of one wrong word makes this my absolute favourite -
A porthole has been opened. My idea of how my friends and I would handle the fellowship if they were here.
I'm pretty sure that none of those were written by anyone I know. If so, I'm sorry for smiling - but perhaps you might like to look at that summary again.
There was also a story with an interesting premise, of which I read a few chapters, but I gave up because I got the giggles every time the writer called the ruling house of Rohan 'The House of Erol'...
As for the B2ME story - well there are now 308 words written... But there are about another 3 weeks to go, and I always find the first few paragraphs to be the worst, so it actually will be finished in time, I reckon!
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no subject
Date: 16/02/2014 06:54 pm (UTC)*Snort*
Oh, dear. And the House of Erol.
The reason I don't even look on FF.net is that half the people seem to have no clue what they are writing about, and can't spell. This is not harsh on my part, I think, because it is very easy to use a spellchecker and to check info on Google.
Good luck with B2Me!
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Date: 16/02/2014 07:26 pm (UTC)Your summing up of FF.net is pretty accurate - and quite kind as, sometimes, it seems like more than half of them.
Which is why I very rarely go there as most of the good stuff is also posted somewhere else. But it does allow me to sit not doing anything practical for ages!
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Date: 16/02/2014 07:39 pm (UTC)Love it!
I definitely think people should write, whatever age, and whatever they want, but kids probably know more these days about computers than me; they can run their work through a spellcheck and google. It's just laziness not to.
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Date: 16/02/2014 07:48 pm (UTC)As for the Fellowship and the porthole - come to think of it, it is the sort of thing my husband might write!
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Date: 16/02/2014 08:14 pm (UTC)Oh yes, of course; spellcheck does not help with that.
Still, the image is great!
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Date: 16/02/2014 10:46 pm (UTC)It's an LOTR-Voyage of the Dawn Treader crossover!
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Date: 16/02/2014 11:13 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 16/02/2014 11:56 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 17/02/2014 08:38 am (UTC)Oh yes! Mind you in recent times there have been some that are approaching sink hole size so I might not have immediately thought of it as a typo, just a very strange idea.
Like you I assume 13-14 year old authors are behind most of the awful summaries for what are, doubtless, not very good stories. Like you, I fear they often aren't :(
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Date: 16/02/2014 07:04 pm (UTC)Stop procrastinating and get back to work! (actually, given the time difference, I suppose you're already thinking about sleep...)
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Date: 16/02/2014 07:31 pm (UTC)I'm pretty sure every one of yours makes sense! I know a lot of people say it is hard to keep down to the character count when writing summaries, but then the 'guess what happens to Arwen' one would actually be so much better if it was shorter.
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Date: 16/02/2014 09:14 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 16/02/2014 07:11 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 16/02/2014 07:37 pm (UTC)There are indeed. Fortunately most of them also post to other sites, but the occasional one or two don't - hence me going there sometimes when I have a lot of time to trawl through!
I'm pretty sure most of those summaries were written by adults - there were a lot that cried out 'I am 14 and fancy Legolas! I know, I will write about a teenager joining the Fellowship, I bet no-one else has ever done that....' but I thought mocking them would be cruel :)
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Date: 16/02/2014 07:57 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 16/02/2014 07:27 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 16/02/2014 07:38 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 16/02/2014 07:34 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 16/02/2014 07:39 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 16/02/2014 08:52 pm (UTC)Every weekend I claim I'm going to be productive with fic-writing, because there's no day-job work distracting me, but then I get distracted and lazy, etc. All of which is to say...
*B2MeM procrastination solidarity fistbump*
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Date: 16/02/2014 09:26 pm (UTC)To you, too. We are not alone....
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Date: 16/02/2014 10:28 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 16/02/2014 10:38 pm (UTC)There are people who have already finished - the very thought made me go off and search youTube for a particular piece of music totally unrelated to my story.
But I have reached 700 words this evening in a sudden flurry of efficiency. Goodness knows how long it will turn out, though. About 2-3,000 maybe. Or maybe not.
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Date: 16/02/2014 09:43 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 16/02/2014 10:03 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 16/02/2014 10:33 pm (UTC)But I probably have stories favorited that use the summary question successfully... rules are made to be broken, etc.
Kind of in reaction to the typical bad summary, mine are probably too short and cryptic to draw many people in.
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Date: 16/02/2014 11:23 pm (UTC)Writing summaries is a bit of an art in itself, really - and I am no star at it either. But, generally, I think if you can't spell the names of your main characters in a summary, or leave a typo in it for more than an hour or two before you realise, I'm probably not going to read your story.
But, like you, I will sometimes make exceptions even for those. But only rarely :)
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Date: 16/02/2014 10:50 pm (UTC)Thanks for the laugh.
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Date: 16/02/2014 11:24 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 16/02/2014 11:01 pm (UTC)Awwww, bless. (But, seriously, this is one of the reasons I hate our whole Warnings culture. I know you don't like AO3, but it does at least give you the option to say 'Author chose not to use Archive warnings' -- a sort of 'Read at your own risk').
Hope your B2ME story picks up soon.
(I spent the whole of January procrastinating over a 8000 word D/H story, and now it seems I'll be spending the whole of February - April procrastinating over another. And I still haven't finished my Legolas/Eowyn advent story yet, LOL...)
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Date: 16/02/2014 11:33 pm (UTC)The B2ME story is now about 900 words long. It is in answer to the prompt "The turning of the year brings feasts and holidays. It's time to enjoy the bounty that was saved for the winter. Create a story or a work of art featuring a Winter seasonal food. Bonus for including a recipe." It is about Tharhîwon's first few months in Valinor.
So the hard bit is done - I know what it is about and what I am including!
The procrastination is an important part of the process, I reckon.
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Date: 17/02/2014 12:02 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 17/02/2014 08:41 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 17/02/2014 12:43 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 17/02/2014 05:36 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 17/02/2014 01:08 am (UTC)Were we ever that young? *G*
Or do I do them a disservice by assuming, as someone mentioned previously, that 97% of the stories posted there are conceived by vocabularily-challenged teens with a penchant for purple prose... see - it's catching and I haven't even been there!
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Date: 17/02/2014 05:39 pm (UTC)Although by now the porthole one has become a fully fledged, though unwritten, cross-over between LotR and The Voyage of The Dawn Treader...
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Date: 17/02/2014 02:10 am (UTC)Good luck with your BTME story.
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Date: 17/02/2014 05:47 pm (UTC)The B2ME story is about 1/3 -1/4 through, and 900 words now. And goodness knows, I will have to be careful when I write the summary, after this :)
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Date: 17/02/2014 04:24 am (UTC)Very disheartening.
Hope your weather is improving.
Huggs,
Lynda
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Date: 17/02/2014 05:48 pm (UTC)Today the wind speed is down to 12mph - but it is still raining.
re Legolas and Friends sister in common and Comment on Porthole!
Date: 20/02/2014 04:38 pm (UTC)As for the Porthole, it would have to be a fairly big one as I can't see Sam leaving Bill behind, though how they are to get him through the porthole is another matter (Bill not Sam)! What they do when they get to the Dawn Treader is up to them, I think Repecheep(sp?) might have something to say about it though!
I know, I know a bit late with the comment but I have to think about these a little!
How is the weather or should I not bother to ask? Rain, again?!
Huggs,
Lynda
Re: re Legolas and Friends sister in common and Comment on Porthole!
Date: 20/02/2014 08:29 pm (UTC)S2C and I have been considering the LotR/Dawntreader story - I reckon Reepicheep would immediately demand the right to take the One Ring to Mount Doom, or local equivalent, seize it, and wear it on his tail until such time as his tail is, as in the story, sliced off with a sword stroke... not sure what happens next!
Re: re Legolas and Friends sister in common and Comment on Porthole!
Date: 20/02/2014 11:41 pm (UTC)I did read a very good story about a similar situation, with L.A.C.E. both spouses in Mandos, can we get married, Aran Thranduil sire? Which did not end happily! Think it was written by Jael.
Last I heard Reepicheep had stopped off on Tol Eressa to say Hi to Frodo on his way to the Utter Most East!
Huggs,
Lynda
Re: re Legolas and Friends sister in common and Comment on Porthole!
Date: 21/02/2014 08:29 am (UTC)A story of Thranduil making such a decision for himself would be interesting - as long as whoever wrote it was a good writer. Aearwen2 on Open Scrolls wrote something a little similar, but not quite.
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Date: 17/02/2014 09:32 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 17/02/2014 10:21 pm (UTC)And I am still considering what the stories might actually be like if Legolas and his friend did have a sister in common - or the Fellowship did enter the story via a porthole :)