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October Writing & November Goals
Oct. 30th, 2020 04:17 pmThis month one of my coworkers tested positive for Covid (she’s fine now, btw) so I spent two weeks in quarantine (I’m fine too) and during that time I accidentally a book. (I finished the draft yesterday and am giving myself the rest of October as a writing holiday, hence the fact that I am posting this monthly writing update early.)
Well, it took longer than the two weeks of quarantine, and obviously at some point the accident became quite purposeful. Really the only part of this that is an accident is that the story was meant to be just a few scenes of h/c drawerfic, and I resisted it becoming more than that because I knew I’d need to do some real research if it turned into a real book... but I crammed in so many aspects that I liked that I ended up writing the darn thing.
The main characters were friends at an English boarding school, and after they are wounded in World War I they are reunited at an English country house that has been converted into a convalescent home for amputees. They sit in the library and talk about Robert Louis Stevenson (specifically, they make up The Further Adventures of Alan Breck Stewart and Davie Balfour), and then a year later Robert goes to visit David in a cottage by the sea in Cornwall and… there is cuddling. And PTSD. And sex. And more cuddling. Look, it’s been a hard year, I get to write as many cuddling scenes as I want.
So it’s going to go in a drawer after all for a year or two as I get “research World War I amputees” sorted. I’ve got E. R. Mayhew’s Wounded: A New History of the Western Front in World War I to begin with. 2022 me can decide whether the cuddling is excessive.
***
As for November writing plans... um, I guess I’ll just hold off and see if there’s an insurrection on November 4?
So I don’t have a specific word count or drafting goal for this month, but I would like to get some writing done. My plan is to work on the m/m Sleeping Beauty I posted about the other day, although I have no idea how to end it and am waffling about whether the fairy folk ought to make another appearance at some point in the story, rather than laying a curse on a baby in 1844 Wisconsin and then fucking off forever. Possibly in connection with Russell finally receiving a true love’s kiss, 102 years after it would have done any good, but better late than never?
Although I’m not sure what would take a kiss over the top to a true love’s kiss if the first sex scene is not enough to do it, which it can’t be, because that’s the scene where CaelanColinAndrew tries to explain homosexuality and Russell is like “...is this why you guys don’t do friendship? Because I’ve noticed that men in 1964 do not share their feelings or touch each other and it’s SUPER weird,” and adding in fairyland at that moment would be Too Much.
(Side note! If anyone with access to JSTOR could get me a copy of E. Anthony Rotundo’s “Romantic Friendship: Male Intimacy and Middle-Class Youth in the Northern United States, 1800-1900,” I feel it would be useful for this book. ETA: A kindly angel has gotten me the article! Thank you, kindly angel!!!!!)
Maybe the true love comes in when Russell is crying because he’s sick of living in the friendship-less hellhole that is 1964 and CaelanColinAndrew kisses him and tells him, in all sincerity although possibly with his heart breaking, “I would send you back to your own time if I could.”
Well, it took longer than the two weeks of quarantine, and obviously at some point the accident became quite purposeful. Really the only part of this that is an accident is that the story was meant to be just a few scenes of h/c drawerfic, and I resisted it becoming more than that because I knew I’d need to do some real research if it turned into a real book... but I crammed in so many aspects that I liked that I ended up writing the darn thing.
The main characters were friends at an English boarding school, and after they are wounded in World War I they are reunited at an English country house that has been converted into a convalescent home for amputees. They sit in the library and talk about Robert Louis Stevenson (specifically, they make up The Further Adventures of Alan Breck Stewart and Davie Balfour), and then a year later Robert goes to visit David in a cottage by the sea in Cornwall and… there is cuddling. And PTSD. And sex. And more cuddling. Look, it’s been a hard year, I get to write as many cuddling scenes as I want.
So it’s going to go in a drawer after all for a year or two as I get “research World War I amputees” sorted. I’ve got E. R. Mayhew’s Wounded: A New History of the Western Front in World War I to begin with. 2022 me can decide whether the cuddling is excessive.
***
As for November writing plans... um, I guess I’ll just hold off and see if there’s an insurrection on November 4?
So I don’t have a specific word count or drafting goal for this month, but I would like to get some writing done. My plan is to work on the m/m Sleeping Beauty I posted about the other day, although I have no idea how to end it and am waffling about whether the fairy folk ought to make another appearance at some point in the story, rather than laying a curse on a baby in 1844 Wisconsin and then fucking off forever. Possibly in connection with Russell finally receiving a true love’s kiss, 102 years after it would have done any good, but better late than never?
Although I’m not sure what would take a kiss over the top to a true love’s kiss if the first sex scene is not enough to do it, which it can’t be, because that’s the scene where CaelanColinAndrew tries to explain homosexuality and Russell is like “...is this why you guys don’t do friendship? Because I’ve noticed that men in 1964 do not share their feelings or touch each other and it’s SUPER weird,” and adding in fairyland at that moment would be Too Much.
(Side note! If anyone with access to JSTOR could get me a copy of E. Anthony Rotundo’s “Romantic Friendship: Male Intimacy and Middle-Class Youth in the Northern United States, 1800-1900,” I feel it would be useful for this book. ETA: A kindly angel has gotten me the article! Thank you, kindly angel!!!!!)
Maybe the true love comes in when Russell is crying because he’s sick of living in the friendship-less hellhole that is 1964 and CaelanColinAndrew kisses him and tells him, in all sincerity although possibly with his heart breaking, “I would send you back to your own time if I could.”
