Snowflake Challenge #4

[osprey_archer]

In your own space, create some goals.

It feels a little optimistic to be making goals what with *waves hand at current events* everything, but snowflake_challenge called and who am I not to answer?

I have two writing goals this year, one fannish and one not.

The fannish goal is to finish the Natasha fic kore commissioned in return for an ACLU donation (which offer will probably stand into perpetuity, given… *waves hand at current events again* Anyway, it’s a $25 donation for a fic of at least 1,000 words, larger donations are likely to result in longer fics although I make no promises). I have decided I need to rewatch The Winter Soldier before I write this. I really hope this will not engender a desire to write another quarter of a million words about Bucky Barnes, not least because that would interfere with my other goal this year…

…which is to finish two f/f novellas set at women’s colleges circa 1890-1910. There are other projects I would like to finish as well, but those are somewhat dependent on if/when I finish the necessary research, whereas the research for the college girls is not only DONE but has been DONE for a decade, ever since I wrote my college thesis on the topic of American girls’ literature from 1890-1915. I have kept reading books about this topic ever since, often with soft cries of “I could have used this in my thesis!”, and now at last it will get some use after all!

Comments

[kore]

I really hope this will not engender a desire to write another quarter of a million words about Bucky Barnes

//waggles eyebrows

I wrote my college thesis on the topic of American girls’ literature from 1890-1915. I have kept reading books about this topic ever since, often with soft cries of “I could have used this in my thesis!”, and now at last it will get some use after all!

Aww that's neat! I love it when people hit the "I get to use my thesis!" mode.

[osprey_archer]

I feel like the first quarter of a million words about Bucky Barnes were probably the best words and the next quarter million couldn't help but be derivative. Hopefully I will not end up testing this empirically.

Honestly kind of shocking that I haven't used my thesis as background material for a book before! However, there is nothing like repeatedly hitting a research wall to make you go "Gosh, remember that thing that I already researched exhaustively ages ago? WHAT IF I USED THAT."

[kore]

Sadly I did not ever write a thesis, so my brain is just stuck full of shiny glittering shards of totally useless literary trivia, like DID YOU KNOW F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote the screenplay for the flick of Three Comrades? (Yes of course I have the book, like I have a ton of other completely useless and highly detailed books about FSF. I mean they'd be of use to someone with a literary career, not me.) From the Afterword:

As the screenplay evolved, its political content became more pointedly anti-Nazi, although the Nazis were not iden­tified. A private screening was arranged for the German consul in Los Angeles, who naturally objected to the anti-Nazi material in Three Comrades. It was suggested to Mankiewicz by Joseph Breen, the industry censor, that the movie could be altered to show that it was about the communists—not the Nazis. Mankiewicz refused to accommodate the Germans and threatened to resign from M.G.M. He remembers, "The next day I went into the commissary, and Scott was there. He ran up, threw his arms around me, and kissed me."

[osprey_archer]

The moment that F. Scott Fitzgerald kissed another man, Ernest Hemingway spontaneously combusted from jealousy and then reconstituted himself through the sheer intensity of his desire to be manly.

[kore]

SOUNDS LEGIT

[kore]

(Also now I wonder if sovay has seen Three Comrades? Hmmm....)

[lucymonster]

My sieve memory and I are very jealous of your ability to retain and use research from college! I recently tried to write something set during the Second Punic War - a topic on which I was PASSIONATE!!!!1!1!11!!! during undergrad - but ended up scrapping the whole thing for the amount of refresher reading I’d have had to do. I couldn’t even remember the important dates without checking Wikipedia.

Anyway, your f/f novellas sound amazing and like a great use of your thesis. I wish you luck hitting your goal, not least so I can read them!

I also wish you luck not writing another quarter of a million words about Bucky Barnes, because you are probably the only author who could lure me back into Captain America fandom, and I don’t have time in my busy Star Wars schedule for falling back in love with Bucky Barnes. :p But you write him so damn well.

[osprey_archer]

For your sake and mine I will try to resist the siren song of Bucky Barnes! Even if he does suffer so damn beautifully. Resist! Resist!

I only remember about my college girls research because I've continued reading books from the time period ever since. Everything I haven't actually kept up has disappeared in the intervening years, like my one-time Russian language skills.

I've got a third f/f college girl novella idea for a Goblin Market retelling, but that one might be a bit trickier. Still, it would be great if it does go.