Organizing Things

[osprey_archer]

On Christmas, I finished a draft of the Depression-era tramps novel (working title, which must be changed: Tramps) and decided to take a vacation from writing till the New Year. I also received a new filing cabinet as a Christmas present, so I have allowed myself the delirious luxury of spending hours in perfecting my new filing system. People whose letters have LANGUISHED in my catch-all files (“RL friends” and “online friends”) have at last received folders of their own! Folders of defunct penpals have been tenderly retired to my brand new archive drawer! Postcards that have spent over a decade in my recipe box have at least been reunited with their epistolary brethren!

Since I’ve got organization on the brain, I’ve returned again to the question of how to archive various elementary school writing and art projects, as well as story snippets written in high school/college notebooks. I contemplated files for those, too, but that would require another filing cabinet (look, in my defense, there are only four drawers between these two filing cabinets and one of them is dedicated to various medical/financial/insurance paperwork), so now I’m leaning toward accordion folders… I’ll have to sort it all out and see if I think accordion folders can handle the volume.

I do definitely want to get rid of the three-ring binders in which a certain amount of it is currently stored. The covers always get squashed and look so untidy, even when the three ring binder is pretty full, which you’d really think would impair the possibility of cover-squashing.

***

I’ve also been sorting electronic files and story ideas, and in the name of mental housekeeping I’ve decided it’s time to admit to myself that certain things are never going to be finished. I record them here, after the manner of a grave marker. Let us mourn together.

1. Chris and Josh, the tale of a small-town boy who moves to the big city and discovers that his incredibly hot but deeply cagy boyfriend’s secret is that he’s currently employed as a vampire’s on-tap snack. In Tramps I stole the best bit of this (Chris’s asshole ex-boyfriend, a football player who publicly pretended they barely knew each other) and I never did figure out how to get Josh out of the whole vampire-snack situation. (Maybe the solution is just to leave him in the vampire-snack situation. Sometimes Your Boyfriend Is a Professional Vampire’s Snack and That’s Okay. Only sometimes the vampire sucks so much blood that Josh faints and that does not seem sustainable tbh.)

2. Jess and Innis, a secondary world fantasy novel about two guys from rival empires, one of whom is a POW who has ended up in service (enslaved? This changed from draft to draft) to the other. I don’t think the world is really feeling slavefic this decade, and also I stole the best exchange (“Sure, my empire has just fallen, but YOUR empire will fall someday too, so how do you like them apples?”) for Honeytrap.

3. Fritzi and Magdalena, in which Fritzi is the princess of a small Germanic principality and also a World War I flying ace and Magdalena is her former bff turned communist revolutionary who has taken over the principality and does her level best to have Fritzi executed by firing squad when Fritzi shows up after the war in a desperate attempt to save her brother the deposed king. Every time I try to write this I run aground on my tragic lack of knowledge about the German language, German culture, the German experience of World War I, and generally everything about Germany. Theoretically I am interested in Germany, but in actual fact am I ever going to research this? I first had this idea nearly a decade ago and have not researched a jot, so all signs point to No.

4. Harriet Peabody, the tale of a Civil War widow, post-war, who falls in love with a doctor who lost his leg during the war. I have a complete draft of this and yet it remains inert. Why not? Who knows. The Civil War just gives me PROBLEMS and I don’t know why.

(Speaking of Civil War stories: I am not burying Sleeping Beauty YET, but it is going on a long hiatus. We’ll see if that helps…)

5. The f/f college roommates “Goblin Market” retelling. Have tried this multiple times (in multiple settings! Modern day and 1900s!) and I just can’t seem to make it work. The idea is free to a good home if anyone wants it! So bitter about this because I had the perfect title, “Come and Kiss Me,” which is a quote from “Goblin Market”... If nothing else perhaps I can salvage that title for a different f/f book. It has some gothic vibes.

Comments

[troisoiseaux]

Every time I try to write this I run aground on my tragic lack of knowledge about the German language, German culture, the German experience of World War I, and generally everything about Germany.

Would it work in a secondary world fantasy setting, do you think? I would read the heck out of this plot.

[oracne]

I like that idea!!!

I don't have a lot of German-perspective books about WWI, alas, because even after taking some German in college and singing a metric fuckton of Bach, my reading knowledge is not good enough for academic works.

[osprey_archer]

There seem to be very few books available in English about the German perspective on World War I. (At least, as far as I can tell from a fairly cursory search.) I can see why there would be far more sources about the Allies available, but you'd think there'd be some books about the German perspective, too... especially given there's no lack of books about the Nazi party in World War II.

[oracne]

Through German Eyes: The British & The Somme 1916 by Christopher Duffy is on my wishlist; my collection right now only includes some Osprey books about the German army.

[osprey_archer]

I'll have to look that up once I'm ready to dive into war books again. (I checked the library catalog and the library has four books with similar titles... all about World War II. Sigh.)

[philomytha]

I keep seeing that one in the library and not borrowing it; eventually I will crack and borrow it and write up the fun bits.

[osprey_archer]

TBH I think inventing a good secondary world setting is even more work than just researching Germany, because you have to make it all up. Also I am a little gunshy because I tried to write MANY secondary world fantasies in my teens and early twenties, and probably the problem was that I just had too little experience at writing and at Life to write a successful novel yet, but they all fell to pieces in my hands and a part of me believes that this is just my Fate with secondary world fantasies.

Below, people have suggested Ruritanian romance, which might be a good in-between option. Maybe if I literally call it Ruritania it will turn off the part of my brain that is all "That castle name doesn't sound very German actually! Maybe you need to learn German to write this book properly."

[philomytha]

Fritzi and Magdalena sound like your classic Ruritanian romance, genderswapped, and in all of those that I've read, any relationship with actual history, geography and culture is entirely optional ;-)

[osprey_archer]

Maybe if I just straight up call it Ruritania that will short-circuit the parts of my brain that wail "but WHY are all these Central Europeans reading so much Wodehouse?"

[sovay]

Maybe if I just straight up call it Ruritania that will short-circuit the parts of my brain that wail "but WHY are all these Central Europeans reading so much Wodehouse?"

It's certainly worth a shot. You could research by reading a lot of Ruritanian fiction.

[osprey_archer]

Oh nooooo, a fate worse than death! I might be forced to watch the film versions of The Prisoner of Zenda too...

[sovay]

On Christmas, I finished a draft of the Depression-era tramps novel

Mazel tov! Probably you should not call it On the Bum.

Every time I try to write this I run aground on my tragic lack of knowledge about the German language, German culture, the German experience of World War I, and generally everything about Germany.

Fortunately, this is one of the reasons the Ruritanian romance was invented.

[osprey_archer]

Hahaha I am 90% sure that Amazon would have Things To Say about the title On the Bum (and also that readers would go in expecting erotica and/or spanking) which is too bad because otherwise it would be perfect.

I briefly contemplating Riding the Rails but unfortunately this is so on the nose that there is a PBS documentary and a nonfiction book about tramps in the Depression already. Oh well. I'll come up with something eventually I suppose!

[ellenmillion]

Congratulations on finishing not-Tramps!

[osprey_archer]

Hooray for not-Tramps! May a title come to me soon!

[littlerhymes]

Rest in peace to Chris and Josh, I did love that bitey set up SO much.

I'm going to cross my fingers for Fritzi and Magdalena though - their love is so firing squad!!! I agree with the suggestions maybe just putting it in a different setting will help.

[asakiyume]

their love is so firing squad!!!

--LOLLLL! Love that.

[littlerhymes]

A catchy byline ready to go for when it's published! LOL

[osprey_archer]

I do feel some pangs about Chris & Josh, but at this point I would have to start from scratch because basically none of the material is salvageable (I did write it when I was 23...) and there's still the Vampire's Snack situation.

I suppose I could make the vampire drain Josh's blood a little less enthusiastically, thus making Vampire's Snack a more sustainable profession, but if the vampire doesn't drain so much blood that Josh faints then what is the POINT.

The problem re: Fritzi and Magdalena is that the setting already basically is Ruritania - it's a made-up Germanic principality. I guess people have built Ruritanian settings on "the Germans like beer and schnitzel, right?" before, but there's a corner of my brain sitting there yelling "SOMEONE SHOULD BE QUOTING GOETHE."

[littlerhymes]

LOL Josh can timeshare his job with Chris so they're both a little woozy.

Maybe the characters in Fritzi and Magdalena can be too busy spying etc to read Goethe. Not everyone has time to READ!! Some people are adventuring and shooting things!

[osprey_archer]

The happy ending is that they BOTH become snacks for this vampire, and they have woozy post-feeding snuggles! HAPPY END (I don't think anyone would think that was a happy end).

It's TRUE, non-readers have been tragically underrepresented in my books?? Maybe Fritzi is too busy flying planes and Magdalena never reads anything but Marx.

[asakiyume]

I am super impressed by all your organizing, and also I'm amazed at how long we've known each other, because I remember the genesis moment of several of these ones you're not going to finish. I think it's good/cool/right that you've used some scene already in works that *have* gone out to the world, and I wouldn't be surprised if that happens with the best angles or moments of others of them.

I'm happy for your one Civil War story that does exist--admittedly, more *post* Civil War than in medias Civil War, but--The Threefold Tie

[osprey_archer]

Except for Jess & Innis, I think all these story ideas post-date our acquaintance! Although I'm not sure I ever posted about Chris & Josh on here till recently, even though it's been knocking around for a decade or so.

Harriet Peabody and Sleeping Beauty are both post-Civil War too... *cries quietly*

[skygiants]

A wreath for these excellent ideas, gone but not forgotten! (I too will join the ranks of those hoping for a Ruritanian Fritzi & Magdalena, though ...)

[osprey_archer]

The outcry over Fritzi and Magdalena's fate has been SO GREAT that it may have saved them. Only time will tell!

ETA: The other issue with Fritzi & Magdalena is that it's a story that calls for lots of action, and action scenes are not my forte, but I have been practicing - there's are some pretty lively scenes in Tramps, for instance - so perhaps that, too, will help save them...

[lokifan]

Putting in another vote for Ruritanian Fritzi and Magdalena, that sounds FABULOUS!

[osprey_archer]

Truly, there are not enough love stories where one character spends three-quarters of the book trying to have the other one executed. "It's not PERSONAL," Magdalena insists. "The inevitable processes of history mean that feudalism HAS to be displaced."

"Couldn't you just DISPLACE ME TO PARIS?" Fritzi demands.