(no subject)
Oct. 11th, 2012 06:33 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
seekingferretI'm 1200 words into my Kaleidoscope story and I really like most of those words. I feel like at least 900 of those words are in final form. I don't anticipate many cuts or edits. (People I've passed drafts to have mostly agreed, so far.) So yay, I'm at the required length!
But Kaleidoscope also requires a finished story, and this might be as little as 1/3 done, and it might be closer to 1/2 done, from that perspective. And when I realize that I have barely more than a week left, I get scared about that. I feel unprepared to finish this story.
It's not canon review that's sticking me, but secondary source review. I only recently reviewed the canon, and it's pretty fresh, but I'm trying to pin down cultural details for the specific time period my story is set in and trying to figure out if I can justify fudging stuff based on information in books that are off by five or ten years. Kaleidoscope is tricky that way, since cultural sensitivity is so central to its mission. I don't want to fuck up details on any story, but I especially don't want to do it when I'm writing about a minority culture that isn't my own. And the overriding message of virtually all of the things I've read are "Do not simplify! YOU WILL BE WRONG!" There's a part of me that keeps whispering that I should default. I don't like to listen to that voice.
But Kaleidoscope also requires a finished story, and this might be as little as 1/3 done, and it might be closer to 1/2 done, from that perspective. And when I realize that I have barely more than a week left, I get scared about that. I feel unprepared to finish this story.
It's not canon review that's sticking me, but secondary source review. I only recently reviewed the canon, and it's pretty fresh, but I'm trying to pin down cultural details for the specific time period my story is set in and trying to figure out if I can justify fudging stuff based on information in books that are off by five or ten years. Kaleidoscope is tricky that way, since cultural sensitivity is so central to its mission. I don't want to fuck up details on any story, but I especially don't want to do it when I'm writing about a minority culture that isn't my own. And the overriding message of virtually all of the things I've read are "Do not simplify! YOU WILL BE WRONG!" There's a part of me that keeps whispering that I should default. I don't like to listen to that voice.
(no subject)
Date: 2012-10-13 03:00 pm (UTC)It's kind of a relief to have the default deadlines past. I was never in any danger of needing to default -- the early draft I sent to beta would have been fine with minor edits -- but I do have a tendency to doubt and second-guess.
(no subject)
Date: 2012-10-16 05:41 pm (UTC)I've written more now. I actually feel a lot better about where I stand now than I did when I wrote this, because I've written the end of my story. It's not really fully written yet, because the middle needs fleshing out and detailing, but I've figured out the whole emotional arc, so that's just details. I had been worried that this was going to balloon into a six thousand word story like last year, but I think I can complete this story in a lot less than that, though definitely more than the thousand word minimum.
And meanwhile, I finished reading one of the secondary sources I was playing with, and it's given me lots of neat ideas. (That are definitely not about Nick Fury)
(no subject)
Date: 2012-10-16 07:23 pm (UTC)