Titles pt. 2 + errata

[queenlua]

Well since Rethi and Raphi are doing titles, and since it's been a few months since my last titles infodump, might as well do another one :D

• Delicately, Madly: So the title that seemed closest to "fitting" while I was writing was actually ganked directly from the title of a James Tiptree Jr. short story: "With Delicate Mad Hands." However, (1) I didn't want to just yoink Tiptree's title directly (esp. since the stories have almost nothing to do with each other), and (2) the motif of hands suggested by that title was kind of a problem—I didn't want to call too much attention to the hands in the story, since that sort of risked calling attention more toward Oliver (see: Oliver-grabby-hands-scene) and away from Reyson himself. But I was flopping around and couldn't think of anything I liked that much more, so in the end I took delicate, mad, adverb-ified them, and called it a day :P


• Every Little Thing: It'd been sitting in my list of "phrases that would make really awesome story titles if you ever find the right story" for a while. I had it in mind when I wrote the first draft and decided it fit.


• Wings Dancing in the Darkness: This actually had a working title of "Bitterroot" and it kept that title until I was very nearly almost finished with it. Bitterroot is an actual flower, but I didn't know that at the time—I just compounded the words "bitter" and "root", and I felt like it fit especially well with that opening scene.
  
  But during the revision phase, while I was glancing at FE Wiki to look double-check some trivial fact, I noticed that Naesala's title in the epilogue, "Sky's Shadow," can be literally translated as "Wings Dancing in the Darkness"—which I actually really liked the sound of, felt like some nice imagery for a Rafiel and Naesala tromping around in a bog after sunset, something something. So I stole it.


• Kingdom of Earth: So there's this brief scene in Nietzsche's Thus Spake Zarathustra that stood out to me when I was in middle school—it's basically a parodic/satirical send up of Christianity, this one scene where some dudes are praying to a donkey, and Zarathustra gets pissy at them for praying to something so dumb, bla bla. Anyway the line he uses I remembered clearly:
  
  "To be sure: except ye become as little children ye shall not enter into THAT kingdom of heaven." (And Zarathustra pointed aloft with his hands.)
  
  "But we do not at all want to enter into the kingdom of heaven: we have become men,—SO WE WANT THE KINGDOM OF EARTH."
  
  (I seem to recall the translation I read just had "WE WANT THE EARTH," which sounds more powerful to my ear, but I could just be imagining things.)
  
  Anyway I thought that whole theme of "accepting and embracing the harshness of reality" was pretty fitting for Naesala, especially in that situation, so I yoinked the phrase from there.


• lust like remembrance: Just a little phrase that drifted into my mind near the early part of drafting and felt right for whatever reason. (I wrote the whole fic terribly quickly and was honestly just going with my gut on everything herp derp)


• Sink: Uhhhh. If I were being 100% honest I would mention that "Sink" was the title for a thread on one of the wolf RPGs I played on :D;;; But no seriously it got me thinking about the word and how it's not just, y'know, a kitchen sink, it's a slow pulling-under, a weightiness... it's a nice word and when I was thinking about titles near the end of the fic it seemed to fit. So.


• Sounds and Silences: I knew I wanted a title that touched on the theme of "quiet" since that's a big thing in the opening paragraph and since it's a bit of a motif in the story, but I didn't want it to be too heavy-handed. I reread the story explicitly looking for phrases that would fit for a title, and "sounds and silences" jumped out at me and seemed to work.

Also the last time I did an author's-notes-type-thing was last October, since I never have enough thoughts on any one story to make an actual post about, but here's a roundup of random thoughts on stories I've written since then.

• wow I just found my earliest note for "Wings Dancing in the Darkness" and evidently I have a text file vaguely mentioning the original concept dated to October??? wow it is mighty convenient my fe-exchange prompt happened to fit it perfectly haha


• I go back and forth on how much I actually like "Wings Dancing in the Darkness." When I submitted it to the exchange I was actually kind of convinced it was one of the worst things I'd ever written but no amount of editing was going to fix it so I just submitted it and felt bad. I went back later and decided I'd been too hard on myself—and I still kinda flip-flop whenever I go back to read it, heh. I guess my main thought is that there should've been a livelier/faster way to get to that final scene with Zarieth, but despite that it mostly works, and I'm really fond of the bit with Zarieth, so.


• when writing "Kingdom of Earth" I watched a whole bunch of videos about how to gut deer and how decay works and it was all pretty gross for squeamish little Lua and I'm not very convinced that I even did a good job with writing it. Then when I was about to publish it I was like "man is all this random shit about Naesala tearing up the deer even necessary, like he's a fucking giant raven he can probably just jab his beak in fucking anywhere and it'll be 'kay," but at that point I was too lazy to edit any longer and bla bla not sure how to balance the story properly so it stayed in


• also! "Kingdom of Earth" was very almost titled "Closer, Still Closer"—I remembered vaguely some hymn with that as a title or a refrain or something? but I couldn't find the exact hymn I was thinking of online, just some fairly modern hymn with the same title, and I wasn't even sure "unreachability of God" was really a theme that jelled with the fic, so I looked for other ideas :P


• I wrote "lust like remembrance" in like two days. That is absurdly fast for me.


• I am terribly fond of "Sink" for literally no good reason. It's really just a bit of weird AU headcanon masquerading as fic, and it's not even the main bit of AU headcanon I was wanting to get across, and it only barely qualifies as fanfic because let's get real half of it is just me writing a horse race with very little canon connection and the prose isn't even objectively that great... but I still feel oddly content and warm when I reread it, and I really really enjoyed writing it. Maybe I just like it because it was the first thing I wrote post-thesis and I was just walking around on cloud nine :p

Comments

[lyndis]

Titles are hard. Well, sometimes. I've come up with amazing titles, then changed them because the story wasn't good enough to deserve my awesome title. :P I did a tally a while back on how many of my titles were from a song, too. (Answer: A LOT.)

Usually I write things in one sitting but as most people notice/will notice/have noticed, I do better if I sit on things a lot longer, and take my time with them. However, some of my better pieces? Written within five hours. It makes me sick. Stuff I work hard on just sort of falls apart, probably because I have time to pick at it? I don't know!

Two days for a 'fic that turned out really well is pretty fast IMO. I guess I can just admit I have no patience and so the thought of spending hours working on fanfic (or art) makes me roll around anxiously in my mind. XD

I wish I could do that, though.

(Chaptered fics don't count. I did write one in a single sitting (12 chapters) but the one I'm currently writing? I write each chapter in one sitting, at least. There were some times I wrote 2 or 3 in one sitting if I was on a roll. Man when the muse is bouncing around in my head, I don't turn it off!)

[queenlua]

I've come up with amazing titles, then changed them because the story wasn't good enough to deserve my awesome title

I lol'd. That's kind of precious.

Stuff I work hard on just sort of falls apart, probably because I have time to pick at it? I don't know!

man what this makes me think of most is back when I was playing piano a lot, I'd noticed that it was actually possible to overpractice a song—where you'd played the damn thing so many times you started sounding kind of lifeless and mindless or whatever—I'm pretty sure actually proficient pianists have ways of combating this, but yeah, I definitely feel like picking at the same thing for too long can backfire.

I generally max out at about 1,000 words a day—and that's like, I'm-skipping-my-classes-to-write levels of productivity. I wish I could write faster, sometimes; blasting through a fic in one sitting seems like it'd be very satisfying!

(also holy shit a chaptered fic in one sitting o.o that's impressive shit yo)

[lyndis]

I just write very quickly. With the like, three hundred FE fics I've written, I've decided this is how writing goes:

A. You write very little but everything you write is better planned, thought out, worded, etc., or
B. You write a lot of shit and everything is wildly hit or miss.

Like, I've written a few things that I thought were damn good. But then I've written other things (like the chaptered story in one sitting)(not as impressive as it sounds, only 9k words and 12 chapters) that later I felt I could have done SO much better.

To clarify more, I feel that I'm especially rusty when it comes to writing things longer than 5k words (in total length). I really enjoy writing, obviously, but since I've taught myself I do a lot of stupid things, make the same mistakes over and over, et cetera. I found that writing by hand was helpful, but I write so slowly by hand (w/ the arthritis & tendinitis) that I would skip words, or parts of sentences, or write things backward/in reverse order. I do this a lot when typing words, because my brain skips to far ahead and then backs up HAHA HEY THIS WORD STARTS WITH A BR NOT AN EAK. But it happens a lot less. Shit just comes pouring out of me. And I type maybe 70wpm on a really good day now--used to be over 100 back in my golden typing days. Hehehe.

I mean, it's okay if a one-shot is hit or miss, but with something you spend a LOT of time on, like a chaptered fic, you WANT it to be hithithithithit. Sadly for me, my doofiest fic ever (Canon in D) was the one that got away with me and turned into a legit story when I wasn't paying attention. Except half of it was a joke at first. I wasn't prepared for anything to be serious. Or for the characters to develop...you know. Legit personalities. Because, for example, Hector and Farina were in that story FOR comedic relief. Except she had some serious shit going on. And I hit so many words into that story and just. STOPPED. Stopped writing it because even though people said they liked the story, it was a giant miss IMO. It was tons of fun to write, too. Easily I'd turn out a 10k chapter for that thing in one sitting. And be sad that it was too late to write more!

But I mean, that's the payoff. I can write quickly but most of my stories (and there are too many) aren't very good. I'm all right with that, though. Occasionally I churn out something pretty good and even the fodder-quality 'fic is entertaining to some people, so it doesn't feel bad to me at all.

Though sometimes I wish I had the patience to word my pieces more carefully!

With my latest 'fic, writing a thousand words for each chapter felt like a damn chore half the time. I'd check and be like "weh, why is this only 700 words long am I over a thousand yet" because I think the longer chapters topped out at 3k words. -_- But that's me being lazy and starting to scrape the bottom of the barrel for motivation. When I finish MTW, it'll be my first not-completely-rushed finished LEGIT chaptered story. Like. Ever. Because the 100k bullshit stories from 2002 were crap and the endings were rushed. Also they were terrible.

[queenlua]

Except half of it was a joke at first. I wasn't prepared for anything to be serious. Or for the characters to develop...you know. Legit personalities. Because, for example, Hector and Farina were in that story FOR comedic relief. Except she had some serious shit going on.

ISN'T IT CRAZY WHEN STORIES DO THIS. I mean. It sounds like, in that case, it sort of messed up your overall fic, but sometimes when I'm writing and a character suddenly has such-and-such development that I was totally not anticipating but makes total sense it's so surprising and satisfying and awesome oh man.

but yeah thanks for sharing all your writing process stuff :D and pre-emptive congrats for the legit-chaptered-ness that shall be MTW :D

[raphiael]

I wrote about 3k words of Emperor in one sitting at a really weird hour of the night, and it was an honestly terrifying experience. Like I could not not work on thing. A lot of it later got cut, but yeah, really do not recommend unless your goal is really really crazy.

[queenlua]

TIL Raphi was actually possessed by the ghost of Lyon and did some of that automatic writing shit

:P

more seriously, I did manage to do quite a bit above my regular 1k max when I was finishing up that ridiculous Civil War story for class, but uh, turns out you can complete superhuman feats when your grade really really depends on it, but I was less-than-satisfied with the results :P

[raphiael]

Well, I am a shy academic who thinks entirely too much about Ephraim. (Probably too squeamish to do anything with dead bodies though, ew ew ew.)

Yeah, I cranked out about 2000 in a night for a class, but doing a lot of creative writing in a sitting is hard. My max per day is usually around 700-1000 words if I'm really feeling something. Papers are completely different, I guess, because while I wouldn't recommend it, I have been able to do massive papers in single nights if the need arose. I don't think I could write that much creatively, though, even under duress.

[amielleon]

IMO some stories are just less difficult than others, and you can spit them out on the fly and they basically work. And then other stories are just harder to make work, and you can spend weeks on them and feel unsatisfied. :/

[lyndis]

If I ever spend weeks on a story I'll let you know. :P

[writerawakened]

The only titles of mine I particularly like in retrospect are the ones that basically came to me spontaneously. Any title I have to actually think about writing usually ends up being pretty stupid :P There's something to be said for the power of epiphany in the creative process, especially if it's something that sounds cool. :P

[queenlua]

haha, sounds fair enough :P I'm definitely generally fond of titles that just "came" to me, but I've been lucky enough to come up with a few gems that worked out when I thought about them (ex: I'm terribly fond of "Dog in the Vineyard," which was a result of me sitting around thinking, misremembering the Bible, and reading indie pen & paper RPG reviews :P )

[amielleon]

Dude, Wings Dancing in the Darkness is one of my favorite things from you of late. :P Though maybe it's the mopey softness that you don't like about it that I like so hey.

[queenlua]

admittedly I haven't written much as of late that's substantial enough to really compare to Wings Dancing :P

but naw, I'm glad you like it, thanks! it's definitely not that I hate it, it's probably like you said—I do mopey softness so rarely that I have no idea how to feel about seeing it in my own work, haha.