IWSG – Something’s shifted

I’m not quite sure what, but something is just a little off from what it had been.

I mean, some of it’s the same.  I’ve been obsessed with writing fanfic for Velvet Goldmine since July’s CampNaNo session, and that hasn’t changed (despite coming up with what feels like a really good idea for an original novel series in the meantime), but the stuff I’ve been writing has been.  I’m not sure if that’s a maturation of my interest, a reaction to the real world, a suggestion that maybe I’m starting to tire of it, or what, but it’s kind of been weirding me out a little.

So, when I started, it was mostly just “how can I get my two favorite characters to hook up and have their happily ever after?”  (Because I am, at heart, a very shallow person who would prefer to live in a fairy tale world.  Especially since this one sucks.)  Of course, there was usually some situation going on outside their relationship that needed resolving, often relating to the reporter managing somehow to expose the conspiracy behind the scenes of the 1984 section of the film.  Now, it’s not like those elements have gone away, of course.  Getting them together is still the primary goal of almost every one of my fics.  (There have been a couple of really short ones that didn’t do that at all.)  Or rather, I should say that it starts out as a primary goal.  Lately they’ve been twisting and going strange (and dark) places I didn’t intend as I started writing them.

Take, for example, the one I’m about 75% finished with right now.  The idea was to take the surveillance the rock star is under in the movie (almost certainly a temporary measure in canon) and imagine it carried further, where he’s under an unknown amount of constant surveillance, preventing them from being able to simply start dating like a normal couple.  So what happens is that he knows there’s a wiretap on his phone line (I never had him explain how he knows that, though), and he assumes he’s also under scrutiny whenever he goes to public places, though he isn’t quite sure how much scrutiny.  The premise, therefore, was that they can only get together in his apartment, on weekends, and have a very awkward relationship until they finally decide to leave the country to get away from those surveilling them.  It was supposed to be the usual romantic fluff.  Somehow it’s turned into a festival of paranoia and failure to communicate.  They’re both totally convinced the other one doesn’t have any genuine feelings for them, and that whatever they have will be ended at any second.  And at this point, they’ve already moved to London together, but they’re still thinking that way.  (Okay, actually, as of Sunday night, the rock star is starting to believe the reporter really does love him, because the reporter was about the write the exposé that the rock star thought was his only goal in the relationship, but then changed his mind and decided not to write it, giving three reasons, one of which being that it would bring their relationship under too much harsh scrutiny.  But the reporter is more convinced than ever that he’s entirely unloved.)  I’m really not sure how that happened.  The weird thing is that while it’s not entirely in character for them to be so paranoid, it’s not entirely out of character, either.

In another one, I realized I’d written myself into a situation where they had to break up for about six months in the middle of the piece.  That was odd, too, but it feels a bit more natural.  (In fact, that one may be my favorite I’ve written so far.)  In another, my decision to play around with the idea of the reporter’s brother turning up in the employ of the government agency that’s behind the conspiracy turned really dark.  Like, his brother ordered him beaten up and killed.  Thankfully, rescue arrived before the killing part could happen, but the poor reporter spent the whole rest of the story covered in bruises.  Again, very odd.  (Especially since I hate real world-style violence (fantasy violence is a different matter), and the movie has pretty much zero violence in it.)  And yes, I have a whole lot of fics for this movie by now.  (Most of which are only half-edited, and therefore haven’t even been posted to AO3 yet.  I have to take it a bit slow on the posting, anyway; I don’t want to have two of my pieces right next to each other in the chronological posting list if I can avoid it, because it just looks bad.  (I wasn’t thinking about that at first, so early on, there are places where I have three in a row, and it makes me cringe.)  Which is annoying, ’cause I just finished posting something, and now I have to wait for someone else to post something before I can put up anything else.  Especially annoying because someone posted something the day before I put up the final chapter.  So if they’d just waited one more day before posting…!)

Anyway, long story short, I feel like my writing’s getting away from me a bit.  Maybe I’m just stressed out from work and school and having been sick for the entire month of March.  (Which is when I wrote all of that still-unfinished piece, btw.)  If it’s not stress, I’m not sure what the change indicates, or if it’s anything I can — or even should — try to fix.  (After all, these darker pieces are definitely better than the light fluffy ones I started out with, so maybe I shouldn’t be complaining.)

---

Addressing the suggested question for this month, about using April A-to-Z to publicize a novel, well, I’ve never published anything, but if I do write that original series I mentioned above, and if I decide to self-pub it as I mentioned in an earlier post, maybe I should think about doing that.  Might be an interesting thing to use April A-to-Z for, if one was careful to be interesting and not make it just boring, shameless advertising.  (Sadly, I’m not doing the challenge this year, unlike the past two years.  I meant to spend all year getting ready for it, another nice, research-intensive world mythology theme, but…I kept putting it off for one reason or another, and never got the research completed.  And I have a lot of work to do this month for school, so…school work is always more important than blogging, and therefore I just can’t do the challenge the way I want to.  And I’d rather not do it than to do a half-assed job of it.)