pebblerocker

Can we start saying "twenty-eleven" instead of "two thousand and eleven" now? Or "two thous and eleven", thank you radio announcers? (Thou means thousandth [of an inch], not thousand, and the plural of thou is thou, not thous, and we measure our tappet clearances using the metric system these days anyway.) I want to say "twenty-eleven" and I also can't wait four years for my hoverboard and for my fruit to come out of the ceiling when I call it.

I made a New Year's resolution to Write Stories, and I've not broken it yet although there's still time to break it before bedtime. I'm counting writing half a paragraph of a story I've been writing for four years as Writing Stories, and I'm counting writing some thoughts about what I might put into a story if I wrote one as Writing Stories, so it's been pretty easy not to fail at it so far. I find it very easy to make lists of things that might happen and write background details and do things like scribbling maps and inventing place and character names, but I have no idea at all how to turn that into actual stories where something happens and there's a beginning, middle and end. I'm sure I used to write stories as a child, so I must have known how to do it once, though I recall often having ideas and starting stories but not knowing how to finish them. I'm hoping that either if I try hard enough I'll eventually learn how it's done, or that the internet will suddenly give me sense-making instructions on how to write stories without me actually figuring out what to type into Google to find it.

I've found myself volunteering to moderate a fanfiction forum and archive. Oops. I don't really feel qualified. There's hardly going to be anything to DO, maybe occasional spam deletion and moving misfiled posts, though there could be an explosion when new canon comes out. But I've never posted any fic myself and I feel a bit of a fraud moderating, even though someone has to do it and nobody else spoke up.

I'm starting by reading some of what's archived so I know my way around a bit better. Maybe I'll get inspired and write something myself. Maybe I'll do some more work on that story I've been writing for the last three years or more, and still not show it to anyone.

Edit: it is apparent that all I ever talk about on LJ is fanfic and writing, but nothing ever comes of it. Maybe I need to learn to write stories on the computer, so I won't be stuck if an exercise book goes missing. One of the main skills to learn in order to achieve this is to not read webcomics all the time and keep checking to see what's on The Hathor Legacy this week instead of writing.

It hit me suddenly: What happens next? What is this character doing ten years from now? I can't not make up stories about her.

I haven't actually written much fanfic before, mainly just read it. (Ghastly self-inserts and unfinished ramblings don't count.) And this is a fandom I'd never even considered writing for. But now I want to write, and I don't think I know how. I put down all the questions that came into my head and various answers so they don't get away. Now I'm probably going to research women in policing in 1950s Britain until the urge to write has gone.